The anniversary was always hard, even after almost twenty years, you miss her desperately.

You know, logically, that it wasn't your fault. You'd been held over late at work, and your wife with her beautiful black plumage, her stomach rounded with your unborn child...

The whiskey burns on the way down. The neck of the mostly-empty bottle glistens in the flickering light of the candles on the mantlepeice. Thunder makes the windows rattle in their frames, a flash of lightning illuminating the living room you once shared with her. The place where you'd have started your family if not for the early freeze, the rain-slick road across the old bridge...

If you'd been behind the wheel, then maybe the three of you would be here together, telling scary stories by candlelight right now, or maybe you wouldn't have been able to control the old, heavy sedan any better. Even then, you'd all be together now. Not alone. Not tormented.

The bottle has become empty, dribbles of whiskey dotting the collar of your undershirt, and you let it drop from your numb fingers, clattering against its siblings on the floor under your feet.

It has to be close to midnight, the wind howling like a mournful wail outside the window. Lenore... how you miss her.

You feel your head touch your chest, the dull roar of the rain on the windowpanes almost comforting.

"Hey."

You jerk awake with a start, something cold brushing against your bare arm and making the hairs stand on end.

There's no dancing firelight when you open your eyes, and the storm is raging more feircely than before, but the shapes of things are visible in the dim blue glow that illuminates the room.

A feather traces its way down your arm, leaving a glittering trail behind it that slowly fades. it's a long flight feather, connected to a wrist with slim, clawed fingers that touch you, making you shudder. Your eyes follow them as they move your hand, running along your palm, interlocking her fingers with yours.

A slender feathered arm appears from the gloom, the blue spectral glow intensifying as more and more of the figure reveals itself.

Narrow shoulders, a slender neck, short feather-hair curling around her cheeks and a pair of big, round eyes above smooth nasal feathers that cover the base of a straight beak, the corners of which drift upwards in a smile.

"Lenore?" the whisper that leaves your lips is choked with emotion. She flutters her eyelashes at you, as long and beautiful as you remember. This is a dream. A vision borne of alcohol and lonliness.

Your eyes trace down her neck again. The nipples of her small breasts poke through the slick feathers of her chest. There's a fleeting thought that they're smaller than you remember, but you shake it off, especially when you touch them. The icy nubs are sensitive, and her rough voice competes with the raging storm when she moans.

Her belly... that hurts you. Not rounded with child, but slender and tight, her narrow hips widening into plump thighs that come into existence straddlng your legs as her hand squeezes yours so tight as her beak opens and her bright eyes close.

The feathers of her tail fan out behind her as she rocks her cool hips against yours, the feathers there slick with arousal that shimmers and glistens with spectral light as it highlights the outline of your cock through the stained sweatpants your suddenly embarrassed to find yourself in.

"Lenore!"

She refuses to let go of your hand, so you let go of her breast, digging your fingers into the feathers at the back of her head and pulling her open beak against your mouth.

It's awkward at first, just like it used to be when you kissed her living flesh, before the two of you learned how to make your disparate anatomy fit together in a way you both enjoyed.

You bite down on the hard tip of her nimble tongue and she gasps, finally letting your hand go and pushing slightly away. Lenore always loved that, but the ghostly apparition looks confused, then blinks and shakes her head.

Clawed feet grasp your ankles.

"Lay back," she says. It's been so long since you heard her voice.

"Please, fuck me."

She spreads her thighs, collecting more of that glistening ectoplasm on her fingers as she works them under her tailfeathers.

You shimmy out of your sweatpants and underwear, the outline of your cock glowing as her slim, scaled fingers rub more of her cool, slippery ghost lube up and down your shaft.

"In the ass?" you ask. It's not like you'd never done it, but it wasn't exactly either of your first choices.

"Mmhmm," she says, shifting her hips forward and holding you upright as her thighs compress. The head of your dick kisses her between the cheeks.

Who are you to deny your ghost wife? You push her hand out of the way and firmly grab her hips, thrusting up with slow, steady pressure and feeling her pucker tighten before the pressure and slick lube overcome the resistance and you push your way inside.

Unlike her cool exterior, the inside of her as is fiendishly hot, and far, far tighter than you remember.

"Fucking Hell!" she moans, arching her back as you pull her down to meet you and her thighs jiggle as your hips clap together.

She tosses her head back, squeezing one of her tits and twisting her nipple between two talons while she braces herself against your chest with the other. You let her sit, adjusting to your size as she shifts her hips back and forward in small, jerky motions. You try to acclimate yourself to the heat and tightness, stroking the feathers of her hip and playing with her free breast while she moans through her beak.

More of her slick lube leaks down between her legs, dripping down the length of your cock when you give the first experimental thrust.

"Fuck!" she croaks, looking down with half-lidded eyes.

"That's the idea," you say through gritted teeth as you dig your fingers into her curvy hips and start to drive yourself up into her with long, slow thrusts, letting her shockingly substantial weigh slide her body back down your dick before you bounce her up again.

She takes over mauling both her perky titties as you use both hands to hold her narrow waist, and both of you moan together, her ethereal flesh cast in sharp relief by the flashes of lightning and your moaning, panting breaths compete with the driving rain and thunderclaps.

You missed her so much. So, so so much! And you never found anybody else. You never could break away from the chains of that deep, passionate love that's shackled you together even now.

"Fuck me!" she screams, head thrown back, wild as the storm as she works her hips, bouncing frantically on your cock as you fuck her just as hard. You'd be sweating if her cool tailfeathers weren't spread out against your thighs. She clenches down around you as she warks an ululating moan, bending over and humping you as hard as she can as you feel your thighs start to burn, the couch creaking as you pound her.

Your fingers travel up from her waist and across her back. Her head nestles against your shoulder, beak hard against the side of your neck.

"Fuck me, daddy," she moans. That's new, but you're getting close, the hot slick lust uncoiling from deep within your balls. Her thighs shudder as she collapses onto of you and you have to carry yourself over the finish line, just a few jerky, frantic thrusts as you hold her tight and unload inside her.

Her thighs squeeze down against your hips, her clawed feet grabbing your calves and holding you tightly inside of her while she squeezes you in a desperate, clinging hug and you squeeze her back just as tightly, until you're afraid she'll pop like an ephemeral soap bubble.

As the aftershocks of the most intense nut of your life start to fade, you look down her slim back and narrow hips to her splayed tailfeathers as she holds onto you, her body heaving with deep, shuddering breaths.

A few things start to click into place.

Your penis softens with extraordinary speed and you push her up, eyes roaming over her petite frame. She looks down at you with blissed-out, glowing blue eyes, her tongue hanging out the side of her beak.

"Lenore?"

Maybe just after highschool.

She smiles, a sinster grin, and shakes her head 'no.'

"Mom said if you're going to join us, it'd have to be me."

A chill much colder than her ectoplasmic flesh runs down your spine.

"Don't worry, daddy. Hell's actually pretty chill."