"Ghost from the Room Above" By Brent Zirnheld

Because Cassie can pass through walls at will, she likens herself to a ghost. Because her presence on this earth haunts my heart and soul, I liken her to a ghost as well. To the world, she is missing and presumed dead. In many ways, I suppose she truly is a ghost.

Six months ago, assassins killer her parents. They had once been a part of an experiment, but had gone AWOL when it was discovered Cassie's mother was pregnant with her. They'd been on the run ever since, moving from place to place, keeping to themselves, until finally they came to live in the apartment above mine. When the assassins found them, Cassie managed to escape. To me. We'd never met, but that didn't matter at the time.

I've never told her how much she means to me. That would be selfish. Confined to this place all day and all night, every day of every year, I am beneath someone like Cassie. She deserves to have free, unlimited reign in this world. There is no place she cannot go, nothing she cannot see. As for me, chained to this dreary apartment, well, seven hundred-fifty square feet is my world. I was born twenty-eight years ago, destined to live in nothing more than a glorified box.

It wasn't always like this. I used to be able to move freely. But things began changing. I can't place when it started exactly, but soon I was going into that vast city less and less. People and crowds became oppressive, the open spaces became my hell. Agoraphobia is what it is called: a fear of open spaces. That makes it sound so simple. Giving it a name implies you've discovered the problem and the next step is to overcome it. The last time I was out there, I pissed myself and nearly went catatonic before a neighbor brought me back to my apartment. The shame and embarrassment of that day doesn't even allow me to entertain the notion of stepping outside my door. I cannot even bring myself to touch the knob. My mail is slid back and forth beneath the door with a hanger and the neighbor who delivers my groceries has a key. The nest egg my parents left me will keep me in this apartment for the next seventy-nine years should I live so long.

I was perfectly happy in my self-imposed solitary confinement until Cassie came to me that night six months ago. Naked, she entered my living room, crashing through the top of my coffee table, putting a gash in her hip. Like an angel, she had appeared out of nowhere, as if dropping through the ceiling. In shock, she was too frightened to let me call the police or an ambulance. She'd just witnessed the execution of her parents and had fled to another room where she had inexplicably escaped through the floor.

At first, we had no idea how she had come to be in my apartment, but we later learned she has the ability to pass through solid objects. It is a strange, wonderful gift, the only drawback being that she cannot take anything with her, not even the clothes on her back. She enters what she calls a "ghost-like" state. While in this state, she can float gracefully through walls or floors, gravity has no effect on her, light cannot illuminate her. It is only when she makes herself solid again that this world can touch her and she it. We think she is the beneficiary of the experiments that eventually cost her parents their lives, but there's no way to prove this theory.

During the time I nursed her back to health, she was frightened of leaving my abode, after all, the people who had killed her parents were still out there somewhere, presumably searching for her. Cassie's hatred of these faceless killers festered within her. I could see it would eventually tear her from me, after all, she saw her gift as the perfect tool for revenge. The time she spent here was used to hone her ability. My apartment was a temporary safe haven.

Though our relationship had been platonic, I fell into a deep, unrequited love that twisted my heart whenever she went away. And as she began making a life for herself outside the walls of my prison, her visits to me grew less frequent, though they were filled with a quiet, poignant tension as if both of us longed to say things yet couldn't find the voice. What could we say? We of two different backgrounds. She the family-oriented girl who had developed a taste for clandestine travel; I the family-less loner with roots firmly based in my small cube of a world. Of course, there was the little matter of revenge. Three assassins who were to be eliminated for her piece of mind and who's to say once those three are eliminated she won't decide that those who ordered the executions should also die?

Two weeks ago she came to me, drenched in blood. She had found the first man involved in the slaying of her parents. I let her use my shower, afterwards I comforted her, hoping she would confide in me the details of her ordeal. Alas, she was silent. She'd let me hold her, though.

When she is here, she never wears clothes so it only intensified my longing to hold her taut, lean body that is unblemished but for the puckered scar on her hip. For me that scar is a reminder of the first night we met; for her it is a reminder of the night her parents died.

When she left me the next morning, I was in agony the moment she disappeared. I told myself the next time she came, I would tell her of my love, I would tell her that I would make an effort to leave this place, I would tell her whatever it took to make her love me in return. I knew I couldn't do that, however. It would be selfish. I'll never overcome that which keeps me in this apartment, so how could I ask her to spend so much time here when the world should be her playground?

Realizing I could never tell her how much I love her, I resolved to at least show her. If she rejected me, then she might never return. Was that too high a price to pay? Infrequent visits are nothing more than torture anyway. Never knowing when she might appear puts me on edge as if waiting for an important phone call that is only a minute away each minute the phone doesn't ring.

Two days ago, she returned to me. I had been in the kitchen cooking when she came through the wall. The smile she wore told me she was in good spirits; at that moment she wasn't carrying any angst about her mission to rid the world of her parents' killers. So I turned off the stove, slid the skillet to a cold burner. She seemed perplexed at my methodical behavior, the fact that I hadn't openly greeted her nor had I acknowledged her presence.

I walked to Cassie, wondering how best to release my wave of desire. With each step, it dawned on me that the ocean doesn't think about how it will bathe the shore, it just does. So I dropped to my knees in front of her and tasted her heat. There was a moment of uncertainty, where I wondered if I might have shattered a friendship and ruined her very notion of who and what I was in her life. Having committed myself to her body, I delved between her soft folds and found the key to her bliss. When she didn't stop me, I proceeded as if each moment might be the last. It was then that I heard her quiet sighs. Her hands found the back of my head and urged me closer.

For minutes, she stood before me on the tips of her toes, arching her back as I consumed her dampness and exchanged it with the rhythmic fervor of my tongue, lips, face. I felt like an extension of her sexuality, an instrument of her need and in those moments I existed solely for the purpose of taking her to the edge of ecstacy until her rapture led her into the abyss.

Cassie held my face so tightly that I could no longer draw breath, but if I were to die it would be with the song of her gasps in my ear and the rising momentum of her spasms rocking me into a sweet death. My hands gripped her buttocks and I held her when her legs quivered on the verge of collapse.

With a final gasp, she reached the summit and came crashing upon me when her legs could no longer support her. Mouth throbbing, head light, I fell back and let her land upon me. For minutes, we lay upon the floor, our legs intertwined, bodies spent. Every breath I drew smelled of her exquisite flesh and it relaxed me in a way that a million fragranced candles could never do.

"If that's your new way of saying hello, I'll be around more often," she whispered.

I laughed.

Cassie's hand found the front of my pants and fumbled with the button. It nearly brought tears to my eyes knowing that what I had done had not only been accepted, but welcomed. To say it was a dream come true would trivialize what we were sharing because such a moment seemed too profound to reduce to the words of an oft-used cliche.

Soon she was straddling me and rocking gently. We looked into each other's eyes as she coaxed me towards a climax. This was how things had been with us for so long. Seldom the need for words. I had been looking for the perfect opportunity to tell her of my feelings while at the same time chiding myself for wanting to tell her. If only I'd let myself realize that we were too close for words. Intercourse was the next step for us, but it seemed too unreal for me to accept until I saw her sitting atop me, working her body in rhythm with mine.

I grabbed her hips and held her. She tightened her hold on me as we stared into each other. With multiple spasms I filled her, then slowly drifting down from my plateau. She rested her weight on her hands, her face directly above mine. Her hair tickled my cheeks as we breathed, bodies still connected, both of us smiling. She bent her elbows so the tips of her breasts could tickle my chest.

"We've never even kissed," she whispered.

"Surely an oversight."

"I would think so."

We kissed. A long, languorous exploration of each other's mouth where we said what had not yet been disclosed with words.

The rest of that day and night came and went in a blur of laughter and lovemaking. She haunted me like never before and the joy of having so many months of quiet longing consummated was like nothing I could have ever hoped to experience. Even more pleasurable was knowing she had felt the same for nearly as long as I.

I still haven't told her I love her and she hasn't professed the same to me. We don't really need to at this point since we already know. For now, she has things she needs to work on in her personal life and I cannot stop her, nor should I try. She needs to deal with the death of her parents in her own way. It is my deepest hope that two more deaths is all it will take to assuage her torment.

As for me, I'm writing this while facing the doorway to my apartment. I moved my desk away from the blackened window last night on some whimsical urge. While I haven't seriously entertained the notion of walking through that door, I've found myself staring at it many times during the last day or so. No harm in looking at it, right?

I wonder if I could at least touch the knob . . .

about the author: Since April 2002, I've had acceptances at Short Scary Tales, Deviant Minds, the Denizens of the Dark anthology, Object D'Evil anthology, The Omega Project anthology, and Masters of Terror 2001. My short story "Pepper" placed third in The Harrow's summer writing contest.