Alice flopped on the bed, exhausted by the weight of her new flesh.

“I’ve waited so long to see you and you just sleep,” said Lucinda sulkily. Alice grunted. “I’ve so much to ask, you’ve so much to tell me. Do you like your new body? Francesca was physically blessed but I wish it was all you, but I feel your spirit in there, I feel so close to you and I’m getting nothing back.”

Alice, head full of white noise, did not wish to seem ungrateful for Lucinda’s dexterous occult resurrection of her but the whiny sense of entitlement was needling her. She was no longer the hick, albeit one possessed of modest telekinetic powers she didn’t understand or fully harness, least first time round in the flesh, in awe of the cultured posh girl with the rich parents. There’s was the oldest plotline in the book, with the additional tragic twist of Alice’s suicide; a narrative that would now be tweaked to Alice’s preternatural whims.

“I’ve come back with certain gifts….”

“You had gifts already, a little wayward maybe. Tell me more.”

“You’ll see,” said Alice flatly.

“Come on, don’t keep me guessing.”

“I’m tired little duck, let’s sleep.”

“You must tell me...the other side...are you pleased to see me, I’m quite proud I pulled it off. Why did you leave me, Alice?”

“We’ll talk about it all, in time,” groaned Alice, rolling over and nuzzling her pillow. 

“Come on, don’t be a bore,” implored Lucinda.

“There’s a certain overlap with the meatspace. I felt you out there. I could hear the click of your heels in my deepest recesses.”

Lucinda snorted derisively.

“You sound like a fucking horse,” said Alice.

Lucinda clapped her hands with delight, “Now’s that my Alice, my truculent little rustic pudding. Where did you get all those fancy words from?”

Inwardly bridling at Lucinda’s condescension, Alice whispered, “I’ve heard a lot of things in different voices. Now sleep, my flower.”

Alice took Lucinda in her arms, her new body still feeling weird, its movements willed rather than instinctual responses. Lucinda had the most beautiful hair, thought Alice, holding it in her fingertips, enjoying its luxurious glossy feel, acquainting herself with sensual touch again. “Look at the moon, little duck, look at the moon,” purred Alice. They stared through the open window together at the full moon in a darkness that seemed to be pulsating, where all the stars seemed to have gone.

“Are you looking?”

“Yes, my sweet,” said Lucinda, discomfort evident in her tremulous affirmation.

The moon’s luminescence was increasing in its intensity for Lucinda, a blinding white glow that had lost all colour and definition, exacerbated by finding herself unable to move her neck or close her eyelids. Cackling like a witch, Alice, out of Lucinda’s tortured fixed gaze, sat upright in bed and buffed a pillow to prop herself against, deriving a deep and satisfying pleasure from Lucinda’s distress. 

"I can't blink," said Lucinda.

“Now you can’t speak,” said Alice and Lucinda lay mute and immobile.

The moon was just now an agonising blur for Lucinda, one she feared would pop her eyeballs. Just as they were about to burst and run down her cheeks, everything went black like metal shutters had fallen. Now there was nothing but blackness with Lucinda mute, blind, deaf, and paralysed. But with her senses of touch and smell still keen as ice-cold hands that stank of decay ran themselves down her body. Lucinda, without even the dubious comfort of being able to unleash a cathartic scream, was afraid her heart would stop. Phantom fingers were stroking her pussy when she lost consciousness.

Lucinda shot upwards shrieking.

“You alright there, girl,” smirked Alice. “That was quite a turn.”

“Alice, what the fuck was that?”

“I just did a little dance in your head as I did with your girl Francesca, just the prelude mind.”

“Prelude, you fucking dumb slit,” spat Lucinda, jumping out of bed and grabbing the long-sleeved white blouse she wore as a nightshirt off the dressing table chair. 

“What’s eating you, gal,” said Alice impishly.

“Fucking peasant cunt,” shouted Lucinda, aiming one of Francesca’s kitten heels at Alice’s head.

“You got spirit, girl,” laughed Alice as Lucinda flew out the room on dainty footsteps, almost pirouetting out the door. The bitch even has pretty feet thought Alice, who, a little contrite, felt that she should run after Lucinda. But she was just too weary, her body disobeyed its commands and soon she was in a cavernous sleep where nothing could touch her. She slept through to the following afternoon. 

Alice awoke feeling refreshed and vital, she was beginning to get used to the heaviness of being flesh and bone again. No longer a spirit, yet again a prisoner to the corporeal, her new body now responded more effortlessly to its willed directions, more naturally fluid in its movement. The sun was gloriously illuminating the room with an orange haze and it was a still and sultry day.  Alice peered over the sheets, and the room was just as she remembered it, when she and Lucinda fucked here a few years ago, shortly before Alice cut her wrists. 

Alice sat up and admired her lovely new tits, big and perky. Squeezing and caressing them, Alice came to the conclusion they were good sturdy knockers. Alice felt her pussy cautiously, feeling raw down there. She was preparing to inspect her new sex further but was startled by the grandfather clock, in the corner to the left side of her, chiming two. She had slept for nearly fourteen hours, well into Saturday afternoon.  The room was an impeccably preserved 1920s upper-class boudoir, frozen in time since the days when Lucinda’s great-great-grandmother, a spiritualist with a modest but devoted following that verged on the cultish, entertained her notorious occult lover here, a man whose writings recorded his magical practices and drug abuse. 

Their subsequent publication in the late 1920s caused a scandal; he fled to the continent leaving behind Lucinda’s predecessor to be committed for insanity by her peeved high court judge of a husband. Or so Lucinda told her, but to be fair she had press cuttings reduced to parchment by the years and faded photos to back it up, kept in one of the drawers of the ornate dressing table. They made a handsome couple, the great-great-grandmother a willow thin black-haired beauty who was a ringer for Lucinda, and the tall charismatic magician with the matinee idol looks complete with  roguish moustache and a hypnotic stare that was unsettling in its intensity. 

Alice was admiring what was now her fabulously untamed black pubic bush when she heard footsteps on the stairs. Lucinda burst into the room in a studiedly melodramatic fashion and without aiming a single glance at Alice strode over to the dressing table and slammed down an antique silver tray holding a bottle of vintage brandy and a balloon glass. Lucinda picked the chair up and slammed it down hard before planting herself on it, slouching forward and staring at Alice with eyes of silent accusation.

Lucinda looked hot, the bitch, thought Alice, drinking in her poutily defiant features. Smoking one of Francesca’s cigarettes and sipping brandy, Lucinda was a mixture of ragged nerves and suppressed fury, hair swept back and tied into a bun, no makeup, in white satin panties and the nightshirt. She couldn’t help being a cunt tease, concluded Alice inwardly. 

“What’s up, my love,” said Alice.

“What’s up, you twat. Do you forget about that horror show you gave me last night?" Lucinda poured more brandy and lit another cigarette. 

"Well you did want a taste of the great beyond, didn’t you, dear, so you got a taster,” said Alice grimacing. Lucinda felt a shiver of genuine existential terror run through her.

“That’s what it’s fucking like?” Lucinda shakily tapped her cigarette ash onto the silver tray, her face contorted by anxiety and a nightmarish feeling of desolation.

“Don’t look so glum,” said Alice. “That’s just the passover phase, well if you went like me, it’ll be much rosier for you, my love, and it gets so much better. Out of the darkness, there’s light and beauty.”

Lucinda was not reassured and stammered, “I feel...I..I feel so bereft…"

Alice climbed out of bed, glancing at her impressive bush, and, sensing the brandy was softening her, padded over to Lucinda. 
“I’m sorry about last night, I wasn’t in full control....I dragged a lot of stuff with me...I’m not the only one who wanted to come back, it’s crabs in a bucket.”

Lucinda pretended to recoil from Alice’s touch but soon brattishly assented to her massaging her shoulders. 

“Come to bed little lamb. I’ve been watching you and getting fanny flutters, my beauty, this pussy is mine now. It’s alive, it’s hungry.”
Lucinda, woozily obedient after being overcome by a euphoric serenity that came out of nowhere, allowed Alice to lead her by the hand to the bed.

Alice lay Lucinda on the bed like an etherised patient and carefully undressed her, planting Francesca’s lips on every inch of the body that she regarded as a work of fleshly art. Lucinda was floating above her body, a disembodied consciousness with no discernible form, watching her zombie body be seduced dispassionately.  Alice looked directly upwards at nothingness but knowing Lucinda was there laughed, “Thank god my old dad sent me up the chimney, fuck knows what you’d a done with my bones, gal.”

The words didn’t touch Lucinda. And Lucinda knew what really happened to the bones. The euphoria had gone, she now felt weightless and cool and calm, as if she’d plopped her brain seamlessly into an invisible body. I’m a ghost, thought Lucinda, but then she detected her body coyly breathing. 

“Even your twat is beautiful,” said Alice with desire tinged with envy. “Your pussy lips are like rose petals.” Alice admired the neat jet black landing strip that adorned Lucinda’s pubis.

“Remember my big blonde bush, my dear, you said my pissflaps were like Dumbo’s ears,” said Alice, parting Lucinda’s labia..

When Alice started nibbling her clitoris, Lucinda was sucked back violently into her body in one psychic snap. From being abstracted with no sense of external stimuli, now Lucinda was more fully engaged with her flesh than she had ever been before, every nerve tingling with pure pleasure as Alice licked her pussy hungrily, drinking her juices greedily, working two fingers in and out of her slit as she lapped away. It wasn’t so much that Lucinda was working to the explosive orgasm of cliche, it was all climax. Lucinda convulsed within the glorious bubble of an orgasm that seemed without end. They were both so lost in erotic reverie that neither of them noticed the obsidian raven that alighted on the window sill, where it stood watching them with unusual attentiveness.

To be continued...