The Phantom Lover
by John W. Steele
part 1 of 2
In the beginning I didn’t like her. I felt violated. No one enjoys being raped. At first she came on slow, and I didn’t understand what she wanted. But now I know it was rape. There’s no other word for it.
The whole ordeal started with a dream; everything starts with a dream. When she chose me it seemed innocent, harmless... benign. I’d be walking along a path by the river or maybe sitting in a bar. She’d appear in my peripheral vision like a ghost in a fog, little more than a shadow in an infinite kaleidoscope of shadows.
Then one night, one of her curves caught my eye and something clicked. She reached forth from that netherworld that begins at the border of imagination and extends into infinity, a restless spirit locked in that desperate place where reason has no power and id holds the key to liberation.
She flirted with me like a flower flirting with a bee. Each night her image grew more defined and the gentle swells of her voluptuous persona began to reveal form and color. My attention was all she needed, and as water brings life to a dormant seed, my longing flowed into her, and she germinated.
All realities have their root in desire. A craving strong enough to capture the imagination seizes the mind. Id analyzes the concept, formatting its contours like a tile of a jigsaw puzzle, measuring each angle of the challenge in an effort to determine how the longing can transform to a reality.
Fortunately for the soul hunters, the quality of judgment has atrophied in many minds, as it had in mine. We are the beings they seek. Spiritual parasites lurk in the crack between the worlds like ravenous lions waiting to devour those willing to succumb to them.They hide in the secret chambers of the burning heart where the brush of volition paints the present on the canvas of the future.
* * *
I’ve always been a dreamer. I suppose it’s because life seems so incomplete, like a joke too funny to laugh at. I don’t think I ever slept one night without having some kind of a vivid dream. Most of the visions in the astral realms are awe inspiring and harmless. But of all the wonder in the higher densities, only the beauty of the feminine form holds the power to drive a man to madness. The promise of her tender folds — wet and pink, caressing like electric ants the raw nerve endings deep within the chakra of the sacral nerve plexus — is a craving impossible to resist. Once a soul hunter enamors you, the battle is almost over. They never leave, and they never lose.
* * *
Life for an intern sucks, the stress is unbearable. I spent much of my time trying to cover my ass and delete the mistakes I made. The secret of a successful doctor is to learn how to cover your ass. Medical errors are never forgiven, and no physician ever admits making one. That’s why there are nurses; they’re far better qualified to accept blame.
Of course, as an intern you have no social life. No social life means no sex. The hours required are brutally demanding. And the knowledge necessary to make it through the grueling rite of passage and emerge as a god of medicine is impossible for an average person to comprehend.
I suppose it was good in some ways; I didn’t have time to think. The concept of sexual love existed like a vial of nitroglycerine stored on a shelf somewhere in my mind. The vial was fine as long as I didn’t touch it or, God forbid, drop it. I see now she knew this. She waited for me inside the vial, like a genie waiting to escape from a magic lamp.
For years I ignored the baser cravings of my animal instincts and plodded forward like a mindless ox tethered to a heavy plow. With single-minded concentration I focused on my quest to obtain the Golden Fleece. I knew that soon my life of endless study and sacrifice would pay off.
With each passing day I drew nearer to my goal. In less than three months, I’d be released from the prison of my internship and ordained as Milton Harrington M.D. From there I would don the gentlemanly crown of resident of gynecology. It comforted me to know that in a short time I’d be surrounded in a world of female organs; touching... probing... palpating.
In my darkest hour, there were times I dropped the little vial. And when I did, it tormented me unmercifully. But those moments of youthful exuberance were nothing when compared to the glory of my life to come.
Any licensed physician is automatically granted the surreptitious title of bimbo magnet. And it was for this honor that I struggled to suppress the raging fires of my libido. Like a celibate monk I bridled my instinctive biological drives and held strong to the day I would take my place among the chosen ones.
She knew I was weak, and she manipulated me like an innocent child. We grew to know each other, slowly. Each time she visited, her form became more defined. But there was something about her I found covetous and self-serving.
As she grew more vibrant, I started to see just how beautiful she was. It seemed as though the master of my Id had created a woman that was ideal down to the sculpted lines of her cheekbones and the tender pink soles of her feet. Her curves were perfectly proportioned and her hair so soft it felt like flowing water.
Her beauty appeared to be something conceived by a celestial artist, and at the same time the depth of her sensuality seemed ungodly. She was all I imagined femininity could be, and I began to wonder why someone as perfect as she would have any interest in me.
I knew she was an emotional vacuum inside. Yet I struggled to suppress this notion in a despairing hope that she was only lonely, like me. Hah! She knew cold, exterior beauty is a powerful thing. The sculpted lines and shadows of the feminine form are buried deep in the anima of the masculine primal mind.
* * *
One night she arrived in my bedroom dressed in a black evening gown. The garment hugged all of her curves, and her skin glistened like polished ivory. Her golden hair hung to her shoulders like spun silk.
“I’m here for your pleasure, Doctor Harrington,” she said, and her gown fell to the floor. Her breasts hung full and firm and her aureoles stood erect. The line in her thigh where the sartorial muscle connects to the pelvis was sharp and defined. She put everything she had into this date, and I saw her more clearly than ever. She was hauntingly irresistible.
So far I had been able to contain myself. Even when she rode me until I felt ready to explode. A voice somewhere in the catacombs of my mind whispered, The day she obtains your seminal fluid is the day you surrender your will.
I always let her do me though. Sometimes she rocked slow and easy, like a deep tissue massage. Other times she grew insane with passion and raped me like a frustrated nymphomaniac. She felt cold inside, but the feeling was pleasurable and better than nothing. But I heeded the words of my superego, and I didn’t spill into her.
After she had ridden me for a long time, she hung her head and started to cry. “Why won’t you ejaculate, Doctor Harrington? I need you to let go.”
I could not accept that she was little more than a vain imagining, and I asked, “Who are you, and what do you want?”
“I can’t tell you my name because we have not yet bonded,” she said. “But I need you, Doctor Harrington, because you need me.”
I couldn’t argue with her reasoning. I guess I felt I was stronger than she was, what a laugh. No man can ignore the charm of a beautiful woman. That’s why they were chosen to bear young.
* * *
I’d been assigned to a dozen sixteen-hour days, on the night shift, the equivalent of hell week for a Navy Seal. It was last day of my tour and it had been a horrible stretch. I’d been written up several times for serious prescription errors. I was bone-tired, and my mind marinated in a pit of torpidity. It required all my concentration to accomplish even the most simple of tasks.
Someone had dumped a teenage girl at the doors of the ER. She’d been draped in a black robe, and when the nurses discovered her she was chanting a ritualistic mantra. Inside the pocket of her garment they found a note that read. Behold the power of the cult of Sabboath. Someone or something had driven a spike deep into the girl’s skull.
When they brought her to me, I performed neuro checks. She rated a nine on the Glasgow Coma Scale; this meant she’d suffered serious brain damage. She gazed into empty space, her eyes cold and vacant. I’d seen the look before, and I knew she was stoned on PCP before her blood tests were completed.
The girl lay calmly on the exam table laughing and mumbling to herself. I ordered cranial x-rays and a C-Spine. When the x-ray machine entered the room, she sat up and screamed. She jumped off the table and tried to flee from the premises.
I struggled with her in an attempt to save her life. Her strength was superhuman, and she fought me with the power of someone possessed. At the height of our scuffle, she reached up and clawed my face. Her long painted fingernails dug deep into the tender flesh on my cheek creating three deep gouges. I could see my dermal tissue wedged like raw hamburger beneath her scarlet claws. Drops of blood trickled down my face and splattered in a pool at my feet.
My vision grew clouded, and torrents of red and green light exploded in my skull. In a fit of pain and delirium I slapped her. It was a knee-jerk reaction, nothing premeditated. I had never struck a patient before. It really made little difference; the lunatic didn’t even know I hit her.
When I looked up, I saw the ER supervising nurse, Mary Van Gaff, standing at the doorway of the examination room. She’d witnessed the incident and never offered a hand to help. Van Gaff hated my guts.
Her girlfriend Constance had once worked as a nurse in the Oncology unit. I’d seen Constance steal a patient’s pain medication. I honestly didn’t give a damn; we all stole medications, but I was required to testify when she got caught. Constance was a repeat offender. Not even Van Gaff could bail her out that time.
Constance lost her job and her license. I knew I was in deep trouble, and Van Gaff would do her best to get me suspended. The nursing assistants would back her, or they wouldn’t have a job.
When the aides and I finally got the poor girl in four points, Van Gaff glared at me; her eyes hollow like a mackerel sprawled on a bed of shaved ice. In a husky voice she cried, “Patient abuse is not tolerated in this facility, Doctor Harrington. You need to learn compassion, and I’ll see to it that you do!”
I gazed at her with contempt. I didn’t like the way her uniform hung like a suit of armor on her cadaverous torso, its creases always razor-sharp like the habit of a nun. I didn’t like the drawn contours of her brow or the judicious glare etched in her features. I didn’t like the way her lips were always pursed as if she’d had something jagged wedged in her sigmoid colon.
Van Gaff was the epitome of the anal-retentive archetype, and her power in the facility was revered. With ruthless determination she’d risen to the primary gatekeeper in the facility, and even the administrator feared her. Reason and circumstance played no role in her judgment. All that mattered to her was the letter of the law.
I could tell by the darkness of her countenance that I’d just entered the category of the condemned. She stormed down the hall and out the doors of the ER. I knew she was heading straight for the office of Winston Noble, the medical director.
* * *
Mercifully, I had earned a three-day respite. I didn’t have to show up again at the hospital until Monday. I wandered back to my crummy apartment, feeling broken and exhausted. I thought about my career, and all I’d worked for, and how the Golden Fleece now hung by a tiny thread. I was too exhausted to take a shower. I fell into bed, snuggled into my pillow, and entered into a deep slumber.
Like an answer to a prayer, my love muse appeared. She looked as alluring as ever. There was urgency about her this time. I was hard, and I wanted her to mount me. She rubbed her hands on my chest and said, “I’m crazy about you, Doctor Harrington.” She straddled me, and rode me gently for a long time, all the while moaning ecstatically.
The experience felt glorious. I needed to escape from the impossible circumstances of my life. I no longer cared about voices in the depths of my psyche. I didn’t care about wisdom, or judgment, or gods, or demons, or hell. I only cared about this wicked, mind-blowing moment. I was hers now... and I let go. Like an exploding volcano, my semen flowed into emptiness. She squeezed me tight for a long time, sucking every drop of essence from my body.
When I regained my senses, I glanced into the mirror on my dresser. In the past, whenever I had coitus with this creature, her reflection never appeared in the glass. I thought it was strange that she cast no image, but the whole experience was strange. When I was with her, she seemed more real than the moments I spent treating patients. I decided not to worry about it. What is reality? Nothing more than what we decide it is.
Yet I remained puzzled. I could see her reflection clearly now. She hovered like a phantom. Her form quivered with rhythmic lines of energy like waves of heat rising from the floor of a burning desert.
When she finished seducing me, she said, “You were wonderful, Doctor Harrington. I don’t think I’ve ever been so satisfied.”
“What is your name?” I asked.
“My name is Ursula.”
I had many questions I wanted to ask her. Yet regardless of the mystery surrounding her, only one thing mattered to me.
“Will I see you again?” I asked.
“Do you want to see me again?”
“Yes... yes, I need to see you again.”
“Good, we’ve bonded, and I’m yours until the end. I’ll be here tomorrow night.”
Her ethereal body glowed like a hologram, she began to dissolve, and I watched her dissipate in the ether.
After she left I felt a wet area in the crotch of my scrub pants, and I realized I’d had my first nocturnal emission. The voice of my superego exploded in my head.
You surrendered! it screamed.
I vowed I would not let this paragon of sanctimonious righteousness convict me, as it had done so many times in the past. I shrugged off my guilt as nothing more than a paranoid delusion. “She’s only a dream,” I yelled, and fell back to sleep.
Copyright © 2014 by John W. Steele
