More than a Ghost Ch. 01

Amber wiped her slender fingers together and patted them again on her hips. "It's Friday," she said slowly. Then she amended: "Well, maybe it's Saturday now." We both looked up at the night sky reflexively but just as certainly as if a clock would present itself to us from the firmament.

"You run well," I said simply.

"Gee," said Amber, and smiled again. "You're a professor, right?"

Scientist. "Yes," I said.

"You missed carpool, cooped up in the house, is that why you don't know?"

"Why are you running on a Friday night?"

Amber's eyes flashed. I watched her jaw muscles tighten under her soft cheeks. "That's not very polite."

I was confused. "Why not?"

"Well I'm probably running tonight because I don't have a boyfriend."

I was uncomfortable. After a moment I slowly asked, "Is that why?"

Amber gave a bright laugh that echoed between the darkened houses. "Yes, Mr. Beal, that's probably why..." She turned redder and moved her eyes to the sidewalk. I realized slowly that I may have embarrassed her more than myself.

"But you run all the time," I tried to argue. "Surely—"

"Well Friday nights are a little harder to get through when everybody's having fun."

"Rebecca—"

"Loves to have fun," said Amber. She looked at me quickly. "I just— I don't." She smiled nervously. "It's different."

I pulled my swampy shirt away from my chest and wiped at my hair. We continued our long tramp back to our homes.

"You're weird, a little bit, aren't you?" said Amber.

"No," I said immediately.

"You're different," she said.

"How?"

She laughed again. "Like that. You don't really act like my parents."

I couldn't hide my disgust. "I am not like your parents."

"Right," agreed Amber. "Why were you running tonight?"

"Do you really want to know?" I said.

"Uh huh."

"I don't know what to do next."

Amber pressed her lips together and kept her eyes on the sidewalk ahead. "What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean," I said. "You ran tonight too, with the same tenacity. To block out this...drab neighborhood. To block out yourself, maybe."

"I guess you're not weird," said Amber.

"Perhaps you are."

Amber smiled. "Amen. So you can tell all of that from the way I ran?"

"No," I said.

"Rebecca said you were smart."

"I am exceedingly intelligent."

Amber laughed again, brightly. She took a moment before sniffing and replying. "Thanks for running with me tonight and talking. I actually feel a lot better."

"Was something wrong?"

She turned to me and I realized she was crying. Silently. I felt absurdly out of place, without a basic notion as to what I'd done or said or how long she had been doing this.

"No," she said, wiping at her face. "No, I'm just stupid. I'm not...I want." She made a deep sound and shook her head. "Will you not tell anyone?"

I turned about myself. "Who on Earth would I tell?"

She smiled. "Rebecca says she thinks you think you're better than everyone."

I didn't hesitate. "I'm simply the best at what I do."

"No ego there, huh?"

"All ego," I said. "However, it does not hinder the truth."

"Well I'm not smarter than everyone and I'm only slightly better at running than anyone."

"I agree," I said.

"Did you date when you were in high school?"

"I finished high school early. I dated in college. Why?"

"I dunno. I can't really talk to my mother about...boys and Rebecca, well, I don't think she remembers what it was like to not know what to do."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't like any of my classmates but I want—" She stopped herself. Red again, she started again. "It would still be nice to have someone to spend...time with. To feel," she made herself continue, "wanted."

It was my turn to laugh. I snorted. "Best not to rely on a man for that, Amber. Or a woman, really."

"I know," said Amber testily. "That's not what I mean."

"Hm," I said to myself. But thick as I was at that moment, I suddenly understood what Amber meant. "You're saying you wish you had someone in a romantic sense."

Amber, for the last time that night, burst out laughing and stopped. "That's exactly what I'm saying, you..." She smiled jubilantly. "I don't know if you're being silly or making fun of me but thanks," she said.

I wasn't sure what I'd done but I assumed my overall cluelessness had somehow alleviated her mood.

She sighed. "I don't know what to do with myself half the time, when I'm not running." She flexed her fingers in a suggestive way, stopped, wiped them on her shorts again and consciously played off whatever it was she'd suggested.

"Oh I'm sure you'll find something constructive," I said, trying to relate.

"And in the meantime, I'll just keep controlling my urges by running at odd hours."

"Urges?"

Amber blushed. "I don't have a boyfriend and it's Friday night. Why do you think I run all the time?"

"I—" But we had already come to the girl's house. She waved at me quickly and bounded up to her steps, letting herself in after bending toward the door and trying to find the keyhole. I couldn't help myself from watching the way her body easily flexed over, her behind the only bright thing on the dark front step. It caught the sheen of the streetlamp and flared. Then she was gone, disappeared inside the house. And I stood and stared at my own house, at the basement window leering at me like an accusing socket. For a time I had ignored what I'd come out here to ignore.

Before I knew it I was tromping up the back steps.

Before I knew it I was locking the door behind me.

Holding the vial in my hand.

Watching the light glint through its fluorescent contents.

Don't, a voice within me said. But it was quiet and I knew it wasn't convinced.

"For science," I said, and drank the bitter serum down.

It took less time than I expected. As my hands began to disappear I held them over my face, bringing them closer as they blurred from view until I actually poked myself in the eye with a digit that I couldn't see. I laughed to myself and pulled up my shirt. My stomach. It was disappearing!

Hastily I threw off my clothes as the last vestiges of skin and muscle retreated from my shorts and socks. I must have looked like a ridiculous circus act, tossing off clothes and bouncing across my laboratory while jumping on one foot and—all the while leaving the visible spectrum! I pulled off the last sock just in time to see my hairy ankle shrink to a bony point. And then, at last, I was gone. A ghost, I thought, that's what I am. Giddily, I grabbed one of my lab coats and made it float across the lab. I'd never been so excited!

"Ooo-ooooo," I moaned, flying the lab coat over the tables and chairs, making sure not to overturn any of the vials. I laughed. It was stupid, a man of my achievements behaving so garishly, but damn it I was invisible! I was totally gone!

"Abednego!" came the voice of my wife. I froze. I never kept clocks in my lab but I hastened to where I'd left my watch in the pile of my clothes. It was almost one. "Abednego!" my wife called again. I ran up the stairs and locked the door behind me—no! I couldn't lock the door because the key, my pockets, were in a crumpled heap on the floor. I looked down. I saw nothing. Dizziness suddenly threw my equilibrium off course. I slammed the door behind me and ran through the house. My wife was on the stairway dressed in her nightgown and I stopped.

"Abner!" my wife called again. "I can hear you down there—what are you doing?"

I stood at the bottom of the stairs. Margeret was six, seven steps above me. She stared right through me. She looked mad and disheveled. "I swear," she swore, and tramped down the steps. I took a hasty sidestep and followed her as she banged on the basement door and called my name again. When that didn't work she pulled at the knob and stepped out onto the landing.

"Abner?" she said, concern creeping into her voice.

I was clearly not in the basement. But that was not so strange. Yet it was peculiar tonight, for she had heard my stupid gallavanting below. But she was tired and had expended most of her anger. She grumbled something unintelligible and turned back.

I walked backwards in front of her, incredibly heedful of my feet padding on the tile but realized under the sweep of her nightgown and her own sounds that my footsteps were hidden. Experimentally, I waved and waved in front of her face. But she didn't see and soon mounted the stairs, loudly, shuffling, unaware.

I was outside in a moment, having gone out the side door through the kitchen. The Colorado air was cool but pleasant. The sweat had dried on my skin. I lifted my arms into the sky and proudly strode naked over my lawn at one in the morning. I realized abruptly that I had to urinate but going back into the house was sure to disturb at least one of the sleeping inhabitants. I cut back around my house and made it to the backyard just as my bladder seemed to burst inside me. Once in my yard I let go—

And was shocked to see a sudden, pressurized piss appear in the air just below my hovering eyes. It must have been a doubly peculiar sight for whatever curious passerby there might have been that night. But of course I suddenly remembered, fluids and waste which left the body regained their visibility. Not to be coarse, but as I pissed I snorted and hawked a ball of spit to the grass. No, nothing. Except... As I finished urinating I crouched down at where the grass had been disturbed. There, glistening, was a foamy little ball of saliva. It had appeared; it had just taken longer.

I crouched in the grass feeling primal and sure. It felt good. It felt, in the classical sense, awesome.

It wasn't cold but it was brisk, so I couldn't go just anywhere. But a nighttime tour of the neighborhood was certainly possible. However, my increased metabolism and mass almost ensured that I would appear sooner than the mice. It did occur to me that there was a chance I might never appear again—perhaps a strange human side effect of the serum. Yet, I reflected, an invisible man had a much better chance of making a case for his work, and I could give up shaving with no one the wiser. I laughed strongly. Yes, there was little that could darken my mood tonight. I set off at a jaunt through the dewy grass towards Amber's parents' house.

I smiled to myself, the refreshing breeze of the evening dancing over my freed scrotum. Now why had man ever invented pants? Happily, I set off along the side yard of the house, studying the chipped paint and weedy lawn. I suddenly realized how conscious I was of ever letting my gaze linger too long—on anything. I laughed. I stopped. I laughed again, anonymously. Never stare too long at others; they can always feel it and eventually look at you disapprovingly. Why would I have ever stared for so long at Amber's parents' house? Noticed their chipped paint? Hell, my house was probably chipped too but I'd never spent the time to really stare at the house. That would seem peculiar to the neighbors. But now all peculiarity had vanished along with my body.

I was less than a ghost, I reflected, because there was nothing malevolent about me. There was no pervading aura of dread, no unfinished business. In fact, the very business I had labored the better part of a decade for had been accomplished. I was... Damn it I was happy, I finally understood. I was serene. I was less than a ghost and simply a roving observer, a wondering consciousness looking into windows, bright windows, in backyards where...

Amber was standing naked in front of her window. Without clothes. Her young but fruitful breasts hung delicately away from her chest like two pale pears. Instantly I ducked down. But this was stupid for two reasons.

The first was that I was invisible and standing in her backyard, having wandered there completely oblivious and only drawn to the window because of its brightness. The second was that Amber was not looking at me. In fact she wasn't really looking at anything.

The girl was roaming slowly about her room, eyes half closed, her curtains half drawn and the window half open. She drew a hand over her left breast and reached down to a pair of slim white panties that even from my vantage point appeared soaked. So did her hair actually, and indeed her entire forehead glistened from her overhead light. She hadn't showered yet and was still wet from our run.

Amber's room faced the backyard and was more or less level with me. Thus I could see the ruffled bedspread, her running shorts and sports bra tossed messily atop it, her chest of drawers and mirror, the door to what I assumed was a bathroom. Since the yard was walled in by trees and faced no other house on the other side, she no doubt left the curtains open regularly.

The only other way to account for her actions was the aggressive urgency with which she was pleasuring herself before my eyes. It was mesmerizing. Amber was pacing in her room, her long, lithe legs carrying her absently from one side to the next. With her fingers she squeezed her chest until her forehead creased and she almost cried out. The look of pain on her face was hideous. The girl wasn't—could never have been. No, in fact, her slightly matted hair and flushed pallor gave her an indecent sensuality. What was crushing was that the pain she exuded was almost palpable. Then she stopped her pacing and bent her legs slightly, crouched before the window. I...forgive me, reader, but I could not help myself. I came closer. I came as close to the window as I could until my transparent fingers clutched at her window sill. Amber crouched in a most unladylike way and cupped her vagina through her panties. She seemed to want to rub herself out of existence. She bit her lip roughly and furrowed her brows. Were her fingers trying to burrow through the sopping fabric?

Amber let out an anguished sigh and released herself. I felt something press against me and nearly yelped.

I leapt back trying to locate whatever it was that had touched me. I looked down. Of course: I was hard (extraordinarily hard, as a matter of fact). I had come so close to the window that my erection had risen to the cold surface of the house. I tried to banish the notion to respect this girl's— Well, let's be honest, I was using invisibility for the exact purpose that so many imagination-less peons had thought to put its use. Surely a man was more than his corruptible instincts... Surely.

I looked up.

I am not a sentimental man, but what I saw sent throbs of confused longing throughout my body. Amber had seated herself on her bed and had pulled her panties down. She stared at them dejectedly, at where the fabric had worn thin, dropped them, and tried to gently brush her naked vagina. She had a trim tuft of pubic hair, conservatively shaved into a brunette strip. But now touching herself seemed to bring only bitter pain. I saw now that she was breathing quickly, her ripe breasts trembling, her flat stomach quaked. Beads of sweat tumbled from her neck down between her breasts and glided to her bellybutton. What must have gone through her mind? Did her friends or teammates go to parties on Friday night? It was almost the end of the year—didn't she have someplace to go, some other means of—

But that was ridiculous. It was almost two in the morning. And Amber was wide awake, almost shaking, alone. Invisible.

Invisible. My God that longing wasn't invisible. Her whole body was red, her eyelids shut but doing a poor job of keeping back the moisture borne less from pity than aggravation. With a restless growl she kicked herself back on her bed and set about massaging her thighs. I was treated to a full exhibition of her healthy folds. She opened her legs to the window as the breeze gusted past my shoulders and rippled over her supple skin. That seemed to soothe her but she still touched herself obsessively.

All the while I felt my foreskin strain from the blood that filled my penis in a way it had not in years. I was thirty-seven. I had been with my wife, a handful of other women. I had never been Casanova but I had at least had my luck and a few patient lovers who had taken their time to teach me how to love them. I grasped myself. I let myself go. No, man was more than his corruptible instincts. This was not what I had slaved sleepless nights for, to masturbate outside ladies' windows like a perverted creature from some mad fantasy. I could turn away. I would turn away! Right now I would turn away—!

But I had to know what she was saying first. Had to. I had been uniquely blessed to come this far, to witness this ultimate moment of privacy, to see another person so fully convinced they were alone, not surrounded in a crowd, not cuddling with a lover, not with twenty-five cameras in their face, not scripted, not anonymous on the internet—someone truly alone. Alone! Amber was murmuring something and I had to know.

I quietly lifted myself up to the window (harder than you might imagine as it is confounding to climb on anything when you cannot see your fingers, or your feet, and you have a truly heroic erection). If Amber had not been so distracted she would have heard my awkward shimmying through the portal and the somewhat muffled thump as I sprawled over the carpet.

What adrenaline hadn't been coursing through me before now released in a wave of almost nauseating power. I felt my whole body shake, my fingers and toes literally tingle, my knees flexed and I felt an ache in the small of my back. I stood slowly, feeling huge in this alien room and Amber not three paces from me. She was naked, her feet up on the edge of her bed, her heels pushing into the mattress. The comforter was a mess and she squeezed the skin of her thighs between her thin, hard fingers. Her nipples pointed rigidly to the ceiling while she ground her ass into her sheets, her neck arched back, her open mouth pleading with her locked door. It was very definitely locked.

I could smell her. It was a thick, bold smell, the smell of a young woman in primordial heat, the smell of a healthy runner's sweat, the smell of the night barely added to the mix and buffeting the perfume of her wet sex into my face and nostrils. Shaking, I came closer. I stared down at the impressions I made in the dense carpeting. If she suddenly sat up and saw the invisible footsteps coming toward her, she'd scream. She'd have to scream. But I had to know. Hadn't I? For science? For myself? For what?!

Suddenly I was leaning over her, at her side. I could taste her frustration, the struggle to release herself from her body. It must have hurt, because she said, "Please..."

That's all she said. That's all she was saying. "Please... Please..." she went on, breathing it. Her breasts flattened and jiggled as she lay on her back and she seemed to fumble between gripping herself, her abdomen, and running her fingers back down to her vagina but all the while she kept saying, "Please..."

If I were a demon I might have ravished her. If I were an angel I might have flown away. But I am just a man.

I came around the bed. I kneeled down. I took a moment to stare, fixated, at the swollen, sopping lips of Amber's pussy. That's what it was, and her fingers needed desperately to calm it, but they couldn't calm it. Instead they teased it, frustrated it, missed her clitoris or panicked it. I braced myself for what could very well lead to a broken nose, a kick in the face. Any explanation I could give would only snap against the one solid truth in this room: that I wanted her, to release her, to taste her.

I set my hands on either side of her round bottom and leaned in.

Several events happened at once. I do not have the ability to describe them all in perfect detail but imagine if you will these five things:

A tiger in a young woman's belly.

A clam made entirely of wet muscle snapping shut on your neck.