Skid Roche

In honor of my being asked to contribute to BestSexBloggers.com, I’m posting the following erotic ghost story novella, which first appeared in 1995 (I’m showing my age).

The following story includes adult language and explicitly described sexual situations. If you are under the age of 18, sadly, you are forbidden from reading it. Please go here for top-notch age-appropriate sexual information.

Temple of Love

an erotic ghost story by
Thomas S. Roche
(www.thomasroche.com)

It is perhaps true that any sensible renters would have run for the hills when the agent, Mr. Aristophanes, whispered rumors about the house. Certainly he attempted to laugh it off. “It’s all silly superstition,” he said. “But it seems there was a bit of a cult living here in the late eighteen hundreds, and sometimes tenants have complained of. . . . hearing voices, and seeing things. Oh, it’s nothing, I assure you, just superstition.”

Christa and Nadia and Clint and Earmond had all looked at each other with wide eyes, not quite believing what they were hearing.

“Cool,” whispered Clint.

“Oh sweet death,” said Christa.

Nadia growled: “A cult? What kind of a cult?”

Mr. Aristophanes answered, trying to be nonchalant: “Oh, I’m not really sure. Nothing much. Something involving group love.”

“Group love. Oooooh baby,” said Christa, as Clint and Earmond began kissing (to the evident horror of the unfortunate Mr. Aristophanes).

“Uh, group love?”

“Yes. Two women and a man, not — uh — that is to say –”

“Not to say?” said Earmond, then slipped his tongue back into Clint’s mouth.

“That is to say — it was two schoolteachers, uh, women of money, but spinsters, that is to say, and there was a gentleman –of rather exotic tastes — one of the women was an English teacher — the other a teacher of costuming — the man was a wealthy — uh –”

“Oooooh,” said Christa, breathing heavily. “Sounds like it wasn’t a Boston Marriage.”

“Freaks,” muttered Nadia. “Christa, you read too fucking much. We’ll take it. What did you say the move-in was?”

“Oh, I’m sure we can work something out,” said Aristophanes, mildly nauseous. He couldn’t look away from Clint and Earmond, who were whispering delicate conjurations into each others’ ears. “The place hasn’t been renting that quickly, to be, uh, honest with you.” His face was quite pale, his lips quivering. “What could you kids manage?”
#

Nadia, ironically, was the person who gave the house its name. Nadia was more punk than goth, more fifties-housewife-gone-bad than ghoulgirl-looking-for-a-coffin-to-share, more pervert girlbutch boyfemme fashion dyke than decadent deathrock bi-girl, more Social Distortion than Nosferatu, more Jack Kerouac than Charles Baudelaire. But all the same Nadia had one hell of a perverse streak and more than a little appreciation for things morbid. One day Christa came home from work to find the words stenciled on an old piece of plywood hung above the decrepit iron gate, taken from the Sisters of Mercy song: TEMPLE OF LOVE.

Christa loved it and so did Clint and Earmond, and Morte was hung over with some bimbo in his room listening to Guns ‘n’ Roses, so they didn’t bother asking him. They put it to a vote, and it was unanimous: forever after, 449 Cliff Street was THE TEMPLE OF LOVE.

That night the four of them sat around on the floor of Nadia and Christa’s room listening to the new Lycia and smoking this quarter-ounce of fine Humboldt that Earmond had gotten from a friend.

When the four of them were stoned senseless Nadia had begun to kiss Christa and whispered savagely: “Come, my sweet Christa, to the Temple of Love.”

Then she started laughing hysterically, like she thought that was the funniest thing in the world. But Christa just sat there in her profound pot-stupor softly singing the words to “Temple of Love,” mumbling at the lines she didn’t know.

Meanwhile, Nadia kept laughing until she almost puked, and Clint and Earmond were busy French kissing and sticking their hands down each others pants, and soon Nadia stopped laughing and just watched them as Clint sucked Earmond’s dick. Then she leaned over and kissed Christa, who was still singing Temple of Love, except that she had started to remember the words that she had previously forgotten. That seemed, to her, somehow profound.

“You fucking freaky goth bitch,” said Nadia with more than a little affection, and bent to kiss her lover. Nadia shut Christa up with her tongue in the gothgirl’s mouth, and doom was no longer a four letter word as the four of them coupled desperately on the floor of the room, the sharp smell of their sweat mixing with the scented candles and sandalwood incense and the caressing sounds of the music. Christa and Earmond climaxed at the same time, holding hands across the expanse of hardwood floor littered with black thrift-store cushions. Then they locked eyes, parting the unseen curtain that divided them. Nadia, still occupied between Christa’s parted thighs, licked her lips and laughed.

Morte missed out, still hung over. He probably would have been a freak about the whole thing, anyway.
#

After that, Christa used to sit in the closet, thinking about death and trying to conjure ghosts. She had always been blessed with a natural affinity for things dead, as had most of her housemates. That’s how it started: with the ritual in the closet. Christa turned the place into her personal meditation space, in a sense, a place for her to think about the immediacy of death. Nadia thought it was pretty cool in a creepy sort of way, even if she sometimes seemed tired of listening to Christa’s deathrock poetry which she inevitably composed after leaving the closet, which she had come to call “The Sacristy” (going along with the temple motif, Nadia supposed). The room had a huge walk-in closet where Nadia kept her enormous collection of thrift-store treasures, but there was still enough room for Christa. Nadia’s collection of clothes had become quite impressive from her five years managing The Abandoned Poodle vintage clothing store down on Telegraph.

Christa went in to the closet late at night, after she and Nadia made love. While the feel of Nadia’s hands and mouth still tingled upon Christa’s flesh, the goth girl would enter the darkness of the closet, smelling the sweat of long-dead brides and grooms. She would clear a space on the floor amid patent leather boots and spike-heeled shoes, letting her eyes laze around what seemed like acres of decaying black velvet, white wedding dresses, black tuxedos, housewife frocks and red satin fuck-me skirts.

Christa and Nadia had been together for nine months, and had lived in this very room together for just over three, and still Christa never failed to be amazed at the depth and character of Nadia’s bizarre taste in clothes. She was bargain-basement goth, sure, most of the time, but she also had this weird seventies kink, and one time Nadia had even played high-fashion dominatrix to Christa while wearing a lime green polyester skirt hiked up to her waist, a spandex mock turtleneck and a blue beehive wig.

“Come to Jesus! Oooooooh baby,” Nadia had started shrieking as she came, and even Christa had to laugh at that point, almost spoiling the rhythm of what she was doing. Christa wasn’t normally prone to laughter, but that did it. Later, Christa felt obligated to write a poem about sexual fixations with past decades representing necrophilliac impulses, but at the moment when Nadia climaxed above her, she thought it was the funniest thing in the world. Ever after that, whenever Christa was in a cheerful mood during sex (not often), she would whisper “Ooooooh, baby,” and Nadia would giggle.

Maybe it was that weird streak that balanced Christa’s morbidity and black humor, that made the two such an effective couple.

That night, the Night of the Hungry Ghosts, as Christa would later call it, Christa and Nadia had made love wildly until Nadia fell into a contented slumber, tangled in the sweaty sheets and musk-scented blankets. Christa noticed how sexy Nadia looked with that Gary-Cooper robe on, like some kind of a fifties businessman gone through a sudden and unexpected sex change in the middle of the night — like that ’70s movie GOODBYE CHARLIE or something.

Christa was restless, eager to see the face of death, which she usually was. She shrugged on her own black satin robe and went into the closet and locked the door, sitting in total blackness and just thinking. She considered the state of things and the inevitable fact that she and Nadia would both be dead before too much longer, as would everyone else in the world and, for that matter, everything living. Things that were not currently living had the advantage of not having to die, though certainly the somber beauty of death compensated somewhat. These were the sorts of thoughts which usually drove Christa to compose morbid poetry about decaying flesh, adding to the stack of yellowing sheets in the box under the bed. Today, though, instead of composing poetry she became vaguely turned on, slightly aroused, as she thought about decaying flesh, morbidity and mortality. And then something else happened.

Christa’s eyes widened as the faint outline of a woman came into being at the far end of the closet. Christa just watched for a long time as the woman solidified. She was dressed in some kind of lingerie that looked like Nadia might have brought it back from the thrift store. It was like a boned merrywidow with garters and stockings. The woman wore no panties, her wispy mound bare in the frame of her black garters. The woman was quite a bit older than either Nadia or Christa — perhaps thirty five or forty — but Christa noticed at once that she was stunningly beautiful in a very unconventional way. Her breasts were large and full, her facial features strange and somehow tortured, but her eyes, even through her ghostly pallor, burned with a passion. The woman’s hair was black and it swayed as if moving in some unseen breeze. Her lips, dark as if they were painted, were full. Her tongue darted between them invitingly.

Probably anyone else in the world would have figured that her eyes were playing tricks on her or she was having a lucid dream. But Christa immediately assumed that she was seeing a ghost, which happened to be true, that fact not lessening the oddity of Christa’s believing it without hesitation.

“How fitting,” said Christa. “How fitting that a ghost so beautiful should come to me to punctuate my musings. . . . . “

The ghost put her lips together, whispering in a voice that echoed through the corridors of Christa’s mind and aroused every sensation of her body, causing her throat to become tight and her nipples to stiffen as she sat cross-legged on the floor of the closet.

Only Christa would have known what it meant, and as she heard it she leaned back against the closet wall, her heart pounding, nightmares of desire flooding her soul.

The ghost said: “Embrace death.”

Christa’s eyes widened, her lips coming together in an inviting purse.

“Ooooooh, baby,” she said, her breath coming fast.
#

“Gimme a triple absinthe,” mourned a black-lipped wraithboy in a leather blazer and black T-shirt.

Morte worked nights at The Institute, tending bar amid nightmare ghoul girls and androgynous ghost children, lost in the swirl of black velvet capes and the throbbing sounds of the music. It was pretty cool, and it got him his share of yummy goth chicks, like for instance this hot one he was putting the moves on when the deathrocker interrupted him.

“Absinthe?” snorted Morte. “That stuff’s been illegal since way before I earned my leathers, punk! Where the fuck you been?”

“I’ve been in Eastern Europe,” mumbled the boy vaguely, “hunting vampires.”

“Get a life!” snarled Morte, slinging the guy a Pabst Blue Ribbon and snatching the proffered five dollar bill from too-slow skeletal hands. He returned to the ghostlike lovely whom he was charming with his trademark wit and style, which fell somewhere between pretentious art fag goth-industrial sophistication and subtly homophobic redneck biker machismo. The ghoul girl seemed only vaguely impressed.

“As I was saying,” Morte told her, leaning over the bar so he could look down her shirt and smell the enticing death-smell she wore so deliciously, “I just moved into this house with all these weird deathrockers. It’s pretty cool. I mean, there’s these two hot lesbian chicks, they’re pretty awesome, we smoked pot together just last night and I watched ‘em kiss each other. Pretty cool. Then there’s these queer leatherboys in the attic, I can deal with them, they’re pretty cool, they let me borrow their manacles one night.”

The goth girl was looking at him over the rim of her cat-eye sunglasses, her blood red lips turned down at the edges. Her flesh was pasty white, the faint spiderweb of blue veins visible underneath. She had a simple silver ring through one nostril and six or seven through each of her ears as well as a silver stud through the center of her lower lip. She wore a black leather dress, low-cut and tight with a zipper down the front, and had a long black coat slung over the barstool next to her. She smelled faintly of some kind of flower, something that evoked sensuous visions of funeral homes. Morte kind of liked that, it was plenty deathrock. The chick was damn good looking, too, as a matter of fact she reminded him of that Christa girl, the lesbo poet who lived downstairs with the weird early-eighties dyke freak who always listened to the B-52s and the Clash.

“There’s this cool iron gate at the entrance,” said Morte, talking about the house but thinking about the ghoulgirl’s tits.

“Sounds like a nice place,” said the goth girl, taking a drag on her clove cigarette and a sip of her black lily cocktail, which Morte had so expertly prepared for her and offered to her on the house. “Over on Cliff Street?”

“That’s right. How’d you know?”

“Just a guess,” sighed the pretty deathrock girl. “Good rent?”

“Dirt cheap,” said Morte. “And I got plenty of room.”

“Girlfriend? Boyfriend? Other?” There was not a hint of emotion in the deathrocker’s voice, but Morte could have sworn he sensed a hunger in the way she held her body. She seemed hot for him. “Occasional fuckbuddy?”

“No way,” grinned Morte, showing his implanted fangs, which he’d had done by a biker dentist in Oakland just a couple weeks before. “All alone.”

“Dog? Cat?” Morte shook his head. “Pet cobra? Weasel? Boa Constrictor?”

“Nah, I wish, but I got this cool mannequin with fangs and a leather beret,” said Morte.

“Must be sad,” said the girl, sighing wistfully. “To be alone. Perhaps I could offer some sort of, , , , ,solace.” She squirmed slightly on her barstool, and Morte’s eyes widened.

Morte wasn’t sure what was going on here, but so far he liked it.

“I’m Veronika,” said the goth girl. “With a ‘k.’”

Morte smiled again. “I’m Morte,” he said, and waited for a reaction. “With an ‘e.’ You know what it means?”

The goth girl just looked at him for a time, before she figured out that he was serious.

“Uh, yes,” she said sadly. “I know what ‘Morte’ means.”

“Oh,” said Morte, disappointed.

The gothgirl’s fingertips were like a ghostly brush on Morte’s cheek. She leaned forward and kissed him, her full, lush lips parting and her tongue slipping out so that just the tip flickered into Morte’s slightly-opened mouth. She kissed him again and this time her tongue surged forward, sinking deep so that Morte could feel the steel of the post that pierced it, her lips closing on his lower lip and then her teeth coming together as if she were going to devour him. She suckled for a moment, then leaned back, breathing warm, sweet breath on Morte.

It was almost one in the morning. “Maybe I could get Nick to close up for me,” said Morte. Nick was the other bartender, who also liked picking up on ghoulgirls, though his tastes ran more toward wraithboys. Nick and Morte sometimes covered for each other when opportunities arose.

“I would like that,” said the gothgirl very softly. “Take me home and use me badly, my beloved Morte.”
#

Clint and Earmond had met the gothboy at the Hammerhead, seducing him between Brandy Alexanders and Scotch-and-sodas. The three of them had ground together on the dance floor, sharing black-lipped kisses, the only three deathrockers in a bar inhabited, for the most part, by big hairy leathermen with nipple rings thicker than Earmond’s dick. The scene was made that much more surreal by the fact that tonight was Western night, and half the club was up two-stepping on stage while Clint, Earmond and the boy traded tongues dancing a slow dirge on the dance floor. The boy refused to tell Clint and Earmond his name, insisting that they call him only “boy.”

Soon they were high in the attic of the old house, with the boy manacled properly to the bed frame and Lou’s Venus in Furs on repeat on the CD player. Earmond held an assortment of whips, grinning mischievously as he watched Clint, who was always the top in the relationship, administer divine punishment to the boy’s backside. The boy was gagged but held a red handkerchief in one hand, which he would drop if the pain got to be too much. Unfortunately, Clint wasn’t even eliciting groans yet. The boy was a pain hog, and Clint was having some trouble delivering.

“The fucker likes it heavy,” said Clint. “I figured he was just bragging.”

“He was just bragging, suckboy!” came a voice behind Clint, and both he and Earmond turned to see who had come in — the door was locked. A shimmering figure in black leather, with a perfectly-trimmed black beard framing full red lips and a white face, stood in the slanting moonlight from the window, holding a flogger that made Clint’s eyes go wide.

“Holy shit,” he said. “Who the fuck are you?”

The leatherman swished the whip through the air, grinning cruelly. He shrugged off his leather jacket and let it fall to the floor, revealing a harnessed bulk dusted with thick black hair. His body was vaguely translucent, and Clint and Earmond looked at each other, each realizing at the very same pregnant moment that this was not a trick of the light, or a shared hallucination. This was the culmination of their fantasies, the dead man come to life to instruct them in the Old School they so richly worshipped.

“The name’s Edward Valentine, pussies! But as far as you’re concerned that’s ‘Master.’ On your knees, gothboys!” growled the leatherman. “On your fucking knees. It’s time to learn from an old hand how this fucking thing is done! And I do mean OLD.”

And Clint and Earmond, without a moment’s hesitation, both dropped to their knees obediently, for isn’t it true that the dead deserve some respect?

The boy, squirming on the bed, had his head turned somewhat awkwardly and was watching with excitement as the leatherman stepped up behind the bed, preparing to take up where Clint had left off. The boy could have dropped the kerchief at any time — but he did not. Instead, he steadied himself on the bed and waited for the lush agony dealt by the leatherman.

The first blow was like the sound of thunder clapping.
#

Christa had managed to get to her feet, but now she was afraid to move, terrified that any action she took would dispel the spectre or prevent that lovely ghost from touching her. The closet was dark except for the shimmering whiteness of the woman’s transparent skin, accented by the black of her merrywidow and garters and stockings. She looked like a woman in one of those old porno magazines Nadia liked, and Christa was enticed and seduced by her. Christa pressed her back against the door of the closet and closed her eyes, praying that when she opened them the woman would still be there.

Christa’s eyes fluttered open, and the woman was indeed still there. In fact, she was moving slowly across the closet, nearing Christa, her dark lips parting slightly as she looked into Christa’s eyes. “Ooooooh, baby,” she said, standing very close to Christa so that the gothgirl shook in fear and longing.

Slowly, the ghost woman reached out and took the satin sash of the black robe in her hand. Christa thought her legs would give out as she felt the woman tugging at the sash. The loose knot gave way and Christa’s robe fell open slightly, revealing a the vale between Christa’s slight breasts and the downy mound of her pubic hair. The woman’s fingers slowly parted the robe further, and Christa moaned softly as she felt the woman’s ghostly touch on her belly. The woman’s hands came to rest under the robe on Christa’s hips, and she bent forward and touched her parted lips to Christa’s, her tongue slipping out just a bit. Christa felt a curious tingle of hunger go through her as the woman’s tongue slipped deeper into her mouth. The gothgirl’s eyes fluttered closed as the ghostly woman snuggled closer to her, easing the robe over Christa’s shoulders. It fell to the floor with a whisper and the ghost woman’s body pressed to Christa’s.

“Gabrielle,” whispered the woman, her breath the sweet scent of roses long dead, and Christa understood it to be the woman’s name.

“Christa,” said Christa, and tasted the woman’s tongue again, deeper this time.

She could feel the swell of the woman’s breasts pressing against her own, and the contact sent a surge through her. The woman pulled back just a little, bringing her hands around to touch Christa’s breasts, feeling the cold steel rings through the nipples.

Christa felt vaguely guilty — not because she was cheating on Nadia, for Nadia and she had carefully-negotiated agreements allowing for consensual non-monogamy, and Christa felt sure the dead were included in those agreements at least as much as, if not more than, the living. But she felt guilty because she wasn’t sharing this delicious woman, this Gabrielle, with her lover. But Nadia was sleeping and it really didn’t seem polite to wake her up –

Christa felt her guilt surge deliciously as she felt the woman’s mouth on hers and felt the gentle circular motion of the thumbs on her nipples, felt the woman’s leg pressing gently between her own and rubbing hard against her cunt.
#

Veronika was hot for him, that was for sure. She pressed Morte against the Harley in the deserted parking lot, guiding his hand up to her breast as she kissed him, slipping his fingers under her dress so he could feel her nipple, hard and pierced and inviting. Her cleavage was filmed with a faint sheen of sweat. She leaned back against the Harley and parted her legs a little, the leather dress riding up her thighs, and Morte wanted to do her right there in the parking lot. He was an old outlaw biker at heart and a sleazy goth bitch made it almost impossible for him to keep his dick in his pants. The girl rubbed his cock through the leather, and Morte was about to unzip and go for it when she whispered “Take me back to your house to fuck me.” Morte fired up the Harley and felt her snuggling onto it behind him, her thighs pressed around him, her arms curving luxuriously around his body so that her hand rested casually in his lap, caressing his hard cock through the leather pants.
#

The boy was writhing, moaning, shrieking his doom through the rubber ball-gag as the leatherman drove his ectoplasmic flogger into the boy’s receptive hide. Earmond and Clint watched wide-eyed, their cocks as hard as the Master’s but not nearly as big, as the boy submitted eagerly to punishment.

Suddenly the Master turned and pointed the flogger at Clint, laughing. “You two pansy ass weasels think you’re gonna get off easy, don’t you?”

“Sir! No, Sir!” they shouted in unison.

“Damn right you’re not!” The Master hooked his hands through his belt loops and stood there at the angle that could only mean one thing.

“You, the one with the lip piercing! Get that mouth to work, boy!”

Clint didn’t hesitate a moment, for he’d been aching to taste that cock ever since the ghost master made his appearance. He crawled over, his head down, and then pressed his face into the Master’s bulging, leather-clad crotch. Clint knew better than to use his hands — he brought the zipper down with his teeth and pulled the Master’s belt the same way. He wisely thought to say “Sir! Thank you Sir!” as loudly as he could before he tugged the flap of the leather pants open and watched the thick meaty cock slip out. He wondered for a moment whether safe sex was necessary with a man who died in the last century — but then the Master shimmered faintly translucent in the moonlight through the open window, and Clint realized he was attempting to address a complicated problem in metaphysics and virology with a dick in his face. The guy had lived in the last century, so Clint figured that made it OK. He opened his mouth and worked the head into his mouth with some difficulty, the thing was so goddamn big. He suckled on ectoplasmic pre-come and began to lathe the thick head with his tongue, moving his way down the shaft and licking close to the balls. The Master chuckled in satisfaction, while the boy continued to moan and writhe on the bed. “Join ‘im, Boy!” The Master motioned with his hand, growling viciously at Earmond, and Earmond lunged forward and pushed Clint aside, working his face into the Master’s crotch to join his lover in pleasuring the Master.
#

Christa felt Gabrielle’s tongue sliding deep inside her as she laid there sprawled out among the shoes. The black robe was a tangled mess on the floor, her thighs spread wide as Gabrielle knelt with her face between them. Christa was very close now, having to fight to keep herself from moaning — she didn’t want to wake Nadia. Slowly Gabrielle repositioned herself so that her legs were spread above Christa’s face, and then she lowered herself onto the gothgirl’s eager, seeking mouth. Christa tasted the sharp tang of the dead and sank her tongue eagerly into Gabrielle’s lustful snatch.
#

Morte was hard as hell and Veronika was plenty wet. They groped each other into Morte’s room on the second floor, and Veronika pressed herself up against the wall, watching him with her lips open as he shrugged off his jacket. The room smelled of stale sweat and incense.

“Why don’t you put on some music?” asked Veronika breathlessly. “I love music.”

Morte was vaguely peeved, but he understood — he dearly loved to fuck when a good Aerosmith album was going full blast. This was a deathrock chick, though, so he figured he better adjust accordingly.

As Morte picked out the disks, Veronika shrugged off her long black coat and toyed with the zipper of her dress, musing on what a cute ass this biker boy had.

Morte had invested in a five-CD changer for moments just such as these. He put on five disks: Throbbing Gristle, Revolting Cocks, Godflesh, Carcass, and Napalm Death, on infinite random repeat.

“Music to fuck to,” he growled hungrily.

“Do me a favor,” said Veronika, moving toward him, her voice an erotic growl of hunger. “Even in pillow talk, don’t end your sentence with a preposition, OK?”

Morte watched as Veronika slowly brought down the zipper on the front of her leather mini-dress. The leather slipped away and Veronika stood naked except for a black leather garter belt, fishnets and patent-leather boots, and the tiniest pair of black leather panties Morte had ever seen. His eyes went wide as he looked over the pert breasts with their double-pierced nipples, the intricate and erotic tattoo work on the woman’s white belly, the slender slope of her thighs meeting the lace-tops of the fishnets where they attached to the leather garters.

It was hard for Morte to tell in the flicker of the light from the stereo, but it seemed like Veronika’s white flesh shimmered vaguely translucent for a split second as she neared him and pressed her body to his.
#

“Sweet Nadia,” whispered Christa as she snuggled her black-robed body back into bed against her lover. “I’ve brought you a gift, my luscious girl. A gift from the land of the dead.” Gabrielle slid onto the bed, snuggling her body close to Nadia’s and bending forward to kiss her. Slowly Nadia awoke, tasting the kiss, feeling the gentle caress of Gabrielle’s tongue. Christa nuzzled her lover’s ear, nibbling, whispering enticements.

“She’s dead,” whispered Christa into her awakening lover’s ear. “I have brought you the ghost who inhabits our closet.”

Nadia was suddenly awake, and her eyes opened wide in hungry and greedy delight. Her eyes roved over Gabrielle’s shimmering body, her mouth dropping open.

“Where the hell did you find that merrywidow?” Nadia asked, moaning softly with excitement.
#

Veronika was down on her knees in front of Morte as Carcass began to play. The unkind sound falling somewhere between grindcore and speed metal. It was very much to Veronika’s liking. She worked Morte’s cockhead into her mouth, tasting the salt of his semen, swirling her tongue around the head and then licking her way down the shaft. Morte moaned contentedly as Veronika suckled on his balls and then moved up to swallow his whole cock. She gulped it down, deep-throating with astonishing fluidity — Morte guessed she did this a lot. Hungrily she downed his cock and then straightened her back, pressing Morte’s shaft between her pierced tits and rubbing the saliva-slick cock into her cleavage. “Yeah,” grunted Morte. He’d seen this in a porno movie and it sure was hot. But then Veronika had pushed herself back, spreading herself on his filthy, unmade bed amid other women’s underwear and tattered copies of HUSTLER. She parted her thighs, showing Morte her moist, glistening cunt with its elaborately-pierced lips.

“Fuck me,” she whimpered, watching as Morte tried to tear his clothes off. Veronika pushed aside a bright-red push-up bra left by Morte’s last “seduction.”

Inwardly, Veronika cursed herself for being such an alley cat. But, call it a fetish, there was just something hot about making it with a guy this sleazy. And if she was going to consort with mortals anyway, she might as well go as low as she could, right? Besides, to return to the house in so ignoble a fashion only seemed appropriate, since she had left so many years ago to seek her fortune in the world of the living — and this is what she’d gotten. Matter of fact, she liked it. OK, so call it a fetish.

“Fuck me,” repeated Veronika, moaning it louder this time, since Morte wasn’t getting his clothes off fast enough for her taste. “Fuck me, oh Morte, please fuck me good –”

Morte finally had stripped naked, and Veronika saw that his muscular body was covered in tattoos. He lunged forward onto the bed, feeling Veronika take hold of his big thick cock as he settled between her thighs. “Ooooooh baby,” she cooed as she guided his cock up against her snatch and rubbed the thick saliva-covered head between her lips. Then, moaning and pushing Morte into her, Veronika snuggled closer to Morte and rocked her hips as he sank into her. Hungrily, like rutting wolves, they began to fuck.

Faintly, Veronika’s white flesh shimmered.

The CD player shuffled over to Napalm Death, which was still very much to Veronika’s liking for this sort of thing.
#

“Yeah! Fuck yeah! Suck it, you mortal motherfuckers! Suck that cock! Take it!” The Master screamed as great streams of come exploded from his cockhead, spewing over the faces of the mortal boys servicing him. Kissing each other and sharing the Master’s ghostly come, they shouted “Sir! Yes Sir!” and continued to pleasure him until he ordered them to stop. Then the Master told them to shut up. He stood there, listening intently. It couldn’t be –

“Fuck me! Yeah, fuck me, oooooh baby!” came the faint cry of a woman from downstairs.

Probably one of Morte’s porno-star sluts, both Clint and Earmond thought simultaneously.

It couldn’t be. It was impossible that she would return in so ignoble a fashion. . . . no, wait a second, that would be exactly Veronika’s style.

Edward would have known those cries anywhere. It was her. He turned and raced toward the door, his cock still hanging out.
#

“Yeah,” she shrieked. “Do me!” Veronika was like some sort of beast, a whole lot more into it even than Morte was, though he was sure as fuck enjoying herself. She was clawing and scratching him and screaming so loud Morte was sure the neighbors could hear even over the streetcleaner sounds of Godflesh. Matter of fact, it sounded like someone was pounding on the door just as Morte shot his wad.
#

Christa was kissing beads of sweat from Nadia’s belly while Gabrielle went down on her, her faintly glowing head bobbing up and down between Nadia’s splayed thighs. Nadia had already come once and was going for a second one — Christa was so jealous. Then suddenly, as Nadia neared the second climax (Christa could always tell it was coming), Gabrielle lifted her head, her cunt-slick mouth dropping open.

“It’s her,” said Gabrielle.

Christa was puzzled, wondering what was going on, as Gabrielle got up and ran to the bedroom door.
#

Damn! Morte knew he should have gotten a lock for that door. Now this big leather daddy with his cock hanging out had torn the thing open and was standing there with his cock hanging out looking like he was ready to kill him or fuck him. Morte figured he’d just been caught porking the guy’s daughter — but why was the guy shimmering like that, why could he see through him?

Veronika was still squirming underneath Morte. She looked at the leatherman and smiled.

“Edward,” said Veronika. “It seems I have summoned you.”

“Summon me!” thundered Edward. “You damn near brought the house down! What are you doing fucking this greasy boy? Nice ass, though –”

Morte’s eyes narrowed as his brain processed. “You lookin’ at me?” he said nervously.

Suddenly Morte gasped as Veronika seemed to shimmer and disappear, floating upward THROUGH him — it was impossible, but she was gone and his face was buried in a pile of women’s underwear and sleazy porno mags. Then Veronika was standing behind him. As Morte turned over and looked at the two of them, Veronika seemed transparent — and she and the leatherman embraced, kissing.

“I’ve missed you and Gabrielle so, Edward,” said Veronika. “It’s been agony! But I’ve learned many things –”

“Apparently!” laughed Edward uproariously, pushing Veronika back so he could touch the rings in her nipples and belly-button. “Are all the living doing this nowadays?”

“Oh, Edward, There are so many pleasures to be had in the land of the living –”

Morte lay there on the bed, not quite believing. He could see through Veronika and the guy just enough to see that it was Earmond and Clint and Nadia and Christa — looking damn fine in that half-open robe, Morte noted — crowding into the doorway of his bedroom behind them. Morte tried in vain to find something to cover his exposed crotch with, and finally settled on the pink-push up bra that slut from Bakersfield had forgotten last week. His face reddened considerably.

But who was that woman pressing her way THROUGH the crowd, as Veronika had just done? Whoa, thought Morte, this chick was pretty hot, too.

“Oh, Gabrielle,” said Veronika, kissing the woman as they embraced. “I have missed you as well. . . . so deeply.. . . . .”

“We have haunted this place since you left,” said Gabrielle. “Oblivion would be nothing if not with you.”

“I have learned so much,” said Veronika, which Morte thought she had already said. “So many pleasures among the living. . . . but my energy is depleted, and I long to seek sweet oblivion with you. . . .I knew there was a chance you would still haunt the mansion, waiting for me — so when I discovered this boy I smelled your death scent upon him and was siezed with longing. . . .”

Gabrielle blushed faintly, giggling. “Yes, I did that while he was sleeping — not strictly moral, I suppose. . . .”

“But I thought you might have gone ahead into sweet nothingness without me.”

“Never,” said Gabrielle.

“Never,” said Edward. “Oblivion would be nothing without you!”

“Then let my return be our death bell,” said Veronika. “Ex nihilo nihil fit. From nothing comes nothing!”

“Ex nihilo nihil fit,” said the three of them all at once.

A cold wind blew through Morte’s bedroom. The wind began to swirl about in a whirlwind, siezing the underwear and porno mags and causing dust to fill the room. Clint and Earmond and Nadia and Christa and Morte all watched, astonished, as the vortex formed in the middle of Morte’s bedroom and the trio of ghosts began to shimmer and glow, swirling into the wind. “Ex nihilo nihil fit!” they shrieked, the voice of oblivion. “From nothiing –”

Then they were gone, and a good quantity of Morte’s junk had been carried into the afterlife with them. Morte cursed — he’d seen his last copy of CHEERLEADER BIMBOS being sucked away into darkness.

“Sadness,” said Christa. “Such sadness. . . . “

“That was so cool,” sighed Earmond.

“Shit happens,” muttered Nadia.

“Damn, that son of a bitch had a nice basket,” said Clint.
#

Midnights came, and Christa would sit in the closet hoping against hope that the beautiful Gabrielle would come to haunt her in the darkness. And even so, Christa knew it would be tragic if Gabrielle did, for that restless and horny spirit of the dead deserved its sweet peace.

Christa felt she had been blessed in the most wonderful way, to have tasted the lips and cunt of a hungry ghost. To have held her, embraced Gabrielle in that sweet frozen moment before oblivion, before death –

It was beauty that Christa, and all living things, had to look forward to — oblivion, and death.

But in the meantime. . . . .

Christa could hear the slapping sounds of fervent flogging from upstairs. Clint and Earmond had brought that gothboy home again — and now they even had Morte getting into the act, it turned out he wasn’t such a straight boy after all.

Christa stood and touched the doorknob of the closet, knowing she would climb into bed and wake her lover Nadia with a gentle nuzzle against her throat and then make hungry love to her again, until dawn broke over the hills.

She paused, though, and looked into the closet, remembering Gabrielle’s beauty the night she had appeared there. . . .

Christa smiled, crossed herself, and mumbled a prayer for the dead.

THE END

“Temple of Love” by thomas S. Roche first appeared in Seductive Spectres, edited by Amarantha Knight. Masquerade Books (New York), 1996. Copyright ©1995 by Thomas Roche.