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The Phasmophages

Yelena shuddered. She was already regretting coming to this supposedly haunted house. No, she didn’t really believe in ghosts, but a run-down and long since abandoned hospital like this was intense enough to give anyone the creeps. As she explored the building, there were sounds that she couldn't identify. Things fell over when she hadn't been near them. Maybe it was rats, or maybe it was the wind outside. Every now and then she nearly gave herself a heart attack after spotting something that almost looked like a person in the corner of her vision. A coat-stand with an old uniform on it. A medical mannequin. A poster.

Okay girlie, you’re spooking yourself at this point. Just focus on filming stuff. You’re making content. That’s what you’re here for. You’re taking the heart and soul of a place with horrible history and compressing it into bite-sized chunks of excitement for your audience. You’re not here to scare yourself. Get a grip.

Yelena sat down on a bench that she imagined hundreds of patients had sat on before. An old hospital would've been creepy enough, but this one had specifically been a *mental hospital* in the days when patients were just kept somewhere instead of actually being treated. And that by itself was already enough to make an entire spooky video about, but there was another perk. Nobody had made one about this place before. There were rumors that it was haunted, but even that hadn’t managed to attract any eager content creators to the place, so Yelena was the first.

She could certainly see why nobody else had done it. The hospital had an outright oppressive vibe, the kind that made her wonder if someone else had tried to make a video before and simply disappeared. She half expected to find discarded gear in every room she walked into, the owners having vanished midway through their- no, there was that irrational fear again. Ghosts don’t even exist to begin with, Yelena thought to herself. Sometimes, being a deer sucked; the ancient impulses of being afraid of everything hadn’t fully left them even in the modern day.

Breathe. Get it together. At most you’ll encounter a squatter or something, and if they’re aggressive, you got your pepper spray.

She patted the pocket with the reassuring cylinder. Right. It was time to get back to work, she thought, and finally worked up the courage to flick her camera back on.

“Like I was saying,” she spoke. “This place used to be an insane asylum. They closed it about a hundred years ago when one of the patients went on a murder spree, which only ended after police finally shot him. Rumors say he used an axe for it. As for where he got the axe from? Well, traditional historians agree that-”

The lights flickered, interrupting her shamelessly exploitative description of the place. It was a wonder that this place still had any working lights at all, never mind why they were turning on in the first place, but it was irritating. It made her lose focus. And it made her think about stupid ghosts again. Ghosts that didn’t exist, she reminded herself.

“-traditional historians agree that the man had stolen an axe from the groundskeeper of the estate, when-”

The lights flickered again and Yelena let out a growl of frustration. But then, she heard heavy footsteps behind her, unmistakably so. Yelena spun around – praying that it was just a rat having knocked something over or maybe her equipment tipping on the uneven floor –and through her camera lens, she could see a wall ripple like water as a limb reached out, holding an axe.

Yelena froze. Had she just completely lost it? Had she spooked herself to the point of an active psychotic episode? When she lowered her camera, there was initially nothing there.

Calm down. Calm. Down.

She took a few steps backwards, breathing deeply before she dared to look again. Only this time, as she raised her eyes from the camera, she could see it with her own eyes. The shape emerged fully from the wall; a half-transparent, almost ethereal figure in the shape of bull with an axe held tight in its grip, appearing more solid now. The lights flickered wildly above the apparition, as if protesting its very existence. It snapped towards her. Not turned, but one second it was facing the opposite wall, and then it was facing her, as if frames of animation were missing.

The corridor turned deathly cold, all heat sapped from her surroundings instantly by the apparition’s manifestation.

A ghost, then. Yelena’s panicking mind had no other explanation. She was facing a ghost, even though ghosts weren’t real. But she had seen enough horror movies to know the appropriate reaction to take the instant it moved, stepping towards her and raising the spectral axe.

Yelena turned around and ran. Even if she believed ghosts weren't real, she had no desire to become proof otherwise, nor test if the unearthly being was just some very clever trickery.

With each step, it moved faster, and it was coming straight towards her, axe bobbing in its hands with every lurching step, absolute freezing malice radiating from the apparition. Frost formed on the walls near it, but as a deer, Yelena was still faster. She reached the door she had entered through, only to find that it had slammed shut. The handle burned with an absolute cold that she knew would immediately freeze her hand solid if she touched it.

She kicked the door in a blind panic. Come on, fucking open, I can’t die here, she begged mentally, and yet, the door wouldn’t budge. Of course it didn’t, these asylums were built to keep people in and now she was trapped here. In a last-ditch attempt, she grabbed her pepper spray, flicked the lid open, and desperately emptied the canister at the ghost.

Unsurprisingly, there was no effect. It was dead, it didn’t have any nerves for the concentrated capsaicin to irritate. Yelena screamed as it kept moving, kicking at the door but ultimately knowing that this was how she would die.

The ghost raised its axe to cut her down. And then it froze right in the middle of its swing, as though paused like a video recording.

“And there you are, Mr. Grunwald,” a voice as sweet as honey came from a nearby room. A figure in a heavy-looking scarlet robe stepped into the corridor, the door swinging open effortlessly. He looked like something from Arabian Nights; a fox clad in silk and gleaming gold, his hands adorned with glinting jewels to the point one could barely see the fur beneath.

His fingers traced a shape in the air, and the ghost convulsed, his spectral arms twisted backwards jointlessly. There was a groan, a beyond-the-grave sound of gurgling agony.

“For so long, you hid from us,” he continued. “Was it fear? Malice? Self-preservation, despite having been dead for a hundred years? We’ve been looking for you, all that time.”

As the fox spoke, it looked his like mouth hung open as if unhinged, like a snake’s, only closing to form the words he spoke. Either it was an optical illusion of some kind, or he had been in some horrible accident that left him deformed despite the trappings of beauty and luxury he wore.

His eyes, too, gleamed in the darkness, reflecting what little light there was.

“And now you manifest, purely out of sheer hatred for the living. To share your suffering with this young woman. Or perhaps simply because you need to inflict pain, as it was inflicted upon you, driving you mad with anger. How delicious,” the strange fox whispered. “What delightful seasoning. How did you die, I wonder? We have no records. But I’ll know soon. I’ll taste your end myself.”

On the ghost’s distorted face, where there had previously been an expression of hatred, was now an expression of terror mixed with defiance. Its powerful bovine features were twisted and bent, and he flickered, twitching again like a paused recording on an old VCR.

The fox was drooling, rivulets of his saliva hanging from lips and fangs. But was it hunger, or simply a result of whatever accident he had been in? Yelena couldn’t tell.

He raised an arm, and suddenly the ghost was animate again, stumbling and nearly falling to its knees in a strangely human way. “But there is no such thing as enough spice, no such thing as too much flavor. Perhaps you’d like a final chance, a final desperate hope that you might escape and continue inflicting your terror on innocents?”

Mr. Grunwald – as the robed fox had identified him – spun around with a roar like the cracking of ice, immediately throwing the spectral axe at the fox. It stopped, frozen just like his body had been, right before it would’ve impacted his chest. The fox had made no attempt to dodge or move despite the seemingly lethal threat.

“Quaint. Why an axe, I wonder? Perhaps you were a lumberjack. A heroic firefighter? Oh, oh, oh, I will know all you were.”

The axe trembled as the fox’s clawed fingers traced across it, before it disintegrated, melting into mist that the robed figure greedily inhaled though that distended, salivating mouth. The ghost let out a scream that sounded like pain, like that of someone being eaten alive, the axe perhaps being part of his spectral form. Yelena didn’t understand any of what she was seeing, but she did recognize that she had almost certainly been saved from the ghost’s wrath.

“Oh, the sweet despair,” whispered the fox. And he stepped closer, fearlessly approaching the murderous apparition, his long robe trailing behind him on the dusty floor and yet gathering no dust or dirt. The lights flickered as the ghost tried to move, to escape back into hiding through the wall, only to find itself unable to, the brick wall of the asylum just as impenetrable to him as it would’ve been to Yelena. It suddenly seemed so powerless as the fox drew closer until he was so close that they could touch each other.

“Did you like that feeling? A part of yourself gone forever, beyond even death,” he continued murmuring, like a lover might in bed. A jeweled hand reached out to brush immaculately groomed and painted claws across the ghost’s mangled face. “After a hundred years, there’s so much more of that awaiting you. Forever more.”

The lights went out, one by one, every remaining bulb in the worn corridor popping as the world was plunged into absolute pitch-black darkness.

Yelena cowered in a corner, waiting for something to happen. But nothing did, for the longest time. And then, the unnatural cold seemed to lift, and the fox – who was still there, while the apparition was utterly gone – flicked on a flashlight that seemed terribly mismatched with his attire.

When he looked at her, he looked normal. Like any other red fox, even if ostensibly dressed. He gave her a reassuring smile; had she just imagined the unhinged mouth in a moment of terror? A trick of the light?

“I do apologize for the dramatic display, but he had to go,” he said, in an apologetic tone. “After all, he’s been haunting this location for a hundred years, ever since the epidemic. And you’re quite welcome, yourself. I think what he was planning might’ve left you haunting this place as well.”

“I, um, thank you. What… was all of that?” Yelena stuttered. Some part of her was screaming at her to get out, but the fox was too polite, almost cordial, for her to just run. He had saved her, after all, hadn’t he?

“A ghost,” the fox smiled. “They can be quite terrifying unless you know how to handle them, yes? Oh, where are my manners? I am Gabriel, and I, along with a few more individuals, hunt these malignant apparitions.”

“I’m… Yelena,” the deer replied. “Thank you for saving me, if that’s what you did.”

He shrugged, but then briefly bowed to the deer. “I did. Though purely by accident. My associates and I have wanted to meet the legendary Mr. Grunwald for… quite some time. It turns out that he needed bait to manifest, and you, unwittingly, became that bait. Yet, no harm done, except to him.”

“What did you do to him? I couldn’t see anything when the lights went out,” Yelena asked. She was slowly calming down. The fox clearly meant her no harm.

“Well, hm. If you do wish to know the specifics, perhaps you’d be interested in meeting my organization,” Gabriel offered. “It’s somewhat secret, but the more I think about it, I do think it’s one we should share with you. A ghost haunting you leaves a… mark, so to speak, that tends to attract more of them.”

“Am I- am I in danger, then? Of more of those things coming after me?” Yelena asked, her natural nervousness spiking again.

The adorned fox shrugged again. “You may be. But we can, of course, teach you how to effortlessly fend them off, as you saw me do.”

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that he wasn’t telling the whole truth. But if what he said was true, it made sense in a way. Yelena still had a hard time believing that she had been attacked by a ghost to begin with, given that ghosts didn’t exist.

And so, Yelena made the fateful choice to agree to join Gabriel and his undoubtedly strange company, if only because she didn’t know if she really had a choice, if the part about being marked by the supernatural was true.

---

Together, the anachronistically dressed fox and Yelena arrived at a grand mansion. It was ornate, and whereas back in the city Gabriel had looked out of place, here he looked exactly like what one might expect the residents of a stunningly beautiful turn-of-the-century mansion to look like. They entered through heavy doors and into the lap of luxury itself, the interior draped in silks and clad in gold.

Five others greeted them.

“Who is this that you bring to us?” a leopard asked. She was dressed in much the same fashion as Gabriel, though much more lightly so, her silken robes revealing much of her curvaceous, bejeweled body. “And going by the expression on your face, I’d imagine you found Mr. Grunwald as well, did you not?”

“Oh yes, she was being hunted by the old thing,” Gabriel grinned from ear to ear. “He had expected to simply kill this beautiful deer to sate his rage. Oh, and his reaction upon discovering something that wasn't pre was… delectable. The intensity of his dead emotions, the flavor…”

The other five seemed transfixed by his tale, each expressing that they wished it had been them, as if they enjoyed hunting ghosts, perhaps in a much deeper way than Yelena had imagined.

“He was delicious, so utterly terrified and yet burning with hatred,” Gabriel continued. “But enough about him. This is Yelena, and I believe she needs our protection, having been marked by them.”

“Our protection?” a regal-looking bird chuckled. Yelena couldn’t tell what species he even was, except that his feathers were brilliant, pearlescent in almost all the colors of the rainbow. “Or do you wish to induct her?”

Gabriel never stopped smiling. “Induction is our protection, is it not?”

“And does she know what we do?” the bird asked.

“We shall show her first-hand what it is we do,” the fox replied, and then turned to Yelena. “And not to worry, it includes nothing unpleasant. Not for us and not for you, at least. We have some other guests present tonight.”

“Guests?” Yelena asked, and immediately they all looked at her. Other than the leopard, the bird, and Gabriel, there were a wolf, a dragon of some type, and the group’s other woman, a skunk. She could almost feel their eyes boring into her.

“I suppose there is no need to tiptoe around it,” the wolf finally spoke. “We have captured certain malignant spirits, to be… disposed of at our leisure after being sufficiently studied. You will join us for this and learn how to defend yourself.”

Yelena noticed a tremor in the wolf’s voice, but she wasn’t sure what emotion it betrayed. All six were quite unreadable, jovial and eloquent, but the deer couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more to them. She thought back to the mental hospital where they had met only hours before, and how Gabriel had looked almost emaciated.

A round of introductions followed. The wolf was Nicholas, the bird Luke, and the dragon introduced himself as Julius. The leopard and the skunk were Isabella and Sofia in turn, their names matching their strange, old-fashioned, or rather outright classical and ostentatious attire.

“We did originally plan to wait until tomorrow to handle our guests,” Luke laughed, the mansion’s many lights glinting off his gilded beak. “But I suppose it is past midnight and so, tomorrow is today. Shall we indulge ourselves and our new guest, then?”

“Mm, we should,” Isabella murmured. “And then when it is truly tomorrow, we hunt once more.”

There it was, now Yelena recognized it. There was a distinct tension, a sexual charge in the air, as if her strange hosts were getting excited by the idea of “handling” whatever beings they had trapped. It made the deer feel skittish, but if she ran now, how was she supposed to defend herself if she found herself haunted by another apparition?

She followed the group to a different room, and that’s when she saw what was truly happening. The room had six enormous, person-sized tanks. And in each of them, a ghost was trapped.

“Are they… actual ghosts? Like, actual dead people’s spirits?” she asked, her eyes flitting from a sorrowful-looking young woman with long hair to a man holding a spectral chainsaw against the glass of the tube, yet unable to as much as scratch it.

“They are. All malevolent,” Gabriel explained. “Perhaps the woman worries you? As a person, she was innocent. But she was murdered by her mother by being drowned in a well just as she was old enough to move out, and this thing she is now is not her former self. She will, if set free, attempt to drown others in turn.”

“He’s right,” Isabella remarked. “Regardless of what she looks like, regardless of how much she cries, she’s no longer a pup, but a being of hatred and murder. Death often twists us so.”

“…and what exactly are you going to do to her?” Yelena asked. Her heart was beating rapidly.

“I suppose there’s no point in being coy, is there?” Luke shrugged. “We eat them.”

“You w-what? You eat the ghosts?” Yelena stuttered.

“We are the phasmophages. We devour evil spirits. And in doing so, we live eternally,” Luke explained. His feathers seemed to shine even brighter. “And we have been doing so for… centuries, in my case. A millennium, for Gabriel. Isabella is our newest addition, at only a hundred years old.”

The leopard didn’t look a day older than twenty-five.

“Are you serious?” Yelena asked. It was as if she had been thrust into a different reality where ghosts existed and people ate them.

“I’d say we are dead serious, but you wouldn’t appreciate the pun,” Gabriel smiled. “We shall demonstrate. And then you shall do the same. It’s not difficult, if you know how.”

Yelena was left dazed. “I… I don’t-”

“Watch,” Gabriel whispered, wrapping an arm around her as if to keep her safe. “Don’t worry. We have more than enough experience to keep you safe.”

Luke was the one step forward. With his back to the others, he approached a tank holding a wholly ghostly figure without discernible features bar for a fleeting visage in the misty shape it took. The tank snapped open, and Luke inhaled. In that moment, with his arm raised, he had the same emaciated look that Yelena thought she had seen with Gabriel. The ghost didn’t move, nor did it scream, simply accepting its fate as it dissolved fully into mist that quickly disappeared.

“Bland,” Luke said, as he turned back towards the group. “Too far gone to have much flavor. But nutritious with age.”

“He was one of the oldest we’ve ever caught,” Isabella commented. “Always a gamble whether they gain complexity or lose flavor.”

“True, I cannot complain,” Luke replied. “Not all can be as tasty as I am sure Mr. Grunwald must’ve been.”

There was a tinge of jealousy to his voice as he glanced towards Gabriel, and it unnerved Yelena how readily they talked about these evil ghosts as some kind of bizarre delicacies. They had been living things once, each just as alive and complex as they were, and it seemed degrading to consider them mere food.

After the demonstration, it was Yelena’s turn. They presented her with a robe that felt too heavy and several ancient-looking rings she was almost afraid to slide onto her fingers. She hesitated only for a moment before taking off her clothes and putting on the robes, given how important they seemed to the group.

“Merely attire. From my times, you see. Quite comfortable and befitting of our calling,” Gabriel smiled as he always did, reassuringly.

“I always felt that we’re perhaps a little too old-fashioned,” Isabella remarked. “But then, who can really say no to the touch of the softest silk?”

“Agreed. It’s certainly nicer than synthetic fibers,” Sofia added.

They were all acting very casually given that they were releasing murderous ghosts one by one, presumably all risking death in doing so.

Yelena was guided to the tank holding the drowned woman that she now knew wanted to do nothing but kill. Though already trembling, the deer realized that she had to do this or she wouldn’t be safe. And eternal life didn’t seem so bad in exchange for eliminating something truly evil from the world.

Gabriel leaned over her. “Remember. Focus your will. Turn your fear against them. And breathe them in.”

She wasn’t sure how she would do it, but maybe there was something more to it. The heavy rings sparkling on her fingers, or perhaps the robe held some power that would allow her to do this impossible task.

“Just like that?” she asked. “I mean, can anyone just… do it?”

“Yes. With some practice. They’re simply afraid to do so. If you’re afraid, they have power over you. Ghosts like these-”

He gestured at the tanks and the horrifying things contained in each.

“-they only choose to appear if their would-be victim fears them. Remember Mr. Grunwald? He hid from me for almost ten years. And then, when you entered the hospital to…” Gabriel commented, trailing off.

“To what?” Isabella asked with a chuckle. “Take photos? You know what a camera is.”

“I believe they call it recording,” Gabriel replied with a snap of his fingers. “For something called a website. It’s difficult to keep up with all the new technology. Either way. If you’re not afraid, they’re powerless. And then you devour them. Try it.”

He stepped back, and then the tank suddenly opened with a hiss. Expecting to be immediately rushed, a surge of adrenaline shot through her. She wasn’t going to die like this. Before anyone, even the ghost, could react, she raised her hand as she had seen Luke do.

“They’re manipulating you. They’re lying,” the girl hissed. She didn’t move, and of course, that was only because she couldn’t.

“No,” Yelena growled. “I saw what ‘Mr. Grunwald’ tried to do. What he tried to do to me.”

She hadn’t expected the ghosts to talk, but at that moment, her fear turned to anger. Her hand curled into a fist, and now, the ghost let out an ear-piercing scream of pain as her spectral body crumbled, slowly, into ethereal dust that Yelena inhaled forcefully. The pain sounded real, but she knew the truth; it was all an attempt to make her stop, to have a chance to kill her. She couldn’t stop.

The ghost fought her. She wasn’t as strong as Gabriel or Luke, the ghost flickering and snapping into tortured positions as she forced it to dissolve, trying to get away and yet failing to do so. The ethereal mist was drawn to her as if by gravity, and she breathed it in. It tasted like well-water, though boiling over with pure yet ephemeral… no, not hatred, as she had expected_._ Sorrow. Like tears in mossy water.

But it was too late to stop now. Whatever the ghost’s motivation, it was half consumed, and leaving it like that would have been even crueler than simply annihilating it, she thought. And so, Yelena inhaled again sharply, drawing the rest of the creature in, her mouth opening wider than she had thought possible as a heavy rush came over her. Power, lust, dominance, it hit her like a truck, a drug more powerful than any she had ever tried, and she could only gasp at the intensity of it. Euphoria, immense satisfaction, raw and carnal might. She was dripping wet in an instant.

In that moment she knew everything about the girl’s former life, too. How she had been mistreated, only to be drowned in the end. It all came together in one vivid experience, she could taste every emotion the ghost had ever had, like her soul had been torn apart and every last fragment of her was laid bare like a buffet for Yelena’s feast. One last time, the ghost shuddered, a final spasm resisting what Yelena was doing, one last spark of existence defying the void, and then she was gone.

Yelena staggered backwards. Her pupils were dilated, and she felt so incredibly powerful, so vital, as if mortality held no more dominion over her.

“Well done,” Luke smiled at her. “How do you feel?”

Did he always look so- oh, fuck it.

She embraced him, catching his beak in a kiss. And sure enough, as Yelena pressed herself against the regal bird, she could feel he was just as aroused, his stiff length rubbing up against her in turn. It was a breathless moment of pure arousal, her hand greedily slipping underneath his robe and grabbing that hardness.

The world melted away. Whatever the others said, she didn’t hear. And he welcomed her lust, pulling the robe off her shoulders and leaving her curvaceous body naked, caressing her heavy breasts with both hands as he returned both the kiss and her lust.

In no time they were actively grinding against each other, Yelena’s hand eagerly stroking the bird’s cock as he in turn fondled every part of her that he could reach, including shamelessly sliding a finger into her naked pussy. She couldn’t believe how incredibly horny she felt, especially for a stranger that she had known for less than an hour, and the context of it all should’ve been a turnoff, but it wasn’t. Her entire body reverberated with an almost orgasmic lust as she simply pushed him to the floor right then and there while the others did whatever they did to the other ghosts.

His cock, just as engorged with lust as her whole body felt, pointed straight up, his open and luxurious robes providing a soft enough spot for him to lay down on. Yelena was on top of him almost instantly, pinning his feathered shoulders down and leaning over him so that his beak could reach her breasts. Every slick little flick of his tongue across her bumpy areolas was exquisite, and the bird was a very experienced lover no matter her impatience and need, playing her like a fiddle as he wrapped his arms around her in turn.

He did have centuries of experience, after all, and yet he also had all the vigor and energy of someone even younger than Yelena. His warm hands on her hips guided her to straddle him, and soon her lips kissed the blunt head of his cock. Yelena was the one who guided him into herself, grasping the base of his girthy shaft firmly, pushing it against her slippery entrance, and then letting gravity do the rest. She gasped as he slid into her, filling her so utterly.

The tanks were empty now, and the group had decided to join Yelena and Luke in sating their other hungers as dessert. Isabella and Sofia were curled up in a quivering sixty-nine, lapping up each other’s juices like sweet ambrosia. Nicholas and Julius were already mating roughly, the wolf on all fours as the dragon hammered into him with loud, rhythmic smacks. And Yelena already knew that she wouldn’t stop with her handsome bird as their hips began to move, hers gyrating and his thrusting, bouncing her on his lap. No, she wanted to sample all of her new friends. There was no such thing as too much flavor, after all. Not when she was burning up, feeling energized to the point she doubted she’d ever sleep again.

From gentle and even classy, their rutting quickly turned frenzied, almost feral. Luke crooned as he fucked her hard, the wet slapping of his feathered groin slamming into her soaked body echoing in the room. Yelena could barely believe it, but in no time at all she was right on the brink of orgasm, but just as she was about to crest that hill, a soft hand turned her head and she found herself face to face with the skunk’s pussy, just as wet as her own. She didn’t hesitate, immediately flicking her tongue over her clit.

“You’re taking to this well,” Sofia purred. “I bet you’ve never even tasted a woman before.”

She hadn’t, but it wasn’t hard to get into. Her nectar tasted sweet and honeyed, and the cock pistoning into her with expert precision made sure that she was burning hot with lust. Before long, her tongue was inside the skunk, tasting her in the most intimate way possible and feeling those perfect, silken walls clench around her tongue to reward her with a fresh, delicious gush of her feminine juices.

Yelena moaned as she licked, and just as Sofia’s hands pulled her head tighter to grind against her lips and tongue, both she and Luke finally reached their peaks. He throbbed inside her heavily, and she could feel his cum erupting into her. It was glorious, white-hot pleasure, and she moaned against Sofia’s pussy as her own orgasm engulfed her, far more intense than anything she had ever felt before.

She arched her back with a heated wail of pleasure as she clenched in turn, milking the beautiful bird dry with each pleasure-spasm. Her face was matted with Sofia’s juices, and yet she wanted more. Luke emptied all he had inside her, and by the time her legs were steady enough to dismount him, she was readily dripping with his seed. Even the thick warmth oozing down her legs felt somehow luxuriant.

But they weren’t even halfway done. And neither was she. The sheer lust of them all, engorged on the energy of the ghosts they had eaten, had to be thoroughly sated, and they were going to do so. And so, she picked the next-closest person, Isabella – currently already getting fucked by Julius, whose emerald scales had taken on an almost ethereal shine – and dropped to her knees to taste her cum-filled pussy in turn. She didn’t know whose cum it was, but the mélange of her arousal and the masculine musk was deeply intoxicating, as was watching the dragon’s heavy balls slap against her with each thrust.

Before long at all she felt someone grab her ass. Gabriel. He didn’t hesitate in the slightest, just as eager as the rest of them to both revel and introduce the deer to them properly, and so his knotted, vulpine cock sunk into her well-used sex effortlessly.

“Enjoying yourself?” he growled playfully.

Yelena could only moan in the affirmative before Nicholas nudged his way in to take Isabella’s place at her mouth and filled her muzzle with his own cock and she went on to suck on him breathlessly, wanting nothing more than to feel his cum spurt all over her broad tongue.

By the end of that long night of pure hedonism, where nobody made any distinctions based on gender, that heavenly sexual high finally began to settle. Everyone had tasted her and she had, in turn, tasted all of them. She was dripping with mixed cum, but so was everyone else, the males included. Yelena couldn’t remember ever feeling so utterly satisfied as she finally went to shower and wash that mess off her. The pleasure made the strangely distasteful act of devouring a ghost feel like a footnote, a pale memory that didn’t really matter.

---

After that night, time flew by for Yelena. They hunted every haunted location that they could find, and during this time she learned the true variety of flavor of her newfound favorite delicacy. The stinging bite of jealousy, the spicy heat of rage, the forlorn taste of a life unfulfilled, they all blended together into a deeply erotic palette of sensations. The more Yelena indulged, the more she wanted, her hunger only growing with each spirit that she devoured with the others.

Each meal was followed by an orgy of absolute, dissolute pleasure, usually among the silks and gold of their mansion. The pleasure was never-ending, in the most literal sense, for a group of immortals who had everything they could ever want. It was an easy life to fall into, with Yelena soon finding herself entirely forgetting about her modest former life, at least as long as their revelries continued.

Eventually, though, all the nearby hauntings were exhausted as their hunger outgrew the supply. This was nothing new, Gabriel reassured her. Despite their inexhaustible wealth, the phasmophages were a nomadic group, and would simply move to new locations to continue their lives while letting new tragedies unfold and specters manifest where they had previously picked clean. But moving took time, planning, and effort, and for a few weeks they had little to feed on – at least nothing delicious like the ancient ghosts they devoured together.

Thus, one day, after an utterly unknowable number of days spent in luxury and ecstasy with the phasmophages, Yelena woke up feeling strangely starved. Not hungry, exactly, but as if her body demanded food regardless. She struggled to her feet, her robes suddenly feeling heavy. She noticed that she had drooled all over the front of it in her sleep.

Ugh.

Groggily, Yelena stumbled into the bathroom, and there, an unfamiliar sight greeted her in the full-body mirror. She looked gaunt, as if she hadn’t eaten for months. Her ribs showed through her fur, and she couldn’t stop drooling, her jaw feeling just a little too weak to keep her mouth fully closed. She struggled to even swallow as she stared at herself in the mirror, rivulets of her saliva dangling from the corners of her mouth. Her fangs were sharp like those of a predator, and her appearance more like a ghoulish predator than a deer.

Yeah, she figured that she had to eat something. The last… whatever period of time it had been all felt like a blur. She wandered into the kitchen, where she met Gabriel, and Yelena jumped as she saw how he looked in turn. Just as she remembered seeing him, so long ago, at the asylum where they had first met. Like a monster. Like herself.

“Don’t be so alarmed, little deer,” the fox spoke. He sounded sick, or at least, not as he usually did. “Is it truly your first time seeing our true selves?”

“I… I barely remember… anything,” she groaned. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing is wrong with you. Our calling takes a toll, and we pay that toll by doing what we do,” he grinned, and that once charming grin was now a hideous mockery of a smile. “If we go for too long without eating, the damage begins to show, but that is simply the price we must pay.”

Yelena swallowed down a mouthful of what felt like stomach acid and bile. “You couldn’t have warned me about this beforehand?” she spat.

Gabriel approached her and leaned close. His patchy muzzle rubbed against Yelena’s own. “And what would that have changed? You have been enjoying your time with us. All we must do to return to normal is to eat once again.”

“I’m not sure if I can do this,” Yelena replied. “It’s… a bit much. Maybe I should just go back to my job.”

“Oh, yes. Your job. The years do tend to blur together when you’re having fun, do they not? I remember that feeling well, the constant euphoria washing time away. Tell me, Yelena, how old do you think you are?” Gabriel asked, and she could barely stomach looking at his distorted figure.

“Um, twenty-five, right? Maybe… twenty-six?” she suggested. Her stomach felt sour as she imagined what life would be like if she had somehow missed a year. But at least it was for a good cause, right? She was helping get rid of evil spirits for the good of all life.

“Sit down,” the fox demanded, and Yelena immediately obeyed, picking the nearest chair.

“Perhaps we should eat first,” he suggested. “I was hoping to wait with this until we were all feeling better, but you appear to have lost track of time.”

“Eat… what? There’s no… food, I looked,” Yelena groaned, her body yearning for something she couldn’t quite pinpoint.

“You have been devouring the phantasms of the past with us for enough time that you know what we eat, Yelena,” the fox sighed. “Mortal food is no longer for us. We need… the ethereal. So let us hunt.”

“N-no, I want to know, first. You said I lost track of time. I don’t want to… I do want to- oh, Jesus,” the stuttered. If she ate like that again, she knew she’d forget all about this and simply live, once again, in absolute luxury and pleasure, and the thought of it made her body ache with need. But she’d lose track of time. Maybe she’d lose someone like her aging parents and not even notice.

“How long has it been? Why won’t you just tell me?” she snarled. “So what if it’s been five years? People still watch videos. I could still go back to my parents. It’s like you’re trying to force me to stay.”

“You have been with us for some ninety years,” Gabriel told her bluntly. “And that would mean you are a hundred and fifteen years old.”

It was if Yelena’s mind short-circuited. Ninety years? Everyone she knew would be- no, that couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible.

“N-n-ninety… years?” she asked, still in utter, crushing disbelief.

“What does it matter? All mortal relationships are brief and fleeting, but we are still here,” Gabriel insisted. “Come. Let’s find you something to eat.”

Yelena stood up mutely, still drooling all over herself at the prospect of eating again. Her whole life was gone, all people she had ever known long since dead. Except the phasmophages. Her parents, everyone she had known as a child, everyone she had ever flirted with. Her career was long since over. She was probably legally dead, herself, having simply disappeared from the world ninety years ago.

With Gabriel holding her hand, they stepped outside the mansion, and though it was night, she could – in her clear-headed state – see that the world had changed. The mansion had been far outside the city last time she had consciously seen it, and now, the city had crept closer. The buildings had grown much taller, the skyline completely different from how she remembered it.

“Beautiful, is it not? And yet they keep repeating the same mistakes. Never shall there be a shortage of food for us, not for as long as people remain people,” Gabriel smiled. “So it was a millennium ago, and so it is now.”

“Everyone I know is gone_,_” Yelena snapped. “How can you be so fucking casual about it?”

Gabriel shrugged. She was starting to get irritated by his nonchalance, but then, he had seen countless generations come and go. Maybe, Yelena reasoned, she couldn’t really blame him. With time moving as fast as it did, maybe it wasn’t possible to get attached to anyone but other immortals.

“Your body and mind are currently deteriorating, Yelena,” he finally spoke as they walked towards the graveyard. The mansion had, of course, been built relatively close to where most of the city’s dead were buried, for situations when the phasmophages didn’t feel like chasing legendary prey, or situations like this where they had already exhausted the area. “You need to eat. And then you’ll feel better.”

Fine. She said nothing more, merely quietly mourning the loss of everyone she had known, except this strange group of people. The graveyard looked different, too. Digitized gravestones that showed little videos of the deceased, interspersed with advertisements for flower delivery services and grief counselling.

“Fascinating,” Gabriel laughed, his hideous face drawing into a wide grin. “This is all but guaranteed to make the dead restless. What a beautiful invention.”

They walked around. At this time of night, the graveyard was completely deserted, deathly silent except for advertisements playing at each grave they passed. Gabriel stopped at that of a boy who had died early in childhood. Help is available, the advertisement screen informed them, giving a number to a suicide prevention hotline.

“Perfect,” Gabriel murmured, and once more he raised his hand. A trembling little specter rose from the grave, noose-marks still around his neck. He was curled up, a look of absolute terror in his ghostly eyes.

“Too terrified to move on,” Gabriel smiled. “Hiding inside his grave instead of letting go. The desperation is delicious, isn’t it? Not quite the spice of a remorseless murderer, but a lingering marinade of hopelessness.”

“Wh-what-” Yelena protested, despite her growing hunger. “He c-can’t possibly be dangerous!”

“He will be, and so we end his suffering,” Gabriel grinned. “Why wait and risk more lives being lost. You are our youngest, and so you shall eat first.”

Yelena wanted to argue, and yet, she knew that the fox was right. Her protests were what she knew she should’ve said, but she didn’t feel the associated emotions. The trembling little ghost looked so very, very appetizing. He’d turn evil eventually, anyway. They all did. It was inevitable.

Wasn’t it?

Or was there a real chance that they – she – was going to devour the scared soul of a victim who was simply utterly unable to find peace, ripped by Gabriel’s cruel, bejeweled hands from the only remotely safe space that he could find in his unlife?

If she didn’t eat, she’d die. Either die, or twist into something so horrendous that she didn’t want to imagine it.

Even if he wasn’t guilty, violent, or evil, wasn’t it her right to devour him, the way a lion devoured a gazelle?

Some distant version of Yelena wanted to throw up just for thinking like that. But the one she had become hungered, and the hunger was impossible to resist. And if she didn’t obey the new hunger that’d quickly come to define her life – quickly by the standards of immortals, at least – she’d wither away ultimately be forgotten, just like the rest of the world she had once known. She gave in, assuring herself that she’d feel better and think more clearly after a nourishing meal.

And so, she ate, digging her monstrous claws into the trembling ghost and breathing him in, dissolving all that there had been of him into mist. Once again, someone’s life was fully exposed to her in an instant as that euphoric high settled in over her. He had never had any evil intentions, not in life nor in death, only having remained here because of crippling fear.

But Yelena no longer cared. She had to live, and the ghost’s life had already been spent. His fear made for a beautiful, exquisite spice, and once again it filled her with that wonderful energy, with power and joy, with confirmation that she was still doing the right thing.

Gabriel left her to it as he wandered the graveyard. Despite how dystopian it all looked, it seemed that there weren’t many apparitions.

By now, the other starved phasmophages had begun to arrive at the graveyard. Yet, not all graves held a corpse so restless that a spirit could be wrested from it; some were merely dead, their occupants having moved on to whatever lay beyond. Yelena, lust-drunk and hazy, watched them move from grave to grave. Gabriel was starting to pace restlessly, having been unable to find sustenance for himself.

“Empty graves,” he muttered. “Far too many empty graves. As if they simply give up despite all of these… things,” the fox groaned, gesturing towards the advertisement-headstones.

That was the dark truth of it all. Ghosts needed something to remain for. Extraordinary suffering, fear, hatred. One completely defeated at the time of their death would never rise, no matter how miserable their circumstances, and especially so if everyone around them was just as miserable.

Isabella strode past them. She looked perhaps the most monstrous of all, not having fed yet, her feline claws permanently protruding from her fingers like little sickles, and her fangs looking more like pronounced tusks. Luke’s vibrant feathers had faded to a greyish black, his beak elongated and fleshy like that of a vulture.

“I assumed there would be more,” he commented.

“There is always food. We simply cannot afford to be as choosy as we once were,” Isabella replied.

Gabriel retched. “Are you suggesting that we eat fresh ones? Unseasoned by any real suffering and pain?”

“I will,” Luke commented off-handedly. “Needs must.”

“Fine,” the fox replied with a grimace twisting his visage further. “Then we do so.”

Yelena heard footsteps approaching. The night had already faded away into the first light of morning, and someone had come to visit their deceased relatives. She couldn’t imagine how they’d react to seeing the other six of her kin. They looked nowhere near natural at this point.

The fox glanced towards them. He seemed to hesitate, but only briefly so. His greyed muzzle wrinkled with disgust rather than regret, and then he sighed and moved towards the mourner.

Yelena didn’t say anything. Needs must, after all, as Luke had said, and she was once again burning up with lust, wanting to put this distasteful feeding behind them so that they could enjoy each other for a while and then hunt for something more appetizing.

While the rest of her immortal family closed in, Yelena stood back and saw everything. How Gabriel approached the stranger, who reacted with panic to his horrific true form. How he made the slightest gesture with his elongated fingers, and how the visiting woman immediately collapsed onto the ground. Yelena closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see this, didn’t need to. There was no need for her to stare as Gabriel tore the spirit out of her body. She felt too good, and far too horny to bother with caring.

After all, what was the difference? A disembodied, dead spirit was a ghost, and they were the phasmophages. The only thing it lacked was seasoning, but it was better than starvation. And if they were to stay immortal to prevent such malignant beings from harming the living, they had to eat.

Sometimes it just came at a cost. And that cost didn’t matter. Or at the very least, she didn’t care anymore, drunk as she was on spectral essence. Nothing else mattered in the end. She only wanted to keep feeling this way, and so Yelena pulled her heavy, soft robes tighter around herself so as to avoid having to listen to the incoherent screaming.

That night they were all back to their usual selves, indulging in each other fully, the sheer ecstasy of being impaled by Nicholas while eating out Sofia’s beautiful cunt washing away what little doubt there had remained in Yelena’s mind that she had chosen correctly. They’d frolic for as long as they pleased, finally move, and then, they’d research, find good prey, and another century would speed by in a near-instant.