Darkside Stories – The Fool

I’m worth a million in prizes

With my torture film

Drive a G.T.O.

Wear a uniform

All on a government loan

– Iggy Pop, “Lust For Life”

 

I.

Winter in Hong Kong. Me, a starving writer stuck in the middle of a project that I couldn’t seem to push through. Rent needing to be paid, yesterday.

My faceless boss—some anonymous email account and a random ad that I’d responded to twelve months ago—always paid on time for ghostwritten erotica. I was happy to have an outlet and even happier to have a source of income, but apparently my muse had quit her post, frustrated about my making up stories based on an activity that I hadn’t personally participated in for a long time.

Out of desperation I’d left my flat to wander the streets and hopefully kick my imagination into gear. Winter wasn’t cold in Hong Kong; winter behaved like a dry Spring, which most folks considered ideal. Crazy me preferred summer—summer like running for your life in a sudden downpour, summer like flames dancing on the sword-sharp horizon of the South China Sea, summer like a hundred candles burning on an old wooden shelf, summer like a drunk kiss by some guy or girl after a shitty club. I liked things intense, and winter in Hong Kong wasn’t that.

I had a lion note in my pocket, the last of my money, and just as fiery in hue as summer. A random wind slapped my face from around the corner of the nearest building and I turned from it, instantly becoming lost in a shroud of my own streaming hair. My mini schoolgirl-esque skirt tilted around my legging-covered ass like a silent bell. Fuck this, I was taking the subway.

A thing about me—my thoughts are loud, but my voice is quiet and I hate to shout. Everybody’s always asking me to speak up or repeat what I’ve said but I can’t help it, I don’t like the way my voice feels in my throat and I spend most of my days working from home, away from people. If one day I woke up to find I’d suddenly come down with a galloping dose of Shakespearian actor boom-voice, hooboy—I’d blow everyone away with how rampant and disgusting my interior cum exterior dialogue could be. Lol I said cum.

Down in the subway station the red tiles and big, dragon-sexy black letters jumped out at me like urban art. It’s funny how language becomes abstract shapes and scratches when you weren’t born speaking it. Yikes and a strong drink in the direction of any and all non-native English speakers. Sorry, fuckers. It’s like when you stare off and your vision gets blurry when you’re sleepy. You have to pinch your eyeballs with the muscles of your face just to focus again—that’s what it’s like for me to turn those rad wanna-be kanji tattoos into actual words.

Tsuen Wan Line. Instead of one, confident lion-note I now had several less confident and more miserable pieces of paper in my pocket after the booth lady insisted she could only break such a large bill if I bought a monthly pass. Maybe it would get me out of the house more often.

Down the clicking escalator to more pretty red lipstick tile, and finally to the plexi tube through which the train whooshed by, just fitting.

I bit my lip and and laughed (in my head, I don’t laugh in public). No it was fine, just fine, I was fine with not having fucked a soul or a device in a year and two months because obviously, obviously, seeing trains and thinking how they fit in their tubes was completely normal.

“Fuck normal,” I said in my stupid, scratch-whispery voice, and no one heard me, and that was normal, too.

###

The train was weirdly crowded for this time of night, and then I remembered the lunar festival. I could have stayed home, but my anxiety has a habit of pushing me out the door for no reason other than to wander about aimlessly, questioning my life.

When surrounded by crowds, I had a habit of nicknaming people by their smells.

There was always Armpit Guy, every day and night, on every train and in every corridor I’d ever walked.

How Sweet Pea made its way across the Atlantic to more exotic and far-away places I’ll never understand; damn you, capitalism. Ayyye, Sweet Pea Ladies.

Oh hey, Cool Water Daddy—1993 misses you, and I would like to, as well.

Unwashed Hair Lady smelled actually wholesome tonight, and I noticed her torn stockings and fabric grocery bag that was coming apart at the seams and I wished I was rich so I could rock her world with major dollars and a back massage.

Then I smelled aftershave, six o’clock, the most dangerous hour (pro tip, it’s right behind you). Aftershave is weird. It has the potential to level you to your ovarian core but it can also swerve you right off the tracks and crash in a fiery blaze of nope if it’s too cheap, too blue, too plastic, too much. But this was just right. Vintage Old Spice and daddy fantasies, I gripped the handle above me just a little tighter.

A fingertip flicked across my ass cheek, hard.

The warmth couldn’t be stopped, jetting from impact point to pussy in under a second flat, then to the tiny thumb as I called him (himb? ham), down my inner thighs to the bottoms of my feet. Why the cat’s connected to the feet has always confused me, but when I meet my maker, I’ll ask Her about it.

Meanwhile, Aftershave Man had just touched my butt. Now he placed his full palm on an ass cheek and squeezed.

And no I hadn’t seen enough daily versions of what Pornhub had to offer on this subject to not know what to do. Except I didn’t do that. I did the opposite.

I turned around and stared at him like a dork.

He withdrew his hand as if my ass was a hot coal and blushed—his thick-lashed, small eyes darting right, left, down, at me for a sec, then left again before he edged his way through the cloud of bodies to someplace out of my line of sight, and out of flicking range of my extremely horny ass.

Fuck.

The doors whooshed open and I stepped off the bullet, full of self-rage and sexual angst.

So inside my own head over the missed hand-job opportunity was I that it took me five blocks to realize I’d gotten out at the wrong stop.

###

I turned to look back the way I’d come.

The night had fallen fast, faster than it should have by nature’s laws I guess. Everything was a gross, dead, blue color and I could barely see the facades of the businesses I’d passed.

“Gweilo lost?”

I turned around and squinted at a skinny white guy in a cheap suit. He looked tired, though his eyes sparkled like rhinestones, plastic and cheap. “Look who’s talking, Gweilo. And no. I just got off at the wrong stop.”

“Train’s not running this line anymore tonight.”

“The fuck it isn’t?”

“The festival. Everything’s on a different schedule until the morning.”

“How far are we from Dōng Hǎiyáng apartments?”

He shrugged. “I’m not an expert. But which stop is your stop?”

“The last stop.”

“Then you’re in luck. This is the Lai King stop. So only five more stations to go.”

“How many kilometers between stations?”

“No idea, little queen. But you’ve got your good walking shoes on, so. Just don’t get lost.”

I raised a brow at him. What do you say to that? Weirdo-suit and his whimsical speech. “Hey. Which direction?”

He shrugged again and walked away, opening his umbrella though there wasn’t any rain

###

Since when does a festival stop trains from running?

I decided to head back to the station to wait for the next train. Out of season thunder announced a storm’s arrival from somewhere across the sea, and the salt-smell had already began to gather up and mingle with the odd, heavy chill of the night. I walked faster, then sprinted.

Up the steps and down the escalator to the Lai King stop, and I found the station deserted. A newspaper tumbled along the tracks, pushed by a sudden gust of cold air. The train!

I stood at the edge of the platform, struggling to determine any mote of light from the mud-thick darkness. Nothing yet. I cocked my head and squinted. This was tiring; I headed for a bench.

Walking away from the platform, the muscles in my neck on the right side began to pinch. What the fuck, Byx? I’m 31 I can’t sprain my neck just by using it.

I felt the effects of the toxin twist up my sternum and flutter into my chest like an expensive sleep-aid before my eyes saw double and I slid along the bench and passed out.

###

I woke up before I opened my eyes, and my brain tried different scenarios and room-choices as it does whenever I wake up in an unfamiliar place. Lobby of shitty hotel? Cabana by the beach? Ex-boyfriend’s mother’s pantry?

I opened my eyes. Nope, the train station bench.

I blinked a few more times and the room came into focus.

Nope, a prison cell. What?

I slid my legs off the bench and felt my bare feet touch the cement floor. And, I was naked.

II

I had to pee.

I continued to sit on the bench while I figured this out. Logic said nobody here cared if I had to urinate; they certainly didn’t care if I was cold. My clothes were gone, the bench was concrete, floor was concrete, and by my sharpest estimation my captors were keeping the thermostat at a manly 18º C.

Of course I was an asshole for assuming they were men, but fuck being polite honestly.

I hopped off the bench, nipples leading the way in this godforsaken chill to locate a bucket, and found one in the corner to the left of the bench. I actually bent down and sniffed the bucket. Why? I don’t fucking know, I guess if it was going to be my shitbucket I didn’t want anyone else’s shit in it.

It was clean. Then I stopped and thought about drip-drying. Nope, didn’t like that.

My head snapped to the right because there it was—a miracle-faucet, coming out of the wall at about a meter off the floor. Not a bidet by any means, but good enough for gas.

I squatted and pissed, duck-walked over and rinsed.

Now what.

I padded over to the wall of bars where a huge metal door was set. The door must have been two meters high, which seemed excessive (I was closer to 1.6 but okay). I pressed my cheek against the bars, trying to catch a squint down the corridor, then did the same in the opposite direction. Nothing moved in this silence so heavy it pounded in my ears. I sighed, and the sigh ended ragged, defeated. I slapped myself in the face like you do when you’re trying to stay awake during a cross-country road trip.

“Hey!” I yelled, my voice bouncing off the walls.

I stood there for who knows how long in silence and felt terror well up, felt my thoughts click into place like a clock’s gears. This was serious. I was probably going to die in here.

Then I smelled the aftershave. Not the same as the train, but delicious nonetheless.

A broken, lunatic laugh escaped my mouth and I pressed my face against the bars again as a tear rolled down my cheek.

The door’s lock turned and the sound of that broke the silence like a hammer breaks a brick. My heart flew out of my chest to hide beneath the bench, though I could still feel it shuddering behind my ribcage. Please please please.

The door swung open and I stepped back to avoid being hit by it, to get as far away from my captor as possible. Please don’t hurt me.

Pressed against the wall with the water spout, I squinted to better see who’d entered the room. I’d discovered the source of the aftershave.

They came closer, taking slow, casual steps in gorgeous, expensive, size 14 dress shoes. Huge, well-manicured hands folded over a crisp suit so well-tailored it somehow managed to make this thickly-muscled creature seem lean, lithe, sinuous. I glanced up towards the face, noticing the long, almost graceful throat, not thick and overbuilt like one would expect. Then I saw the strong jaw, full lips curved like a violin, high cheekbones.

Huh.

Thick eyelashes, beautiful eyebrows, glossy hair the color of the most arrogant crow…and kaleidoscope-green eyes that seemed to glow in the gloom of this crypt.

He still could be a killer Byx hold yourself together for fuck’s sakes.

“Hi,” I said, my voice getting caught in my throat so I had to clear it for half a minute, unglamorously. “Can I have my clothes back?”

The eyes wandered down to my feet then back to my own, and my captor shook his head. “Turn around. Face the wall with your hands behind your back.”

“I’d rather not.”

“That doesn’t matter here.”

“Are you going to hurt me?”

“No.”

The voice of my captor brought to mind lazy, growling tigers, indigo dye and midnights spent in the loneliest cave on Earth. Fighting back tears, I turned and faced the wall as instructed, but before I did, I watched him take off his suit jacket and carefully place it on the bench, folded. Oh, shit.

“Hold still,” said my captor.

I took a deep, unsteady breath.

I felt his hand take my hand by the wrist and pull it away from my other hand, and I gasped, because his skin was hot. Hot like a kid with the flu in the middle of the night hot. Hot like whoo, smoking hot. It was a comfort, actually, in this cold cell to be handled this way. Something snapped around my wrist and I wanted to reach for it, touch it with my other hand to determine its material, but I didn’t. It wasn’t cold; it didn’t hurt. It somehow felt like well-worn wood, narrow enough not to bite into the flesh of my palm, but wide enough not to dig into the wrist itself. Soon my other wrist was locked into one of these cuffs. I instinctively held my hands as wide apart as possible, but whatever held them together was tightened by my captor as soon as I did. I felt his breath against my ear and the good smell of him raced from my olfactory bulb to my pussy to my feet, as it does. He tsked once, and I could tell his lips were a hair’s width from my skin.

My legs trembled and he pulled away; I felt as if he watched me. I could hear him take a deep breath. Join the club, buddy. Deep-breathing exercises, all day.

I heard him grunt as he knelt, and larger cuffs were placed on each of my ankles. Then he moved one foot away from the other, forcing me into a wide-legged stance. My curiosity fled like sunlight before a thunderstorm and I began to tremble, heart going at it again like a construction site’s jackhammer. I heard a subtle click as something locked in place. My legs couldn’t move from their stance. Hearing a grunt, I believed my captor stood up again.

Their hand pressed against the middle of my back, gentle, impossibly hot, and I began to tip forward. Unable to push back from the wall with my shackled hands, I met the fieldstone wall with my chest, turning my face to avoid kissing the cold stone and mortar. The hot hand went around to my belly, and pulled me back to my original position. Then it gently pressed me forward again. Then back, then forward.

I kept waiting for the hit, for the cut, for the punch or the knife, but instead, here I was being pressed, tits-first, against a stone wall. I was terrified and confused.

I was being turned around.

He smiled, a self-indulgent wickedness dancing at the edges of his mouth and his eyes. I was panting like a dog.

“Sh,” he hushed, and traced a finger down from my lips to my throat. “Just a little game.” The fingertip ended where a well-manicured, inch-long crimson claw began. I panted faster. The claw skated down my skin and circled my breast, getting closer to the areola but never intruding upon it. Now he held my breasts in both hands, and squeezed them together gently.

Two claw-tipped thumbs flicked across my nipples, then went immediately to my inner thighs, grabbing the flesh there, his hands always gentle but firm, and always desert-sand hot.

My captor cupped my outer labia together, squeezing my fattening clit within.

My mouth was open now and there was drool but I couldn’t stop shaking either.

“Just wanted a taste,” he said. “Were it that I could actually have one.”

He knelt down and unlocked the bars between my feet. His beautiful head was right there, dammit. I imagined easing my hips forward.

Then I noticed them: twin mahogany horns, each nested against his gorgeous, glossy locks and curled like a miniature ram’s.

He brought my feet together.

“I’ll have to carry you from here on in. Don’t fight me.”

###

“Where are we going?”

“To meet some people.”

“Sans clothing.”

“Yep.”

“Great.”

“It’ll be a little warmer when we get topside.”

We’d left the cell and followed a corridor as wide as the cell door was tall. Up four landings of concrete steps and we gained the street above, seeing no one in our journey so far.

Above the unexplained warren of hallways and jail cells this world was a canvas of sepia tone high-rises and strange, spiraling spires amid whispery, bent trees, with the wind hurrying herds of dead leaves and random paper scraps. Every window was black; I could feel the absence of life but also feel a heavy presence hushed, as if it waited in the shadows and watched as we moved across this monochromatic landscape. I blinked several times to somehow command the color into correction, but it wouldn’t obey.

“It takes a while to get used to it.”

“How long’s a while?”

“For me? 2 years I guess, I’m not really sure.”

“Are you used to it?”

“Not really.”

If I squinted, the dullness of the light didn’t seem as bad and the overall effect was strangely beautiful, but as somber as a church bell cast off in the dirt and stuffed with straw. The constant wind felt warmer than the chill air of my former cell, but its movement over my bare skin made me shudder. I burrowed harder against my captor’s unnaturally hot body, the warmth remarkable even through the layers of his expensive suit.

“What’s your name?”

“Li Jun.”

Li Jun carried me over streets devoid of vehicles; large cracks crisscrossed the pavement like lines in an old man’s face. Up ahead, a small, white cat sat atop a concrete pylon, watching us pass by. Its small eyes shined briefly in its odd little face, its tail lashing twice. I shivered for some reason I didn’t understand.

My deliverer shifted me in his arms to hold me closer, his large hands pressed against my skin as if to warm me. “Sorry you’re cold. We’ll be there soon.”

###

“I wish I could touch you,” I said to Li Jun as he carried me up a series of steps. We appeared to have entered a pedestrian walkway, one that was leading up to an office high-rise. Granite columns carved in dancing shapes framed the entrance to the lobby; all of the doors were blown apart and tiny, green cubes of safety glass glittered dully over the marble floor, crunching beneath Li Jun’s feet. “You’re beautiful.”

“And I, you, again. Thank you.”

“Uncuff me.”

“I can’t until we reach our destination.”

There wasn’t a shift of weight or any sense that Li Jun struggled carrying me as his burden. I felt light as a feather (and stiff as a board).

We stopped before an elevator. Blueish light flooded the lobby as its doors slowly cranked open. When Li Jun stepped into the car, the elevator groaned in protest.

“Don’t worry, it’s safe,” he said.

“It wouldn’t be, if I were uncuffed.” I grinned.

To my great satisfaction, Li Jun grunted, and shifted his weight again, his hands widespread across my flesh tightening until he shook his head, blinking his eyes to shake off whatever verbal spell I’d managed to cast upon his troubled mind.

The elevator opened and we entered a board room, mahogany paneled, immaculate, with a gleaming, black marble floor, and filled with a dozen hungry faces and eyes combing my naked body so hard I could feel their stares like disembodied tongues flicking me from toes to tonsils.

I snuggled harder against Li Jun, but he thrust out his shoulder to push me off. “Not here,” he muttered. I sat up straighter in his sheltering arms.

The men in the board room stood in unison, pushing their chairs softly behind them, satellite faces devoid of expression though their eyes growled like dark ghosts.

“They will want to see you walk with,” Li Jun gently lowered me to my feet, “these things. Just to the boss’s door.”

I stood still for a moment, looking at my pale feet against the marble, and I was angry, maybe tired of this now. Maybe I was done with this adventure. I looked up at the board members, followed their eyes tracing over my body and something in me sparked like the last match of a matchbook. I’d give them their stupid little show.

I made my way to the boss’s office door, my steps impeded by the wooden bars so that my gait was reduced to a shuffle—stiff, jerky, and I could feel my flesh jiggle with each step. I made sure I moved close to the suits on my side of the table, their arms held straight at their sides, and I dared their fingers to reach out for me as I jerked past them; the men towered over me and I could imagine a scent coming off of them in this scentless chamber—it smelled like dangerous spice, something too expensive to sell out in the open, something that could get you killed but could also buy you a life you’d only imagined in dreams.

I made it to the door; my heart was racing like a mouse before a fox.

“Going to unshackle you now,” said Li Jun.

My limbs freed, I entered the office of the boss of the dead.

###

The door closed behind me.

Smoke of incense—something that recalled tall temples perched atop spindly mountains—lent a thick haze to the room and on the other side of these clouds sat whom I presumed was the boss-man. He was tall, like the others, but portly, his wide face and thick neck looking strangled in his white collar and crimson tie. His eyes stared at me as if he could scan my thoughts and test my flesh with invisible fingertips.

“Welcome to my world, little one.”

“167 centimeters but okay.” I winked and stretched my arms high above my head, letting my hands drop as I looked at the floor to ceiling bookshelves, felt the rich pile of the rug beneath my toes.

“Do that again.”

“I don’t perform for anyone.”

“Not in a long while, no, you haven’t.”

“Gross—have you been recording me?”

“No. But I have watched you. You can be quite the exhibitionist.”

I exhaled, loudly, as the fun drained out of the moment as quickly as the incense smoke had disappeared. Parlor-trick creeper.

“Come closer to me.”

“I’ll not. I’m going to sit in this chair in front of your desk until you let me know when I’m free to go.”

“I’m not a police precinct, Byx Ferguson. And I’ve never been to your apartment. At least, not physically. I know for you, it’s been a long time since you were fucked. Over here, a month goes by—over there, that month lasts a year.”

I stared at him, still visibly annoyed.

“Your whole building is as haunted as I’m obese. Does that give you any ideas?”

I continued to stare at him.

“You’re in the land,” he pushed up from his large, leather chair, “of ghosts. You got a little cocktail distilled from scared herbs that the good doctor injected you with in the subway station. You’re a precious guest. A rare treat. If you think we’re all staring at you because we’re attracted to your body then you’re only half correct.”

“You want my body?”

“In a carnal sense—I don’t want to inhabit it. I may be fat but I’m content with the gender I presently occupy.”

I twirled my fingers in a pattern in front of me, tired and bored of the game. “What am I doing here, boss?”

“We want you. All of us want you.”

I pulled my legs up onto the chair. “That’s nice.”

He walked around his desk and leaned against it, hands in the pockets of his slacks. “Just because we want you, Byx, doesn’t mean we’re going to have you. Only you can decide that.”

“A relief. You could also be lying.”

He reached behind him on the desk and held a scroll. Untying the ribbon around the scroll, he let the parchment unroll to the floor. “We have contracts for everything. Any decision you make will demand terms, terms that will ensure your safety and well-being, and you and I will sign a contract guaranteeing it so.”

“Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but that contract is written with the laws of the land of the ghosts in mind, am I right?”

“Correct.”

“Where pray tell would I find a lawyer to defend me, should someone break that contract? Would I use a ouija board or just throw bones at a mirror and hope for the best?”

“A broken contract with a ghost doesn’t require a lawyer. A broken contract with a ghost simply means the ghost ceases to exist. And while I would much rather be back in the land of the living, with proper food and drink and a sense of smell and taste, I’ll take what I can get for now. My employees and I prefer to exist.”

I got off the chair to stand in front of this man. No, this ghost. I wanted to examine him, see if I sensed any form, any heat, anything at all to indicate he was pulling my chain. He stood a good third of a meter taller than me. A strange memory of a scent coiled in a deep recess of my brain, tingling down my spine to my feet: delicious cologne, fine-milled soap, expensive fabric. I suddenly felt a spark of desire for this tower, this power-symbol; I wanted his hands on me and I wanted to climb him.

I swallowed the saliva that had gathered in my mouth, and put my hand on his chest. I could feel a heartbeat. I could also feel the unnatural heat emanating from his flesh, just like I could with Li Jun.

“The heat is our life-force,” he said. “Everything you feel is our energy, coagulating in a sense, into form, into shape.” He reached for my hand and I allowed him to bring it to his mouth and to kiss it, making an elaborate gesture with his small lips against my palm, tongueless but erotic nonetheless. He made to move to my wrist and I allowed him to, and then he gently ran a manicured fingernail down the length of my forearm. I pulled my hand away but I was sure he could tell the effect his touch had on me just by looking at my body.

I returned to my chair, my breathing deep and full of a hunger I was struggling to understand.

“You like me.”

“You’re okay.” I smiled a little.

“There’s something greater at stake here, so I want to get that explanation over-with before you make your decision.”

“All right.”

“Making love to a beautiful, living being is one thing—and it’s no small potatoes—but the end game here is reincarnation. The fast track, not the natural way.”

“Oh boy.”

“I’m just going to spell it all out, then leave you for a minute to think about it.”

I looked at him as if he’d sprouted another, smaller head out of his left eye. One with tentacles.

“This is the process: you make love to one of us. The doctor does his little ritual—just prayers and some special tea for you to drink, nothing scary. Next thing you wake up in the world of flesh in the best hospital, on your way home to recover.”

“To recover from?”

“Childbirth. Under the gas you won’t remember a thing. Time here goes much slower than in the land of the living, no nine month ordeal, nothing like that.”

“And the baby I’m bringing into the world is, one of you?”

“Yes.”

“Why would I do this?”

He took his hands out of pockets and gestured in the air. “Money. Lots and lots of money. Enough for you to live whatever adventure stirs your heart, every day for the rest of your life.”

He left the room via a side door and I sat there, my head full of wheels, lights, and motion like cars zipping through the Cross-Harbour Tunnel.

###

He returned and I still didn’t know what to say.

“Penny for your thoughts?” he said.

“What’s your name?”

“Wang Yong.”

“Prove to me that you’re a ghost.”

“Sure.”

Wang Yong walked over to a wide, ebony cabinet on the opposite side of the room and opened a drawer. From this he removed a blue, leather case. He brought the case to the desk and opened it. A magnificent sword gleamed there against the velvet interior.

“Watch closely,” said Wang Yong.

I gasped as he took the sword in both hands and held it to his throat. He slid the sword across the flesh and I could see the blade cut through, see it dig into his neck as if his flesh was butter. After he’d finished he showed me the sword: bloodless, gleaming, clean. His neck showed no evidence of a wound.

“There’s so many other ways to prove to you where you are, and what I am. We’ve got time to explore that, but I’m an impatient man in some ways.”

“What ways are those?”

“I want you, now, regardless of whether or not you’re interested in my offer.”

“That’s been abundantly clear ever since I arrived in your little corner of heck. I could smell your thirst from a kilometer away. Also, at first I thought you’d taken my clothing. But that’s not the case, is it?”

“Correct. The sacred herbs won’t help articles of clothing—or any other material object for that matter—pass through the gates from your world to mine.

“I figured, but I just wanted to hear you say it.”

“I’ll call you Zhang. Zhang Min.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re quick.” He tapped his temple and smiled, crooked teeth and all.

“Okay,” I said, watching him. I couldn’t help it; I smiled back. He had something going on about him. Something affable.

“Making love to you, Zhang Min, would be like taking a good, long, hour to appreciate a priceless work of art. If I even lasted that long.”

“Flattery.”

“Observation. Why, when the observation is positive, do so many subjects cry flattery?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Well, I am. Because they feel uncomfortable under such intense gaze.”

“Possibly.”

“But don’t be. Look at me, Byx. I’m ugly, and I know that. But I am astute!” He chuckled. “I have seen so many things, so many people, sights, moments. I know what beautiful looks like. It comes from within, and radiates out to the divine structure in which it’s encased.”

“Okay.”

“Would you just come here and sit on my lap? I’m drooling for you.”

“I don’t know.”

Wang Yong returned to his chair and we sat, watching each other, little, wry smiles playing across our lips. He scooted his office chair back, small eyes sparkling with fascination as he unbuttoned his jacket, and slowly unzipped his fly.

“Really?”

“Wait. It gets better.”

Wang adjusted his weight on the chair and fished out his dick, which sprang out of the opening of his boxers and pants, ridiculously large, scimitar-like and ridged, as if Wang had somehow descended from dragons.

“Oh hell no!” I said, laughing.

“Hold on,” said Wang, laughing also, and as he did his crazy cock bounced up and down. “Just listen to me. You’ve gotta understand—my appearance here is a direct result of my shitty personality. My body wasn’t like this in the mortal world, ha! Especially my dick, no. It was pretty small! Money makes everything bigger, am I right?”

“But here we both are looking at that gargantuan Mortal Combat dick, so.”

“It’s just energy, Byx. It adjusts to conform to the space it’s allowed to enter.”

My face was hot from laughing so hard. “Oh my honestly—what?”

“Tell me something you know about vampires.”

“I know they…hate garlic?”

“Eh. Take it or leave it, that’s probably false.”

“They drink blood.”

“And energy. Definitely true.”

“They can’t come into a house unless invited.”

“Ha!”

“Ha?”

“That’s bullshit. Well not entirely but it became bullshit for vampires. See, in Chinese culture, ghosts are some bad motherfuckers. We’re given a lot of…weight,” Wang slapped his prodigious stomach. “And over time, and because ghosts were just as frightening to the every-day man as vampires, a lot of the myths associated to one camp got transferred over to the other.”

“Ghosts haunt houses, though—they don’t ask for permission.”

“If they lived in that house while flesh then yes. But if they did not—if they followed the person or just simply drifted along, then no. They cannot enter without permission.”

“And so this little tale affects us, how?”

“Your sweet pussy, my dear, is like a house.”

“Oh Christ.”

“It is. Laugh all you want. Your body is yours, and I can’t invade it without an invitation.”

“Well, that puts me at ease, a bit. Again, assuming you’re not lying.”

“Why would I lie? I want you to want me. If I betray your trust that will surely never happen.”

I had drawn my legs back to my body, and stared at him, my chin on my fists, fists resting on my knees.

“Come here. Please.”

“Why?”

“I want to make delicious love to you. With your permission.”

I got up from the chair. I walked to him.

He gathered me up in his arms and lifted me off the floor as if I were a doll. I straddled him, that science fiction cock of his pressed behind me, against my ass crack. He ran his fingers lightly up and down my upper arms and I broke out in gooseflesh and my nipples grazed his suit as he pulled me closer.

My god how I wanted to fuck the shit out of this strange, goofy, chubby ghost-man.

I pressed my mouth against his and despite his lack of orthodontic repair, his breath was cool, sweet, like rain on a Western winter morning mixed with a bit of tobacco. I kissed him hungrily, my tongue going crazy in his mouth. His hands were everywhere on me, grabbing, sometimes pinching, to which I’d groan and immediately laugh, and he’d laugh too. I couldn’t stop kissing him, reveling in the comfort of his enormous lap and the heat coming off of him, his huge arms around me, his hands spanning regions of my skin.

He placed one hand against my throat and gently guided me away; I watched him suck my flesh, teasing my nipples with his tongue til it felt as if maybe I could cum just from that, it was so good. I pressed his head to me, combing through the thick salt and pepper hair while he sucked one nipple then the next, and I gasped and whispered something encouraging as I felt his hand smooth down my back. He gripped my ass and moved his fingers further down to press against me; I pushed back to drive them in and my hips moved against him of their own volition.

“Princess,” he muttered, kissing my neck. “Hungry, sweet princess.”

He’d pulled his fingers out of me pushed me back a little to make space for his hand; he trailed down and around to my fattening clit, tracing fingertips around the hood, then back down to fingerfuck me again. It had been too long since I’d fucked anyone and I couldn’t do anything slow, couldn’t wait, couldn’t stop.

I balanced my feet on the edges of his chair and turned around on his lap, facing the desk, his cock in front of me now like a saddle horn.

“Wait, wait,” he said. “Look at this.” He pivoted the chair around to face the wall and pressed a panel with his shoe. The wall parted, giving way to a floor to ceiling mirror. My eyes shined with delight and lust and fun.

“Fuck, yes,” I said, and then I paused. That crazy cock.

“If anything hurts,” he whispered as he massaged my chest and gently twisted my nipples, making my eyes squint shut, making me groan, “you tell me and I will stop, immediately.”

“Okay,” I said, my breath making it difficult to talk.

He lifted me by the waist as effortlessly as if I were made of paper, and held me up, his arm around my belly while the other hand rubbed my cat, teasing the lips with fingers and spreading the fluid, painting myself with me. He grabbed his dragon-dick and pushed the smaller head against me, then into me. I panicked; I could feel the pain in my head though it didn’t actually hurt.

“Just tell me to stop.”

He pushed himself in a little deeper.

This is energy this isn’t flesh. I slowed my breathing, concentrated on relaxing my body.

Wang pushed it in deeper. I opened my eyes to look in the mirror.

I was impaled on it, my lips spread wider than I’d ever seen, clit jutting out like a tiny dick itself, thighs gleaming with sweat and sweet liquid, and my red cheeks and sweaty face streaked with black tendrils of my own hair. His arm still around my belly, Wang pushed down on my right thigh with his other hand, pushing himself deeper into me—the part of the cock that seemed impossibly thick.

My pussy spasmed as I felt that interior, angelic spot explode with delight, and then his fingers were moving across my erect clit and circling it, softly tapping it, and he pushed himself deeper into me, halfway to the hilt before lifting me up to do it again, faster, and I became aware that in some distant place, lost in sweat and brilliant nerve endings, I was bellowing like a bear woken up from its cave. Up and down he lifted me and all I could do was lean back and love every fucking second of the ride as I shouted myself hoarse.

###

“You cry like a sweet, little cat when you’re being fucked, but you roar like a lion when you cum. I love it. Forget Zhang Min, I’m calling you Mushi: Lioness.”

He’d held me in his arms while I rested against him, swinging his chair gently back and forth and I heard a familiar sound coming from outside his office’s windows: rain.

“How can it be raining?” I asked.

“Sometimes miracles happen in this crazy place.”

III.

Wang let me out the side door, because I didn’t want to see the board members and I didn’t want to be carried anymore (and I didn’t want to see Li Jun right now). I told Wang I was taking my liberty to explore my new surroundings and he didn’t disagree.

Still and all, I was naked in this wasteland of ghosts, and I wasn’t sure where to go or what to do. I didn’t feel hunger or thirst, and I imagine that had to do with the vast difference in time between the here and the there. The elevator lights blinked down the sequence from floor 88 to the ground floor, and I combed my hair with my fingers, discovering that my sweat had vanished. I looked at my trembling legs and saw that there too, all evidence of my acts with Wang were gone.

I crept through the empty doorframe of Wang’s nameless corporation and tread carefully over the field of glittering safety glass. Steam, or smoke, rose silently from chimneys in the distance. I heard the mournful cry of a train and wondered if anyone occupied its cars. I felt a sudden tug of fear and regret in the pit of my belly, a mix of homesickness and delayed shock at everything that had happened, but my curiosity pushed that aside and I walked out into the permanent half-night, watching black cranes fly in silent formation overhead and hearing the gurgle of a little stream winding its way between the larger streets, avenues and pedestrian paths.

I followed a sidewalk away from the high-rises behind me, and the sidewalk became a series of steps that followed the black stream, away from the broad avenue and towards a little park that shivered in the rain (as did I). The smokestacks and industrial area groaned and clanked in the night, in the distance and to the left of the park. The steps led me down into a little grassy square—beyond this, bamboo rose in the permanent twilight, bending in the wind and clacking against each other in that oddly comforting-frightening way. A path burrowed into the bamboo thicket.

“Can I wear bamboo?” I asked myself as I stepped gingerly over the hard, circular stumps of former stalks.

“Only after doing many strenuous things to it,” said a voice somewhere in the midst of the glade. I followed the path for a few moments, then stopped: a small, black fox sat primly in the shadows, its golden eyes fixed on me. I looked behind me; there was no one else but me and this creature.

The fox turned around and trotted away, sneaking further into the bamboo grove, and I followed it.

The grove proved to be a lot larger than it had appeared. I was shivering, trembling, my arms hugging my torso as tight as I could. I knew that logically I couldn’t feel cold, but just as I had been able to feel the heat of Li Jun and Wang, so now was I feeling my own energy draining beneath the relentlessness of this late night afterworld rainstorm.

I stopped, realizing I’d lost track of the fox.

A dark brown leg stepped out of the shadows, followed by the rest of a creature so astonishingly sexy, so lovely and poised, I just stood there for a moment with my mouth agape like one of those coin-biting frog statues, sans coin.

“Would you like some clothing?” asked the creature. Their skin was nearly as dark as the little black fox’s fur had been, only now, it had a feminine, human face—all apple cheeks and bright eyes, wide, tiny nose and luscious, cupid’s bow lips. Their voluptuous chest rose out of the top of a tight, sapphire-blue satin bodice, and their diminutive waist widened to delicious hips beneath a satin skirt, atop strong legs and dainty feet that they stood on the balls of. The creature tucked a curled lock of chestnut hair behind a delicately pointed ear.

“A kitsune,” I said, my voice catching in my throat.

The creature bowed their head. “Close. I am called Huli. Sort of like, a sister to a kitsune. And I do not yet have all of my tails.”

“I would love to find some clothing, Huli,” I said, regaining some measure of composure.

“Come along,” said Huli, and as we walked among the moving shadows of the park’s bamboo grove, Huli’s form shifted, sometimes appearing more fox-like, sometimes human again, sometimes with three tails. As we left the park and the relative shelter of the bamboo, Huli suddenly had hold of a huge parasol, and opened it to shelter us from the rain.

###

Huli tucked the parasol away into some alternate plane of storage, and from the same mysterious spot produced a heavy ring of skeleton keys. She thrust one of these into the otherwise keyhole-less mass of a giant steel door at the end of a warehouse in that industrial section I’d seen when I first left Wang’s company building.

The door shivered violently and Huli took my hand, pulling me back from it; then the door was gone.

We walked in together and my mouth made the money-frog expression once more as we entered rows of floor to ceiling shelves, each piled high with beautiful things: dresses with faded price tags folded atop one another, piles of glittering necklaces and earrings, gems all shining somehow in the gloom of the heavy, sepia-tone murk. Huli led me on until we reached the end of the warehouse, where a small dressing area had been staged. A jewel-toned turkish carpet soothed my tired feet; velvet sofas begged me to sprawl across them and I threw myself down on one. Huli pointed the key in the direction in which we’d come and the great steel door reappeared and locked itself with a tremendous boom.

“I’ll make us some tea,” she said, covering me with a heavy wool blanket. “Don’t fall asleep.”

As comfortable as I was there was no chance of that.

I watched the lofty ceiling of the warehouse, listening to thunder growl above its steel roof, or its semblance of steel—what was real here, and why?

I ran my hands over my body beneath the blanket, wondering if I was still real.

Huli returned, carrying a tray with a pot of tea, two cups, and a dish of what looked like candied ginger. She set this down on a table in between the couches, and knelt beside me, pouring two cups of tea with all the grace I’d expect from a being of Huli’s exquisiteness.

“Can I actually eat and drink here?”

Huli nodded. “It reminds the sleeping body of the world to which it’s tethered. It may not be real in your world’s sense, but its energy will warm and refresh you.”

“Ah. Thank you.”

“It’s my pleasure.”

###

I just wanted to touch Huli—okay, I just wanted to touch her and put my mouth on her. Okay, if I could do more than that with my birth-given body I would, in a fucking heartbeat, speaking of which, mine was thumping faster than the stock market on a good day.

There was just so much pretty.

Every time she moved, shifted, adjusted, her flesh shifted too and jiggled in such a way that it was as if plate after plate of a seven-course meal had been trotted out before a person lost at sea for a month. I wanted to devour her. She somehow sensed my agony.

“You’re here to experience.”

“I’m—what?”

“Don’t be. I want you, too.”

Oh sister. “Seriously?”

Huli opened a drawer beneath the low table, then placed a deck of golden cards on a silk cloth, face down. “Sit closer.”

I did as she obeyed.

Huli picked one card and turned it face up next to the stack. “This is you.”

I looked at the card, where a youthful person blithely stepped along a path to the mountain’s very edge, a small dog nipping at their heels.

“The Fool.”

“Great.” I grimaced.

“It is! The Fool has no worry, no fear. They are embarking on an adventure. I very much envy The Fool.”

“Can you pick one for yourself?”

“Sure.” Huli picked a second card and turned it face up, beside The Fool. “This is The Empress. She is a place to lose your cares and fears, feel joy, and love. She is bountiful.”

I reached for Huli’s slender, brown hand. “May I?”

She nodded, yes.

I began to kiss her hand, nipping gently at her wrist with my teeth, and continued this, slowly, up the inside of her arm until suddenly my own arms had gathered her to me as I slid from the couch to the carpet. I felt her breasts crush against my skin, her breath heating my neck in quick, little gasps. I pulled at one of the laces crisscrossing down her back that held the bodice together and groaned when the garment fell away from her. Then I was lowering Huli to the floor, kissing her breasts one at a time, gathering them in my hands and sucking her long nipples into my mouth one by one as she cried out softly. I was floating on a satin sea, her skirts pooled beneath my naked body as I planted deep, firm kisses on her candy mouth, as I brought my leg up between hers, applying pressure to the treasure hidden beneath the material.

I pulled at the waist of the skirts but couldn’t find a clasp or button, so I whispered for Huli to turn over, and lie on her stomach.

I circled her ankles with my hands and began to slide my fingers up the backs of her legs, stopping to kiss and gently bite the backs of her knees and her plump, delicious thighs. She brought her ass up, and posed this way, on her knees but with her chest to the floor. I forgot about my mission with the skirts and just folded the material over, my mouth watering at the sight of the glorious flesh in front of me.

Her plump lips were parted, slightly, the tiny clit jutting out from between them, and her deep pink opening mirroring my own face, trapped in a heady, hypnotized state of “oh.” I ran my hands all over her ass, so perfect, smooth, big and round, a giant Valentine’s heart I needed to taste every inch of. I don’t remember every moment of the next hour, if it even was an hour; I became lost in the taste of Huli and her sounds, her skin, her deliciousness that tasted like a mix of salt, sugar, heat and hunger. My tongue was painting a picture for Huli, on her lips, deeper inside her, against her twitching clit, on her mound—the picture was of her and how beautiful she was to me. Her thighs began to shake and I wrapped my arms around them, holding her steady as she screamed and came.

###

I begged the physical laws of ghost-world to leave Huli’s taste on my lips just a little longer. Somehow they heard me, and obeyed. She’d wanted to taste me, too, and it was the most difficult thing to walk away from, but I thanked her for her tea, thanked her for her body, thanked her for the clothes I was wearing and left the warehouse.

There was something I wanted to try—a test of endurance.

IV.

This time, it was my own shoes crunching the safety glass in the lobby of Wang’s building.

As I waited for the elevator, I studied my reflection in the stainless steel doors: in the end I’d chosen a perfectly tailored suit—just the jacket and pants and a red tie, no shirt, and a size 7 pair of glossy oxfords. I felt obnoxious and that was perfect.

I stepped out of the elevator and into the boardroom. It was empty.

Wang’s office door opened and he walked towards me, a generous smile crinkling the edges of his eyes, his hands outstretched.

“You came back,” he said.

“I want to fuck your board members.”

The smile faded and the hands relaxed at Wang’s sides. “All right.” He turned to the long table, pretending to wipe invisible dust off of its polished surface. “Probably a good idea. Then you can decide which one of us to contract with.” Wang’s hands curled into fists and my finger hovered over the elevator’s button. “But let me give you something, Mushi.” Wang walked to one of the panels in the wall that separated the board room from his office and opened a hidden compartment. From this he removed a gold whistle, dangling on a golden chain.

He walked to me, hands relaxed again, and placed the chain over my head, lifting my hair so that the chain now rested against my skin. “I know my workers. Around me they are composed, in control. But around you, Byx, I fear they’ll allow their deeper instincts to take over. If you find that you no longer enjoy what they’re doing to you—you blow that whistle, and I will come and put a stop to it. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” I said, my heart beating faster.

“Wait here. I’ll call them in.”

###

As I waited alone in the boardroom I spoke to myself, in my head, going over the decision and coaching myself: I knew this wasn’t going to be slow and tender like it was with Wang. I knew this wasn’t going to be guided by me, like it was with Huli. I knew—well, guessed, more accurately—that this game was going to be in Wang’s workers’ hands, and I would be the only playing piece.

Something about that spread the heat around my body like a wildfire. I couldn’t fucking wait.

The board members entered the room single-file from a door on the other side of the table; they walked silently, each man’s eyes fixed on me with such intensity I felt a thrill of fear flutter in the pit of my stomach. The men circled the table, facing each other, then pulled some of the chairs away from it before turning to face me.

We were going to use the table, I realized. Okay.

I wondered if they were going to remove their clothes. As if reading my mind, the nearest man walked to where I stood by the elevator; he ran his hand over my hair, brushed his thumb over my lips, my chest rising and falling with excited breaths.

He unbuttoned my suit jacket and pulled it down, reaching around to remove it from my arms. He looked down at my breasts and leaned to suck at my nipples while he unbuttoned my trousers—I reached to touch him but he held my hand, firmly, and guided it away. Suddenly he lifted me up and set me over his shoulder. Just like Wang, he was incredibly strong, and tall, and I felt like a doll as he removed my shoes and slid my pants off my feet. He then walked with me in this position, back to the table where the other men waited.

I felt his hands moving over my buttocks, squeezing the flesh there while I dangled down the back of him. My hair was in my eyes and my cheeks were reddening as he gently pulled my cheeks apart, exposing me to the other board members who muttered and laughed. Their voices got louder, seeming to encourage him as he ran a finger along my lips, as he pinched my inner thighs, as he flicked a finger against my asshole. His hand reached back and he inserted two fingers into my mouth and I sucked them for all I was worth; he removed the fingers and inserted them into my pussy, vigorously finger-fucking me while the board members voiced their approval. He removed the fingers and ran one, slick fingertip around my clit, working the sides, up and down, before giving it a squeeze. I yelped. He slapped my ass, hard, then ran his hand over the warmed flesh before returning to work on my clit some more.

The blood was pooling in my head and I was getting dizzy but I couldn’t stop whining, groaning with everything he did—being the spectacle for the other workers’ amusement was intoxicating. But now, I was being laid down onto the table. The man who’d carried me positioned me doggy style and I looked at the other eleven board members—they’d not removed a stitch of their clothing but each had his dick out, stroking it.

With great relief I saw that each board member’s member was a “normal” size—not gargantuan, not draconic, not anything weird. I wanted to crawl to one of the men and take his cock into my mouth, but I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to make a move in this little game. I reached a hand as if to crawl, and immediately felt a sharp slap on my ass cheek. Guess not.

The man who’d carried me moved to one side so I could see him, and he reached over and took the whistle I wore around my neck, pulling the chain once, hard, so that it broke. He tossed this across the table and I stared at it, suddenly unsure of what I’d embarked upon. He then took hold of the red necktie he’d allowed me to wear and pulled it, gently this time, so that I crawled a few steps his way. He held the tie while unzipping his trousers and fishing out his erect penis, and began to stroke it while another man came behind me, fondling my pussy, reaching underneath me to squeeze breasts. I stared at the first’s man’s eyes, plaintive, obedient. He stared back, utterly devoid of emotion, but intense in the certainty of his own will. I wondered if any of them ever got to express their will but for this moment. The fear rippled through me again as I felt a tongue lap against my hard clit while a thick finger plunged in and out of my pussy. The man behind me removed the finger and pressed it against my asshole, slowly inserting it while somehow, another tongue flicked at my clit, slowly, relentlessly, like the ticking of a clock, flit, flit, flit. The finger slowly fucked my ass while more hands grabbed regions of my body: my breasts, my throat, my hips, my waist. Someone slapped my ass again and pinched it; the finger began to fuck me faster.

I felt the first of many cocks press its head against my opening, then plunge balls-deep into my vagina. Two hands gripped my hips as the man behind me began to fuck me; gloriously that tongue was still at work on my clit, and all of those other hands moving elsewhere on my body, and the finger deep in my butt, holy shit, this was real, holy shit and I came so hard, my thighs shaking like Huli’s had when I devoured her pussy, my head raised up like a bucking horse’s and the first man jerking off and orgasming in my face while he held my necktie leash.

The man fucking my pussy pulled out of me and the first man let go of my necktie to gently wipe the cum off my face with his handkerchief. They turned me over, onto my back, and the second man pulled me closer to him before two other men came and took me by the arms, lifting me up; they arranged me so that I straddled the second man, and he re-inserted his cock and began to thrust upwards in earnest. The two other men put my arms over each of their shoulders while they fondled and pinched my breasts; a fourth man came behind me and slowly pushed his dick up into my ass. I was being fucked like I was part of some elaborate machine. The two men fucking me had formed a rhythm so that when one pushed in, the other pulled out, and all the while my clit rubbed against the second man’s trousers and belt, while the two who were keeping me up teased and twisted my nipples, sometimes reaching down and pinching the side of my butt cheek before returning to their work.

The man in my pussy began to cum, his face squinting with release and his head tilting back while he gasped and shouted. He pulled out, stumbled back, and another man took his place. The man in my ass began to pump harder, faster, and I too squinted, panting, trying to relax my body in the wake of his vigor. The man now fucking my pussy stared at me; his cold, black eyes piercing my soul and I looked away from him. He grabbed my face roughly, and pressed his lips against mine, forcing his tongue into my mouth. I sucked his tongue while he hammered me; my body was going numb. I wanted to slow things down, feel things again. I thought of the whistle.

The man in my ass finally came and gave my cheek a final squeeze before stumbling away. The remaining three men carried me to the table, where the man who was fucking my pussy slid to a position on his back, his legs resting off the table. The other men sat me firmly atop his dick, and his hands traced tickling lines across my body as I slowly grinded on him, trying to regain my skin’s senses once more. I lowered myself on him so that my breasts brushed against his suit jacket, and he groaned, closed his eyes as I slowly, deeply pushed his dick into me, my ass circling above his lap. I felt new hands over me, on my ass, another finger pushing into my burning asshole as I fucked the guy on the table. Then another cock pushed into my ass.

I breathed, allowing the heat to transform into pleasure. The man below me told me to open my eyes and look at him.

Everything had slowed down. The three of us groaned in unison, synchronized like one organism of flesh and ghost combined. After I felt the numbness subside I began to quicken my pace and felt pleasure shudder up through every nerve ending once more. My clit twitched and jumped, crushed against the man on the table’s zipper. The two men fucking me increased their pace and I matched them, my hips grinding wildly as hands gripped me or slapped my flesh. I yelled in the crush of a second orgasm and they shouted along with me, fluids pumping into me as hot as their ghostly skin was to the touch.

The man behind me pulled out, and the man below me slowly turned me over before getting up from the table. A new man, one of eight who’d watched us while masturbating, came and pulled my legs forward so that my ass rested right at the table’s edge. He pushed my legs up, reaching over my body to squeeze my breasts, then my throat, moving some of my wild, black hair off of my face to stick a finger in my mouth. Then he thrust into me and began to pump, tracing a hand across my jiggling breasts. He held my legs against him and fucked away, grunting with each thrust. Then he stopped.

I opened my eyes to watch him move to the back of a line of the remaining eight, and the next one in line began to fuck me. I closed my eyes again as his finger brushed over my clit; I winced. Too soon. I reached for his hand but he lightly slapped my hand away. Soon he pulled out and the next man took his place in the line of my little train.

After they’d each had a few turns, they re-positioned me again so that I waited for their cocks on my hands and knees, the pace faster now, the thrusts deeper. I had entered some sort of trance-like state, breathing deep and willing myself to endure their affections. I was no longer worried about the whistle, but I’d never done anything like this before and I wondered—briefly, as I returned from my ecstatic state to my thoughts—how much more of this I could take? I had no idea, but I didn’t want it to stop, yet. Endurance.

A mouth was sucking my asshole, now. I gasped at the surprise and change of texture.

I felt the tongue insert itself into me, fucking my ass, giving me the rimming of my life. Damn, okay—I was back in the game now, alert, interested, fully present, then the cock pushed into my ass where the tongue had been. I felt the man’s arm reach around me, his fingers trace down my belly, searching for my clit. A finger-vibe buzzed against the side of my clit and I squeaked, then moaned; I heard the man’s encouraging voice say filthy things to me in the language of the ghosts. We’re going to fill you with cum.

They must have passed the finger-vibe to the next guy in line because this treatment continued, along with the fucking of my ass, again and again; the world becoming a dizzying rush of senses, places deep within my body that I didn’t know could feel this good, more hands grabbing, pinching, slapping, keeping me focused on the building, massive orgasm that threatened to steal my voice from my throat and render me forever mute.