Detective Erica Vargas wore her gender like a uniform. She looked at the younger woman across the table. The faint gulp told as much as the perky yellow sweater with bright greek letters. The best tell was the makeup marred from a night in a cell. Detective Vargas judged the younger woman exhausted, in over her head, desperate, and tired.
“Sarah?” Detective Vargas said. “You’ve had quite a night haven’t you?”
The late morning sun had begun its climb in the sky, though there was no window in this room. Detective Vargas liked it this time. No other officers bothered to watch interrogations at around 9:45am. The young woman silently nodded.
“Your boyfriend, Cory?” began Detective Vargas. “He’s not telling us where he got the MDMA. Smart boy, Cory, right?”
“Yeah,” said Sarah with a cautious breath.
“Says you’re not involved.”
“That’s right. I didn’t know he was selling shit,” she added.
Detective Vargas liked it when captives lied to her.
“So you wouldn’t know where he got it?” Detective Vargas added. “Because I think you do.”
Sarah said nothing and looked away.
“You live on campus, right?” said Vargas.
“What do you care?”
“Just wondering if you went home for the summer,” said Vargas. She flipped through a smartphone idly.
“Yeah, I sure did,” said Sarah.
“No summer organic chemistry lab?” said Vargas stopping on a photo of Sarah’s social media. It showed the young woman proudly smiling in a lab coat. Vargas held the phone like a poker hand. Sarah looked away again.
“Can’t I just go home?” said Sarah.
“Yes,” said Detective Vargas. “But what’s with your storage unit though?”
Sarah looked at Vargas for a guilty second and then looked away. Next her sharp exhale and tightening of her lip made Vargas smile. Closing for the kill, Vargas stood at her height and looked down at Sarah. She only crossed her arms over her chest.
“Not sure what you need a storage unit for,” said Vargas. “Since you didn’t leave campus this summer.”
She stepped around the table and stood next to Sarah.
“Should we search it?” smirked Vargas. “Find out more? Or should we let you go home?”
“I don’t know anything,” repeated Sarah. “I’m waiting for a lawyer.”
“We can get you one, or you can go right now,” said Detective Vargas. “I need something before you leave though.” She placed a hand on Sarah’s shoulder, massaging the tense cold muscles. Reacting in disbelief at Vargas’ gentle fearlessness, Sarah only looked up in fright. Vargas brushed Sarah’s disheveled hair aside and whispered into her ear.
“Give me a few nice licks,” she said and then raked her tongue over Sarah’s lobes.
“What the fuck?” Sarah said. “Who are you?”
“I’m Your way out,” cooed Detective Vargas, as she held Sarah’s face. “The last gate to get through before your bad dream is over.”
“Fuck you,” Sarah stammered, her voice too tired and the night too long for her to be angry. “I want my lawyer.”
Detective Vargas unbuckled her belt.
“Lawyers take time,” she said. “If we’re doing it that way, I’ll search your storage unit.”
She dropped her belt to the ground with a clatter.
“But this other way out, Isn’t it so much easier?”
Sarah looked up and down Vargas’s body, then her eyes rested on her pelvis. She rolled her lips.
“If I do this,” she said. “We’re done? I’m out of here?”
“My solemn promise.”
Vargas shoved the interrogation table back, sat on its edge, and opened her legs. Sarah took a resigned breath and then handled Vargas’s pants. A button and zipper came undone under Vargas’s leer. Shifting her hips encouraged the cornered little suspect to hurried compliance. Sarah hefted down the jeans and the plain underwear. Vargas opened her knees and showed her trimmed, demanding, pussy.
Sarah took one more look at the detective. That glossy dissociation in her eyes entertained Vargas. The looks of spite and surrender turned her on like no other. Her sex moistened and warmed. Sarah’s first gentle pinches at the outer lips built a savory sensitivity. Vargas knew for certain then that Sarah had done this before. Then again, these college brats almost always had.
Sarah fondled the pussy and responded to the sighs and whispered commands. Vargas’s clit was plucked by dainty fingers and then suckled by defeated lips. The heavy smooth feeling delighted as much as the captive’s reluctance. After all, a resentful finger penetrating her pleasured as well as lover’s nails. A desperate tongue lavished as well as one from a seduced partner. Any emotion had its utility, though Vargas enjoyed using some more than others.
“Keep at it, bitch,” she groaned. “Get that dirty tongue all over. Drink all my juices.”
Sarah complied, her eyes closed and her gaping mouth covered so much of Vargas’s pussy. The ravishing grew more hurried, more fierce, and more determined. Energy built up inside Vargas. She reached down and grabbed the back of Sarah’s messy hair. Holding tight, she kicked her legs open wide and rubbed herself onto Sarah’s face. Vargas exhaled in sharp huffs. A drug-like wave of pleasure enlivened her muscles. When the dizziness hit her head, Vargas laughed and let Sarah’s hair go.
Sarah pulled away. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and glared up at Vargas. It was an expression Vargas knew and felt for one the moment: humiliation. One more suspect humiliated made Vargas feel as alive. It had her heart beating as fast as when she once hunted suspects.
“You going to let me go now?” muttered Sarah.
“Oh yes, Sarah,” she said. “Think we’ll cross paths again?”
Sarah said nothing.
“Yeah whatever,” said Vargas. “Don’t get caught okay?”
It had been good for everyone and Vargas knew it. A boyfriend would get a good lawyer and probably plea out for a six month stint. The lawyer would get a nice paycheck. Sarah would probably move her little chemistry project somewhere else, or maybe dismantle it. She got herself a get out of jail free card from this whole fiasco. Detective Vargas had had her fun. She even collected cash from a colleague who bet that Sarah would insist on waiting for a lawyer. No lawyer talked better than Vargas and she proceeded on with her day buoyed on the victory from the morning.
Her less dull duties passed quickly too. She reexamined a double homicide from two nights ago. A body had been shot twice in the chest. It was a male. Blood pooled around it and the face looked up at the ceiling in rigor mortis. Some bystander, maybe another customer, took a bullet in the stomach as he had come out of the restroom. Blood in that case pooled around his side as if he napped. He closed his eyes before he died. Vargas wondered why some bodies closed their eyes before they died and others kept them open. Some things she would never know, but she knew -thanks to her morning victory- that she’d solve this case before Shales and Rosingar tried to one up her again.
It took only one letter to sink that mood.
“Vargas?” said Jarod. He was a handsome younger officer with nice biceps and bright brown eyes. Vargas loved a San Jose summer.
“Yes?”
“Letter for you,” he said. He held a yellow envelope in his hand. “Looks personal.”
Vargas held the letter and scanned it with her eyes for imperfections. Nothing from the glue to the stamp looked out of place. The return address was Los Angeles county.
“LA?” she said out loud. “Hey did this get cleared by security?”
“Of course,” said Jarod. “Issue?”
“I don’t know anyone in Los Angeles. This is a little random is all,” smiled Vargas. “Thanks for the note. Got anything else to give me?”
“Maybe after tomorrow’s shift is up,” Jarod said nodding back. “Got time to hit up Marshall’s High Top bar?”
“That one? What about the dive called Spyder’s? Heard your team arrested two perps there last week.”
“Oh you looking for action, Detective?” said Jarod.
“Absolutely.”
“Then I insist on Marshall’s High Top,” he said. Vargas considered biting back.
“Marshall’s it is. I’m out of here at half past five.”
“See you then.”
She eyed Jarod and touched a pen to her lips. It got a reaction. She liked it. Maybe she’d tease him later, get his pants down sometime, take his dick into her mouth and take a bite. Yes, that’s the great thing about getting those parts on the inside, one chomp down and its blood. Amazing how much people trust each other. Yet that officer only cracked a smile back. Vargas watched his thighs as he left.
With hands in white gloves, Vargas read the letter. Hand written? That was unusual. Who does that? She read lines and shivered. “Erica, I miss you so much,” it began. “I hated how things ended, because I can’t stop thinking about how good we were together in Silver Lake.” Silver Lake? No this didn’t make any sense. It sounded like Zoey. That’s Zoey Howers the news podcaster until some years ago. Years before that, she was Erica Vargas’s Silver Lake neighbor, frequent fuck buddy, and eventually lover. Things hadn’t ended well. Erica Vargas slept with one of Zoey’s exes and for some reason that made Zoey upset. Erica couldn’t forget that, she had said that her fingers and mouth could please Zoey as well as any other. What was it Zoey had said right then after that? It was written in this letter, “You’re more than a collection of parts, animated by cravings, Erica. I know that now. You could be so much more.” No, this didn’t make any sense. Who else could’ve known those exact words? Did someone get Zoey’s journals? Did Zoey share that in a message? Maybe Zoey had shared it with a therapist. That would be most probable.
After all, this letter couldn’t have been from Zoey. Zoey Howers had died three years ago.
No one makes a fool of Detective Vargas, and she would have a chat with whoever sent this. They were idiots to hand write it. That meant skin cells, patterns in the slopes of the pen, even the kind of paper might be a clue. Detective Vargas handed the letter to the forensics team who agreed to look at it.
That night, though, she watched a video of Zoey Howers on her phone. Zoey, god it had been several years since she’d spoken. Zoey had been the one of the few women to end things with Vargas before Vargas got bored, or maybe Vargas had been bored, but she wasn’t bored of Zoey. No Zoey had all the attachment to Vargas as a dozen other casual lovers, yet somehow she banished Erica from her life. That burn to the ego ate at Detective Vargas, but she loved having Zoey around too. What’s the deal with people and exclusivity? It’s not like random partners tainted your body or something. Bodies were just that, things that could communicate and have affect on other people, like Zoey Howers was doing on her laptop screen right then. She had her mic between her and two student activists from UCLA discussing gentrification. Zoey and the students had taken part in a downtown Los Angeles tenants’ strike and a march at city hall demanding expanded rent controls. It was one of the last podcasts Zoey Howers recorded. Less than two weeks later, Zoey danced at one of the clubs she and Vargas had attended, and was cut down in a blast of gunfire from a domestic terrorist. What was the name of the place? It was the Blue Bumble, Vargas remembered.
The shooter was chased into a blind alley, and Vargas enjoyed the body cam footage. Three officers shot him six times. It’s quite a rush seeing police in action, or anyone really.
When Vargas returned to work the next day, the forensics team shared their conclusions. Not a trace of skin had been on the paper, which was common notebook paper that could have been purchased anywhere. The ink in the letter? From a 0.5 art pen, equally common.
“What about the hand writing?” Detective Vargas asked her colleague.
“We’d need some other samples to be sure,” said the lab coated tech.
He turned his computer screen around and displayed the side by side samples for Vargas. It displayed a 92% likely match.
The social ritual of the date provided more than pretense for Vargas this time. The light drinks and the over priced tapas of Marshall’s High Top bar provided a needed distraction. Furthermore, she had learned throughout the years that humans enjoyed the repetitions, and the chats, and the light laughter that came with a nice dinner. Still, when it came time to end the night she was happy to follow Jarod home.
Back there, Jarod clearly wanted Detective Vargas on her knees. She preferred him on his back. Through a feverish make out, they contended with each other. Each slight button undone and each bit of cloth removed displayed their strength and yet also their vulnerability. Only one would win. Pecks on his neck summoned moans of satisfaction. Vargas prevailed in that moment. Jarod fell to his bed and Vargas stripped more naked. Firm mounds of his muscle resisted her squeezing. She dug her nails into his pectorals until that handsome officer begged for mercy.
That’s when Vargas rewarded him. She opened her mouth, and swallowed that rigid, prone, cock. A smooth tongue made the man hers, but a simple chomp and she could destroy him. Vargas had thought that many times with many partners. Once again, with this groaning sex toy at her mercy, and that salty hot dick in her mouth, she fantasized about blood exploding onto her face. Oh it would be so hot. This though, wouldn’t be the time she could get away with it. Even more, her own blood pumped into her pelvis and the living sex toy in her mouth had so many uses.
Vargas straddled him. There, she aimed the cock up into her pussy. Riding him controlled his body until his face tightened, and his head rolled to the side. It was like watching him gasp, or choke, or die. That’s why she enjoyed the top position so much. He came inside her too. People come when they’re connected, and she liked the connection with him. Only then did she allow herself to be taken like a whore on all fours. Once positioned, Jarod fucked her hard, and she fondled her own clit until she climaxed.
It electrified her body, and then filled a void she always forgot she had. Writhing in submission connected Erica to her fuck buddy and even to herself. So overwhelmed with pleasure, detective Vargas became more than a body and an ego. The orgasm from someone had touched her and she felt what he felt. Damn, that sensation of pride, pleasure, and a soul wreaked havoc on her nerves. She’d never wish to be seen like this, for reasons she never understood. She tended to fuck to dominate and orgasms like those gave her something beyond that. She craved the sublime experience of full and complete humanity.
As she cuddled with Jarod, that sensation faded as it always did. Vargas lost that strange inner state that humans have. She was a collection of fearless organic parts once again.
Erica Vargas’s cell phone chirped at three in the morning. She rolled away from Jarod and gazed in to the spectral blue screen glow.
“Erica? Did you get my letter?”
Erica shivered. The text message came from, a bunch of random characters? It wasn’t a number. It wasn’t blocked. It was indecipherable. This stalker had gone out of the way to bother her. Vargas was up to the challenge.
“I don’t know who this is, but it is literally my job to find people like you,” she texted back. Turning the phone face down and ringer off let Vargas protect herself. She cuddled next to Jarod’s warm body. The phone buzzed again.
“It’s me, Zoey,” the text message read. “I miss you. I want you. Come find me.”
“You are going to REGRET IT when I find you,” texted back Vargas with angry thumbs. “Zoey is dead. You’re not her.”
She shoved the phone away again. Jarod muttered something as she rolled next to him. A droning synth wave and metronomic bass hits emanated from her phone. A floaty feminine voice hypnotized in verses.
“Fuck!” grunted Vargas grabbing her phone. With sweaty palms, she fumbled to turn it off while the unforgettable song droned on.
“Vargas?” said Jarod sitting up. “What the hell? What is it?”
“It’s ‘Cursed’,” snapped Vargas referring to the song’s title.
“And…?”
“And nothing,” panted Vargas. It was only a song. Only one of hundreds in Zoey’s playlist. Any particular song could have been picked at any moment. It was only a coincidence that ‘Cursed’ played the first time Erica ate Zoey out. Sure, Zoey climaxed to the haunting beauty of this song, but that didn’t make it special. It never had to be a special song. Vargas had the phone off at last, and would smash it if it bothered her again. She reached down to Jarod’s dick and found it a dangling rope. It hardened for her.
“Got energy for another late night fuck?”
“Erica?”
“Just answer, yes, Jarod.”
The following morning, Detective Erica Vargas looked across her chief’s desk at a skeptical superior.
“A leave of absence?” he said.
“Only one week. That’s all I need.”
“Vargas, we had you on that double homicide because you asked for it. Now you want to leave. Why?” he said. “You wanted the laurels for solving this one. I put you on it because I thought you could.”
“I think Shales and Rosingar can handle it now,” she said, gulping because she hated to lose to them on this too. The chief crossed his arms.
“You’re not handing this case over to your favorite colleagues,” he said with clear sarcasm, “because the investigation of the scene was a dead end are you, Vargas? Want someone else’s name on a cold case? Is that it?”
“Chief,” she said sitting and feigning submission. “Let me be honest: this is personal. It’s about the Blue Bumble okay?”
The chief nodded in a ‘go on’ sort of way.
“I had a friend that was one of the victims,” she said. “It’s been years since it happened. I can’t say I’ve dealt with it.”
That convinced him.
“I can’t promise you’ll be back on this case in a week,” he said.
“I understand, sir.”
“Alright then Vargas,” he said. “I’ll make the changes today. Take all the leave you need.”
Erica Vargas drove five hours south to West Los Angeles where she found herself a boutique hotel. She visited the LAPD, flashed her badge, and asked for some department to department favors. Hardly any cops wanted to talk about the Blue Bumble shooting. Though when Erica played the role of a grieving detective on a mission, they opened up to her. She was promised access to crime scene photos, autopsy reports, and anything she’d need when she returned on Monday.
With little to fill her time Erica considered driving all the way out to Silver Lake, and maybe haunt some of the places that she and Zoey visited. Though it wouldn’t do much good there to prove that Zoey had in fact died, and maybe her anonymous harasser expected that. Instead, Zoey chose someplace public to scope out: the Blue Bumble itself. It was a Saturday evening, and the club was filled with reveling Hollywood hopefuls. All of them worked hard to stay beautiful, and Erica enjoyed the eye candy. She even enjoyed flirting with another woman, while she waited for other friends.
The Blue Bumble had a memorial at one of the booths. Pictures of the victims hung in frames, among them was Zoey. A short epitaph read “Activist. Journalist. Fur Mom.” Vargas looked away at the empathetic, photogenic, smile, and distracted herself with the beautiful dancing bodies. There were no signs in this club of bullet fire or blood. It amazed Erica how much those things could get cleaned up. If it wasn’t for those photos, no one would even have to remember. Maybe it was only a matter of time before the next lonely bigot opened fire on happy people. Zoey suddenly felt exposed without her gun, and kissed her unexpected date good night.
While Vargas slept, she heard the voice of Zoey. “Miss you…” Those soft words could not be mistaken. Erica ignored it. Yet it only persisted and called to her again. Vargas clicked out the lights and coiled her bedsheets tighter around her. Despite that, the hotel sheets slipped off her shoulders, exposing her arm and neck. The cool air touched her skin, and then it became warm. “Miss touching you…” Zoey’s voice whispered. Vargas’s night time tank top rolled up from her belly. Something hooked around her panty’s waistline and tugged them down.
“Stop it,” said Vargas slapping her hand to her underwear. “You’re not real. You’re not here.”
A heavy, smooth, and warm sensation coiled around her wrists like a snake. Vargas’s arms flailed against the invisible force, and it only got stronger. Something pinned her wrists together above her head. Her tank top was yanked up and pulled off.
“Always wished to be the top…”
“Stop it!” cried Erica.
A slithering spiraled around her legs. Vargas couldn’t kick. Her panties slid down her legs and then something pulled at the thighs and opened them.
“Not Zoey!”
“Am I?” came that voice. A touch followed. Was it lips? Fingers? No, that couldn’t be it. Erica couldn’t be feeling that irresistibly skilled caress at her pussy. This had to be a memory. Erica Vargas had taught Zoey to please her like this. Zoey loved nothing more than doing it. Bewildered by pleasure, and confused at what she couldn’t see, Vargas succumbed.
“Do more like how I told you, Zoey,” she breathed out. “Lick me like I taught you.”
A fluttering of tongue whipped Erica’s clit. A hard tendril entered her wetness.
“Fuck… How?!” sighed Erica accepting the pleasure. Bliss overtook her mind and her body quaked against her unseen restraints. Heedless, Erica bucked her hips against what pleased her. An explosive climax broke her last line of resistance, releasing buried memories of Zoey into consciousness. Zoey missed Erica. Now, Erica craved for her lost friend and lover as well.
“I will have you. We will be together,” the voice whispered. Vargas was released from her bounds and her eyes closed in satisfaction. When the sunlight hit her eyelids, and awoke her, Vargas found herself naked upon messy sheets.
Monday came. Erica glanced over the mortician’s photos. The corpse had eyes closed and the straight hair had been slicked back. She examined the eyebrows, the lips, and slight jut of the chin, and saw no flaws. The bloodless face in the photos had to be Zoey. Still, suppose someone had reconstructed the face of another. Perhaps it was a fake corpse placed there by a mad conspiracy. How about that tattoo? Yes, the other photos showed the antique compass that Zoey had on her shoulder. Erica examined the chest next. That’s where those exit wounds were. So Zoey had been shot in the back. Speaking of the back, Erica examined that part next. Zoey had a mole on her lower right latissimus dorsi. Erica found the same mole, unmistakably dark against the corpse’s skin on the morgue photos. Futhermore, Erica’s examination of the original crime scene photos revealed nothing different. Zoey’s body had been photographed with fastidious care, and the entrance wounds on her back matched what Erica saw on the mortician’s photos. Not even the red pools of blood around bodies showed anything suspicious.
Her phone pinged to life.
“So nice to touch you last night… did you like it, Erica?”
Vargas texted back.
“I’ve been looking at some photos of a body, recognize it?”
She took a snapshot of the mortician’s photo and sent it.
“I know I’m dead, Erica. You don’t have to remind me.”
“You’re not a ghost. I’m going to find you.”
“I want you to find me. I can prove I’m me. You’ll see.”
Vargas was about to type out another annoyed response, when she stopped. The number it came from was no longer a scrambled string. It began with a 323, a local area code in Los Angeles. “Holy shit…” gasped Vargas. “You idiot. I have you.” Mere hours later, Vargas was in the back of a police SUV. She watched with detached satisfaction as cops exited a squad car in front of her, issued an arrest on a resident, and pulled him into the car. Vargas sized him up quickly. Early twenties. Caucasian. He had the thin yet muscular build and a motorcycle club patch on his jacket.
She considered questioning him right that night, but restrained herself. Erica Vargas insisted the LAPD do her one last favor, and allow her to interrogate him first thing in the morning. As he was chained to the table, he did nothing but stare at her. She only stared back, counting the seconds and savoring the moment.
“How do you know me?” Vargas said at last.
“What?”
“You fucked up. We traced your cell phone. You lost. I got you,” she said. “So, how do you know me?”
“Are you crazy?” he said. His head cocked to the side.
“Okay…” smirked Vargas. She plopped copies of Zoey’s morgue photos and Blue Bumble crime scene pictures in front of him. His nostrils scrunched in disgust. His hands pulled at the table restraints.
“Take a good look. How did you know her?”
“Listen lady… I don’t know what you’re…”
“Look!” cried Vargas. She grabbed his hair and slammed his face down onto the photos. A surge of adrenaline spiked in her veins. “You tell me now! I caught you! It’s over!”
“What the fuck!? I dunno! I dunno!”
Vargas screamed. She held his hair tight and slammed his head against the metal table again and again.
“Vargas!” shouted a voice in the intercom. She relented. The terrified prisoner cried reaching for his bruised forehead. Vargas stepped outside the interrogation room where another cop handed her a phone.
“You wanna calm down in there? It’s your chief.”
“What?” blinked Vargas. “What about?”
The cop pointed to the hapless prisoner in the room.
“We ran prints on that poor asshole. Looks like they matched a crime scene up in your metro.”
Vargas had lost control. That made her hand tremble as she raised the phone receiver to her ear.
“Chief?”
“Detective, you wanna tell me why you insisted this was ‘personal time’ when you were chasing a lead on that double homicide?”
“No.. Not like that,” insisted Vargas. “It was… good intuition?”
The chief snorted in the phone.
“Vargas, I’ve known you for five years and I know you don’t have intuition of any kind,” he said.
“It’s…” Vargas winced.
“Oh this is new,” said the Chief. “You see I figured you ran some scheme to humiliate Shales and Rosingar. Now, I’m actually not sure.”
Damn, that would’ve been a great story to spin.
“You got me. I’m working the case,” began Vargas.
“Whatever lead sent you down there,” the chief cut her off. “You have 48 hours to get back up here, understand?”
“Chief. No. I swear…”
“Forty Eight hours,” he said. “That suspect will be up here not later than that.”
Vargas power walked out of the station and into her car. Her phone buzzed her once more.
“I gave you a gift. Did you like it?”
The number was scrambled again.
“FUCK YOU!!!” Vargas texted back.
“I fuck. I fuck you like we did in Silver Lake. Or that time in Arizona. Or at the Austin Festival.
Vargas growled. She squeezed the phone tightly in one hand, and reached for her baton. As soon as she opened the door, that familiar song played from it once more. She bumped her head in the car in surprise and the phone clattered to the ground.
Erica Vargas picked it up. She sent one more text.
“You are dead. I saw your body. You’re not alive.”
“You saw pictures, Erica. You never saw my body.”
Vargas grabbed her baton and pummeled her phone to splinters on the asphalt.
Zoey Howers had been interred at Hollywood Forever cemetery. Erica Vargas waited until night, and then waited longer. Late night road construction would cover the noise. Zoey’s casket resided in a small mausoleum. Heavy bolts of brass held the polished granite seal. With a drill she’d borrowed out of the cemetery’s office, Vargas undid the bolts. The whirring of the drill and the cracking of stone echoed off the polished walls. Next, the seal fell down with a thud. A dusty casket lay within and Erica dragged it out.
“You found me.”
Zoey’s voice whispered from behind, as Vargas was hunched over the floor with the casket halfway out. She didn’t want to turn around. She knew nothing could be there.
“You’re dead, Zoey,” said Vargas. She dragged the casket out further. “Dead people can’t talk. There’s a body in here. I know it’s yours.”
“I am dead, and I still miss you,” the voice spoke so clearly now, angering Vargas. She spun around determined to prove to the nothing that nothing could be there, and instead confronted a billowing apparition of black smoke. It had the face and torso of Zoey. It had her particular chin, her jaw, the alluring almond shape of her eyes. Her chest and shoulders couldn’t be mistaken either. Vargas remembered too many nights pressed against that petite body, and so many evenings of caressing those nipples. Erica looked down, curious about the legs, and saw only a flowing black cloud.
“What are you?” said Vargas to it.
Zoey’s lips parted in desire. Lithe arms stretched towards Vargas who stumbled back. Colliding against a wall, she could only look back at Zoey’s apparition. The hands touched her cheeks with unexpected warmth. Zoey drifted in, and her lips touched Vargas. Erica kept her eyes open in shock. Then her mouth opened in concession. She shared a kiss with Zoey which put her into a trance. It had only been Zoey who could ever do that.
“Why?” Vargas said. “You were the only one who ever rejected me.”
The ghostly figure smirked in sudden supremacy.
“Here I am. I’m dead. Still reaching out to you, and you’re worried about why I rejected you?”
Tendrils spiraled around Vargas’s legs. The sudden constriction quelled confusion.
“Maybe in death I’ve learned not to care,” said Zoey. “Or maybe I don’t care who you cheated on me with. Or maybe there is something only I can give you.”
“You can’t give me anything, Zoey,” muttered Vargas. She didn’t believe it. The void that orgasms filled yawned ever more hollow within. For the first time Vargas could not ignore that empty space. She needed to come right then to fill it up, to make the empty part of her soul whole.
“Remove your shirt, Erica,” whispered Zoey.
Erica Vargas lifted the tank top over her head and unclasped the bra beneath. She stood there, with her heart pumping and nipples hard and erect. Vargas liked being missed, and Zoey had clawed back from the dead to reach her. Now, she expected to be adored, like she had so many times before. Yet Vargas had never known that huge hollow place inside her. It was as if she was skin and bones stretching over nothing. The voluminous spectral cloud enshrouded her, and Vargas wanted it within.
Warm breath from Zoey brushed her neck. The sensation, so long forgotten, of her chest pressed to Vargas. She reached out into the air, wrapped her arm around Zoey’s neck and drew her close. The mouth that met hers warmed as they kissed. Zoey’s tongue pushed harder, deeper, and shockingly strong. Like a heavy whip, it pressed down into Vargas’s throat making her groan at the subjugation.
“Did you like that, Erica?”
“Yes!”
“I’m glad you liked it,” purred Zoey. Tendrils of smoke changed to heavy tentacles which tightened down on Vargas’s limbs. Then, Vargas found her arms tightened stretched out to her sides and her ankles likewise restrained.
“I love you, Erica,” whispered Zoey. Smaller tentacles undid Erica’s pants and pulled them down. “As cold as you are, I still loved you. Soon, I will fix you.”
In a violent yank, Vargas’s knees were spread open. Her pussy, left prone, received a heavy smack. It ignited such arousal, that she gasped and shouted. It hurt, and she loved it. Zoey beat her again with other stray tendrils. All the while Vargas looked to Zoey’s beautiful face hovering above her. As Vargas panted and shouted at the sudden pain, Zoey watched and read every tremor in the body in her possession.
Vargas would have taken more. She knew she could take more. What she wasn’t ready for was Zoey’s torture of tenderness, as her hands and tentacles rubbed her body. She shook against the bounds that held her, only for Zoey to reflect her strength.
“Make me come, Zoey,” she begged.
“Like this?”
A tentacle pushed its way into Vargas’s slick sex, and throbbed there. Then another curled around her clit and squeezed.
“Yes!” cried Erica.
“I missed you so much, Erica!” cried Zoey. She embraced Vargas once again. With their chests together, and Zoey’s arms holding tight, Erica was lifted into the air on a thick mass of flowing muscle. Constraining her even more, layers of tendrils wrapped around her arms at her back. Vargas loved it. Zoey’s tender lips, mighty smacks, and persistent penetrations filled the hollow inside her.
“You will come for me, Erica,” Zoey said. “Then you’ll come again.”
“Yes!” panted Erica. She spasmed against Zoey’s unyielding bounds as a juice spilling orgasm made her dizzy. She found herself spinning once again when Zoey shifted, turned, and otherwise controlled her. Erica took another thrashing at her back as Zoey suckled at her nipples in her front. The unreal and unrelenting passion cursed Erica into depravity that she had never known. Bound, controlled, and at another’s mercy could not possibly break her. Despite that, she wished it too. Another violent orgasm electrified the nerves of her body and she wept. Lost to Zoey’s machinations, Erica could not even beg for more.
Erica Vargas awoke as the cool morning mist crept through the mausoleum. Her bare skin rolled away from the smooth granite. For the first time, Erica shivered. She was naked, and trembled as if the chilling had never touched her before. Would someone see her? What had transpired? Erica remembered the night. She remembered how Zoey lowered her, in a loving cradling down in a corner of the mausoleum. She remembered Zoey covering her as if a tent filled with pillows.
Zoey was dead. Oh god, why did Zoey have to die?
Too many thoughts and feelings screamed in Erica’s mind. Covering her chest she sat and ordered those trespassing anxieties to silence and to submission. Unruly and obstinate, they still demanded something of her. Erica looked over at the casket. She closed her eyes and lifted the lid. Inside, the thinned, bloodless, and decayed visage of Zoey rested, eyes closed in a morbid peace. Vargas touched the corpse’s cheek and found it as cold as stone. She jerked her hand back in grief, and retreated away. Huddling to the corner, she wondered if death itself touched her hand. That’s not how bodies work, and that was still Zoey’s in there. Zoey wasn’t supposed to be cold and decayed. Gulping down the shock, she crawled to the casket and knelt over it. Detective Erica Vargas looked at a corpse and cried.
End
Special thanks to Bobbi Mare and Nicolas Belvoir for their beta reading.
Thanks to Tokyo Rose, whose song “Cursed” helped inspire this work.
