5 comments/ 37512 views/ 27 favorites More than a Ghost Ch. 01 By: Mister_Shy More than a Ghost Ch. 01 Amber wiped her slender fingers together and patted them again on her hips. "It's Friday," she said slowly. Then she amended: "Well, maybe it's Saturday now." We both looked up at the night sky reflexively but just as certainly as if a clock would present itself to us from the firmament. "You run well," I said simply. "Gee," said Amber, and smiled again. "You're a professor, right?" Scientist. "Yes," I said. "You missed carpool, cooped up in the house, is that why you don't know?" "Why are you running on a Friday night?" Amber's eyes flashed. I watched her jaw muscles tighten under her soft cheeks. "That's not very polite." I was confused. "Why not?" "Well I'm probably running tonight because I don't have a boyfriend." I was uncomfortable. After a moment I slowly asked, "Is that why?" Amber gave a bright laugh that echoed between the darkened houses. "Yes, Mr. Beal, that's probably why..." She turned redder and moved her eyes to the sidewalk. I realized slowly that I may have embarrassed her more than myself. "But you run all the time," I tried to argue. "Surely—" "Well Friday nights are a little harder to get through when everybody's having fun." "Rebecca—" "Loves to have fun," said Amber. She looked at me quickly. "I just— I don't." She smiled nervously. "It's different." I pulled my swampy shirt away from my chest and wiped at my hair. We continued our long tramp back to our homes. "You're weird, a little bit, aren't you?" said Amber. "No," I said immediately. "You're different," she said. "How?" She laughed again. "Like that. You don't really act like my parents." I couldn't hide my disgust. "I am not like your parents." "Right," agreed Amber. "Why were you running tonight?" "Do you really want to know?" I said. "Uh huh." "I don't know what to do next." Amber pressed her lips together and kept her eyes on the sidewalk ahead. "What do you mean?" "You know what I mean," I said. "You ran tonight too, with the same tenacity. To block out this...drab neighborhood. To block out yourself, maybe." "I guess you're not weird," said Amber. "Perhaps you are." Amber smiled. "Amen. So you can tell all of that from the way I ran?" "No," I said. "Rebecca said you were smart." "I am exceedingly intelligent." Amber laughed again, brightly. She took a moment before sniffing and replying. "Thanks for running with me tonight and talking. I actually feel a lot better." "Was something wrong?" She turned to me and I realized she was crying. Silently. I felt absurdly out of place, without a basic notion as to what I'd done or said or how long she had been doing this. "No," she said, wiping at her face. "No, I'm just stupid. I'm not...I want." She made a deep sound and shook her head. "Will you not tell anyone?" I turned about myself. "Who on Earth would I tell?" She smiled. "Rebecca says she thinks you think you're better than everyone." I didn't hesitate. "I'm simply the best at what I do." "No ego there, huh?" "All ego," I said. "However, it does not hinder the truth." "Well I'm not smarter than everyone and I'm only slightly better at running than anyone." "I agree," I said. "Did you date when you were in high school?" "I finished high school early. I dated in college. Why?" "I dunno. I can't really talk to my mother about...boys and Rebecca, well, I don't think she remembers what it was like to not know what to do." "What do you mean?" "I don't like any of my classmates but I want—" She stopped herself. Red again, she started again. "It would still be nice to have someone to spend...time with. To feel," she made herself continue, "wanted." It was my turn to laugh. I snorted. "Best not to rely on a man for that, Amber. Or a woman, really." "I know," said Amber testily. "That's not what I mean." "Hm," I said to myself. But thick as I was at that moment, I suddenly understood what Amber meant. "You're saying you wish you had someone in a romantic sense." Amber, for the last time that night, burst out laughing and stopped. "That's exactly what I'm saying, you..." She smiled jubilantly. "I don't know if you're being silly or making fun of me but thanks," she said. I wasn't sure what I'd done but I assumed my overall cluelessness had somehow alleviated her mood. She sighed. "I don't know what to do with myself half the time, when I'm not running." She flexed her fingers in a suggestive way, stopped, wiped them on her shorts again and consciously played off whatever it was she'd suggested. "Oh I'm sure you'll find something constructive," I said, trying to relate. "And in the meantime, I'll just keep controlling my urges by running at odd hours." "Urges?" Amber blushed. "I don't have a boyfriend and it's Friday night. Why do you think I run all the time?" "I—" But we had already come to the girl's house. She waved at me quickly and bounded up to her steps, letting herself in after bending toward the door and trying to find the keyhole. I couldn't help myself from watching the way her body easily flexed over, her behind the only bright thing on the dark front step. It caught the sheen of the streetlamp and flared. Then she was gone, disappeared inside the house. And I stood and stared at my own house, at the basement window leering at me like an accusing socket. For a time I had ignored what I'd come out here to ignore. Before I knew it I was tromping up the back steps. Before I knew it I was locking the door behind me. Holding the vial in my hand. Watching the light glint through its fluorescent contents. Don't, a voice within me said. But it was quiet and I knew it wasn't convinced. "For science," I said, and drank the bitter serum down. More than a Ghost Ch. 01 An asthmatic being squeezed through a straw two miles long. The sudden taste of Eden's forbidden fruit, you realize it is nectar, it is sweet as pineapple, and it dribbles down your chin. You are a bad, bad invisible man and you like it. If Amber suspected that an intruder had begun to lick her delicate snatch she did not seem overly disturbed. Rather, she had worked herself into such a fit that after a shuddering and vacuous intake of breath her instinct was to immediately slam her legs together and wriggle fiendishly against my tongue. I ended up with a great portion of Amber's vagina inside my mouth—which was delightful, especially since the girl tasted, for all her sweat, fresh as fruit. It was a little sour. It did not gush but it was viscous and copiously lathered about her inner thighs. Since she was dizzily writhing up and down my face I decided to grab her pliant ass cheeks. "Ah!" I finally heard her say. Her little feet went up and flailed wildly in the air. Then her heel came down on my shoulder. "What—?" she gasped. The toes of her other foot came down softer on my other. "What—" she huffed again. But just then a spasm wracked her taut stomach and she pressed her palms into the mattress around her ears and pushed her body up to form a stuttering bridge. "Oh God," she groaned. Hm. Amber had gymnastics training. "Good God," Amber went on. I peeked above her undulating belly and squeezed her soft flesh. That soft flesh beautifully overlaid a hard musculature underneath and the barest of down salted her abdominals like translucent snow. I reached up further and squeezed her quivering breast. Amber immediately lifted her head from her mattress and stared into my eyes. Not quite, but it was disturbingly close. She was more accurately staring through my eyes (the mechanics of how I could see while photons denied my existence is not a matter to be discussed here) while her elbows shakily braced her upper body to a semi-sitting position. Words did not escape her mouth but she dropped her lower lip and it trembled while her eyes grew wider and wider still in a way that no woman would ever want her man to see. It was the open, vacant stare of someone lost in thought and yet terribly preoccupied. It was the glazed expression of having your privates tended to and not having a good goddamn thing to do with yourself but watch. She was staring at her pussy with an ember of satiation. Hungrily. Frightened. She wasn't staring at me. She was staring at her pussy as if she wanted to interrogate it, to demand from it why it had chosen to fill her with this. This feeling. Her toes kneaded themselves into the flesh of my shoulders but that did not seem to concern her. Her breasts juddered as she leaned forward and pulsed her hips rhythmically against my lips. I kissed her slippery pussy. She shut her eyes. "Unh!" she grunted. Her eyes snapped open. She breathed sharply a few times. I wedged my tongue as deeply inside of her as I could. Amber's eyes went wide. "HA-ah-ah!" Her red lips nearly tossed the sound to me. She bit her lip, wiped the sweat from her forehead and shoved her pussy up into my mouth. "UNN! H-UHN! Yes. Ah—" She slumped back on the bed. "Oh God... What's happening?" Her hands snaked down her naked breasts and the film of moisture over her stomach and found my head. She drew her fingers through my hair but obviously there was nothing there—or obviously there was, but not apparently. She actually reached behind my skull and squeezed me against her loins. Her thighs lovingly pressed against my ears and she wiggled like she was swimming. I kissed her. I sucked at her. I welded my tongue into the strong flesh of her labial folds. Her body rose with every stroke and fell with each sudden lap. And trembled! How her body perspired with my nose digging into her clitoris. No longer did she toss restlessly but now wrapped her pale arms into her covers and groaned into the folded heap. It was a kind of sex she had suddenly convinced her body was real. Reality had bent itself around her and met her on the other side of that anxious "Please". My member was as stiff as a birch rod and I needed that release too. But this had already gone too far. What were my intentions when I snuck into this strange, beautiful girl's bedroom? Eating her pussy? A surreptitious wank? No, I had to clear my head; I had to go. Perhaps she'd cum somewhere along her gyrations and undulations and exhalations. I had to go. I had to go. I had to go— I rose up and suddenly felt her catch me with her sweating calf. She fell back and lifted the long, glistening leg. "Don't—" She stared at the ceiling and gasped for air. "I know you're there..." she rasped. I watched the way her breasts rippled against her soft body. But it didn't matter what she wanted! I had to go! I shifted away from her leg and it dropped suddenly against her mattress. Amber sprang up from the bed and bounced weakly to her feet. Before I knew it she'd slammed into me, having misjudged how far I'd gone. I almost teetered against her window but I had to lean in to keep Amber from slipping back to the ground. Reflexively, I put my arms around her. Her hands came up to scratch at my chest. She stared at the hard, invisible surface her fingers could not penetrate. She looked up into where she assumed my face was. "Please..." she suddenly said and she was murderously serious. I stood over her, tall and naked and nearly immaterial except for the throbbing that reminded me I was a man. Amber pulled my arms from around her and grasped my wrists. She was stronger than I realized. She pulled my hand to her face and inhaled deeply. Her eyes flashed and she looked quickly up into the blank air again. "I can smell you," she said. "I know that smell..." She took a step back, my wrist still clutched in her hand. She wiped her hair out of her eyes and threw herself backward onto the bed—taking me with her. I fell forward. My penis slapped against her stomach. Amber's eyes flashed again and she let go. She stretched full length across the mattress, her arms wound into her sheets and her long, lean body reached to its fertile limits. Beneath her skin her heart thumped so hard. "Say something," she said, still trying to find me. I pushed into her mattress and tried to raise myself. But she said, "Please..." Tears stood out in her eyes. "I don't..." Her lip began to tremble. "I don't know how to..." She fought to say it, "I don't know how to... on my own..." She reached down my body until she found my member. She wrapped her fingers around it and gasped. "Are you a ghost?" she whispered as she felt my back and shoulders with her other hand. She was willing to experiment, willing to fuck the phenomenon. I don't know which of us started the kiss but it was Amber that first stuck out her tongue. I sucked on it hungrily, a dollop of saliva dripping from my lips. It hid in the corner of her mouth but she didn't see it. Her right thigh glided over my hip and instinctively pulled me in. Her left calf pressed against my ass. I put my hand on her breast and Amber's eyes rolled up into her head. "You have to..." she groaned. "Do it..." I had to go— "Do it. Take it..." She gazed at the ceiling, the bright ceiling, the wind from the open window blustering over us. She wrapped both legs around my hips and forced her vagina against my cock. Her entire body shook. I raised her pelvis with my left hand to brush her body against what she was looking for. "It's there..." she whispered. "I can feel it. Oh God..." Her lips parted. "Oh God, please..." She opened her legs until her knees were parallel with the bed. Definitely gymnastics. She drove herself over the head of my cock, piercing her thin hymen. Amber's eyes widened to white circles. My wife was next door. "Do me," she demanded. "Hurt me until I can't see. I'll be... I'll be quiet..." Her eyes opened and burned into me. "Oh God what are you?" A scientist, I wanted to tell her. I pulled out of her body and slid myself back in as gently as I could but Amber didn't want it that way. She forced her body to take me up to the hilt, groaned with her whole diaphragm, and slipped out from under me. Then she impaled herself again. Amber was fucking herself on my dick. "Y-yes..." It was a greedy, broken note. Amber's thin body drove back against the mattress. "Ah..." Desperate fingernails raked over my shoulders. Her vaginal walls were streaming. I couldn't remember the last time I had been embraced so tightly; her pussy gripped me and ground against me. "I can smell you," she said again. She ran her hand over my shoulders and to my neck and forced my hand down onto her breasts. "I won't tell," she whispered, still piercing herself with my dick. "Kiss me," she begged. I slipped her pink nipple into my mouth and she lost control of her thighs for a moment. Amber's toe slid down the back of my thigh as she suddenly drifted back and moaned. Evidently we were working through the pain of her lost virginity. Amber craned her neck so that she could stare through my right shoulder and watch her vagina. I watched her face contort with wonderful lust and fascination and I realized that the fluids inside of her were definitely coating me. Amber could watch something enter her vagina—what's more, she could watch the residue of what came out of her. She was entranced. The expression she wore was one of helpless confusion. But she was being fucked. And Amber, judging by the way her pussy was flushing my swollen shaft with her warm fluids, was very glad to be fucked. She fell back against the bed and squeezed my shoulders. "Are you a ghost?" she grunted huskily. "Are you fucking me? Are you possessing me?" She guided my hands to her ass and made me squeeze her. "Harder," she demanded. "God! Fuck me!" I complied, pulling her ass to me as I tried with all of my might to push deeper inside the girl. "Are you going to cum in me?" Her eyelids fluttered and I felt another jet of juice slide over my shaft and stick to my balls. I'd never been so turned on by a woman's nipples—Amber's were sticking straight out like little raw cones. I took one in my mouth and playfully bit it. Amber slapped at my face. Evidently she hadn't meant to slap at my face. But she did it again, this time with a manic pleasure. "Bad boogey man." At the word I thrust up hard into Amber's pelvis. Her whole body bucked up with my hips and she crashed back to the comforter. "Anh! Oh, I'm sorry!" I fucked her harder. She wrapped her wrists around my neck and let her head loll back to her doorway. The tension in her stomach slackened and she'd left off meeting my thrusts. Now she was willing to let me do all the work. I couldn't even focus on not cumming. Amber moaned. "I've cum so many times... I think I've cum so many times... I've never... God, I've never..." I pulled out nearly to the tip of my head and squeezed back in. Amber's breasts expanded as she dragged the musky air into her lungs. "Yeah," she said as low as her register would go. "Yeah..." Amber squeezed me between her thighs and tried to fix her gaze on whatever was above her, inside of her. She laughed lightly to herself, the sweat outstanding on her forehead. "I thought I could go all night," she muttered. "But I think... I think I'm going to pass out." She locked her arms tighter around my neck. "How do you make it stop?" she whispered into me. I had to cum. I'd been ready to pop since I'd felt Amber's toes clutch at my legs. But I wasn't going to make it outside. I realized my semen would materialize. I couldn't cum in her room—that would raise too many questions. Even if Amber thought she was dreaming, there was a mess to clean up. Even if Amber didn't think she was dreaming, the sperm would be all too real. I could cum on her but that left me with the same problem. Suddenly Amber reached behind my neck and drew my face to her mouth. After licking my ear, she whispered: "Cum inside me, Mr. Beal." In two seconds I came explosively inside Amber's vagina. I reached down and clutched Amber's ass cheeks in my palms and pushed her thin hips up onto my dick. She had been coming repeatedly since I'd entered her but now she came obediently, feeling my penis burrow deeper inside her. She took it. She took it and smiled. And slept. I pulled out of her and didn't have time to think. I went to her bathroom and found a small hand towel. I wet it gently and returned, wiping her vagina softly, not wanting her to be harmed, not knowing if I was trying to cover evidence or clean her. I turned off her light and let her wiggle her way inside her covers. Did she really know it was me? I looked down. I was still invisible. Yet she'd smelled me. It had taken everything in my power not to cry out. Amber seemed to bask in the drowsy light of what she'd done, or dreamed we'd done. And then she reached out for me but I of course had already slipped from beside her and backed away. Not finding me, she didn't seem surprised. I was more than a ghost now. I dropped myself from Amber's window and felt the soft breeze hit my skin. I walked back to my house in a daze and clambered down to my basement. I flicked on one of the small low watt lamps by the mice cages and sought out eight-six-one. I opened the latch and gathered him into my palm. He didn't mind floating in mid-air. In fact, he seemed right at home. I was invisible and alive for the first time in such a long time. The mouse and I stared at each other until I realized it was morning. At first light, the sun reflected off my skin, the shadows of the lab stretching over my arms and chest. I was back. And I was starving. More than a Ghost Ch. 02 4 The coffee pot bubbled upstairs, its thick morning smell slithering down the cellar steps to bring my thoughts back to earth. I had been elsewhere, it seemed. I set eight-six-one back in his cage and changed the water, the food. Then I checked the other cages to make sure the other creatures were still visible, or alive. They were both. I stumbled over to the rack of coats and robes that hung under the basement window and behind the stairs. Then I tied the rope around my naked body and heavily mounted the steps. It was no use to a logical mind to think, what had I done? I knew perfectly well what I'd done and I'd enjoyed it. A little too much in fact. My fingers kept making contact with the smooth pine of the bannister and feeling the soft down of Amber's stomach flexing under my grasp. Halfway up the stairs I stopped and drew my fingers to my face. Her smell was almost gone, replaced by eight-six-one and the familiar aroma of wood and must. What if I had fathered another child tonight? What if I was unfaithful to Margaret? What if that was just a malevolent spirit who haunted the neighborhood? I smiled. My heart pounded under my chest from confusion and excitement and fear. And yet I was giddy; innocent; powerful and yet humbled by either the girl's bold concupiscence or my own singular triumph. Hell, why not make it a double. Amber certainly left a good deal of restraint at the window; I couldn't speak for the girl but there was certainly an aura of triumph about her all throughout her several climaxes... And I, what had I achieved? Everything. I traipsed into the kitchen in my bare feet, my wife catching my eye over her pointed shoulder and simultaneously smiling into her phone and glowering at me. She was speaking enthusiastically - far too energetically for so early on a Saturday (was it Saturday?) but it was none of my business, or I chose to leave it as none of my business. As I poured the coffee I suddenly realized that I felt shell less. Naked, obviously, beneath the robe, but that in itself was not uncommon. Rather, before no matter the woes and hormonal highs of Rebecca or the cold reluctance or alien sociability of my wife the words seldom penetrated because the latest failure, theorem, confounded hypothesis, existential convolution of algorithmic righteousness, boredom, numbers and dead mice were cloistered about my brain like cotton pulled over my ears and eyes. "Ha!" My wife spun on me. I had laughed aloud. She gave me a dirty look and stomped out of the kitchen, all the while carrying her high, boisterous enthusiasm over the conversation. I smiled bashfully to myself. I had not meant to let that escape but the wave had washed over me all at once. I was suddenly free from that. Because it worked. After so long. Not that I held the illusion that I was free from scientific (or perhaps moral, at this point) inquiry. There were still years of tests ahead of me, ahead of the Institute, of all of us. But... Hell... "Ha-ha!" 5 I didn't see Margaret for most of the day. We went to bed in silence that night (I having slept most of the day, waking briefly to drive Rebecca somewhere that was going out of business or going on sale, then coming home and devouring most of what remained in the refrigerator). In the morning of course she was already awake and straightening her hair. Margaret, my wife, hated her curls. I had always loved them, the original trait that spurred my attraction to her, but she straightened them whenever she could; I disapproved but said nothing; she straightened them more. I sensed that in this, like in so many minute conflicts between us, there was always the brief opportunity for resolution. But we had been married a long time now, almost nineteen years (as long as I had lived without her) and we gradually let the unsaid stay unsaid, the gulfs of unpleasantness that could erupt at the mildest comment soon growing so wide that there was little to bridge the gap between what we had in common - which was little. Ultimately we, like her parents before us, stopped trying. It was easier and happened as naturally as one year following another. I knew this before now and simply not cared. I continued to stare at her through the high french doors of the bathroom. I rolled over to my side and watched her in the bright light of the morning window; that heavenly light dwarfing the harsh artificiality of her vanity mirror. Her hair was shorter than when we first met, darker too because she dyed it. Her mother went gray at a young age and she was adamant to never find out what that meant for herself. Margaret was older than I. She had been a Junior in college at the same time I was completing my accelerated sophomore year. Because I had graduated high school early she had been fascinated with me. Maybe, I thought, in bitter moments when I wondered how it had come to this, she gravitated to me because she was less intimidated by a younger man, thinking too that my intelligence and drive would render me low maintenance. She was right. But I wondered, as I was told by men who were not quite friends but nevertheless valuable companions in my final bachelor days, if she had planned it all. The sudden sexual bouts, the demure outer Catholic mask shed the moment we were far (far) away from students and teachers who knew her and safely ensconced in my dormitory where she unleashed herself on me. She needed very little in return and rewarded my occasional attentions with all that my studies could not relieve. It was perfect. But I'd never asked about the precautions she was taking. I certainly wasn't. I was a young and selfish man. But smart enough to know when I was in trouble. Was I stupid enough to be duped? I always wondered. But I had to smile now. Because it didn't matter now. I stared at Margaret in the mirror, at her long lashes that her girlfriends endlessly coveted, telling me how lucky I was to have a wife with such bedroom brown eyes, telling me how impressively she had kept her figure. Margaret was a vegetarian, thin though never much for fitness, with teardrop breasts that sagged but in a full, heavy fashion. She had softened some, from her eyebrows to her ears and her nose, her pale lips. It did her complexion good, the way her chin no longer seemed so cruel or her long neck so strained. I had been with another woman last night but I... I couldn't tell where my new happiness sprouted from. Was it finally realizing I had won? Was it conquering that young, brazen runner? Was it just staring at my wife in her mirror? Perhaps it was all these things and more, or less. "Where were you last night?" she asked. I cleared my throat. "I worked late in the lab. You probably heard me..." She pulled the iron away from her hair and squinted at me. "You weren't in there." "I ran. Intermittently." "Oh," she said, and turned back to her mirror. I rolled awkwardly in the bed and her voice floated back to me. "Has the Institute called you?" She wanted me out of the house. "Not yet," I said. "But I'm going to speak with some of the lab tomorrow." "After the carpool." "After the carpool," I agreed. "I'm going grocery shopping later. Do you want anything?" "No," I said. And that was our last conversation of the day. 6 I sat behind the wheel in our slanted driveway wondering how it would be to see Amber again. Rebecca had dashed next door to go get her, as she did every morning, and the two would walk back to the car - slower or faster depending on all the important events I was too square to hear. They came back breathless, both of them wearing enormous grins and Amber especially looking healthy, happy and mischievous. "Well?" she asked my daughter after giving me a hurried hello. I put the car into reverse and rolled into the street while Rebecca pondered aloud. "Ohhh, I don't know!" "Come on!" Amber chided. Rebecca only laughed in reply. "Do you believe in ghosts?" I swerved the car and nearly flattened Mr. Potacki's little Pomeranian. The girls shrieked and I quickly righted the car. "What the hell, dad?!" Rebecca screeched. "Dog in the road," I said. "I don't see-" Amber started but I was already turning the corner. It didn't take long for the girls to calm down enough to resume their previous conversation. "No," said Rebecca, "that's so stupid." "I think my house is haunted," Amber whispered. She was downright giddy. I watched Rebecca smirk in the mirror. "Haunted, huh? You don't seem scared." "No..." Amber taunted. "I think it's a lonely ghost." "Oh yeah?" Rebecca said. The fire was suddenly in her eyes. I realized the two girls were communing in secret right behind me in some significant but abstruse way. "What's his name?" Amber shook her head forcefully and Rebecca suddenly attacked her with a furious reaching of fingers and pokes. "Tell me! Tell me!" "Ow!" Amber groaned. "Stop, stop..." The two were already huffing against each other in a giggling pile. I regarded them coldly in the mirror. "You're both far too old to be behaving like that." Rebecca rolled her eyes. "Lighten up, dad, this is a big deal." "I don't understand." Both girls resumed their conspiratorial smiles. "We know." I left them to their huddled whispers, sure of nothing else but the fact that I was most definitely not the subject of their conspiracy. Rebecca knew enough that Amber had had some sort of experience in the last 48 hours. How deeply Amber herself believed in its supernatural validity was debatable, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves. My heart was going to beat heavily all throughout that day, seeing Amber or being found out, what I was about to do after I dropped them off, everything in my mind ensured that my body would be rapt and waiting for the slightest physical incitement. Rebecca planted a swift kiss on my cheek and hurried out of the car to join the gaggle of girls gathering in the school's parking lot. Amber pulled her long legs from under her and left her seat, closing the door promptly and pulling her dainty skirt around her calves. I was pulling the car out of neutral when she stepped back to the window. "Mr. Beal...?" I froze. I locked the car into park and lowered the passenger side window. She smiled shyly and leaned in. "What is it, Amber?" "I want to thank you." I raised my eyebrows in an attempt to mask the building tension in my jaw. "What?" She pulled a lock of hair away from her lip and studied me for half a second before swallowing. "Just...the other night, talking to me." "Oh!" "What?" "Oh. No. No, not a problem, Amber. Cleared my head too, really." "Really?" It was my turn to smile. "Yes," I said. "Okay," she said happily. "Thanks again, Mr. Beal. Have a nice day!" I waved back at her as she strode away from the car and joined Rebecca in the lot. It took five minutes to clear out of the parking lot behind the endless red lights of other vans and SUVs and then another five to get on the highway toward downtown. Thankfully I wouldn't need to go all the way into the city and could avoid rush hour traffic. Instead I turned off halfway down the pike and sped through the outskirts of Boulder towards the outer city park and the imposing acreage of one of the Institute's many commercial research facilities. I stuck my permit on the dashboard and waved at the security as I coasted in, parked, and walked determinedly up the peaceful brick walk between the glass and steel cyclinders of the complex, my hand in my pocket all the while fingering the glass vial in my pocket. I encountered more and larger crowds of people the closer I got to Building G, most of them enthusiastic looking gentlemen in suits, some old, some surprisingly young. All of them looked hungry for something. I stopped at the employee entrance to the research zone and allowed the security officers to take my badge and frisk me (shifting my leg so that the small vial inconspicuously rolled behind my wallet). I glanced over my shoulder at the men in suits; they watched me curiously in turn. I had seen this before and I knew what it meant: the Institute was ready for business again. After another kindly wave I was inside the building, my identity card swinging around my neck and my soles making authoritative smacks on the abandoned linoleum. Since disbanding the greater body of its advanced researchers the building was only occasionally used. The Institute had no qualms with allowing its senior staff to use the place but it discouraged too many of us gathering at once. After placing a call late Saturday evening I knew Pris would be working in G all day. After the mass outside I suspected that Pris would be doing more than working. Priscilla Coker M.D. (with another Ph.D. on the way in advanced theoretical cellular electronics) was not a cold woman by any stretch of the imagination. At 31 she was already a leader in the field of both biological mutation and the budding nanotechnology industry, vivacious and endearing and outwardly one of the key faces of the Institute. She was 5'8", platinum blonde (not naturally) and - as one of the key faces of the Institute - had to smile a lot and wear the sort of outfits that made lab work potentially hazardous. But the Institute needed that because most of us were not so striking to look at. Behind the veneer of Priscilla's bright white smile, however, was an exacting, even cruel ambition. She was not, despite her high praise in the industry, its leading figure in theoretical transhumanist research. She had a good team of energetic graduates behind her that did what they were told and were rewarded accordingly. And many times over, if tales told out of school are to be believed. But there was a high burnout rate and young men in her brilliant cabal tended to last only so long. Which is not to say that Priscilla didn't have talent. The girl could thread DNA like a fabled tailor if she ever got her hands on the right tools, and few understood the chemical reactions on the molecular level the way she did. It was never overtly clinical, her methods, but something emphatically instinctual. Public relations were as natural to her as being undressed. She was dangerous but valuable. And, after all, weren't we after the same thing? I found her door open, her legs shining under the heat of a solitary lamp at her desk and her knees crossed over each other in a short, red skirt. She looked up when I knocked on the door, her pale green eyes going from curious to tight in the time it took her to recognize me. "Good morning, Pris." She smiled coldly. "Beal. I didn't think you'd actually show up." I crossed her sterile and ordered office and sat down across from her on the other side of the desk. I appraised her shelves. "Your office is neater than anyone else I know. I suppose that's one way to keep clean - don't read the books." She sneered. "I heard one of the janitors nearly killed himself trying to get into yours. Bit of a health hazard, isn't it? And besides," she uncrossed her legs and leaned back, "at least I have friends." I leaned forward, my elbows on her desk. "You've got me there, Professor Coker. That's exactly why I'm here." She gave a high, hollow laugh. "Moses comes down from the mountain, huh? You're lucky you're smart, Abner. Otherwise people might think you're irrelevant." "Better that than illiterate, I always say." She frowned. "Why ARE you here? I really didn't expect to see you. You're always working." "I work until I get results." "Very funny," she said. And stopped. Her chair cracked as she slowly came upright. "What do you mean?" "How are the nanites coming?" I asked casually. "They're still... they don't seem to respond to photons the way we expected. The way I expected." Ask Priscilla the right question about her work and she became just enough of a tolerable person. I never managed that trick myself. "I keep telling Corman that nanites are the wrong way to go about combatting the spectrum. I should be shifted over to neural engagement and let you and the rest of the sci-fi scum work on this whole optical nonsense." "Nonsense, is it?" "It is..." She studied me coolly. "What's up, Abner? You're awfully pleasant for so early in the decade." I shrugged. She sighed and shook her head. "I don't have time for this now anyway. I have a presentation before the investors. Remember that atmospheric shield you opposed?" "I don't oppose the idea but the method is entirely wrong. If you want to create a barrier that large you need ten times the output and a completely different agent for the plutonium. It will dissolve at that speed." "That's not what Bostwick says." "Bostwick is a quack who still thinks he can send amphibians back in time." Priscilla waved her hands in the air, dispelling the possibility of my rambling on about meteorological endogenics. "Whatever," she said. "The Institute wanted me to sell it to the money." I stood up. "What do you mean?" She tightened her blouse around her shoulders and gathered her papers. She grinned like a jack knife. "It means they're apt to take me at my word, Professor, which is more than I can say for you." "If the Institute gets that project up and running the whole Advanced Espionage unit will be shuffled back another decade. Even if they spent half the budget recruiting new blood there's no way they'd have the manpower and money to sustain the rest of our research." "So wait till next decade." She strode out of her office. I pursued hot on her stiletto heels. "I don't know what you're so pissed about, Abner," she continued, "you'll probably be picked to lead it." "Over sixty five individual devices and more than two dozen research units will be compromised by investment in some ridiculous vanity project that wouldn't pass muster at a grade school science fair!" Pris tossed her hair over her shoulder and laughed in my face. "That's so cute! Since when did you give a shit about other units' research?" She continued to march determinedly down the hall to the massive auditorium across campus. "There's a difference between science and fiction, Priscilla. And there's such a thing as principles." She spun on her crimson heel. Thrusting a hand into my chest she stared up into my eyes. "Stop it right there, Abby. The Institute cares about two things: money and money. I'm sure you're aware that you are dispensable, no matter how big your brain is. In the meantime though, why not enjoy that sloppy paycheck that comes your way every two weeks and get with the fucking program." She narrowed her eyes. I casually pried her fingers back from my shirt. "Language, Pris." She laughed another high, hollow laugh, each one of her pearly teeth glinting in the hallway lights. I watched her swallow that sound, her ruby lips puckering for a moment while she thought about what to do with me. Finally she said, "I'm going to enjoy watching you lead this vanity project. I hope your principles don't send you and your musty office packing in a cardboard box because it," she leaned in close, the words cutting through her teeth, "is going to feel so good to watch you try to figure out how to make Bostwick's project fly. Because if I know anything about men with principles it's that they'll try to make shit smell like flowers before they admit defeat. Even you, Abner," she pointed, again making sure she touched my chest, "will admit that. Are you really going to throw a tantrum to the Institute...just because you know the project's a waste of your time?" "So we're agreed it's a waste of time." She smirked and retreated back down the hall. "Of course it is. But I, unlike you, Professor Beal, have more on my mind than how super smart I am. I like to think about the number of bathrooms I'm going to have when this is all said and done." I watched her shoulders tense as she drew her hands together. "I'm thinking six - just one more than I really need." More than a Ghost Ch. 02 "That is entirely superficial," I said. "Isn't it great?" She was practically beaming with anticipation. We crossed the empty courtyard in silence and swiftly made our way to the bustling theater. She glanced into the guest entrance and quickly made for the back portico. "Prepare to be rich," she said and patted me on the arm. I watched her step behind the curtain and suddenly meet what sounded like hundreds of excited cheers. I paced behind the curtain itself, listening to the opening joke about how stodgy the rest of us scientists were and how they must have all felt overdressed. Or something like that. By that point I was livid. Bostwick! An ignoramus spawned by a community of ignoramuses! What passed for science in his febrile mind would have choked a primate with its absurdity! And Priscilla knew! She welcomed it just as the Institute had because she knew it was exactly the kind of thing the investors were willing to pay for: flash and fury... There was nothing subtle about the atmospheric shield. It was just another buzz word for missile defense only now it was the twenty-first century and the magic was just within our grasp - for upwards of several billion inflated dollars! I threw my arms about petulantly and felt ridiculous. Hadn't I just come to reinvigorate this greedy place? One swig of this elixir and disappear! No need to invest in overpriced tomfoolery when you could send some invisible operative to just deactivate the enemy's defenses. No missiles required! All it needed now was testing - testing to make sure the effects lasted, that there were no side-effects, that it worked. Hell, I knew it worked... No missiles required. I glanced over my shoulder at Priscilla's erect posture while she dazzled the murmuring crowd with facts and figures and a questionably tasteful decolletage. She was right; she could sell them on it. She was poised, confident, and well organized. The security was guarding the outside doors, not the inside. There were men at the foot of the stage but no one behind the curtain. I reached into my pocket and pulled the vial out. It caught the reflections of the stage lights in its thin glass, the liquid within shimmering where the light didn't quite refract the way it should have. Why did I bring it anyway? For science. I popped the rubber cork and drank it, not stopping to think, as I swiftly began to unbutton my shirt, what would happen if this invisibility gag was all in my mind when I stepped out in front of three or four hundred monied ladies and gentlemen. If it worked as quickly as last time I'd only need a few minutes for it to take effect. If it didn't last as long as last time I could be in for trouble. But what was I going to do exactly? I was already down to my boxer shorts and black socks when my fingers drained of all their color. It was like staring through a glass statue, my forearm. I trailed my fingers down my chest and watched chest hair hang in space and then shorten and vanish. I reached down and pulled the sock off of nothing at all, then the other, finally drawing my boxers from mid-air to the ground. I was gone. "Priscilla," I whispered into her ear, "do you believe in ghosts?" The girl snapped her head to the side as if a bullet had swiped across her face. She hadn't heard me come up behind her from around the curtain and, despite my lifelong stage fright, picturing myself naked in front of the fully clothed assembly was doing much more to inspire my confidence than the other way around. As soon as she turned her head I tapped her on the opposite shoulder - just like some kind of looney tune! She started and whipped to the side, suddenly reaching out into nothing. I backtracked quickly behind her and let the projector at the far end of the auditorium glide through me to the opposing screen. The happy murmurings of the crowd had suddenly frozen; the whole gathering waiting to understand what had happened. Priscilla, ever the diplomat, smiled broadly and apologized for the sudden interruption. There was a mad fly looking to sabotage the operation. That got an appreciative chuckle from the crowd. She went on with the speech, the projection behind us outlining the basic planning stages of Bostwick's idiot schematics. I couldn't have that. I moved back beside Priscilla and breathed softly in her ear. I had to hand it to the girl, she had talent. All she did was deftly cup her ear, as if pulling a stary hair back around her earlobe (which, for anyone close enough, was ridiculous - each of her hairs was perfectly in place). Then I glided behind her and blew into the next. When she waved that off I suddenly realized just how many were in the crowd before us. Tentatively I strode towards the edge of the stage. I stared out at the legion of faces, even waved my privates at them, stuck out my tongue, made crazy grimaces. Nothing, no one could see me. I cast no shadow. I danced before the projector and made not a single impression. This was brilliant! Of course I still hadn't achieved my objective. So I sallied back to Priscilla and decided to do something drastic. I placed two fingers, very gently, on the back of her neck. Her whole body went bolt upright but she continued her drone. Perhaps it wasn't noticeable to the eyes in the back but those at the front were visibly bemused. Priscilla by now realized there was something on stage with her but I was just over her shoulder and I could see her scan her periphery and then the eyes of the audience. No one, not even her, could see anyone but her. I let my fingers glide down her back, over the fabric of her suit jacket. One elbow tried to nonchalantly brush me away but the gesture was too awkward to carry off, so she swung her arm back, right into my face. Her fingers gave a trembling spasm as they connected with my nose and she couldn't help but turn. But no, I still wasn't there, but yes, she did let out a yelp. Priscilla was by the second looking more frantic - not afraid, but suddenly on unfamiliar ground. She returned to the podium and gripped the sides of the lectern with overeager excitement. Now she had happened on a stilted tangent about the return on investment the bigwigs were guaranteed. Most of them were still on board. Some of them looked unconvinced. When she went for the lectern she removed herself from my radius, but that was easily remedied. I came up behind her again and drew my fingers down her back. Her legs were shaking behind the podium, each muscle punished by the high stilettos and sweat actually visible in the spaces behind her knees. I wasn't sure how far I intended to go but my hand was now resting on her impressively toned buttocks. The red skirt glided under my fingertips but still, even still, Priscilla continued to sell it. So I gently brushed the skirt back and reached underneath. It ocurred to me, even at this stage, that this was twice now I'd used invisibility to my voyeuristic advantage. I wondered if the corruption was inevitable. Yet how corrupt was seeing a round, flexed bottom (my fingers crept stealthily past the band of her panties and into the wet crevice of her ass crack) and not experimenting? Below Priscilla's waist everything was shaking. It was as if her legs were caught in a miniature earthquake and her upper body was capable of floating above it. But I could see the tremors in the white knuckles on the podium. And we both knew that she couldn't risk giving anything away to the attentive eyes in the darkness. I slipped deeper into her ass crack, coming behind her and laying a hand over her left fist. Priscilla glanced at it, glanced at where she figured my shoulders were, and after a sudden eruption of laughter or applause from the audience I heard her whisper away from the microphone, "Are you enjoying yourself?" "You stop I'll stop," I whispered into her ear. "You don't have the balls." My hand slipped underneath her. I twisted my palm and pressed my fingers between her legs. I cupped her vagina and sunk my middle finger up inside her. Priscilla's sudden gasp was swallowed by a cascading round of applause. "Okay," she whispered as the applause died down. "Okay..." But even as she said it I watched her tighten her resolve and simultaneously felt her vaginal muscles tighten around my finger. She was going to try to ride it out. Ride was the operative word. I began rocking my middle finger back and forth inside of her. Priscilla caught herself just before her knees buckled, then caught herself again as she tried to rock with it. The intense sweat collecting underneath her made her extremely slippery and my wrist and forearm were already damp wedged up against her body. I decided to send an exploratory thumb up into her anus. "Polychromatic cells go beyond mere shading in this instance and na-ahhhhhhh!" Her sudden (almost erotic) outburst sent more than a few men to attention. It was as if I held her erect with my right hand, my left hand locked over hers, my fingers plugged into her body and her lower body noncomittally trying to force me out. "Nnmm," she went on. "The fibers..." I wiggled my ring finger up inside what felt like a thick labial lip. "The fibers..." she gasped. "Ah." She wet her lips and let out a tremendous breath. "To create this process, we..." My slick middle finger withdrew from her vagina and I slipped it gently up... "We..." she tried again (the audience could not see her ass gently arching back onto my thumb, her back twisting). My finger fondled. "Oh," she sniffed. "We, uh, ahm. Excuse me." My middle finger wicked across her clitoris. "OH my God!" she suddenly blurted into the microphone. She slapped her hands over her mouth and darted to the right of the stage. My hand still stuck inside her panties I was dragged offstage with her, a weird fin-like protrusion seeming to hump out behind the girl's skirt. I finally pulled my hand away from her as she stalked through the theater doors and started lambasting the air. "You dirty fucking bastard!" she shouted. The security guard started moving towards her and she shrieked at him. "Get away from me, asshole!" The man spoke some stuttered words into his walkie and backed away terrified. Priscilla clomped about ten more steps before cracking one of her heels. She swore loudly and kicked the shoe off, then ripped the other one off with her hand and continued to march across campus back the way we'd come. I followed behind her. "Are you there?" she snapped as we strode back into G. We were in the hallway again. "Indeed I am." She clawed wildly at the air behind her, realized she looked insane, and let out another stream of enraged curses. "You might have gotten me fired!" "Principles," came the floating voice over her shoulder. She groaned and shook her platinum head. "You touched me..." she muttered. We were stomping back to her office. "You're taking this rather well," I replied. "Well you're obviously fucking invisible." "Language, Pris." We banged back into her office and she whirled on the space behind her. "Where are you?" "I'm reluctant to say." She stepped backwards in her bare feet and sat on her desk. "Is this easier?" I stepped forward cautiously. "Maybe." She flipped up her skirt. "Is this easier?" "...I'm confused." "Come here..." she said huskily and reached out for me. "Are you naked?" Before I knew what I'd done I was standing over her desk and she was reaching out to me. Her fingers first brushed my cock and I watched her eyes go wide as my stiff member passed invisibly through her hand. "Oh my God..." she whispered. Her manicured nails sifted into my pubic hair and roved up my stomach and chest. "You're...you fucking did it..." Her fingers continued across my shoulders. She kept pinching and poking, dragging her nails down my sides. All the while I noticed that she was spreading her legs over her perfect desk. "Do something to me," she whispered. "What?" "I- I don't know. My hair!" I reached out and swept my fingers through her thin blonde, nearly white, hair. I let the hair slip through my hand as I pulled it towards me. Priscilla watched wide eyed as her hair floated before her eyes. She let out a low, earthy laugh. "Do something else," she whispered. "What?" "Do what you did on stage, you bastard." "This?" I laid my hand over her left hand. "No..." she said. Her legs opened wider on the desk. "This?" I breathed softly into her ear. She shivered but shook her head. "No," she said. "But you don't have to stop doing that..." While I moved in closer her hands reached up to run down my chest and stomach again. I pulled my hand away from hers and dragged my trembling fingers up her soft thighs. "This?" I breathed into her ear. "Oh..." Her breath was coming so rapidly that it was catching in her throat. I drew a finger over her (what I now saw were lacy, crimson) panties. She sucked a tremendous amount of air down her upturned mouth and fluttered her eyelids. "This?" I said into her ear as I slipped my fingers inside of her. Her legs clamped shut over my invisible hand and she ground her pussy against me. "Yes," she groaned. She pressed her head against my temple and reached behind me to claw at my back. "Oh, you fuck..." she groaned. I don't know what possessed me other than sheer, powerful lust. I reached down and tore her panties apart. She gasped as she saw the flimsy material fly from her bald pussy. "You wouldn't," she taunted. "This?" I said, and pushed my cock up against her skirt. "Bastard," she whispered, reaching for it and dragging it down. "Bastard," she moaned as she led it to the entrance of her slit. "Fuck me," she demanded as her thighs raised to allow me entrance into her- "PRISCILLA!" The two of us slammed back to reality as the voice came bawling from the hall. "Holy Hell..." Priscilla rasped as the sound of footsteps came trundling towards us. Gathering her bag and a few choice items she grabbed where she figured my wrist was (missed, but I grabbed her fingers) and pulled me out her office door and down the hall in the opposite direction. Both of us were barefoot and our soles slapped down the hall and made several extreme turns around and around the complex, all the time the voices behind us, all the while more footfalls in pursuit. At last we burst from the building and sprinted towards the parking lot. "You have to make sure I don't get fired!" she yelled over the racing wind. "Why's that?" "Sexual harassment!" she screamed. We scurried over the grass and flew into the parking lot. "Where's your-" She must have realized I was either invisible or without pockets because she suddenly pulled to the left and started pumping her elegant legs towards her own car. "Are you there?" she called back. "I am," I said at her side. She panted. "How are you right there?" "I run a lot." She unlocked her doors from a distance and we piled in on either side. "I did not intend to get you fired," I said. "Right," she replied. "Fuck you just the same, Abner." She started the car and we pulled out fast. "And if you don't mind, nobody needs to know about what may or may not have almost happened back there. This has been an incredibly stupid morning." I buckled the seatbelt over myself and Priscilla did a double take. "That's so weird." We pulled away from the complex and got back on the highway towards suburbia. "Okay, look," she said, dragging her fingers through her hair. "I'm going to try to salvage this. I'll tell Corman and the heads that you're on top of this." (She seemed awkward with the phrase.) "I'll tell them... I had a bluetooth or something and you had a eureka moment or... Dammit, Abner, you better not have got me fired!" "You're still taking this well." "Because fuck Bostwick!" she bellowed. "You're invisible!" She reached over and spread her hands over my chest. "And you're...in much better shape than I imagined." "You imagined?" "You're still a pain in the ass, Beal. And I'm not the only one who thinks so." "But I am a genius." "Unfortunately," Prisiclla sighed, merging into the carpool lane, "you are." "You're in the HOV." "So what?" She thought for a moment. "Right." She merged back into the fast lane. "I will help you," she said. "But you have to help me, too." "That's why I came to you." "You can't tell anyone else for now. Who else knows? Your wife? You have a wife, right?" "She doesn't know." "Who knows?" Briefly I thought of Amber. "No one," I said. "And," I continued, "the formula is not in my laboratory." She glanced at me, or the window really, from behind her blonde tresses. "So what?" "In case you were thinking of having the Institute take what they rightfully own...instead of firing you." She turned back to the road. "I wouldn't do that." "Wouldn't you?" We drove on in uneasy silence. More than a Ghost Ch. 02 Quickly I ascended the steps, gaining momentum as I ascended, my hand on the banister, my heart already racing. I could hear them! I could hear them furiously abusing the bed - which I already knew was my bed. My wife's bed. I glanced into my daughter's room, which was pristine and filled only with the straight sunbeam of a crepuscular ray. I passed the bathroom, the guest bedroom, rushed over the carpet to the overwhelming duet of aching, passion, moaning, groaning... My hand pushed the door open and there, pinned under some neanderthal's sweating back, was Margaret, fucking it with every vicious muscle in her body. She was like a serpent, undulating under him, the heat nothing compared to the fury of their thrusts and passion. I'd never seen her move like that, never seen her bite, never seen her open her mouth and scream, "Fuck me!" like her life was dripping from her lips. Her breasts bounced and jiggled freely against his muscular chest. He was a younger man, but not much younger. And the most insulting blow was that I did not know him. I did not recognize him in the slightest, I wouldn't have known him on the street - was he a milkman? The postman? A teacher? An engineer? An exterminator? A neighbor? A friend? Whatever he was he seemed ill suited to her tantric passion, only able to meet her thrusts in time and continue groaning. It was she who was making all the racket, she who was raking her hands up his back and squeezing her own breasts as she hugged his hips with her tight knees and stained our king size bed. I stared at her, even as the stranger plunged his penis deeper inside my wife's vagina. I stared at her eyes, even as he ran his fingers over her forehead and she demanded that he pull her hair. He pulled her hair, but she screamed "Harder!" So he pulled her hair harder. She screamed "Harder!" and he simultaneously pulled and began to fuck her wildly. Her thin hips rose with him and she spread her legs wide, obscenely wide, to allow his dick to shove harder - and harder - inside her. Inside her! Rage erupted throughout my arms as swiftly as the blood that filled my cock. I let out an animal roar and lunged at the man. The two suddenly jerked, terrified at the sound, and I grabbed the man under the armpits and threw him with all of my might. The stranger collided with our chest of drawers and careened off an old wood bookshelf. The shelves splintered against him and he screamed. Margaret screamed in turn, pulling herself up on the bed and shouting, "What happend? Oh my God - what happened! Harry?" Harry was his name, eh? I pulled 'Harry' from the wreckage of the bookshelf and, still dazed, went smashing into the bedroom door, cracking the molding and popping one of the hinges. Margaret screamed and pulled her hand over her mouth. "Harry!" she shrieked and jumped off the bed, her large breasts swinging away from her body. She clutched a pillow of her vagina and belly, as if modesty, now, was finally what was required. Harry grunted an unintelligible curse and came swinging for me, even though his senses told him he was swinging at shadows. Still possessed of an inhuman anger, I met his tackle head on, slamming into him in mid-air and trouncing him, rolling him backward, watching him connect first with the bannister and then tip over the stairs. I could feel the sweat fly off of him - even see the glistening wetness where his penis had been inside my wife! My wife! Margaret dashed from the broken bedroom door and crashed into my back. She let out a scream as she felt something there and bounced back. I turned to her, glowering, my eyes blessedly invisible lest I transformed her into stone. But the look on her face was not what I expected. A near vacant, knowing expression painted her flushed features. "Demon..." she whispered. The pillow dropped from her hands, revealing her puffy and soaking genitalia Of course. Margaret was a believer. A devout believer; a Christian who believed whole heartedly that a very large percentage of any given restaurant and hence the world was going to Hell. But Hell hath no fury as I. I stormed down the steps to find Harry shaking himself and rising to his feet. The stairs hadn't broken him. Good. I landed against his jaw with a solid left hook and he stumbled into the kitchen. Margaret came wailing down the stairs after us, now fully aware that her lover was fighting something he had no possible means to defeat. "Let him go!" she shrieked to me, scratching at the backs of my shoulders. She dug deeply. My blood came back from her nails. She screamed again and beat against my back. "Get behind me, Satan!" I shoved her aside and she splayed over the couch. Harry gave one more dazed and pathetic punch and fell forward into a sprint. He crashed into the front door and then pulled himself through it, absolutely naked, tripping and stumbling over himself out into the street. He wouldn't say a word. I knew that instantly. But my anger, my betrayal, my confusion had not abated. Margaret ran for the door, closed it, and spun, her back to the wood and her breasts shuddering on her chest. I watched her heart ripple the skin of her belly and chest and With her right hand she locked the front door securely. She swallowed, shaking, and came forward. "...Ezekiel twenty-three," she rasped. Her whole body quivered with the wilderness of belief and fear and...something I found wholly unexpected. She cupped her breast with her left hand, then cupped the other and stumbled back against the door in the early afternoon sunlight. "The whore of babylon," she said. I watched her rub her flushed thighs together. "Jezebel. Isn't that right, demon? ...Demon?" She shivered and I shook with my own rage: "HOW COULD YOU?" I roared. She shrank, her legs quaking and her breasts jiggling when she released them. She let out a cry of her own and came towards the sound, fists raised, body a jumble of shouts and fecund flesh. I gathered her up into my arms while she struck me about the chest, back and head. I didn't know myself. I slung her over my shoulder. I planted a sharp smack against her rump and this only set her beating against me all the harder. "Devil spawn!" she cried. "Who are you to judge me? Behind me, Satan!" I mounted the steps as if her stinking sex wasn't dripping against my cheek. "Behind me, Satan!" I threw her down at the top of the steps and she writhed on the carpet. "Ezekiel twenty-three..." she groaned, and began to twist her hips in a way I hadn't seen since nearly nineteen years ago. "I defiled myself with your idols... I gave myself as a prostitute..." She slipped her hands down her wet chest and drove her shaking fingers down to her opening, to her wet and glistening sex. She began to finger herself. "Ah!" Margaret's mouth opened and I watched her breathe the house's moist, angry air. "She lusted after her lovers," she quoted, licking her lips, "whose genitals were like those of donkeys and..." Strumming her clitoris, she arched her back up and offered her pussy up towards my face. "...and whose emission was like that of horses. Ahn. Use me as a prostitute," she whispered. "Use me, demon..." Her eyes burned into me. Right at me. As if I weren't invisible. As if she knew my eyes. I loomed over her. She could feel me there, feel my dick swollen and hard over her own sexual sin. She reached up at once and grasped me, pulled me to her. "Defile me," she moaned. "I give myself as a prostitute!" I thrust inside Margaret as if I'd never seen her before, as if I'd never known her, made love to her, lived with her, dated her, driven with her, loved her, wanted her, married her. I pushed my hard, aching member deep inside her and she screamed with guttural lust. She screamed. "Expose my nakedness!" My balls began to slap against her ass and she reached behind me to push me deeper. Her thighs widened to accomodate me. I pushed deeper. I felt her hips dig back against the carpet and she slung her thighs up over my back and rubbed her hardened nipples against my invisible chest. I fucked her so hard that her back was burned against the carpet. "Fuck this sinner!" she cried. Her eyes, watering, rolled back into her head. "Mmm, I am more depraved than my sister..." she babbled. "Fill me, demon." She wrapped her legs over my invisible hips and raked her fingers over my skin. My penis slipped out of her and drew over the soft, soaked skin of her thighs. I watched the viscous outline of my prick drool her vaginal juices back over her body and roughly pushed it back inside of her. She screamed. "How will you defile me?" she gasped. I popped out of her pussy. "RUN," I grunted. Immediately Margaret slipped from under me and ran towards the bedroom. The red rug burn of her back burned in my vision. "Back, Satan!" she cried from the doorway. I came running. I saw her eyes trace my footfalls in the carpet and watched her scream with a feral immediacy. She lifted her arms to me as I grabbed her up and she bit me hard on the mouth. "Get behind me, Satan!" she spat. "Get behind me!" I threw her on the bed and she crawled forward on her belly. "On your knees!" I demanded. She did so, raising herself to me. "Defile me..." she moaned. "Defile me with your idols... My weakness," she moaned. She began to rub her pussy and reach behind her to slather it over her crack. "Defile me..." she whispered, all the while rubbing herself between her anus and her vagina. "Get behind me, Satan..." I understood. I mounted her hard from behind and squeezed my cock against her asshole. "Aigh!" Margaret cried. I pushed harder and the tip of my penis pressed inside of her. Her anus clamped around me but her whole body doubled over to let me push further in. "No! Defile me!" she screamed. "Pour out your lust upon me." I pushed into her, not caring how much it hurt. Margaret wringed the bedsheets between her little fists and cried aloud: "Get behind me, Satan!" I shoved myself deep inside her. My wife twisted, her back arched, her breasts quivered out from her chest and I squeezed her hips mercilessly between my fists. I was sweating and panting profusely, just as her stranger had been, when she said, "I give myself as a prostitute... Use me as a p-prostit-tute. Oh, God... Oh, God, sodomize me!" I pounded into her body and she tore at the sheets, her voice ululating a mixture of howl and orgasmic surrender. She even reached between her legs, alternately to stimulate her clitoris and feel my balls swinging against her. "How I have lusted," she panted as I pumped into her anus. "How I have been defiled..." she groaned, roving lower and lower to the bed as I pulled in and out of her ass, punished her, punished her the way she wanted to be punished. I slapped her ass hard and she let out a grunt of erotic approval. "Fuck...me..." she panted. "Unh. No..." My dick squelched in and out of her anus. "Oh...oh, God...OH GOD!" she screamed. I slapped her ass viciously. Then I pulled out of her and slapped it again; and I began to spank her. And with every smack to her rump she whimpered as if being impaled by my cock. "My lewdness and promiscuity have brought this upon me, Ezekiel," she cried. "Give it to me!" I forced myself back inside her anus and she shrieked with either pain or orgasm. "You've taken my body..." she whispered. "Give me your emission...pour it over me...feed me..." She swayed over my cock as if she would faint at any moment, wiggling her hips to and fro with my dick planted firmly in her behind. I could burst inside of her. But that wasn't what either of us wanted. I pulled out of her and flipped her roughly onto her back. I let her legs dangle over the side of the bed and sat myself directly on her chest, over her heavy breasts. She reached up and fondled my erection. "Your seed..." she said with almost reverence. She began to stroke me with one hand. I felt her nipples hard and compressed against my ass. She reached up and used both hands. My wife began to furiously pump my cock as it bulged harder and bigger in her grip. "Spill out your lust upon me - pour your emission over me - make me eat it!" All the while she cried out with building ecstasy, writhing beneath me, contorting and convulsing. I, meanwhile, reached down and twisted her hair back from her head and gripped her firmly at her scalp. "Harder?" I groaned. "Yes..." she hissed. I bunched her hair in my fingers and pulled harder. "Harder?" I clutched her hair in my palm and drove it against the mattress. "Yes," she cried, squeezing her eyes tight and jerking me back and forth and aiming my wet cockhead against her mouth. I ejaculated with unholy madness, coating her face and chin. Margaret opened her mouth wide and flicked her tongue like a snake. She freed herself from my grip and actually took the head into her mouth, closing her eyes against the force of the cum and its no doubt evil taste. She pumped my shaft into her lips until the last of my seed had been swallowed, swallowing it again and again as more ropes of my jism left me and jettisoned down her throat, and then she collapsed against the bed, globules of my sperm still glazing her eyebrows, nose, lips, and cheeks. Both of us were left heaving and gasping. But I had to pull away from her. I had to run - flee is a better word. I pulled myself off of her and ran from the room. I could hear her protest weakly but I paid it no mind. I wanted to run outside but where would I go? The car was still at the Institute. The cellar wasn't far enough away. And yet it was the only place I could go. My laboratory. My prison. My stupid, impotent and blind prison! How had I not seen? How could she have... How could I have... What had happened? Where was I? What was I? A demon. A ghost. A scientist? Certainly not a husband and barely a father. A genius? A pain in the ass. I NEEDED TO SEE MYSELF. But I was void.