One Haunted Night

"Well, technically you were, honey."

"What the hell are you going to do with... with my body?" In the mirror Mol pursed her lips in disappointment.

"I really don't want to fight about this, sweetie."

"Fight?" But suddenly Polly's head was ringing, deafening buzzing chimes that obliterated all sense, all reason. She wanted to scream, but she had a feeling, like someone very strong was holding her hands by her sides. But it wasn't her hands, it was her, she was being held in place and kept from moving and with these bells, these infinite bells she just couldn't think of how to get out of this, how to get her arms out of whatever they were stuck in and....

Polly closed her eyes.

- - -

"... feeling so much better, thanks Carrie darling. You're one in a million."

For a moment the fact that the nausea and those hellish chimes were fading really did make Polly feel so much better. Then she realised that she was listening to her own voice and that she was walking back from the bathroom, with Carrie, to the kitchen. Her steps were smooth and steady and there was a swing to her hips that... that she never normally put so much into.

Mol was in total control.

"You're acting so weird tonight, Pol. Are you sure you're ok?"

"I wanted a change, baby, you know how you get! When everything's boring and you just wanna stir things up a bit..."

It was surreal, looking at her hands, watching herself fix a drink next to her friend (nothing stronger than a club soda this time), listening to her own voice hold forth, lively and vivacious.

- Are we back, honey?

Mol's whisper - not Mol's words in her voice, but the ghost's voice in her ear. Inside her this time.

- Do you see what I mean? I want us to do this together, it makes everything so much easier. But I can always just keep you locked up in that little box of noise and sickness and have my way anyway.

Polly tried to form words in her mind this time, trying to address Mol without speaking out loud. Not that she was sure she could speak out loud.

- Are you going to make me... hurt myself? Cut myself?

- Gadzooks, baby! Of course not! I am entirely on the up and up when I say that all I want to do is have some fun.

Carrie was smiling. Mol was clearly getting a little more comfortable and making things sound a little more natural through Polly's mouth, she realised. God, this was horrible. To be trapped like this in your own body, watching your hands move, feeling your legs walk. Only focussing on what someone else wants to look at! But what choice did she have? When Mol had talked about fighting... well the pain and sickness she had felt had been the closest she'd ever been to... the other place, as Mol had put it.

- Ok. For now.

- Oh, sweetie. This is going to be a blast.

- - -

She'd seen a couple of her co-workers, people who she didn't like all that much but didn't really have a problem with, and she'd told Mol everything she needed to know to schmooze them and probably leave them with an entirely different impression of her than they had had before.

"Polly! You're so different outside of work!" one girl had said, "It's like you're a different person."

"Maybe I am a different person!" Mol had cackled through Polly's lips. "In fact, why don'tcha call me Mol for the night, instead of Pol?" People had burst out laughing.

"You're unbelievable!"

"I'm finding it hard to believe myself," Mol answered, "Now which of these fellas has the wherewithal to furnish this young lady with a coffin nail?"

Carrie had looked over at her, eyebrows shooting up. She kept giving Pol/Mol odd looks, but she seemed to accept that this was just Polly letting her hair down, getting drunk and playing silly for the night.

"You're smoking again?"

- Please don't, Polly said in her mind, I quit last year, I don't want to relapse into...

- Relax, sugar, it won't work like that,

came Mol's soft whisper in her head. But as soon as the smoke had curled into her lungs Polly knew it had been a mistake. She felt every drag, and it felt so good to be smoking again. She knew she'd have trouble not just keeping on with the old habit tomorrow.

"Real smoke in real lungs." Mol had said out loud, gazing in satisfaction at the glowing tip of her cigarette. "Even makes up for how weak this is."

"What are you talking about?" Carrie frowned at her as they made their way away from the office bores.

"Nevermind, sweetie. Now, let's go find some boys. And let's go find this Lou fella."

"You are on a different plane tonight, girl."

"Sweetie, I'm on every plane."

- - -

Polly was still dressed up in her baggy, stupid pirate outfit, while Carrie had come as some kind of glittery, sexy witch. But with every group of guys they landed in, despite the legs and the fishnets that made Carrie the first one they looked at, it was always Mol that ended up getting all the attention.

Mol was... she was just sexy, Polly realised. She could make almost anything sound dirty, and she could sound like she was promising everything, while making clear that she wasn't promising anything at all. The kind of maddening tease that all the guys loved, Mol/Pol really was becoming the queen of the party.

She lost the fake mustache and the bandana, both of them going to guys who looked like ex-college football players in exchange for a kiss on the cheek. She still had the eyepatch that had come with the costume, and she was delighting in all sorts of stupid flirty behaviour with it.

"No, no baby. You've gotta flex them one at a time, I can only see one at a time with this eyepatch."

"Yeah, it's a sad story, sweetie. I was cleaning the captains mast and it was hard as oak when it slipped and..."

Carrie was getting drunker and flirtier too, like Polly knew she would. Normally it was Cassie that was the man-eater. Tonight, now that she was drunk, she was trying to catch up with Molly. Polly wanted to warn her not to bother trying. And in her weird anaesthetised bubble she couldn't tell if she was happy or not that they hadn't run into Lou yet.

"No, you see I've got no distance perception, darling. That's why I need YOU to get me another drink."

Lou was always so cool, always a little detached and above everything that was going on around him. But not in an arrogant way! Just in a... a cool way. A fun way. Carrie used to work with him and Polly had met him a bunch of times but never had the time or the nerve to put any kind of a move on him.

Tonight she had no doubt at all that "Polly" would have the nerve to make a play for him, it was just... not her that would be winning him. And considering how wild Mol was getting in her body she was nervous as to what would happen if they did run into him.

Maybe he hadn't come tonight.

This whole time Molly had been drinking. Not enough to be really dangerous to Polly, but enough to keep her head buzzing and to stop her thinking too clearly. Even so, she knew what was happening and she was nervous about meeting Lou, and possibly even more nervous about what Mol would want to do if they didn't find him. Maybe nothing. The ghost seemed to be happy just flirting and teasing and controlling the muscular dopes and sensitive geeks that littered the party. And, after all, she killed guys. She hated guys.

- - -

It was maybe one a.m. when, after leaving another little clique of guys shooting lustful looks after them, the three girls, Carrie, Polly and Molly, had tripped giggling through the doorway of a weird little mezzanine drawing room, halfway up the main staircase.

And there he was.

Lou, Greg and was it Fred? Freddie? The three friends were chatting with a few other people she didn't know around a low table under a tattered old Chinese lantern. The whole house was like this. Ten years or more of people just bringing whatever old furniture they had up here to deck out the town's informal party venue. The walls looked black, the marble fireplace looked dull and wooden.

- Lou.

She didn't think to stop the thought, and even after she thought it she didn't know if she should have.

- Show time!

Mol giggled in her ear, and, locked up inside herself, Polly shivered as best she could without a body.

"There he is," Mol/Pol whispered to Carrie.

"I told you he'd be here." Carrie smiled back slyly.

"Carrie and Polly!" Freddie, the big guy, had stood up and had his hand up as if they needed help spotting them in this tiny little chamber. There was one low table and a few armchairs that another group was in, playing a drinking game. And Freddie was really big - when he stood up the whole place suddenly seemed almost claustrophobically small.

"Hey!" Lou shot her a grin. He shot HER a grin - her first, and then Carrie. She knew there was something there! Not that she'd be able to work out what it was on her own that night.

"Guys!" Carrie laughed as people shuffled along dusty old sofas and made room for them to join the group. "We were looking for you."

"Why? Polly was looking for some booty to plunder?" Freddie sat down too, shooting a finger-gun at Polly.

"Oh I'm not sure she's Polly tonight!" Carrie giggled, "She's got some whole thing going on... Mol, is it?" With her friends now, Carrie felt like she could tease a little. Polly ached with frustration at how close she was to the truth.

"Oh don't be silly, sweetie. It's Halloween, everyone gets to have fun on Halloween. And you can call me whatever you like." Mol addressed the entire table, but her eyes were locked on Lou. And he was looking right back at her, just how she'd always wanted him to. Was this how easy it would've been without this brassy ghost pulling the strings?

There were bottles on the table, just like there were bottles everywhere here, and so drinks were poured and drunk and poured and drunk and people moved around and the people she didn't know were introduced, but Polly's consciousness was so focussed on Lou that she didn't take in any of their names at all. And through it all Molly became the life and soul of the gathering - which was at least a little funny considering she had no life of her own. Her comments were always timed perfectly and always on the verge of being scandalous without actually falling over the line into crassness. People whooped and then more liquor was poured, and Polly wondered if this would go on until morning.

- - -

But after what could have been hours, but could just as well have been ten minutes, something changed around the table. The big group conversation splintered, and for a moment Polly, dazed and doped by Mol, couldn't keep track. But she saw Carrie around the other side of the table, and watched as the hand of one of their new male acquaintances slid up her thigh and under her dress. She saw another couple leaving the table. And then she realised she was sitting between Lou and Greg, squeezed in between them, and Lou's arm was draped along the couch behind her.

"So where did you park the ship?" Lou was holding a bottle, waiting to top up her drink. But Mol was still holding her full glass, looking up at him slyly.

- Look at this naughty boy - Pol heard her inside - Trying to fill your glass and get you drunk

- Get you drunk.

- Get us drunk

"Drop anchor," Greg, tousle-haired and sardonic was chiming in from her other side. "If you're going to start hassling her with pirate lines man at least sketch out some good ones first." Mol/Pol glanced over at the leaner Greg, and Pol noticed her gaze lingering on his cheekbones and his jaw.

- I think I like this one more - Mol confided inside their shared mind - He's smarter. But you know your taste I suppose.

- We're not choosing here!

"Your eye-patch is flipped up," Lou noted. "Makes me think maybe you don't need it at all."

"Well, see" Mol put her glass on the table, "My problem is that if I cover the left eye I can't see one gorgeous man, and if I cover the right eye I can't see the other gorgeous man." She put a hand on each of their legs, not too forward or slutty, but there. "So, I decided to stop pretending to be one eyed."

- What are you doing?

The guys shifted under her hands. She felt them move a little, felt the heat of them through their jeans, but she couldn't move her hands an inch. Mol ignored her.

"What are you guys here as anyway? Don't you have any Halloween spirit?"

"I'm Batman." Freddie was leaning over toward them from the other side of the table. There weren't many people left in the group now, and Carrie was... well she was straddling her new friend in his chair, her long blonde hair obscuring both of their faces. Freddie was wearing a batman t-shirt, hardly enough to qualify as a costume. Mol wrinkled her nose.

"C'mon Polly," Lou grinned, "it's just a party really. It's like you two and half a dozen others are the only people in costume." Now that she thought of it, Polly realised that barely anyone else was in costume. Wow, if she hadn't been sedated with booze and psychically restrained by a murderous ghost that had taken over her body she would have been kind of embarrassed.

"Actually," Mol was moving her hands, slowly, slowly pulling them up the thighs to either side of her. Polly felt the tension in the two men shoot through her fingers like an electric shock. "I'm not really a pirate."

"What are you then?" Lou's hand was slipping off the back of the sofa down onto her shoulder. Polly's heart was hammering but Mol was touching Greg too, and even as Polly tried to form a thought she shot a molten glance at Freddie across the table.

- What are you doing? This is... Lou's the one! Don't make him think I some kind of...

Suddenly a single chime of those hellish bells rang in her head again and she flinched.

- Hush now, we're just having fun. And we are going to have the most wonderful fun...

"If only there were somewhere private I could show you gentlemen..."

- Wait! WAIT!

Again the chime. It made Polly's very consciousness ache.

"There are so many rooms in this place," Greg was looking at her, surprise and interest all over his face. "Up on the third floor there's this whole hallway where the keys are in the doors..."

"How would you know?" grinned Freddie. "Like you've ever taken anyone upstairs here."

"Well there's a first time for everything," Mol purred, and suddenly she was standing. She put her hand out for Greg (why Greg? Why not Lou first? Oh...!) who took it with a look of amazement.

- Stop this! Wait!

Lou was looking up at her, looking at her hand in Greg's and looking almost confused and hurt at the assumed rejection. Then Mol gave him the kind of sultry look that she'd been tongue-tying men with all night and asked: "What are you waiting for?" She turned her eyes to Freddie who was just looking on, mouth agape. "You too big guy."

- What are you doing?!

- Exactly what I said I was going to do, darling. We're going to have some fun.

Carrie was too busy matching lips with her guy, she didn't notice them leave the room, and the rest of their group had long since scattered. No one paid the petite girl and three tall guys much attention at all as they slipped out of the tiny drawing room.

"Now," Mol linked arms with Lou and Greg and made sure Freddie was following along, "Where can we lock ourselves away for a while?

- - -

Greg turned the key in the door and then it was just Mol and Polly and the three guys she was locked in with. Polly didn't know whether she could call her heart her own, and whether it was pounding from her fear and frustration or Molly's excitement - but whatever the situation it was hammering like hell. Her movements were steady though - soft, slow and seductive.

There was a bed (that Polly was instantly, acutely aware of), a couple of chairs and a low, broken down sofa. Lou sat casually, his composure recovered, on one of the chairs. Greg leaned against the wrought iron foot of the bed. Freddie stood awkwardly for a moment before he slumped down into the sofa, making it seem even smaller and lower than it was.

Polly... no Molly stepped right into the middle of them and started lifting up the cheap loose pirate smock she'd been wearing. She bit her lip, looking so naughty, so cheeky. She glanced up at Lou.

"You boys ok with this?"

- Please stop.

"Are you ok?" Lou stood back up and took a step toward her. His hand touched his cheek. For a moment Polly thought he was going to take her out of this - not let her do this. "You had a lot to drink, are you ok to..."

"Oh I want this more than anything in the world," growled Mol, and Polly's heart sank as Lou grinned and sat back down.

Polly was fighting, fighting even though she didn't know how to, but Molly was in her element. She wanted to perform; she wanted to do everything a real, hard, physical body could do. And there was nothing Polly could do to stop her.

The smock and jerkin went flying, leaving her coyly covering her small breasts and the cute little pink lace bra she'd worn. Then she freed her hair from where it had been pinned and held in place and shook it out. For the first time that night Polly saw her own long, dark hair hanging in front of her - through eyes that weren't quite hers.

"Sexy as fuck," someone said and Polly would've screamed if she'd had a voice.

"So is this the real costume?" Greg was smiling, one eyebrow raised. Molly looked over her shoulder at him as she slipped the pirate pants from around her waist and let them fall to the floor. Standing there, in her matching pink lace lingerie, dark hair tumbling down she pouted and shrugged.

"Fuck costumes baby, let's just have some fun."

"Oh yeah," said Freddie in front of her, and Polly cringed as Molly looked right at his crotch... and... and oh God, she licked her lips.

But then suddenly she was moving, and for Polly this sent the room spinning. For Molly however, she was totally in control. She must have been waiting so long for just this opportunity, to feel how it felt to really move again in a woman's body.

She danced. She moved to the muffled thud of a bass line coming from far downstairs and she spun and stretched and moved in a way Polly had never done. One moment she was bending over, pressing her cleavage up and together for Freddie on the low sofa, while giving Greg behind her the most perfect look at her pert ass and cute pink panties, the next she was stretching, almost touching Lou's crotch before pulling away.

God, how was Mol doing this? What had she been, a stripper?

The situation seemed so implausible to Polly that it felt like someone was going to burst out laughing any moment. But they didn't. They were smiling, sweating, passing around a bottle they'd grabbed from the table and they were wrapped around her finger. Mol's finger.

- We're making their cocks hard.

Mol's not so innocent whisper came from inside.

- You are! You are! I don't want this!

- I think I know what you want.

Mol turned to Lou, still sitting, so cool. She reached behind herself, to the clasp of the bra, and pinched it. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours," she challenged. And Lou grinned even wider.

"With pleasure." He unbuttoned the checked shirt in moments and threw it over the back of the other chair, sitting there, cocky but with every right to be as Molly let her eyes linger on his gorgeously muscular body.

Then Molly let her fingers go, let the bra fall away and showed the three men Polly's perky little breasts.

"One more time," Molly hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her panties and smiled, dirty enough to be arrested, "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

"Woah," whispered Freddie.

"Wow," Greg agreed.

"Are you serious?" Lou gave her a half smile and brought his hands to his crotch. He pinched the zipper of his fly between his thumb and forefinger and waited.