Hollywood Forever

"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 to her vulnerability, 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 then, but restrained herself and let him stew in a common cell until the morning. Instead Erica Vargas insisted the LAPD do her one last favor, and allow her to interrogate him first. 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 chest, 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 rejected me. 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 soulless 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. 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.