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The first time my mother had the dream, it was our engagement.
They were always the same—the dreams—the house, our home. Sometimes I was there, sometimes it was only him, but the house remained. Always the image of him inside that place that belonged to us. Even if I wasn’t all the time there.
They went on for years, this idea living inside my mothers mind; different variations of our togetherness or not, parties, children, him, him, always him there. Once, he was even there with another woman, and amidst her sleep she knew it was wrong, that I should have been there but was not. It didn’t birth mistrust, that already lived between us in different ways regardless. It didn’t send me running home to him demanding answers, but it birthed fear. Fear of what could be lost—of what there was to lose.
A lot, it turned out.
It was like this fear that lived so painfully sentient within me, the fear of losing him, the fear of how much I loved him was so strong and so powerful and so pulsating that I'd given the infection of it to my own mother. She worried for me and for us the way I worried for him.
And there was guilt then—for me, from me. I felt guilty, I felt like I was doing this to her, making my own mother afraid. Sending her these dreams with my own worrying mind of a perfect life that could have been so easily lost, of all my happiness and wants and desires of him and how easily it could have all been destroyed.
The last time she dreamt of the house, months after he’d gone in my real waking life, the house was alone. Abandoned. Falling down on its own bones. A bad omen. And there was something so – I couldn’t say… but that was my confirmation, really, more than the years or the silence or the reports of missing, unknown, no answers or responses or clues to what could have happened, it was that dream of hers that told me it was all over in a real way.
She said she’d walked through the dream house, and all the ghost memories had been there: him and I, an engagement, a marriage, a happiness, losses and family and life. But everything was falling down around the past, and it was all alone, and she knew in her heart that he was gone and that I was alone now.
My real fear had gone to her dream fear had come back to my real life, and there was no true abandoned house, but there was an abandoned I.
You’d begged—before he’d gone the last time, on your knees, hands clasped, tears—wrought. You’d begged, p lease, Simon — don’t go, please. Please, don’t leave me. You said last time was the last time. Please, don’t go again — I have the worst feeling about this one. He’d not listened. Chasing a mission, a tour, the salvation of the world or the loss of himself, not me, which was the only distinction that mattered. But he’d gone, and the bad feeling had swelled and swelled swollen until it’d burst. Until there was some uniform on your doorstep speaking words of missing in action, comms gone dead, Simon—maybe dead, maybe not, just gone. Unfindable, but come along with a sick sort of satisfaction that you’d been listed as his next of kin when he’d never even been able to tell you that he loved you. But these were the words now, said with tongue and teeth not belonging to him, not my wife but the woman I love, the woman that’s important to me, my kin.
Simon Riley, code name Ghost: missing in action.
It’s been such a long time now, and you don’t know if that man you loved, love, is still alive or dead or missing or gone or just nothing.
All he is—is not—
—Here. And the before—it’d been complicated. Real and not real, hard, good, never easy. The complicated nature of a thing born from a complicated man such as he was. Occlusive, reclusive, reticent. But so good. So much, that it never really mattered if it was all growing pains, or just pain. How could you know? But when you were in the thick of it, it didn’t actually matter, that answer. It felt good, that was the only focus. Even when it didn’t. You loved him, that’s what mattered. He loved– war, being a ghost, fucking you, having you, maybe you.
You’d had certainty in some ways, that he wanted you, that he was closed off and silent and serious, and that he’d come back because he always said he would, and he always did the things he said. That he was a creature of habit. But everything else—uncertain.
Your mother hadn’t had the dream in years. Memory had become hard to reach, murky, but the sound of his voice, that remained. The only one that did, only because you held onto it with vapor fingers. And it was so clear, the baritone of it, the way it sounded when he was calling you his sweet girl, the way it sounded when he was telling you he was going or telling a lie. That had stayed no matter how far out to sea you’d tried to toss it.
Your last conversation: don’t be a stranger, you’d said. And it was in jest, or desperation, you can’t remember anymore. Something like please, please, don’t go away forever, please, don’t turn into someone I don’t know anymore.
There are things you remember very clearly. Others you’d been granted the mercy of forgetting—the way it felt when he slid inside you, no mercy there.
How do I know if these are growing pains or just pain?
The memory of him is distorted now, preserved under glass, entirely untouchable; just there, and the stopping point is invisible, but it’s still just there .
And you still love him because it’s impossible to let go of a ghost. A thing like that haunts you.
You’d left the home you’d become a woman in, left your country and your mother, after he’d gone missing; found somewhere far and cold and nothingful, and it all reminded you of him in a way that let you know you’d never outrace this feeling. But you’d needed to run and disappear the way you told yourself he’d had to. That excuse, blame , you placed on him, Ghost, leaving that last time, despite the way you’d begged him to stay, please, Simon, don’t go. As if the idea of him just not wanting to be with you at all was more comforting than the reality of, well, he did, but just not more than he needed to chase his duty to violence.
[When they’d come to tell me he was gone—but not really gone for sure— no one has died, they’d said, and I’d thought, just me, and violently. It was the last slap in the face, punch to the gut, fist down my throat and all the oxygen gone through a vacuum—stolen.]
Years: you’d lived with the vertigo of heartbreak, your whole life muffled. And you’d wanted to be alone with the enormity of your devastation and the Ghost shaped hole that’d been left in your body, so you’d come here, to this place you were in now, and you’d learned to be cunning like a fox, a cold that burned. You were not yourself anymore, something else, but something that didn’t hurt as much. A new version that fit that final dream image of an abandoned, forgotten home.
You walk all the time now, through the Ždánice and along the wet meadows and towards nothing. In lieu of doing something else, now you walk.
You find it on one such—it’s just like the dream—walk. Circles and circles around the Slavkovský rybník, back into the trees you go, and then it’s just there falling in on itself, eaten dead by the green overgrowth; the dream house. Your mother’s voice within your ear, I had a dream about the two of you, he’s yours, he was your husband, he was your fiancé, he was the love of your life, I had a dream about it all. There is a house.
He’d liked to smoke, when he was stressed or angry or happy or sad or just. Cloves because he could be a jackass sometimes, like when he was buying cigarettes. You smoke them now too—a griefful jackass, even still. Obviously you’re trying to hold on without saying it out loud, like being kin. Tongue slick, sucking on the stick until it’s all gone, just a stub, and standing there in the waning gray light—the sun doesn't come out much now, it’s wonderful—you watch the house.
You wonder if your mother sent it to you with her own missing. You wonder if he’ll be in there if you go inside. You feel like if you do, you’ll die in there, find something real bad, real real .
When you’re done with the lie of the cloves, you exchange the butt for a leaf, feel the smooth, dry edges of it. Folding it slow and careful between your fingers, thinking, trying to follow the path of veins, trying to decide if this is the dream house or not, trying to decide if you’ll really die in there or not. There are no more sounds, there haven’t been in a long time, and so you can't tell if it’ll really matter or not.
Recently, or years ago, you’d watched a video of a trio of swans doing battle, a rarity, the fact of three. They’d mauled each other, first two overtaking the third, and then the co-conspirators, turning their violence on each other. This is how you feel, at battle within yourself; your past, present, future, all fighting to leave you dead and bloodied, floating bloated in the water.
Horrible thoughts.
[We’re fighting a war on three fronts: me, him, fact.]
But there’s only dream here now. No Ghost.
You decide on the house—walk inside.
It’s only bones within, guts on display, covering ripped away. And very sad, very familiar.
You pass through it slow and floating, not looking where one foot goes in front of the other. You’re inside your mother’s dream just like she’d seen it so many times, returned to the womb, and like she’d said: there’s your engagement, a rarity of happiness, glorious intimacy, possibility, there’s your Ghost.
You’re not paying attention when your foot goes through the floorboards, to the knee first, jarringly painful, then the rest of your body gone through the rot. The only thing fizzing through your stupidly shocked mind is that you knew this would happen before you’re hip smashing, skull bashing ten feet down onto the basement floor. Cement ground, laying on your side and gasping like an eviscerated fish. The fist down your throat pulling all the oxygen out is back.
And all you can think, as you lay there, only a wink before pain that knocks you into sleep, is—and really, get a fucking grip, get your priorities straight—I tried to fuck so many other men to wedge the memory of you out, bring the sounds back. I’ve tried other people and other tastes and other lives, and I can't. I can't. I want you so much, I miss you so bad. I dream of you, of the way you felt inside of me, of how wet I get for you even still, wet for a maybe dead man, and how much my cunt hurts because it is so wanting. How much it hurts to love a thing that’s gone and how the physical pain is almost as bad as the one in the heart.
And then an ice blue, cold that burns. “ Wake up, darling. ” He’s always had the bluest eyes that’ve ever been.
“Ghost?”
“Simon.”
The jut of his chin, it’s the same. The one you missed. You come awake or alive. “Simon, you’re not really here. How did you find me?” Your body doesn’t hurt the way it should.
“Been lookin’ for you,” he says, runs his big thumb up the curve of your cheekbone, and you turn your face into his hand almost involuntarily. He even smells like a ghost, and you can’t remember if you actually ever even fell or not.
“Ghost?” You ask again—confused, full of sleep and someone else's dream.
But he shakes his head slow, and you can’t see his mouth behind the mask, but you see the smile in his eyes, joy above the skull. “No, baby. Simon,” he says again.
“You were looking for me?” His hand moves into your hair, cupping the small bowl of your skull in the big pool of his palm, the other coming to your neck, thumb at your pulse, just to feel, just to hum along to it.
“I was.” His accent is different, and you can’t hear sounds anymore, but this sound is different—you can tell.
“Where’ve you been?”
“Told ya—lookin’ for you.” Jut of your chin propped against the jut of his palm, pads of his fingers against the ledge of your orbital bone. He presses soft, probes gentle, lets himself be tickled by the fan of your lashes.
You close your eyes and tell the truth, “I wish you wouldn’t. I might hate you now. I wish you’d let me go. It’s been such a long time.”
“I know, baby.” But he doesn’t know, not really, not how bad.
You’re laying on something soft, no more hard basement you can’t really remember, and you let yourself slump into it while he touches your face. “I can’t believe I’m still here,” basement or with him or someone else's dream, you can’t tell which you mean. “I can’t believe I'm still here all these years later. You’re like a ghost.”
He agrees, “I am a ghost,” and contradicts himself.
You open your eyes again, swallow the blue. “I thought you said you weren’t.” No answer—but he hunches over you, large and brutish and falsely undiscerning, without any answers ever. “You’re not a ghost. You’re a real man, and you have to stop haunting me.”
“Not haunting, only looking.” He bends, reveals his mouth, kisses you for the first time since he’d gone, and it’s the same as before, but not. Always a beautiful, hidden mouth that he’d had.
There is nothing that Simon Riley does that is gentle, even when he is being gentle.
It’s always with a punch behind it, always with a scream behind it. Always with the certainty that he does not know how to be gentle, but that he’ll try to be so anyway. If only for you.
He tastes like cloves and ghosts. Lips warm, dry and smooth, tongue slick and demanding. He presses his big thumb bone between your molars, pries your jaw open so you’re mimicking the dying fish again and licks inside of you.
Ah—so this is how it’ll be , you think, mean .
The inside of your cheeks pinch hard enough between his grip and your teeth that you’re sure the mouthful of come he’ll be giving you soon’ll be seasoned with blood. You moan into him, take his breath on your tongue, the dream flips and switches in your mind. Rolodex of memories and unrealities. Where have you been? You ask again because the demand feels necessary, the answer, life-hinging.
He shoves you belly back, tells you, “Sometimes you talk too fuckin’ much,” and swings one tree trunk thigh over your middle so he’s straddling you, caging you, crushing you. A fist twisted in your hair so he can pull and handle you as he pleases. “Open your mouth,” so that he can lick inside again, taste you again. “It’s all just the same,” he whispers, and you can’t tell what he means. Doesn’t he see you’re the fox in the marsh now, cold enough to burn? Nothing’s the same since he went away.
You try and scratch at him, shove the behemoth away, mountain versus the moth, yank him closer—too. You bite his tongue, and then it isn’t only your own blood in your mouth, but his too. It only feeds him more. When he lets his weight fall heavier on your belly, ribs compressed, you feel the ridge of his hard cock.
You couldn’t ever keep him, but you could always make him hard.
“Ghost.”
“Not a ghost.” He tells lies now.
“It’s not all the same,” you gasp when he comes up from the well, hand at your tit, hard and punishing. “Can’t you tell?” And you say it angry or affronted. “How can you look at me and not tell? How can you look at me and not care?” About what you’ve done to me , is what you don’t say.
This makes him pause, even as he mauls you, and the blue is not ice but not warmth either. Jagged, perhaps, even though it always is a little bit so, but punctuated in a different way. Only discerning now, nothing un– about it.
“How can you look at me and think I don’t?” His words have teeth, and you want him to chew you up and spit you out. Maybe then he’ll recognize you better.
“You’re always going to choose something else over me,”—an accusation. “Because I wanted you to come back so badly,”—an explanation. You don’t remind him how he didn’t, and he doesn’t say that he wanted to. But he’s here, and maybe that’s all that matters, maybe it’s enough for you to let him slip his fingers up beneath your shirt, nipple punished between his thumb and index, mean and nasty. Other hand down the front of your jeans, sliping against your wet, fingering your cunt.
He doesn’t work hard at making space for himself in your too tight hole, merely tugs your pants down to your knees, tangled and trapped in him the way you’d always been, and with a hand on his cheek you find purchase to turn yourself over, shoving at his jaw roughly as you go. “ No —like this. Like this,” you demand, belly down, ass up. “I don’t want to look at you when we do it. I don’t want to do it looking at your face,” you tell him even though you do love him.
He’s quiet for one victorious second, big hands wrapped around your hips, fingers flexing, swallowing it. “Are you trying to hurt me?”
“Yes.” He shifts, hooks you over his arm across your belly, hips up, cunt presented, swollen, needy sex like a wound. “Is it working?”
You listen to the drag of his zipper, the shift of his clothes. You close your eyes, enjoy the return of sound.
“Always.” And then it’s the warm, blunt press of a cock that’s going to hurt, and you feel very calm, entirely hungry. The pain in your cunt will be the kind you’d ask for in a few seconds; he notches, swipes, presses mean again at your clit.
“Let’s not pretend we’re something we’re not—you’re not—real.” And when he wedges himself into your too-long-untried cunt, it hurts. It hurts in a real way. Like he’d rip you in half and not care if he could. Hurts in a mean way.
He starts off hard, unforgiving, like he’s taking the pound of flesh he feels he’s owed for being made into a Ghost right here, fucking you on the dirty, cold floor.
Hunched over you, bulging arms braced around your head, wrist clasped in a death grip, breath in your ear, and he fucks you like an animal. A groan and a spit, and he’s telling you, “You’re so fucking good, best cunt in the whole goddamn world.” The wet squelch, the splash, splash, the moan like a whore agrees with him.
“It always hurts,” you tell him, whispered between a sob for more or harder.
“You like it,” and it’s a pant ending of a soft kiss to the corner of your mouth where a tear rests. Something gentle to remind you that even as a monster, he’d never hurt you in a way that couldn’t be turned back. Maybe.
“What if I don’t anymore?”
He swings his hips back, cunt dragging, when he pushes in again it’s to batter against your womb. “Don’t you?”
“Don’t stop,” is all you can say. You press your hips back, spread your knees as far as your tangled jeans will let you, back arched like you need it more than you can even say. Bent and pummeled to defy nature or some such other thing, and his balls slap heavy and stinging against your clit, cockhead at your womb again, again.
“Come on my cock, be a good girl.” Like he knows you’re just there already, pulsing and throbbing and ready to soak him, wet cheek fucked raw against the ground with every one of his pounding thrusts. His fist is so tight in your hair, around your wrist, it burns almost worse than your knees against the old wood, hand gone to numbness.
But it’s so hard to give someone so much when they never give anything in return, and it pains you to do it now. Your stomach pulls tight, heat all swirling in your pelvis. “You’re never good for me,” you moan, cunt twisting into a knot. And then you come, fluttering around his pouding length, the slap of his thighs against your ass. He shoves your shirt up so that your breasts are naked to the cold air, fingers digging too hard to be for anything other than his own vindication. It makes you come harder, cry harder.
And then like a switch, soldier on display, he flips, goes slow and soft and languid. Long deep thrusts, pressing your belly down into the ground and stretching out on top of you—longer than a river, broader too, similarly overpowering. His whole too heavy weight pressing all the air out of you, prone and caged and power stolen. He slams into you, but it’s slow and punctuated and precise now. Tip at the front of your cunt so that you know exactly what it is he wants from you, another one.
“Do you ever wish I was a better man?” He asks between thrusts.
You can’t lie. Look at you—fucked and frozen. “No.” The hurt hurts good, you like it like this. You like that he’s a Ghost.
He kisses your mouth now, gives you his tongue to taste. Cloves and you love him so much and it seems so unfair that it be so short, the love, when the forgetting is so long.
“Can you tell me that you don’t love me?” It’s a begging, it is. “That you never did—so that I can forget.” He pulses and throbs inside of you, thrusts get harder. He’s about to fill you full of come. “So that I can move on. Force me, please.”
He presses his mouth to yours again and with teeth, the bunch of his mask suffocating you. “Can’t lie to you, darling. I never could,” —not the lie you want.
And you should’ve expected it, he’s never been the merciful sort. When you beg please, please , you’re not sure if you’re asking for more of his come, for harder, for mercy, for the lie. Like so many other things now, it doesn’t really matter. He sends you into another orgasm, and he’s lazy about letting you milk him. Mouth slick against your own, breath panting hot against your cheeks, white blond lashes, too long and too pretty for such a beast, tangling with your own.
He lets it be slow. He lets it last.
And one more time is better than a last time—the once more negates the lastness of it. Now, it only exists in perpetuity. This is the lie you’ll tell yourself as he throbs and spurts once more, whispers your name into the shell of your ear, asks for his back. I got one more time. I got one more time. Now it all lives on forever, Simon. Now the house is no longer abandoned. Now we’ll exist here in this memory like so, forever.
He’s gone when you open your eyes again, sleep or unconsciousness, maybe he never was. And as you right yourself, your clothes and the thick leak from the overwrought place between your legs— no, he was, or was he? —your body doesn’t hurt as it should, only cunt-sore, looking at the dark you shaped hole in the floorboards next to you. You can't tell if the hurt now comes from the want or the truth, sound is gone again.
Outside, there’s snow on the ground. When you look up, it’s falling from the sky, against the surface of the pond, lost to the dark. A celebration happens somewhere, across the distance, in the town, you don’t know for what—or can’t remember. There are fireworks in the sky mixing with the ice.
You realize, or you think, or you hear someone say—does it really matter, it comes off the wind or the trees—a reminder that you’d come here to mourn something. To this place you lived in now. To the dream house.
[I’m mourning all the things that happened to me. I’m mourning the way I’ve been, the way I was. It was terrible, I hated how I’d been, but I still have to grieve her. I have to not hate that poor girl I used to be.]
The barium, copper lights go off and off and off, and it’s bombs dropping, pyrokinetic shelling, your life imploding, the end of everything. Him—a ghost.
Once there was only dark. If you ask me, the light’s winning—now.