Phantom

He slouches in the chair, long billowing robes hanging over the arms and the seat, almost as lifeless as his partner if not for the tell-tale pounding of his heart. That and the cool, sticky sweat, the ceaseless shaking of his hands. He watches them in the mirror, hoping he can at least hold the tome steady.

The temperature immediately around him drops as his wife drifts over to him, passing through a few chairs and instruments on the way. “Calm down, dear.” The phantom’s fingers press into his shoulders, at times massaging the surface, at times slipping deep into the muscle, giving it a kneading caress. “You’ve done this countless times before.”

He frowns, “But never before this many. Have you seen the people out there, dear? The biggest of the big names. Oh gods, what if I mess up?”

His wife smiles placidly and plants a ghostly kiss on his neck, sending a shudder down his spine that splits his nerves and shakes them loose. “You won’t. It’s time.” She reaches across and takes the wide brimmed, tall tipped hat sitting nearby. It’s a goofy, theatrical looking thing. With a stifled smile, she puts it on him.

He looks into her grinning eyes through the mirror, the elf-phantom’s gentle care soothing him in ways he could never manage alone. He steals a moment, just to take in her visage. Her long and flowing hair like misty clouds of gossamer and just as pale. Her skin too, in fact most of her was painted in the same spectral brush. The colours of her dress were muted, as were the colours of her mask, though that wasn’t really her fault. The most striking colour to remain was the light tint of gold in her eyes.

The dress she wears tonight is modest, if ornate. It flows about her, showing off her curvaceous form but reveals little. Its top took the look of an underbust corset that rose up into high, showy collars and down her arms as sleeves, all of one material, flickering as ghostly as she. Her breasts were covered by what looks to be pale white linen adorned with frills down the centre. It allows for a pendant to hang as the centrepiece of her chest, glowing with a faint power, a memento of their time together.

He takes a deep and shuddery breath, trying to clear his head even as the announcer’s magically enhanced voice thunders through the theatre.

“Ladies and gentlemen! To the nobility of Ithilien and all it’s fine people. It is with the utmost pleasure I present to you tonight, the newest rising star to grace this humble theatre. A duo, though not quite, a man with talent exceptional and his beautiful wife who I’m sure we all remember fondly, Gillian and Erato!”

A raucous applause greets the pair as they ascend the stage that is far too large for two people alone. None the less, Gillian stands in the centre with his huge, flowing, theatrical robes and his tome. Erato flits about him, whispering encouragement and playing with the audience, her stage presence alone enough to capture all who are here tonight.

Slowly though, one by one, the people stop cheering and chattering and the noise dies down. The first to notice are those who spend every moment of every day tugging and pulling at the threads of magic. The hush starts there and filters down until amidst the entire audience some thousand strong, you could hear a pin drop.

Gillian closes his eyes and Erato opens her mouth, the beginnings of a haunting tune starting to filter through the seats and the stands and high up into the balconies. Hers was a voice well known to the theatregoers, well respected and well loved. All appreciated her voice, but even so, all waited attentively and patiently for Gillian to begin. After all, Erato had already proven herself.

She sings her wordless, lilting tune for a few bars, setting a haunting melody, her own magic beginning to form the stage’s backdrop. A few keen ears perk. It is a new one. After long moments of standing still, Gilian begins to move, thrusting one arm up and out rapidly, a sharp movement to catch the eye.

He holds the book out before him and his outstretched hand slowly makes its way to the cover. He waves over it and a pale blue mist surrounds him as the book opens and pages turn of their own accord. He sets his jaw and thrusts his nerves asides. This hush was all for him. Erato’s song hits a long, sustained note and the cry of a chorus of stringed instruments joins it, soaring out across the room.

The mists surround Gillian shift as he works his necromancy, countless spectres rising from within, brandishing their own ghostly instruments. At this moment, Erato’s song shifts. Words become clear and distinct, woven into her melody. Words in an elven tongue so old that only the noble and most ancient amongst them would understand. Their dead faces twist in emotion and they clutch at their hearts and chairs. To all the others and to Gillian himself, it is only a sad, hurtful song.

As her words grow clear so too does the music shift. Large drums thunder with trumpets, a morose and sombre reverberation that pushes and pulls and shakes at the core of the theatre and the audience. Gasps arise as the first thunderous beat makes itself known with roaring abandon. Gillian closes his eyes and focuses his ears and mind, the images behind unknown to him.

The spectators watch wrapt with attention as the sudden rise gives way to a sudden stop. Erato’s voice grows low, accompanied only by a steady padding of cello and violin. One shadow approaches another, writhing in the blue clouds. It’s hurting. In pain. It screams out with a violin’s shrill voice.

A chorus of gasps rise as the drums thunder and the two shadows meet, the blue mist grows dark. Power flows out of Gillian and the stage is lit once more, showing the two shadows entwined. The tune of Erato’s ancient elven grows both hopeful and afraid.

The audience swoons, the act having gone long past the need for words. Each and every soul there feels the performance with their own hearts. It’s sweet. Tender. Not a gasp rises as the drums thunder once more. Faces flush and another kind of anticipation grips them. Gillian himself feels a self-conscious heat tickle at his collar as Erato flits about the stage. He can neither understand her nor see her projections, yet all the same he understands it’s most likely about him.

The all-too-expected crash of the drums heralds in another change of pace. Frantic. Needy. The shadows twist and clutch at one another before falling to the ground. At this point, Gillian can feel the eyes grow smoky and turn from him to whichever man is closest. That’s how it always is with the Ithilien audience. He focuses instead on Erato’s sensuous voice and even as he works his magic, he feels his mind being lulled away by her enchanting song.

All too soon, the passionate music rises to a lusty crescendo that has the audience standing as it crests the peak and breaks. The final notes are drowned out by a chorus of cheers and applause as Gillian finally opens his eyes, his spectres bowing and fading back into the quickly dissipating mist. Erato’s phantom images have long since faded.

“What a performance!” the announcer booms once more, loud enough to dominate the applause, “What a beautiful song indeed! Give it up once more for Gillian and Erato!” Any further words were once drowned out under an ocean of applause.

His phantom wife approaches him, her face flushed red but not with exertion. He knows that look. A silly grin comes to his lips. Her fingers seek out his and they wrap around each other as the couple bow. “I told you you’d do great.” They both wave to the crowd as they make their way off stage,

“Couldn’t have done it with you.” Hastily, they make their way to their private room back stage and burst into it, Erato stripping the robe off him.

She grins, “I know. But still, you were great.”

He lifts his arms and the robe comes off and is thrown aside by the horny ghost. She gives a happy squeak as he wraps an arm around her back and pulls her close for a kiss. Their lips clash. They stand together, joined or long moments before Gillian breaks the kiss to suck in a lungful of air,

“So. What was that song about?”

Erato grins coyly, “Want to find out?” She takes him by the hand and leads him to the small bed tucked away in a corner of the room. He smiles and slips under the sheets, her phasing through them to join him. “Close your eyes and I’ll tell you the story. It’s a good one.”

He does as he is told and his consciousness is cradled, whisked away to the phantom’s land of dreams and fables.


*	*	*

He stumbles as he lands, looking around, his wife nowhere in sight. A wailing scream pierces the wind and as he looks around, he spots the house it’s coming from.

“T-this place. I know it.”

Her voice echoes in his head, warm and playful, “Then you also know the role you must play.”

Gillian blushes, “Really? You showed them this?”

A ghostly laughter fills his head, “But it was the most beautiful story I could think of. Come on. Get moving. Don’t leave a girl waiting.”

He sighs as he makes his way to the eerie house, the shill screaming growing louder. “Do you have any idea how long I spent learning your music and memorising your songs? Gods I was such a…”

“Cutie?”

His lips twist wryly as he pushes the creaky oaken door open. “Yeah, let’s go with that.” The door swings the rest of the way open itself and the sheer piercing force of the endless wail rocks him back on his heels. He grimaces. “Was it really that bad?”

There’s a long moment of silence, “Worse. Now hurry up, this is not my favourite part of the story.” He nods, steels himself and bursts into the first room on the left, a lounge-room off the hallway. In the centre of the room is a familiar woman on her knees, furniture forced up against the walls and the floor bare. Her dress is ancient and torn. Tears stream down her cheeks and her head is tipped back, the tips of her long stringy hair dragging across the floor. She tears at her chest as she screams.

The dress is a faded white and hangs off her as if wet, so thin you could see her skin under it. Her body was curvaceous and bountiful, with thick thighs and an ass so voluptuous her heels practically sink into it from her kneeling position. Her considerable bust shakes with her endless cry.

Her eyes burn a hellish crimson and wail a story of eternal woe. “I remember you looking a lot less… healthy.”

The voice echoes in his mind one more with the ghost of a grin, “Artistic liberty.”

Gillian drops to a knee, humming a tune before singing the words and eventually shouting them over the raucous din. The screams are drowned out slowly but surely and soon enough the wailing banshee blinks, no longer the spectre of the past.

“I always loved that song. How did you find it anyway?”

“Not telling.”

She pouts playfully, her elven ears drooping, “Mean.” They flick back up, “Do you remember what comes next?”

Gillian rises and strides over to her before taking her hand and pulling her up into his arms, “How could I forget? My heart was beating so hard I thought I was going to die.” He forces a kiss upon the stunned spirit. She squirms in hesitation, patting at his arms and shoulders, grabbing at his shirt, but he doesn’t relent. Soon she goes slack and a not-so-subtle change beings to take place.

The tears in her dress begin to mend and colours bleed into the fabric, ghostly ivory and spectral blues. The red of her eyes bleeds out into the air, leaving behind a faint gold and her hair flows down with a silky lustre. She clutches at him again, but this time to draw him in. Gillian begins to lose ground as Erato gains.

“This is the part that had them all rising out of their seats, dear.” She takes him down to the ground and a ghost flame engulfs him, burning off his clothes. He gasps as his bare skin touches the stone floor, but the icy sensation is soon replaced by another, far more pleasurable one.

She swings a leg over him, straddling his hips and her soft body drapes across his. He feels her breasts spill out against his stomach, so soft you could sink right in and that is if she wasn’t making mischief with her tangibility. Her fingers trace a frozen trail down his abdomen and wrap around his half hard cock. She strokes at it with skilful rhythm, her talented digits calling him to full hardness with a practiced ease. She wiggles down his belly until his hard, throbbing cock rests between her soft, chilly tits.

He groans as she pushes her bust together around the scaldingly hot girth of cock and he gasps as his head is taken in by her cool, wet mouth. An odd war of conflicting sensations wages in his loins and his cock throbs to the soft envelopment and pumps full of molten need at the plummeting temperature.

Solace comes in the most rudimentary form of heat a mammal can produce. Friction. Lewdly wet slurping noises rise from some-where around his cock as her head bobs up and down, Erato’s face hidden behind a curtain of hair and mountains of tit flesh.

Her small tongue swirls around the head of his cock in wriggling motions and she giggles as the shaft grows larger in her mouth, twitching and boobbing. Gillian bites back a groan and runs his fingers through her hair, caressing her for a moment before forcing her deeper down into her own cleavage.

She relishes in the deeper penetration and swallows his cock gleefully. She runs her tongue down the underside of his shaft, the soft muscle massaging the length of dick. The thick head pokes and grinds at the back of her throat before it thrusts down her neck with a gurgling pop. The phantom coos blissfully as Gillian bucks his hips upwards and forces her head down.

All it takes is another handful of quick, short and deep thrusts before he squeezes his eyes shut and holds her head there, balls twitching and clenching. Thick spurts of seed lurch through his loins and up his cock, coating the ghosts throat in smears of cum, most of it being pumped right into her stomach. His grip weakens and she begins to rise off the length of his erection, licking and sucking all the way up, leaving it clean and not wasting a drop.

Her lips pop off the head and she swallows her mouthful with evident relish. “Mmm,” She begins to slide up his body “Tastes exactly the same as it did the first time.” She shudders and her hand flutters down to her lower abdomen, above her womb, fingers playing at her clit, “And I still need it just as bad.”

She reaches a hand down to wrap around the base of his cock and steady it as she lowers her hips, pausing as the tip presses at her entrance, savouring the coming penetration. She falls ever so slowly, relaxing bit by bit, letting gravity impale her on Gillian’s length.

“Mmmmm – Ah~” Her long moan is accentuated by a small gasp, her hips finally coming to rest against his.

“How uh… How much of this was in the performance?”

She grins down at him as she begins to swivel her hips. She grabs his hands each and places them to her grinding pelvis, “All of it.” She giggles as he blushes, now given another reason to be weary of large audiences.

Her pussy is already soaked, practically dripping a puddle upon his thighs and the inside of her writhing, cum-hungry canal is just as wet. The tight and cool depths grow warm quickly, the grinding movements added to the radiant heat of his malehood is more than enough to thaw her icy, ghostly body.

She goes from grinding in small circles to bouncing. His fingers dig into her wide hips and he pulls her back down every time she rises up, joining her at the last moment with an upward thrust that sets her softness jiggling. Each little thrust earns him a melodious cry and she strings together a carnal song of orgiastic ecstasy, played to the constant beat of flesh upon flesh. Her huge tits bounce up and down with her motion, nipples tracing lines through the air. His eyes lock onto them and he licks his lips subconsciously. As if reading his thoughts, or perhaps his very blatant body language, Erato goes from bouncing to rocking her hips against his, back and forth. She leans down across Gillian and wraps her arms around his head, pulling it into her spectral bosom.

He rubs his face between her breasts before searching out a nipple to tease and molest. Meanwhile his hands slide from her wide hips to her thick, round rear, fingers sinking in deep as if trying to contain the jiggling handfuls.

She moans and whines as she rides him, then gasps as he finds his quarry. He sucks and pulls at the nipple with his teeth before letting to go briefly with a tit-jiggling pop only to catch it again and tease the bud with his tongue, running circles about the over-sensitive ghost’s skin. He nibbles and bites softly and rolls it about his tongue, each movement almost mimicked by her tightening walls.

Her breaths coming short and ragged. Her long elven ears flop erratically, shooting out as the head of his cock grinds against a sensitive spot before flopping back. And he knows the vast majority of them. It doesn’t take long before her rocking turns into a passionate, needy rutting and she pants like an elf-spirit in heat, pussy growing tighter and tighter until it’s nearly painful for Gillian to thrust through her vicelike depths.

Orgasm crashes unceremoniously into them both, splatting into them white and messy, sprawling them over the peak and tumbling down together to the other side. He feels his loins broiling again as he pumps her womb full of seed, reminding it of the life bearing task it once had. She twitches and moans atop him, lost in a maze of bliss and the conjured dream starts to melt around them, revealing their private room and the bed strewn with sheets and cum.

The couple hold each other, panting. The phantom utters a final moan that sounds more like a content sigh and masters herself, her breathing returning to normal. The more mortal Gillian has his heart rate to contend with and settles much slower, nuzzling his face into her breasts until his breath grows steady again.

“Are all your performances about things like this?”

The phantom smiles, “Only the ones I wrote about you.”