"I mean, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here! How the hell am I supposed to sleep at night when this... fucking thing won't leave me alone? They're not nightmares, because I'm definitely awake, and it's not a sleep paralysis demon, because I can move. What are my options here, man!?"

"Oh, that's easy, you just start sexually harassing it."

I looked at my friend Mike in utter disbelief. "Come again?"

"You heard me. If it starts trying to scare you, just take a pass at it!" Mike said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Say its ass looks fat. Start touching yourself. I've banished almost three ghosts outta my old-as-shit house that way, it works perfectly."

"You're fucking with me," I replied flatly.

Mike shook his head, wearing a smug grin on his face. "I'd never pull your leg on paranormal stuff, Danny. The amount of money I've saved on exorcists as my witness, I swear it works. How else do you think I survive living in a fixer-upper from coal-burning times?"

"So you're saying all I have to do is start acting horny when this visitor of mine tries creeping out from under my bed, and it'll fuck off?" I asked with a suspicious squint.

"It's that easy," Mike nodded. "Once you change the vibes, they can't handle it! It throws off their ghost feng-shui or something. I read this great forum post about it once."

"Yeah… Yeah! I get it! That makes a lot of sense, actually." Perking up, I reached out to Mike for a fist bump. "Thanks, dude. After tonight, this shadowy fucker is never gonna bother me again!"

***

That night, I was going through the motions of my usual bedtime routine. A hot shower, a change of pajamas, and some freshly-brushed teeth later, I was settling into bed without a care in the world. Work had been so busy that the only thing on my mind was sleeping like a dead man. I almost got there too—until I was broken out of my dreary haze by a lone 'thump' coming from underneath my bed.

Immediately, a jolt of cold fear shot through me. Its presence was a tangible thing, even if I couldn't see it. The dull bumping and shuffling sounds beneath my bed-frame became more frequent as it stirred. I began to spiral into a panic; my heart beating faster, my palms sweating, and my breathing becoming shallow. Then, in a rush, Mike's advice came flooding back to me: I had to make a pass at it. Sexually harassing my unwelcome guest was the only path to freedom.

But how? I was a total klutz when it came to smooth-talking girls, let alone trying to sexually harass demons or whatever. But I knew I had to sound confident. I had to really sell this to whatever the fuck was crawling out from under my bed. Confidence. Hunger. I breathed in, suppressing the tremor in my gut, and spoke up.

"Back for more, huh?" I said in the most promiscuous voice I could muster. "I was hoping you'd come back around, you…" Shit. What was a good clincher? "…sweet piece of ass."

I was going to die of embarrassment before any paranormal being ever managed to eviscerate me. For an excruciatingly lengthy moment, my room was bathed in perfect silence—a silence that was broken by a faint, yet horrifying sound like icy wind and echoing whispers passing over my ears. I did my best to stave off the deeply instinctual fear that was welling up within me. I couldn't let it win! I wouldn't be tortured for another sleepless night!

"That's what I thought. Too juicy to stay away from, huh?" I growled, transforming the fear in my bones to lusty zeal in my voice. "I get that a lot… but I'll be sure to give it to you good tonight, honey."

Gotta sell it. With a jittery hand I moved to grab my crotch, arching my back to really lean into the motion. There was another thump from under the bed. I froze, holding my junk, and listened carefully as the sound of something slithering became apparent. The thought crossed my mind that I might be incurring this thing's wrath, and that I might actually be staring down the barrel of my imminent demise. No! That wasn't going to happen. I was going to sexually harass the shit out of this thing, and it was going to leave me the fuck alone. I was going to win.

I grit my teeth and spoke up again. "Oh come on baby, don't be shy. You gonna spend all day under the bed, or are you gonna come up here and let me rail you?"

The cold vortex of energy pulling at my heart grew stronger, and that horrifying mixture of icy, whispering noise drifted across my ears again. This would not be a fun or dignified way to die—but I wasn't a quitter. I rolled over onto my side and reached a hand over the edge of the bed, making a coy 'come-hither' motion with my index finger.

"Well? The night's not getting any younger, sweet cheeks."

A short pause. More slithering sounds. Then, something shot up from the floor, and in the blink of an eye my entire hand was in the grip of some freakishly-striped tentacle. I wanted to scream, to cry, to shit my pants in sheer terror, but the raw adrenaline coursing through my veins kept me on track. With absolutely brazen confidence I gave the tentacle twined around my hand a feisty squeeze.

"D-Don't be a tease, now," I chided the monster. "Having to wait all day for this is torture enough."

Some awful mixture of morbid curiosity and alien magnetism drew me to the edge of the bed. I dared to peek over, and saw a slender figure in a raven-black cloak crawling out from the space beneath me. More of the bizarre striped tentacles accompanied it, gripping the edge of the bed-frame and twisting around the balusters to grant the monster purchase. In a disturbingly fluid motion, it twisted its torso around to reveal a… shockingly feminine figure.

Wide hips, a neatly tapered waist, and a bust that rendered her cloak strenuous made me do a double-take. The monster was still fully clad in that strange garment peppered with silver zippers, but there was no mistaking the buxom curves tugging at the fabric. Something within the abyssal depths of her hooded face looked straight into my eyes, and I was hammered by a sensation like liquid nitrogen flooding my veins. An otherworldly sound rippled through the air, and all of a sudden it was whispering into my mind.

"ᛇᛃᛜᚦᛖᚨᚾᚱᚻᚹᛜ ᛈᚠᛝᚱ… ᛑᛀᚠᚷᚻᚢᛚᛐᛉᛙ ᚹᚨᛜᛁᚦᚢᛚᚲᛗ."

"Holy shit," I mumbled quietly. "I mean, um, you're looking foxy tonight, babe."

Restraining a deep cringing feeling in my core proved impossible. I could have quite possibly been on the verge of getting my soul devoured, but here I was still coughing up atrocious pickup lines. I had no alternatives. My only option was to keep charging forward with the plan. I was snapped back to my senses by the monster reaching out to me with a spindly hand, revealing fingers so sharp they made my gut twist. She carefully brought them forward, and dragged her index finger along the underside of my chin.

"ᛇᛏ᛫ᛓᛨᚷ ᚢᛞᚹᚳᛙᚦᚢᛚᚲᛗᛖᛉ ᚠᚪᛚᛟᛜᛁᚦᚨᚷ," the echoing, icy whispers came again from somewhere inside my skull.

"I, uh, I didn't quite catch that, gorgeous," I stammered, my teeth starting to chatter with fear. The feeling of something pulling on my heart was only growing stronger. "Wh-What did you say your name was again?"

"ᛟᚩᚮᚸᚦᚨᛜᛖᛗᚬᛡᛝᚢ ᛋᚲᚨ ᚹᛜᛁᚦ," she began, before pausing with a pensive tilt of her head. "ᚨᛜᚢᚾᛜᚲᛏ. ᛉᛏᛔᚪᛞᛑᚳ, ᛕᚣ… ᛠᚺᛊᚱ… ᛙᚢᛊ. ᛕᚣᛠᚺᛊᚱᛙᚢᛊ."

"Katherine?" I said, clinging onto the only intelligible piece of her speech. "Is that your name?"

She nodded hastily, and squeezed the tentacle wrapped around my hand in an excited manner. It occurred to me then that I might have bitten off more than I could chew. Katherine was quick to reach out with both her hands, taking hold of my face and pushing me back onto the mattress as she fully emerged from underneath my bed in a rush of motion. Before I knew it, she was on top of me, the excess fabric of her cloak spilling across the gap between our bodies. Her bizarrely-patterned tentacles were all over my legs, already making themselves comfortable coiling around my calves and thighs.

"ᛋᚲᚨ ᚹᛜᛁᚨᚢᛜᛰᚲᛏᛚ…" Katherine's voice came once again, sounding like a wispy sigh of cold air that caressed my mind.

She leaned in even closer to my face, and from somewhere within the endless black void that existed behind the threshold of her cloak's hood, a pair of lips emerged to capture my own. Her kiss was slimy, frigid, and shamefully erotic. I hesitated at first, but quickly gave in to the deep compulsion tugging at my soul.

My hands reached up to embrace her waist, and through the fabric I found a body that was startlingly real. I was far from hallucinating as my hands dragged along her stomach, and the tip of her chilly tongue began to slide past my lips. Katherine's intimate touch was a whole-body experience from the inside-out; my blood vessels crackling with an icy rush, my heart in the grip of some phantom hand that stroked it as lovingly as her sharp fingers stroked my face in the depths of our kiss. I couldn't even form a coherent thought due to the bizarre psychic white noise that had glazed over my mind.