The Ghost Who Visited Him on Halloween Night

Rubén was twenty years old, though anyone would have guessed less. He had the face of someone who had never hurt a fly in his life: skinny, with thick-rimmed glasses slipping down his nose, and brown hair that styled itself simply by never being styled at all. In his town, half an hour from Cuenca, he had been the typical nerd, the one who got top marks while the rest got drunk at the river-side binge-drinking parties. His parents, two working stiffs who barely made it from month to month, had saved coin by coin to send him to Valencia to study Computer Science.

—You’re going to amount to something, son —his mother would repeat on every call.

What his mother didn’t know was that in Valencia he was nobody too. His classmates treated him like a piece of furniture. He never got invited anywhere, neither to a party nor for a beer. Rubén spent his days buried in the library and his nights in a rented room with walls so thin he could hear the neighbors fucking through the partition.

On Halloween night, the entire city had turned into a carnival. Zombies carrying lit bottles paraded down the street, nurses in tiny costumes, vampires kissing under the streetlamps. Rubén could hear the music and laughter rising up to his window, but he was still where he always was: alone, with an algorithms manual open on his desk. At eleven, his eyes burning, he sent the book to hell and got into bed.

Sleep wouldn’t come. His mind, finally free, landed where it always landed: on Daniela. The blonde from his lab group. A face that looked as though it had never sinned, clear eyes, a wavy mane down to her waist. She never wore a bra, and Rubén spent class pretending to look at the board while his eyes kept drifting to those nipples outlined beneath her T-shirt. Daniela knew it. That was why she smiled sideways whenever she caught him, and why she called him “the weirdo” when she thought he couldn’t hear her.

That night boredom won out over shame. Rubén pulled down his underwear and started to touch himself slowly, imagining Daniela on her knees, that good-girl mouth doing things she would never brag about.

Suck me off, come on. For once in your life, look at me.

He sped up his hand. The room smelled of sweat and pent-up desire. And then, without warning, the temperature plunged.

***

Rubén thought of a draft, but air doesn’t materialize. In the center of the room, a shape was taking form, made of mist that grew denser by the second. A woman. Or what the cold and the darkness had decided to remember of one. Disheveled black hair, pupil-less eyes shining like two moons, and a body of impossible curves just visible beneath the fog.

—What the fuck...? —he stammered, his hand still where it shouldn’t have been.

The apparition floated toward the bed, and as it did, it smiled.

—Poor thing —it said, its voice like wind slipping through a crack—. Alone, on the night of the dead, thinking about a blonde who doesn’t even look at you. What a pathetic sight. And yet, you turn me on.

Rubén wanted to scream, cover himself, run. He did none of those things. Fear had mixed with something filthy in the pit of his stomach. The figure extended a translucent hand and touched his chest. It was freezing, so much it hurt, but beneath that cold there was something else, an ember that shot through his veins and made his body tense.

—Who are you? —he panted, not moving away.

—Lamia —she purred, and her hand slid down his abdomen until it closed around him—. I came to give you what that little girl never will. Let me show you how it’s really done.

The hand began to move, and Rubén arched his back. It was an impossible contrast: the cold of her touch burned his skin while a thick heat boiled inside him. Each stroke seemed to pull at something deeper than flesh, as if they were emptying him slowly through the place where he felt pleasure most.

—Do you like it? —Lamia whispered, her face a breath away from his—. That blonde wouldn’t even know where to start.

He could only moan. His hips moved on their own against that hand that wasn’t of this world, while the room spun around him and all his fears dissolved into a single point of fire between his legs.

Lamia laughed, hollowly, and descended. Her black lips closed over the tip, cold as cemetery marble, but the tongue that ran over him was pure flame. She swallowed him whole, unhurried, without gagging, down a throat that seemed to have no bottom. Rubén gripped the sheets with both fists.

—Fuck... —was all he managed to say.

She rose until only the head was between her lips, teased him for an eternal moment, and then sank back down in one sudden motion. The pleasure piled up in his balls, a pressure on the verge of bursting. Right then, when there was no turning back, she pulled away with a wet snap.

—Not yet —she hissed, squeezing the base to cut off his orgasm cold. Rubén howled in sheer frustration—. First you’re going to do me a favor.

***

Lamia turned on the bed, offering him a back that vanished into an impossible waist and a round ass pulsing as if it had a life of its own.

—Put it in —she ordered—. Fuck me the way you’d like to fuck her. But remember one thing: I’m much better, and I never come to an end.

Rubén didn’t think twice. He knelt behind her, grabbed hold of hips that were somehow both cold and firm, and pushed. What he found inside made no sense: a gateway of ice and, deeper still, a tight fire that sucked him down into the depths. He thrust, first awkwardly, then with a rage he hadn’t known he possessed.

—Harder —she panted, her voice multiplied, as if several throats were speaking at once—. For once in your life, do it like a man.

And for the first time in his life, Rubén did. He forgot the glasses, the town, Daniela. He dug his fingers into that flesh that felt like frozen jelly, slapped one ass cheek and the sound cracked like a small thunderclap. At last he felt powerful, as if all the frustration of years were spilling out through his hips with every thrust.

Lamia kept him on the edge again, and again denied him release. With a snap of her fingers, chains of mist coiled around Rubén’s wrists and bound him to the headboard.

—Now you’re mine —she said, and sat on his face—. Show me you’re good for something.

He stuck out his tongue and licked. She tasted of salt, wet earth, something ancient he couldn’t name. He licked until she writhed, until a scream that made the windows tremble swept through the room and a final shiver ran through her entire body. For an instant she dissolved into smoke. The next, she was back, whole, looking at him with a fresh hunger.

—Good boy —she purred, releasing the chains with another gesture—. You’ve earned your reward.

She climbed on top of him and dropped down hard, swallowing him whole. She rode him without respite, her breasts swaying a breath from his face, her nails digging into his chest, until Rubén felt he couldn’t hold on for another second.

—This time, yes —she granted him, quickening—. Give it all to me. Inside.

Rubén exploded with a roar. He emptied himself into her to the last drop, and as he did he would have sworn something more than pleasure was leaking out of his body, a warm current leaving his chest and disappearing into her. Lamia let out a low, satisfied sound and licked her lips.

—This is only the beginning —she whispered, fading into the ceiling—. Tomorrow I’ll come back. And the day after, I’ll take you to a real party.

The room recovered its temperature all at once. Rubén lay there trembling, unable to sleep. For the first time, Daniela’s image seemed blurry, distant, of no importance whatsoever.

***

He woke sore but buzzing, as if he had lived more in one night than in all twenty years put together. In the cracked mirror on the wardrobe he was still the same skinny guy with glasses, but there was something different in his gaze, a twisted glint he didn’t recognize.

—Lamia —he murmured, and just saying the name made his body respond instantly.

He spent the day at the university like another person. He ignored Daniela’s grimaces, though that morning she was wearing a tight T-shirt that would have had him drooling any other day. He answered in class without stuttering. He looked people in the eye.

—What the hell happened to you, man? —one classmate blurted out, half respectful, half suspicious—. You look different.

—My business —Rubén said, smiling to himself.

What he didn’t know was that this new composure came at a price. With every release, Lamia took a piece of him, a splinter of life that passed from his body to hers through the hot semen, the only food capable of bringing her back to the world of the living.

***

At dusk, as soon as the room cooled, Rubén was already naked and hard, calling her in a low voice. Lamia materialized more solidly than the night before, as if his seed had fed her. Her breasts were now truly heavy, her sex glistening wet between her thighs.

—My little lover —she purred, drifting toward him.

She climbed on him without preamble and rode him slowly, torturing him, rising until he was almost all the way out and then sinking down to the hilt. Rubén grabbed her breasts, pinched her dark nipples, thrust up with all his strength. He didn’t notice how his own skin was turning pale, or the tingling in his sternum each time she squeezed him from within and milked him unhurriedly; he blamed it all on ecstasy.

—Only you —he growled, beside himself—. To hell with Daniela. I only want you.

It was exactly what Lamia wanted to hear. She let herself be filled again, and again a piece of Rubén crossed over to the other side without him realizing it. When she vanished with a low laugh, he slept like the dead, dreaming of more, not suspecting he was digging his own grave.

***

The third day dawned with grayish skin and eyes veiled by a whitish film. “Hangover,” he thought, but it wasn’t a hangover: it was Lamia drinking him down in gulps.

That night she appeared almost human. Flesh breasts, flesh hips, a hot mouth that no longer froze when it touched him. She knelt and swallowed him to the hilt, and her throat was that of a living woman, wet and tight.

—Your cum is making me real —she murmured between licks, true saliva sliding down her chin.

Rubén, blind with desire, laid her down and drove into her in one single thrust. This time Lamia’s sex was warm, tight, alive, with real nails clawing at his back and leaving burning tracks.

—Come inside me —she begged, wrapping her legs around his waist—. Give me the last one. Give me everything.

He obeyed, as he had always obeyed. And the instant he emptied himself completely, he felt it: his body went hollow. His skin turned transparent, his veins faded away, a final cold took hold of his chest. Beneath him, Lamia lit up with color. Flesh settled onto her, her heart began to beat, her thighs were left wet with a very human seed.

Rubén saw himself from the outside, floating, gray and hungry, looking at his own body sprawled on the bed.

—Thank you, darling —said Lamia, and she said it in his voice, stroking breasts that were finally firm—. Your seed has given me back my life. Now the ghost is you.

He tried to scream. Only a hollow moan came out, with no throat to carry it.

Lamia stood, dressed herself in Rubén’s clothes, looked at herself in the mirror with those eyes no film now clouded, and smiled.

—First stop, the Halloween party —she said, adjusting glasses she no longer needed—. It’s Daniela’s turn to meet the new man you’ve become.

And she walked out the door in Rubén’s body, leaving him behind transformed into what she had been: a specter condemned to haunt the rooms of the living, seeking a pleasure that no longer had flesh to feel with, waiting for the night when someone, alone and hot, would summon him by accident and the game could begin again.