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?"
