I guess we pulled up outside the house at around midnight.  It was during that no-man's land, that purgatory between Christmas and New Year and Helen - my girlfriend at the time - and I were travelling between her family and mine. We knew it would take more than a day to drive from Glasgow to London , through the blizzards and the fog that characterised the Christmas holiday of three years ago, so Helen had arranged with her sister that we would stay in her student house in Leeds for a night to break up the journey.

By the time we got to the house, a three-story Victorian leftover from a time when the city had been affluent, the snow was starting to fall heavily and was being blown like razor blades against our skin by the sharp, icy wind.

Like the other buildings in this mainly student-occupied area, the house was locked up and in complete, unwelcoming darkness.

It took Helen a while to get the key to turn in the door, all the while the snow cutting into our skin. After she'd done so, and after we'd dragged our stuff in and slammed the door behind us, we just stood there in the blackness and silence of the hall, recovering our breath.

The first thing we found was that the power didn't seem to be switched on. Every switch we tried yielded no light, just three electronic beeps which seemed to emanate from deep within the darkness.  After a while, using Helen's cigarette lighter to guide us, we found that the beeping noises came from an electricity meter in what seemed to be, from the dim flickering flame, a kitchen.  The impersonal digital display informed us that there was no credit left on the top-up card.  No charge, so no electricity.

Helen said, "Little bitch."  Like her sister had planned this to happen.

We inched our way up to her sister's room using the lighter and found a couple of ornamental candles which were scattered around the room.  The dim light they emitted was barely useful but at least allowed us to undress and find our way across the landing to the bathroom to brush our teeth.

I found it impossible to stop myself flicking light switches as I entered and left the rooms and corridors in the house.  Force of habit I guess.  Every time I did it those three shrill beeps pierced the darkness, carried up through two floors from the kitchen deep below.  At first Helen found it funny, then, after a few times, she stopped laughing.  By the tenth or eleventh repetition she was getting a pissed off.

We squeezed ourselves into her sister's cramped bed, hugging each other for warmth.    The wind outside howled and whistled and the snow rattled against the window in spurts like someone was throwing handfuls of gravel.

Occasionally the roof would creak or the door would rattle within its frame and Helen laughed that it might be the ghost.

"The ghost?"

"All these old houses have a ghost, don't they?"

"I guess."

She drifted off to sleep in my arms.  Normally she'd have a go at me for hugging her and push me away but tonight she seemed to enjoy my body heat, if not my affection.  I lay next to her with a hard-on, feeling the cold draughts on my back and listening to the snow against the window, gradually drifting off to sleep.

The next thing I was aware of was waking up in a panic in the suffocating blackness.  I couldn't work out where I was.  I thought I was drowning or in a coffin.   Trapped without air, without light.

But gradually I came to.  Realised that the sounds I could hear weren't surrounding me, choking me, but were the sounds of the blizzard hammering against the window.

I lay there for a while, listening to the wind and the snow, trying to shake off the deep sense of foreboding that my panic had left me with.  Wondering why I'd woken up.

The atmosphere in the room, in the house, made the feelings of unease impossible to shift.  The more I lay there, exposed to the rank, suffocating darkness, the more I became convinced that something in the house, some noise from deep beneath us, had awoken me.

Over a few minutes of lying there, I worked myself up into such a state that I considered waking Helen.  Just to see if she felt it to.

But I anticipated her reaction - the irritation, the scorn - and dismissed the idea as ridiculous.  Besides, I was supposed to be the "man": the half of the relationship with the balls; the dutiful protector; the valiant knight.  So I reprimanded myself for being childish and turned my back to her to try and get some sleep.

I lay there for a few minutes, feeling myself begin to relax.

Then I heard a sound.

Beep beep beep.

Someone had tried to turn on a light.  I was instantly awake.  Someone was in the house.

I listened for more sounds.  None came.  I wondered if the noise had been imagined; had been the early part of a dream.  But no.  They were too real, too crisp. They'd happened.

I swivelled about, moving my legs out of the bed and sitting upright.  The carpet felt so cold against my feet that its texture was almost wet.  Like dew.

No more sounds came from below.  I wondered again if this was me being over-anxious.  "Hyper-sensitive" as Helen often put it.  But everything within me, every ounce of intuition told me that that wasn't so.  Something was in the house.  Here, with us.

I got out of bed and groped around for my watch to check the time.  The cold green display on it read 03:04.  Lying it back down on the floor, I crept over to the door.  I opened it as quietly as I could and stood listening to sounds from below.  Sounds from the cloying, almost overpowering, darkness.

There was only silence.

"Why are you shaking?" taunted a voice from within my brain.

"'Cos it's so fucking cold," another voice replied.

That seemed reasonable; perfectly logical.

So that made me a feel a bit less ridiculous.

But then, as I looked out of the door, down into the thick blackness, the voice said, "What do you think is down there?"

And I didn't want to reply to that.

I left the door ajar and stumbled back to the bedside table to light a candle.  Reassured slightly by its dim glow, I went back to the door and looked out.  The corridor and stairs leading downward were basked in the yellow, flickering light.  The shadows leapt around the walls, swaying and flailing like drunken dancers

Nothing stirred from beneath.

I told myself how stupid I was being.  Behaving like a little kid.

But then I heard a thump.

The sound was dim and distant.  Like someone throwing a pillow onto the floor.  A soft sound: an explicable sound.

I thought another student must have returned. Travelling between families like Helen and I.  So I called out, "Hello?"

There was no response.

I walked out of the room and down the first few stairs.

"Hello...?"

The house was silent.

I started to wonder if I'd imagined the noise.  I'm not given to imagining noises, but maybe, in this case...

I reached the first landing and looked down, round the bend, at the walls of the first floor, flickering in the dim light as they disappeared into the darkness of the corridor.

Nothing stirred.

I had the intense sensation that someone was here with me.  Down there.

I remembered once hearing, or reading somewhere, that ghosts often make their presence felt by affecting electronic devices like burglar alarms and security lights.  And maybe electricity meters.

It wasn't impossible.

Even Helen - cool, sceptical Helen - had mentioned ghosts.

I called out again, "Hello?  Anyone there?"

Nothing.

But someone was down there.  Every instinct of which I'm capable told me that to be a fact.

I walked down onto the first floor.  I felt slightly vulnerable wearing just my underwear and wished I'd pulled my jeans on.  The idea of turning back seemed cowardly, though.

So I went on regardless.

I called out, down the flickering walls of the corridor and into the blackness     beyond, "Anyone there?"  When, again, there was no response, I added, in sing-song, "Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

Again nothing happened but I felt a bit better.  I think my attempt at joviality raised my spirits slightly.  Like this was all part of a jolly jape between me and my mates.  A joke that would soon be revealed as such.

I walked, more confidently, down the stairs towards the ground floor.

I kept calling, "Where are you, ghost?  I know you're there, ghost..."

Until I got to the bottom.  By then the absence of any response, the lack of any reassurance from a recently-returned student, started getting to me.  I started feeling tense again.  Felt myself freeze up; become as cold as the air around me.

I walked to the front door, feeling the irregular drafts from the gusts of the blizzard leaking through the cracks of it as I approached.

I don't know why, but I reached forwards and pulled on the handle to see if it was locked. I don't know why I did it because I was totally expectant, fully confident, that it would be locked; that either Helen or I would have dropped the latch behind us.

But it wasn't.  I pulled the handle towards me and the door opened inwards, the bottom of it scraping against the frame with a loud groan.  The wind rushed in and the candle went out.

I closed the door and dropped the latch.

I stood there for a few seconds wondering what to do.

I wondered if maybe the noise I'd heard had been the door opening and closing in the wind.

Then something behind me changed almost imperceptibly and I knew something was in the house with me and that that something had just moved. Perhaps it was the vibrations from it, or maybe sounds which we are aware of but don't actually hear: whatever, something moved and I felt it.

I turned around and faced the darkness, without the candle to help me.  The corridor and stairs were weakly illuminated by the neon street light from outside the front door but its tepid orange glow was of little assistance.

I called out, still in sing-song, "Mr Ghost... where are you?"

But by now my mock-joviality was of little comfort and the silence which followed it seemed overwhelmingly bleak.

I said, desperately, "Hello?"

Still there was no sound.

I walked forwards, intending to find my way back to the stairs, when I saw a dim but distinct white glow coming from beneath one of the doors down the corridor on the right.  It spread out from the crack underneath the door, diffusing outwards across the carpet of the hallway.

Seeing the light made me feel more hopeful.  Someone was in the room.  Maybe one of Helen's sister's housemates had come back after all.  They'd lit a candle and fallen asleep on their bed...

I walked forwards and knocked on the door.

There was no sound from within but still the light burned beneath the door.

I knocked again, more loudly.  When the silence continued, my confidence began to ebb.

I took a deep breath and pushed open the door.

Nobody was on the bed.

Nobody was in the room.

The light came from under a chest of drawers.

I walked forwards and knelt down to see where it came from.  The beam shone out from a torch that looked like it had rolled under there.

I wondered what was going on when I heard the door behind me slam shut.

I turned around and my eyes met the stare of a teenager with a crew cut who'd concealed himself behind the open door.  His eyes gleamed in the dim torchlight, alight with malice.

He said, with a grin, "Good evening."

I stood up, maintaining eye contact with him.

He took a step towards me and pulled something out from his pocket.  It clicked and a shiny blade snapped outwards.  He spoke softly, "Don't think about trying anything..."

I was still too shocked to think about trying anything.  Still trying to get my head around the fact that my ghost had acquired flesh and blood.

I stammered, "Wh... what are you doing?"

He cackled.  "What's it fuckin' look like, student boy?  You think I'm Santa Clause?"

I shook my head stupidly.

He went on, "Or Mr Ghost...?  'Hello Mr Ghost, where are you Mr Ghost...'"  He impersonated my voice in a way that made me sound like a retarded four year old.

Then he just stood glaring at me, leering.

I stood in front of him, feeling ridiculous in my briefs and teeshirt, trying to stay rational.  Remember details about his appearance, I thought.  Leather jacket.  Tattoo on his neck.  An eagle or something.  Pierced ear.  Pierced nose.  Jeans.  Boots.

He walked towards me, coming halfway across the room.

He said, "You're gonna tell me which of your little bumchums in the house has the best stuff.  The new discman, the latest PC, the best hifi.  You're gonna tell me that, aren't you?"

"I... I don't know..."

"No no no no no...", he half-sang, like he was talking to a child.  "That's not the right response, blond boy.  You're gonna do a lot better."

"I don't know anything about these people..."

He came right up to me, his face right in front of mine.

He said, with more an edge to his voice, "I said you're gonna do better."  His breath stunk of alcohol.

I said, "You don't have to do this.  I mean -"

I think I moved my right hand upwards, reaching up to pat his shoulder as a friend would so I that I could appeal to his better nature.  He obviously saw my movement as an attempt to outwit him and nutted me in the face.

I fell backwards, my back banging into the edge of the top of the drawers behind me.  Even as I was falling, before I was aware of the pain, I could feel the warm wetness of my blood pouring out of my nose, onto my upper lip and down my chin.

He shouted, "Don't fuckin' try anything.  I fuckin' told ya.  I don't give a shit what I do to ya..."

The pain hit me and my knees gave way.  I sat in front him, my nose streaming with blood, my hands around it and my thumbs blocking my nostrils, trying to stop it.

He said, more gently but equally insidiously, "You're gonna make me cut ya if you make any more moves like that..."

I tried to tell him that I wasn't trying to outsmart him but my words were incomprehensible.  My jaw didn't seem to want to work properly and my nose muffled any sounds that I managed to produce.

He ignored my attempts to talk to him and looked around like he was searching for something.  He grabbed a pair of tights which were lying on the floor near the bed.  I thought maybe he was going to hand them to me to stop the blood flow from my nose but he told me to put my hands behind me.  Dazed, I did so, and the blood began trickling unabated from my nose.  It hurt like hell and I wondered if he'd broken it.

He reached behind me and tied my hands to one of the legs of the chest of drawers with the tights. As he secured them, I looked into his eyes, cold and indifferent.  I tried not to let mine betray how scared I was.

He said, "You're gonna sit there, nice and tight, while I do a little house inspection, aren't ya?"

I nodded.

"Which is your room, then?  I'll leave you a little present.  On your bed."

I looked up at his face.  He wasn't smiling.

I managed to say, my throbbing nose making my voice sounding like I had a case of terminal influenza, "I... don't... live... here..."

"What?"

"I... don't -"

He laughed, obviously unable to understand me.

"You came from the top of the house.  I heard you come down the stairs... I'll make that my first stop."

Without thinking I said, "No!  My girlfriend..."

The words were still muffled by my bleeding nose, but he understood what I'd said.

"Your girlfriend?  Why didn't you say?  And to think I had you down as a queer..."

He took a few steps backward, grinning belligerently.

"A cute little girl... nice and cosy in her bed... wondering where her big strong man's gone..."

I struggled against the tights.  They gave a little but not enough.

He laughed at my frustration and it drove him on.   "Wondering what it'd be like to have a real man... a man with a nice big cock..."

He rubbed the front of his jeans.

I stopped struggling.  I was shivering so much that I couldn't tell myself it was the cold that was making me.  But I stopped struggling, hoping that he'd stop threatening Helen.

He kept leering at me, rubbing his crotch.

I said - my bleeding, pounding nose still choking my voice - "Stop pissing about... this isn't funny..."

He obviously understood at least some of what I said because he stopped leering and glared at me.

"You think I'm messing about?"

He unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned his jeans.

"You think this is messing about?"

He opened his fly wide and, after rummaging around to push the front of his boxer shorts down, pulled out his erect cock.

It arched upwards in front of him, about six inches in length.

He looked down at it proudly and then gave it a few tugs between his thumb and forefinger.  The foreskin slid back and forwards, exposing then hiding the purple, dry head in quick succession.

He grinned.  "Searching through all these student girls' cute little bras and panties... kinda gets a guy hot, know what I mean?  Makes a guy ready for the real thing... someone willing or unwilling..."

I managed to say, "You're gonna turn a burglary into a rape?  Six months inside into ten years...?"

He laughed and considered what I'd said, nodding slowly.  Then he said, "Who's to say you're gonna be any state to give a description.  You think I'm just gonna leave you there, like that?"

That hit me hard.  Even though he was laughing and I wasn't sure that he wasn't bluffing, it hit me hard.  The implication was true.

I said, starting to panic at the prospect of what he was about to do, "But wait... look... look, mate... I've got money... my dad's got money - "

He turned serious.  "I'm not your mate.  I wouldn't be about to fuck your girlfriend if I was your mate..."

The panic set in.  "I can get you some money... I mean a couple of thousand... more, maybe..."

He pulled his jeans down further and started thrusting his hard curving cock into the air in front of him.  It sliced the air, up and down, like a sword, and he gasped in a crude impersonation of female orgasm.  "Ah... yeah... fuck me... fuck me... a real man... at last..."

I begged him, "Please..."  It was all I had left.

He turned to leave the room, his jeans halfway down his thighs, but stopped when he spotted the black Adidas bag he must have brought with him for his pickings.  He knelt down to grab something from inside it.  It was a Sony discman.  One of the chrome-plated ones.

He pulled the power cable out from the back of it and threw the discman back into his bag.

Then he turned to me, winding the cable around his fist, and grinned.  He said, "Just in case she's not being a hundred percent co-operative.  Know what I mean?"

I guess I just stared at him, unable to speak because I was breathing so fast.

He kept staring at me and his grin slowly faded into something harder, "If she doesn't scream, I won't 'urt 'er..."

He got halfway through the door and my panic overtook me.  The horror of this despicable creature laying his hands on Helen was overwhelming.  It erupted inside me, blocking out all rational, sensible thought.  I thrashed around to free myself of his crude bindings and I guess my exertions stretched them enough for my wrists to slip through them.

The next thing I knew I was on top of him, propelled across the room by a kind of primitive life-preserving panic.

His head banged against the frame of the door and I think that momentarily stunned him.  We struggled for a few seconds but his movements were clumsy and sluggish: just automatic reflexes to protect himself while his brain tried to recover from the blow it had received.  I soon overpowered him and dragged him back into the room.  I pushed him, face down, onto the bed and grabbed at the power cable which was still loosely entwined around his hand.

As I tied his hands to the frame of the bed he started to come around.  He began to struggle in earnest and I only just managed to get the knot tight enough before he started kicking outwards, landing one of his heavy boots in my kneecap.

The pain was excruciating.

He shouted, "You little fucking shit!  You fucking cunt!"  He struggled to free his hands from the bed frame but the cable was too strong for him.

He kept kicking outwards, his legs constrained by the fact that his trousers were halfway down his legs, but trying to reach me nonetheless.

I picked up his knife which he'd dropped during the scuffle.

I limped around to the end of the bed where his feet couldn't reach me, my knee pounding like a second heart from his blow, and placed the knife at the side of his neck, on the skin of his tattoo.

I said, quietly, "You're gonna shut the fuck up.  Or I'll cut out your tattoo.  Peel the skin off your neck."

He went quiet and looked up at, his eyes burning with hatred and derision.  "Like you'd fuckin' dare..."

I smiled.  "I'm training to be a doctor.  You think I'm squeamish about cutting skin?"  I pushed the knife harder against his tattoo, so that skin around the end of the blade turned white.  "You want me to give you a demo?"

He didn't reply.  He just stared at me, his expression hardening as he recognized that I was serious.

I said, "I'm gonna tie up your feet and you're gonna stay still."  I glanced down at his exposed arse, white and hairless in the torchlight.  I thought it would make a very strong subject for a threat.

Trying to sound calm, I said, "If you try to kick me, I'll stab you in the arse.  Do you understand?"

He nodded enthusiastically, his eyes never leaving my face.  He was breathing quickly, as quickly as I was.

I reached for the tights with which he'd tied me to the drawers and secured his right leg to the leg of the bed.  He made no attempt to struggle.

Then I looked around the room for something else with which I could tie him up and noticed a dressing gown hanging on the back of the door.  I pulled the cord from it and went to secure his other leg against the bed-frame.  As I did so, as I knelt down to tie the knot, he tried to kick me in the face.

The blow caught me in the cheek, knocking me backwards against the desk.  The lamp on it clattered over, making a loud metallic ringing noise like a cheap bell.

He immediately started struggling, thrashing around on the bed, trying to free himself from my fastenings.

I got up quickly and threw myself on top of him, my chest against his back, holding him down to prevent him from getting free.  I was pretty sure my knots would hold, but not completely sure.  I didn't know the strength of the guy.

He tried to buck me off his back but I held on.  I shouted, "Stay still you little bastard."

He spat out, "Fuck you," and bucked his arse up and down to try and shake me off.

The feel of his arse rubbing against my cock in the front of my briefs gave me an idea.

I held him down and rubbed myself against his arse, thrusting my groin against his round cheeks.

He stopped struggling, wondering what I was doing.  I kept working myself against him and whispered, "You like that?  You like the feel of a real man...?"

He said, more quietly and more slowly, "Fuck... you..."

I kept rubbing my cock up and down the cleft of his arse.  The sensation of being like this, stretched out on his back and using his arse like a masturbatory aid, really appealed to me.  Despite the pain from my nose and from my kneecap, and despite my fear and loathing of this guy, I could feel my cock started to stiffen.

Maybe he did too, because he said, more urgently, "Get off my fuckin' back you queer..."

I said, "Getting frightened, mate?  Oh sorry, yeah... we're not mates are we?  I'd hardly be preparing to fuck you if we were mates, would I?"

He started bucking frantically, trying to push me off.  I held on, holding his chest with both arms, and cried out like I was loving it.  "Yeah!  Yeah!  Go for it!  Give it to me!"

He stopped again.

By now I was getting really aroused by humiliating him like this and my cock was reaching full size.  He would undoubtedly be able to feel it pressing into him.  My breathing was getting faster.  I was in charge of this guy: had complete power over him.  Sexual power.  The knowledge of that was unexpectedly exciting.

I pulled one arm away from him and used it to pull down the front of my briefs.  My cock sprang out and I pushed it between his cheeks, the head level with the area of his arsehole.  His arse cleft felt hot and slightly damp.

He said, breathlessly, "You can't do this to me... cut me if you wanna... you can't do this."

I whispered, pushing my cock into his crack, feeling his moist hole open slightly against the sensitive tip of my bell-end, "But you were gonna do this to my girlfriend."

He gasped as I pushed a little further and a centimetre or so of my cock entered him.  "No... stop... please... that's different... girls like this stuff... they like a guy doing this..."

I laughed.  A genuine laugh.  What he'd said was kind of funny.

I whispered, "You think she'd like a piece of shit like you fucking her?  Forcing her?  You honestly think any girl would like that?"

I pushed further into him, looking at the collar of the back of his leather jacket, at his neck and at his short brown hair.  I felt his anus contract sharply, trying to expel me, but I pushed in regardless.  It made a slight slurping sound.

He heard it and frantically tried to say something that would stop me.  "No - please.  What d'ya want?  I got some dope in my bag.  Some coke back at my place... what d'ya want?"

I pushed again, hearing him gasp and feeling him tense up beneath me with every millimetre of his arse I penetrated.  My cock was feeling impossibly stiff; unfamiliarly large.  Throbbing like that of a sixteen year old at his first strip show.

"I want your arse.  I want you to feel me fucking you.  That's what I want..."

I had this guy for myself.  He'd broken my nose, maybe my kneecap.  He'd made threats against my girlfriend, implied he was going to kill or permanently injure us, but now I had him.  And I wanted him; I wanted my prize.

He kept pleading, "No - no - please - no - "

But his desperation just drove me further into him, egged me on.

When I felt as if my cock was about half way into his arse, I pulled back a little and started working up a rhythm, beginning to fuck him for real.

That feeling, the sensation of my cock starting to slide in and out of him, really seemed to affect him.  Maybe what I was doing to him finally hit home.  He started shouting abuse and struggling frantically.  The knots were holding tight and his free leg couldn't reach me, but I was worried that his noise would wake Helen up so I stretched out on top of him, holding him down.

He stopped moving but kept swearing at me.  Calling me a faggot, a cunt, a bastard.

I grabbed his body close to me and violently slammed my cock about an inch further into his arse in one go.  His arse made a farting sound and he gasped.  "Jesus..."

While he was catching his breath, reeling from my sudden intrusion, I whispered, "If you want it gentle, keep quiet.  If you want it so rough that you shit blood, keep shouting..."

He kept breathing heavily.  The back of his neck had become damp with his sweat.  After a few seconds he whispered, "Yeah.  Okay..."

I started fucking him again, working up a steady rhythm.  My breathing quickened: this felt so good.  His arse felt totally different to a girl's pussy: it gripped my cock eagerly, squeezing it like a red hot fist.  It kept making slurping farting noises as I pushed myself in and out and that seemed to make it even better.  The baseness of what I was doing, the sordidness of fuckin the guy's arse, really got to me.  It felt wet inside and I knew what that wetness was, but that just added to my excitement.

Maybe he started getting into it; maybe he realised that his resistance was making it harder on himself.  Whatever the reason, he moved his free leg outwards to open his arse wider to accommodate me.  He even pushed it out towards my cock, trying to open his cheeks further apart.

That made him fart even more, crude sounding squelches, and the smell from arse became inescapable.  I kept thinking of my cock, stabbing in and out of his filth, and the idea of that was disgusting but, at the same time, exhilarating.

He started grunting in the same rhythm as my cock; kept saying, "Jesus", "Fuck", "Ah" in time with the sounds from his arse.

I pulled away from his back and, kneeling against the edge of the mattress, pulled his arse upwards so that he was bending in front of me.

I loved the feelings that were washing over me from having him like that.  Kneeling behind his overpowered body, sliding my cock in and out of his arse.  I looked down at my cock in the dim torchlight, six inches of it pushing in between his pale cheeks, then out, in then out.  It was streaked with strings of his arse slime, making light brown veins down its thick stem.

The sheer carnality of buggering this guy, tied up in front of me, the thought that I was invading his unwilling and unprepared arse, made me pant and grunt, made the sweat pour down my face and back.

I started slamming myself into him, the smell of his shit becoming even stronger.

His grunting became louder and I realised that, as I pushed my cock into his arse, he was pushing his arse backwards to meet it.  I looked up at his face and saw that it was partly turned towards me, bright red and slick with sweat.  His eyes were closed and his mouth was open.  He too was panting between his grunts.

I moved backwards and stood on the floor next to the bed, holding his waist to keep his arse impaled on my cock.  Then I pulled his hips towards me, standing upright behind him, and began frantically driving the full length, the entire eight inches, of my cock in and out of his wet anus.  The sounds from it were louder, the smell stronger, and the feelings from it - hot, tight and slippery - overwhelming.

I looked down at his two white round arse cheeks and the thick shaft of my cock ramming in and out between them.  I realised that my grunts had become almost growls: low angry sounds from the back of my throat.  My face was contorted into a snarl.  I was completely drawn into this, losing the last threads of my self-control.  I would never have sunk so deep into my own pleasure to have shown such a primitive level of abandon as this with a girl.  Would never have dared even if I had.

He kept grunting and panting and I thought I heard him say, "Yeah.."

Our movements became manic: me, behind him, driving my entire middle body towards and away from him in a frenzy; him bending in front of me, slamming his arse backwards to meet every thrust of my cock.  My balls hung down from the front of my briefs, and I could feel his swinging back and hitting them with every thrust we made.  Mine felt larger but his hung lower; low enough to bob back and forwards in his loose scrotum like a pendulum.

I was in control of him and I loved it.  My cock was my weapon; his arse - no matter how repellent - was its prize.  He'd accepted his defeat and given it to me.  I had his body now I had his acceptance.

The stench of our sex was overpowering: raw and revolting.  We both could smell it, we both knew what it meant.  But neither of us could stop panting, breathing it in, and for me at least it only served to fuel my already intense carnal pleasure.

I started cumming copiously and my semen spilled out of his hole, stained and discoloured by his arse.  I kept thrusting, revelling in the wet squelching sounds my cock was making inside of him, and heard him gasping and whimpering.

I looked back up to his face and saw that his eyes were wide open, staring blankly ahead of him, and his lips were quivering.  He started manically thrusting his hips, pumping his own semen onto the bed, lost in his own orgasm.

I pulled out of him and fell backwards across the room, falling into the desk again.

I held onto it, supporting myself against it, and watched his orgasm subside.

I was besieged by immediate waves of self-loathing at what I'd just done.  I'd raped this guy.  I'd reduced myself to his own level.  I'd done something, enjoyed something, that I would never have thought myself capable of even contemplating.

And yet I hadn't contemplated it, hadn't considered it for a second: I'd just gone ahead and done it.  Just unquestioningly followed desires I hadn't known even existed.

I'd come downstairs to find a ghost and found something infinitely and unimaginably more monstrous already inside me.

I wiped my cock on my briefs and pulled them up.

Then I knelt down and picked up his knife.

All the while, he just lay there, maybe experiencing his own inner torments.

I walked over to him and cut the tights, freeing his right leg.  He just lay there.

Then I unfastened the cable which had secured his hands.

He still just lay there, his wet, pillaged arse pointing upwards, his face lying sideways, his eyes seeming to study the pattern on the duvet.

I said, "You're gonna go now."

At first he didn't move.  He just lay there, staring at the duvet.

Then, slowly, he seemed to pull himself together.

He raised himself up off the bed and reached down for his boxer shorts.  As he did so, I noticed that his cock had a long string of cum hanging from it.

Then, making no acknowledgement of my presence, he pulled up his trousers and fastened his belt.  Went over to his sports bag and threw some of the stuff from it onto the floor.

As he walked out into the corridor, I picked up the torch and followed him.

He walked to the front door and opened it.  Without a word, without even turning to look at me, he stepped outside into the snow and I closed the door behind him.

A few weeks later, long after that frantic half hour in which I'd sorted things out as well as could, cleaned up the blood and scattered the stuff from his bag into likely places around the room, Helen and I were sitting in the warmth of a pub waiting for a couple of friends to meet us.

She made some comment about her sister dumping Ian, her boyfriend.

I was hardly interested.  Ian had been around at Helen's house in Glasgow with the rest of us at Christmas and had seemed like a pretty nice guy.  A bit gormless but okay.

She went on to say that a gang of local lads had turned up one night at her sister's house wanting to "have words with" a blond guy in the house.  The boyfriend of someone in the house.

Then I started listening.

She said that since Ian was the only guy who spent any time around there and who fitted that description, it had seemed as if the visitors were for him.  Nothing had actually happened because he wasn't at the house and, besides, one of the girls had phoned the police.  The lads had cleared off.

But Helen's sister had got it into her head that Ian was getting into drugs and that there was something going on between him and the lads who'd come round.  Unpaid debts and stuff.  He'd denied it but they'd had a massive argument about trust and they'd parted their ways.

"Pity," I said as casually as I could.  "He was a nice guy."

"Nice guy?  Jesus, Seb.  Sonia was well out of that.  God knows what the guy must have been into..."

He was the type of guy who'd maybe smoked a bit dope, but not much else.

But I said, "Yeah.  I guess."

"He was totally wrong for her.  I told her that."

They'd made a good couple.

I said, "Yeah.  It's for the best."

Neither of us anything more for a couple of minutes.

Then she added, "She was crying her eyes out."

I didn't say anything.  I just took a drink from my pint.

She went on, "She said he was too.  When she dumped him."

Then I felt like shit.  And I felt even more like shit for not saying anything.  For just sitting there looking at my drink until she started talking about something else.

"Ghost" is one of my own favourites - though more, I admit, for the atmosphere of the story than for any erotic aspects it may have.  I love stories which combine horror and sex - some of James Herbert's are especially memorable - and this is the first of my two attempts (the second being "Upper Chapel").

"Ghost" deals with the theme of non-consensual sex in a way which I hope readers don't find unacceptable or abhorrent.  As a pacifistic person, I deplore stories in which men are brutalised and humiliated for someone else's gratification.  "Ghost" was supposed to be a means of expressing my own feelings of anger and desperation when I found myself placed in a similar, though not identical, situation to the one described here.

A couple of years ago, I half-wrote about another experience I had with non-consensual sex ("The Stockbridge Horror" which explains why Kaz and I broke up) but, perhaps because I've recently seen some of the affects such incidents have on the men who endured them, I've become reluctant to complete it.