Time Enough

I don't remember much about my life anymore, and mercifully, I remember even less about my death. My first clear memories are of what happened afterward. I was white hot angry back then, because I'd been killed for sodomizing a noble lady, though I was sure I'd never so much as laid a finger on one. As I think back about it, I suspect I was correct about my innocence. I don't remember what did happen, but I have the sense that I was a conventional person in life. I was too conventional to have made a move on a lady who was so clearly off limits.

At first, when I found myself dead, I was furious. I remember tearing into men's dreams — men who I thought had something to do with my death — and mutilating them in the most awful ways, so they must've woken the whole household screaming. I won't tell you what I did, partly because I'm not too proud of it and partly because I doubt you want to read it.

After a while, though, that rage burned out, and I stalked the dream worlds moodily, not satisfied that I was done with all the things I'd been born to do, and not able to move on, yet not sure what there was left that I needed to do. I brooded about my situation for a long time and decided that maybe what I needed was to commit the crime I'd been killed for.

I was certain it was all men's doing that I'd been killed for an imaginary crime. Like I said, back then, I still remembered more, so I'm sure I had my reasons to think so. In any case, I never had anything against ladies, noble or otherwise. Since I didn't figure they'd done me any wrong, I certainly wasn't about to force myself on them. Instead, I went around awkwardly propositioning them.

The first place I wandered into after I got this notion was a fancy country house where an elderly duchess was dreaming of sitting at her desk reviewing papers. She looked worried.

"My lady, don't be too concerned about my presence. You're dreaming. None of this is real and I won't harm you," I told her as soon as I arrived.

She turned around startled to find me seated on her fancy brocade couch with my big muddy workman's boots on her flowery silk rug, and opened her mouth to chastise me.

"These aren't my real boots, and this isn't your real rug. Think about it. What did you have for breakfast this morning?"

"I... honestly have no idea," she admitted. Her forehead relaxed.

"Because this isn't a real day, there was no morning, and you didn't have breakfast. But seeing how you're here and I'm here, I wonder if you'd like me to bend you over the arm of that big puffy chair and poke you in your rear end," I suggested. It's funny — I couldn't even use filthy language with a lady even when I was proposing to do something filthy with her.

The lady burst out laughing. "I'd rather you didn't, but seeing how it can't make me fat, what do you say to going into the kitchen and eating every pastry we can find?"

I accepted her offer. The lady certainly did dream up delicious pastries. I'd never eaten so well. There were little lemon tarts with powdered sugar and great big sticky buns glazed with nuts and honey. She poured me a cup of tea and asked me if I was a real person. I told her how I used to be alive and we talked for a while about our troubles. Her name was Caroline, and I learned that her unpleasant children were a frequent source of disappointment. She said they took after her late husband. I told her about being dead before my time and my quest to become guilty. Neither of us had any advice for the other, but we became good friends. I visit her often, though she hasn't yet taken me up on my offer to poke her in the rear.

In the months that followed my first encounter with Caroline, I visited lots more ladies, including even a princess, and propositioned them all. They responded with nervous laughter, indignation, flat refusal, or occasionally reasonably pleasant counter-proposals like Caroline's. I made friends, and in time, I spent more time visiting my friends than propositioning random noble ladies. I found I quite liked these ladies, since they tended to be educated and well traveled, with interesting and carefully considered points of view.

Still, as much as I enjoyed the company of my new friends, I'm not one to set aside a project without completing it, so I enlisted Caroline's help to learn some social graces. Though Caroline admitted she'd never had any interest in sex herself, she nonetheless came across as someone who knew what she was talking about, so I took her advice.

And so it was that finally, after what must have been years of asking, someone finally said yes.

Her name was Lizzie, and I'd found her in a finishing school with architecture that made no sense. Her age fluctuated from late teens to early forties, and she had a tendency of turning up in her thin white nightgown at the most inappropriate of times. That night, I met her in the courtyard and pointed out that she'd forgotten to get dressed.

She looked down and her cheeks flushed pink in the ethereal sunshine.

"Perhaps you should come in before an instructor sees you like that," I suggested, and opened the door behind me, hoping it would lead somewhere private.

"Oh. Good idea. Oops, I don't know how I..." she babbled as she scurried into the darkened room, which turned out to be an instructor's office, with a shelf of tattered books and a heavy wooden desk strewn with papers.

"This is a dream," I said, and closed the door. "You only know me in dreams, remember?"

Lizzie looked around, her brow scrunched in thought for a moment, and then she relaxed. "Ah, yes. Well I'm glad I ran into you first instead of dreaming about getting in trouble."

"Who says there won't be trouble?" I asked.

"Well, there's nobody else here and I don't think you're the cross sort," she pointed out.

"True, but we can't have young ladies prancing around in their nightgowns. I'm sure this school has some sort of standards to uphold."

She chuckled and rolled her eyes. "I wasn't prancing. I was wandering aimlessly trying to remember which class I was supposed to be in."

"Ah. Truant ladies wandering around in their nightgowns. I think you know what happens to those," I told her cheerfully. I took her by the shoulders and spun her around to face the desk.

She bent over without having to be asked and gripped the far side of the desk. "If I'm good, you won't thrash me too badly, will you?" she asked. I could hear her still smiling.

"If you're very cooperative, I suppose I might go a little easier on you," I told her as I unbuckled my belt. "But I would be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to impress upon you the importance of education."

"Oh gods... You're really going to do it?" she asked.

"That was certainly my intention. Unless you have another suggestion?"

"Do I have to lift my nightgown?" she asked soberly.

"Not if you don't want to," I told her and pulled my belt out of its loops.

She didn't move. "Okay. I'm ready."

I doubled the belt over and started easy, barely striking her at all, and lecturing her playfully about her wanton behaviour. How terribly distracted men would be by her lovely golden hair hanging loose around her shoulders and by her her pretty girlish ankles without even stockings to cover them.

She relaxed and began to laugh again. When I ran short of things to lecture her about, she confessed how she let herself get distracted from her studies by handsome young men such as myself. I agreed that this was a serious infraction and gave her a real swat, hard enough that it made her yelp. For a moment I was afraid I'd crossed the line, but then she confessed that she was enjoying the punishment too much.

"Why don't you lift your nightgown, then?" I suggested.

She did so, revealing a pair of lacy white bloomers.

I tugged lightly on her waistband. "Pull your pants down too, please. We're about to get very serious here."

She clenched her gorgeous pink butt cheeks as she pulled her bloomers down to her knees. "Can you use just your hand?" she asked.

I put the belt down beside her on the desk and smacked her warm backside with my hand. Her flesh rippled appealingly and she gave a cute squeal.

"Thank you, sir," she murmured.

I kept spanking her with my hand, harder and harder, because she kept thanking me and egging me on. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore and had to unbutton my pants and free my erection.

She turned half around to see what I was doing and smiled. "Oh dear. What are you planning on doing with that?" she asked. With a little wriggle, she dropped her bloomers the rest of the way to the floor and stepped out of them.

I pressed my cock between her soft, freshly warmed ass cheeks and she squirmed against me eagerly. I ached to be inside her. But what if that finished my story? What she agreed to take it up her ass and I disappeared when it was over? If this was going to be the last thing I ever did, I wanted to enjoy it for a bit longer. So I nudged her back down over the desk. "Nothing yet. I don't think you've learned your lesson." I picked up the belt and ran it lightly over her heated skin.

"Please hurry up and teach me a lesson, then," she begged. She widened her stance and gripped the desk again.

I really whipped her then. I took her backside from blushing pink to red and purple stripes. She arched her back and quivered as she screamed her thank yous. I forgot all about my promise not to thrash her too badly and just rode the ecstasy until I couldn't stand to wait any longer.

I rolled her over on her back and slung her knees over my shoulders. Papers fluttered to the floor at my feet. "Ever been sodomized?" I asked her.

"Does a zucchini count?" she asked, and used her heels to pull me closer. "Do it."

I thrust my cock into her slick cunt a couple times to get it wet, then the two of us working together managed to ram it balls-deep into her asshole in about three strokes. She grabbed me by the hips and slammed our bodies together. If it weren't for this fear that I had that this was the end for me, her enthusiasm, the heat from her tortured skin, and her tight little hole might have put me over the edge in seconds.

Scared as I was, though, I gave it to her good. Her hands slipped from my hips to her crotch. She put one hand on top of the other, tensing her whole body as she pushed hard on her clit.

"Promise me you'll make a habit of this," she implored.

I swore that I was going to tan her hide and pound her ass each time we met from then on. And with that promise, my fear vanished like a cobweb in the path of a charging bull, and I tumbled over the edge into orgasm. For a moment, I felt weightless and I think all that kept me from falling over was the powerful grip of her knees on my shoulders. She writhed against me, still tense for a minute as I slumped forward, holding myself up with an arm braced on the edge of the desk.

Just when I didn't think I could stand for a moment longer, she let out a sigh and relaxed. Her arms fell limp at her sides and her feet dangled instead of gripping me.

I unhooked her knees from her shoulders and staggered around to the other side of the desk so I could sink into the plush chair and stroke her hair.

"Did you mean it?" she asked, and turned her head to kiss my fingers lightly.

"Do you want me to mean it?" I asked.

She rolled back over and planted her feet back on the floor, resuming her original position bent over the desk. The blotter where she'd been lying was a mess of crumpled paper and spilled ink. An irregular blue stain now marred the back of Lizzie's nightgown. "I will cry if you didn't mean it," she told me.

"Then I absolutely meant it," I assured her. I grabbed a handful of her hair and lifted her head so I could look her in the eyes. "You're in so much trouble, my dear," I promised, and then planted a soft kiss on her forehead.

I'm a man of my word, and I did what I promised. There were nights when she dropped her bloomers at the sight of me and nights where we talked for a long time before I coaxed her over my knee. One way or another, though, it always happened.

It was a couple years, I think, before I admitted to Lizzie how scared I'd been of popping out of existence the first time I fucked her. She speculated that deep down I must have known that I deserved much more than one night of pleasure. According to her reckoning, I deserved infinite nights of pleasure, since each time I enjoyed her, she enjoyed me. She had to tell me that a few times before I quite believed it, but eventually, I took it to heart.

I think that's why I'm still here, even after she moved on. I feel like I deserve to stay as long as I like. Sometimes now, I'll be walking in a quiet dream, and I'll feel that dead calm — that stillness that tells me I could also just slip into eternity if I wanted to. It would be the easiest thing I've ever done, but it isn't time for that yet. There are there are still things I haven't tried. New friends and lovers I haven't met. And there's time enough for all of it.