I sent my mom a picture of one of the paintings I had done. It was one of the ones where she was wearing clothes if you were wondering. This upset Lona, because she thought I should have sent out her favorite. The one where she was quite naked.

“It's the best one,” she insisted.

“I don't want my mother to . . . I don't want my mother to think that I'm some kind of pervert who Titanic's all of the girls he sees.” I said.

“Titanic's? Like the ship that sank? What about it?”

“Oh . . . Right you die- . . . You haven't seen that movie.”

“Yes, Johnny-poo. I died. It, like, happens.” Lona said, annoyed. “Have you painted other girls? Was that, like, your go-to move? You'd do the sensitive artist gambit and be like 'Oh, Stacy, you're so beautiful, I just have to put you on canvas!'” She had donned her dramatic male voice as her impression of me.

“What? No! I would never do that!” I said, defensively.

“You never thought to do that, did you?” Lona asked.

“I . . . did not.”

“That's a shame, Girls eat that up. I would have fallen for it.”

“You did fall for it,” I pointed out.

“I guess I did, didn't I?” She said, thoughtfully.

“Well, it's too late now.” I said. Lona dropped it after that.

A couple more weeks passed. Vincent never really had time to talk. He was in and out of the office. Turns out his girlfriend had fallen ill and he was taking care of her. That was a shame. It looked like she was not going to make it. I did the socially kind thing and offered my help and he kindly did not accept it. This was for the best because I could not think of any way to actually help.

Karen had gotten really busy with her family and her girlfriend because of the holidays, so our experiments had been put aside, which was all well and good. Lona had spent her extra free time doing American Sign Language lessons. When I got home from work, we would spend a few hours practicing together so that I would be able to recognize the signs. She got really good. My hands were slow and clumsy, but she made every movement look so graceful. I picked up on the alphabet and a couple of simple words but with all of her practice, she was waving through whole sentences fluidly. Some nights we would spend the entire time speaking only in Sign Language so she could get used to it. She also found a bunch of videos online of people who presented entirely like that. I was amazed at how well she picked it up.

When I was not helping her with the sign language or hanging out with her, I was designing more experiments. There were so many thoughts that I have had over the years about how ghosts interacted with the material world. I just wished I had a couple more ghost friends that could help me with them. Lona could just be a really weird ghost in how she interacts with the world. In fact, I knew that she was, being the only poltergeist I had ever met. Our videos had gone somewhat viral and had gotten a couple thousand views. A lot of the comments were exactly what I suspected. People dismissed everything we did as a hoax. Some people came up with response videos, some people just screamed obscenities at us in them. Other people pointed out pixelation and artifacting that wasn't there. There were some true believers. Karen wanted to make a video about how we had gotten a ghost to agree to do these tests so regularly and to explain our process. A lot of people had asked about that, both in good faith and in bad.

In mid-December, I received two packages on the same day. The first was a large, soft package. When I checked the return address, it was from my mother. She had said something about sending in sweaters she had knitted. The second package I had to come down to sign for. It was huge. Roughly person-sized, like a cardboard coffin. The UPS driver was a short, stout woman in glasses with short buzzed hair. She grinned at me when I greeted her.

“Hi,” She said, in a friendly tone. I took a look at the box. It had been a little damaged in transport, which is fairly normal. When I noticed that you could see inside of the box a little bit in one of the tears and clearly see a human face when you looked at the right angle, my face became very flush. “Gonna have a busy weekend?”

“Uh, yeah. I guess so,” I said awkwardly. She grinned even wider. I wanted to die so badly.

“Well, drink plenty of water. Staying hydrated is important when using your . . . Exercise equipment.” She met my eye. She knows. Of course, she knows. Please God, kill me.

“Th-thank you. I will.” I said, scribbling something that vaguely resembled my signature and passing her back her pen pad. I took the box and struggled with it. It was awkward, but not terribly heavy. I mean, it weighed seventy pounds or so, but considering it is supposed to be a person, that is not all that much. I managed to get Lona's doll into the elevator, which happened to have a woman who I recognized from the building but did not know. She looked at me and then at the box and smiled.

“Oh? Big Christmas present? What is it?” She asked with a smile. I could not meet her eyes so I stared at her nose and tried to sound casual when I responded.

“Oh, yeah. I got myself a . . . An exercise machine. You know. Gotta stay fit. Can't go out as much in the winter.” I said. She nodded along, as though that made sense.

“Trying to bulk up a little? Pump a little iron?” She suggested. I tried not to think about the possible connotations of the word pump in this case and nodded.

“Yeah. That's the intention.” I managed. She got off before me. Thank God, I thought. I eventually managed to get the box back to my apartment, after struggling past some other tenants. When I got in, I closed the door and slid down to the ground.

“Johnster! What did you ge-” Lona began to ask as she walked through a wall and into the living room. She froze and looked at the huge box. “Is . . . Is that what I think it is?”

Her voice became a squeal and she all but tackled the box and struggled to tear it open further. I got up and grabbed a knife and started doing away with the large, long zip ties they had used to keep the box from tearing in more places. Eventually, we managed to get the box open and some of the protective package out of the way. We struggled together and managed to pull Lona's new body out of the box and sat her against the wall. I sat in front of it, while Lona started examining it. It was entirely naked, because . . . Well, it is a sex doll, after all. She lifted the hand and started manipulating the fingers. They were stiff and stayed in position pretty well, but with a little work, she managed to move them around. Lona fingered her doll's lips and got really close to it, just fully taking it in. She smiled back at me and said “This is so totally weird. It's like looking at a slightly distorted mirror.”

She was right. The doll was pretty damn close to Lona. A few details changed, here and there. The breasts were bigger, but we knew that was going to be the case, but the doll's lips were fuller and poutier, frozen in a constant O. The eyes were blank and they did not have the little laugh lines that Lona constantly had around hers. There was no dimple. But they had gotten the hair perfectly. They had even included a mole and the birthmark she has on her hip. And it still creeped me out. She examined every inch of the doll. After a while, I went to get some coffee and while I was not paying attention, she apparently had flipped the doll over.

“JOHN!” She called out. I rushed over and looked at the doll. Lona had spread its butt cheeks apart.

“What? What is it? Something wrong?” I asked, looking around.

“The butt-hole is in the right place!” She practically fell over laughing. I opened my mouth to ask what the hell she was talking about, then I remembered. There was a part of the sex doll review video that talked about how that particular part of the doll's anatomy had been off. Lona is such a dork, sometimes.

She continued painstakingly examining her new body. We had not really discussed what was going to happen when the doll got here. Is she going to try and inhabit the doll all the time? Is it only going to be when people are around? I can't imagine she'd want to be in that thing all the time. It has got to be fucking weird constantly clipping through something. I helped her adjust the body back into a sitting position and she just stared at it. I watched her. She looked unsure.

“Well, go on. Try it out.” I said. “It's your body.”

Lona hesitated and looked towards me, unsure. I smiled what I hoped would be reassuring. I had never gone full Doctor Frankenstein and tried to get someone a new body. Lona sank into the body slowly. Her ghostly form was consumed and there were a few moments when nothing happened. Where Lona was gone and I was just left with a creepy doll staring at me blankly. But slowly, it started to move. The first thing was that her finger moved. Then her hand. I did my best cackle. “Mwahahahaha. It's alive, alive!”

She raised her hand to her face and slowly moved the fingers, clenching them into a fist. She moved her head slowly back and forth and stretched out her shoulders and moved her legs. I watched as the doll's flesh contorted in much the same way that one might expect a fully human body to. Her calf clench as she tried to stand. The foot shifted and adjusted and she managed to get her weight under one foot then the other. She wobbled slightly. It looked like a baby taking her first step. Slowly she guided her leg forward and . . . there was a huge crash and the doll was lying face-first on the ground. After a moment, I heard a weak, distant voice coming from inside the doll. “J-John. Help me.” I plucked up the doll and carried it over to the couch, setting it down. Lona's head briefly popped out of . . . Well, her other head and she looked around. “This is really difficult.”

“How so?”

“I don't know. I guess I got, like, used to being weightless all the time. It just feels super heavy to move actual mass around again.” I nodded. That made sense.

“What if we tried something a little simpler than walking? Work our way up to that?” I suggested.

“Like what?”

“Honestly your giant boobs and perfectly placed butt-hole are distracting me. I figure we can have you try to get dressed.” I said, mostly joking.

“Oh? You don't like them?” Lona said, grabbing them with her doll hands. She even managed to squeeze them. “Wow, they totally are realistic. Like, not fully, but I've been fondling my own chest since I was twelve and they are pretty close.”

“Stop groping yourself in the living room, weirdo,” I said, walking away. “I'm going to get you some clothes.”

“I don't have any clothes, though!” Lona protested, not letting go of her new chest.

“I have some clothes that you can borrow for a while. Until we can get you walking and can go shopping.” I said from the other room, grabbing some clothes. A minute later, I had grabbed her one of my embarrassing anime t-shirts and a pair of pants. While I was gone, Lona had positioned herself on the couch, displaying her, everything. She was laying down and looked up at me with her weird, dead eyes.

“Oh Jack, draw me like one of your French girls.” Her weird, distorted voice said from somewhere inside the doll.

“Oh, you watched Titanic,” I said, before throwing the clothes on top of her. She flinched and blew me a raspberry, which was weird looking. I could see Lona's ghost tongue poking out of the doll. “This is weird. Get dressed, already.”

She sat up and started to get dressed. It was a lot like watching a toddler dress themselves. Her limbs would fly all about and she struggled with it a lot and her head got stuck. She eventually got the shirt on and worked to stretch the doll's mouth into a smile. It resisted it pretty well and created this pained grimace. Eventually, she got it into it and it looked deranged. A smile without the effects on the cheeks or the eyes. Even fake smiles have something happen with the rest of this face. This did not. It was definitively Uncanny Valley territory. She tried to sit in a sexy pose with her smile. “Take a picture. We totally have to send one to Karen so she can see me finally. Well, mostly me. Even more of me.”

“Don't you want to put on pants first?” I asked, gesturing to the pants she had left to the side.

“No,” she said, plucking at the shirt. It was big on her. I was a little taller and I ordered large instead of my actual medium, in case I got fat. It was practically a tent on her. It covered her legs past the point where it would be absolutely indecent and just a little risque. “This is fine for now.”

I shook my head and got out her phone I took a couple of photos and sent myself a copy then handed her the phone. The doll took it and struggled with it for a moment. “John, it's not working! My phone is broken.”

“What? That's weird, I was just using it.” I sat next to her and flicked my finger over the screen. It worked fine. She tried it again. It did not work. She pressed harder and it finally registered. “That's fucking weird.”

“What?” Lona asked, swiveling the doll's head unnaturally towards me.

“Well, realistically I don't know how you're able to use a touch screen in the first place. They're designed off of capacitive touch. Basically, it detects the static electricity collected around a human body or certain styluses and other things. As a ghost, you shouldn't have a field like that around you, but apparently you do. I don't know if other ghosts do, but you generate that, Lona. Apparently, the doll has less of a static discharge field around it than you do normally, so it cannot interact with capacitive phones as well.

“Huh,” Lona said, then spent the next few moments sending the picture to Karen. A moment or two I got a message from her. In a new group chat with Lona added.

Group Chat:

K: Got ur body huh? Lookin' hot, loans.

K: u try out the goods yet?

L: Nope. It just arrived. :)

L: I'll get Johnny-poo to try it out later. Well let you know how it goes. ;) The but hole is in the right place!

“I'm not sleeping with that thing,” I said, after reading the chat.

“Oh come on! It'll be fun. And warm. You got the heater for that purpose, right?” Lona asked, blinking. I had splurged a little bit on the doll, hoping to make it less creepy by giving it more options. One of the options was to have the ability to close its eyes. The blinking actually helped a lot. It made it look a lot more human.

“I got that so no one would figure out your dead because you're constantly room temperature,” I said, defensively.

“Oh come on. Stop being such a fuddy-duddy.” She leaned over and laid her head on my lap and nuzzled me.

“Fuddy-duddy? God, you really are forty.” I said. I rested my hand on her hair. It felt weird. To be fair, Lona's hair had always felt weird. Cold and soft and kind of watery. It was the least substantial part of her somehow. But this doll's hair felt stiff and bristly. More substantial by far that Lona's usual hair. “Can you even feel anything in that body?”

“It's weird. Vague.” Lona tilted her head and considered the question for a moment. “I can feel you touching me, but it isn't like when you normally do. It's close. I think I just need to get used to it.”

And get used to it she did. She spent the next few days adjusting the body in different ways. We got her a long-haired wig to better represent herself. It was longer than she was used to. It was also replaceable so if she grew tired of it and wanted to change styles, she could. Eventually, her motor control got a lot better. She could stand and walk short distances. But anything longer than a few hundred steps and she had to stop. It was exhausting for her. She slept a lot more. She also kept the heater constantly charged. She said that when it was on, it made her feel more alive. We specifically requested it to have the least amount of makeup that it possibly could have painted on, so that she could do it herself and choose her own looks. Lona pointed out that the doll was always “made-up” in a way. They had just applied a lot of nude makeup style to her. Which I pointed out was a pun.

We went shopping together for her new clothes and makeup and dear God clothes are expensive. We must have spent a thousand dollars to get her enough clothes to last a week. She chose a pretty wide variety of makeup and I'll be perfectly honest, I could not concentrate when she was explaining it. She seemed happy though. She had the doll sleep in our bed and that made things crowded. She would only sleep inside the doll sometimes and she never seemed as well-rested as when she slept outside of it. It was kind of nice to have a warm weight next to me in bed. Especially when she was on my other side, freezing me half to death. I would often cuddle both of them. She also constantly made advances on me in the doll, which I resisted. For a while. After about a week, she literally straddled me and pinned me down.

“We're doing this. I want to try it.” She said, her arms keeping me down. It was Saturday morning. She also had the doll sleep naked, saying it felt more natural. Which I thought was a weird thing to say about a silicone doll, but I did not really argue the point. Mostly because she is way better at arguing than I am.

“I don't think we should. It's pretty weird.” I responded, trying to unpin myself. She pushed down harder and for a seventy-pound doll, it was strong. She had a grip like a vice and I could not move her locked arm at all.

“You have slept with me without a body. If anything this is more normal. I will be the right temperature and have some mass to push down on you.” She countered.

“That . . . Is a really good point, but I'm still uncomfortable with this.” I said, trying desperately to think of something to refute her point with. But I am not good with words. I lost my train of thought when she leaned down and pressed her lips to mine. It was really weird. It was a little cooler than it should have been, but nowhere near the full frozen mint sensation I had grown used to. It had her essence in it. We had discovered another weird effect after a few days of her residing in the body. Ghosts have a soft scent about them. Well, at least Lona does. And we found out that even after she leaves the body, that scent kind of remains behind on the doll for a while. The thing I found out when she kissed me as she pushed the doll's somewhat maneuverable tongue into my mouth was that it was a little wet. I think she had made it wet. And that had a fascinating set of implications that I was becoming quickly too distracted to consider. She let my hands go and wrapped her new, slightly more flesh-like arms around my neck, and pulled me into the kiss. There was still a vague rubbery taste but it was also Lona.

After a few moments, she broke the kiss and I took a deep breath. I looked up at her. It might have been the lighting. It might have been my imagination. It might just be my mind adapting to the idea that Lona was into the body, but the doll looked more like her all of a sudden. It was Lona I was looking at. Not somewhat translucent. But her hair was a mess and she was looking down at me. She blinked, closing her vibrant green eyes. Lona's eyes. The doll's eyes were fine, but when Lona was not in it, they could never have looked real. Right now they did. I swallowed. I was about to say something I had only said to my parents and maybe two people outside of that. And I was going to mean them. And she was going to realize that all of this was a mistake and she was going to leave me. She had a body now. She could get by without me now. But I had to tell her. Even if she leaves. I need her to know.

“I love you,” I whispered, staring up at her. She opened her eyes and stared down at me, uncomprehendingly.

“W-what did you just say?” She asked, matching my whisper. Here it comes. I had overstepped my bounds. Why did I open my stupid mouth? Stupid, stupid, stupid! I berated myself. I swallowed again.

“I-I said . . . I, uh, I love you, Lona.” I managed to saw in an actual speaking voice. Her mouth became a perfect O. I had learned that was not just the natural face of the doll, either. It had adapted pretty well, all told, to having real expressions and the mouth could be closed entirely. Which was good.

“Y-you love me?” Lona said. Her voice was hoarse.

“Y-yeah. I'm sorry.” I said, looking away. Looking anywhere but at her face. There was a pang in my heart as I tried to prepare myself for rejection. “I-I shouldn't have said anythi-”

I did not get a chance to finish my sentence. She pulled me into another kiss and pressed her body entirely against me. She broke off the kiss some time between thirty seconds and an hour later. I was not really sure of the time. My head was spinning and she hugged me to her, pressing my head into her shoulder, and whimpered into my ear. “Thank God.”

“What?” I asked, patting her back. She seemed like she might cry and I had no idea why. Because I have the emotional understanding of a potato chip.

“I love you, too, John. I have for the longest time. But I thought that you might never say it. And I didn't want to say it first.” Lona said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because you're the type of guy who might say it back because it's expected of you. I adore you, but you have no spine.” She said, giggling.

“Hey, fuck you!” I retorted, very eloquently.

“As you wish, my love.” She emphasized the last two words, leaning back from me. My heart skipped a beat. This was not helped at all when she grabbed my dick and positioned it under her new body's pussy.

“Uh,” I said, trying to think of a way to stall this. To stop this. “Sh-shouldn't we use some of the lube they provided?”

As I said this, she sank down onto me. Much like her mouth, her lust was also a little wet. She eased down further, arching her back. She grabbed my hands and pulled them to her chest. “Hey, John.”

“Wh-what?” I asked, tentatively.

“They're warm, huh?” She said, forcing me to squeeze her chest. They were warm. And felt pretty realistically. That reviewer was right.

I have some experience sexually and sleeping with a sex doll is a little strange. I feel I can talk about it having slept with real women, both living and dead. Their bodies are kind of stiff and resistant, but not in the way that humans can be. Humans have muscles that cause resistance. With the doll, it just has a natural shape it wants to maintain because of its design. The doll we had bought had a few special features, a few of which were meant for dolls that had AI personalities involved. The ability to blink for instance was one of those. I think the mouth functions were too. But another one was one that just came with this body type, which was the ability for the doll to orgasm. I had forgotten about this feature. I did not know how it worked and presumed it would not without artificial intelligence. I was wrong. The doll had adapted to Lona's needs. She rode me and I could feel her new body arch and squeeze around me. Her legs would flex, despite having no muscles in them. And when I came, so did she. Her stomach convulsed, which was weird. There was really nothing in the stomach to do that. She clenched around me and arched her back. I could feel the doll undulate around me. She collapsed against my chest and I shuddered into her, wrapping my arms around her tight.

This experience had raised so many questions for me. But right now, I was just more concerned with the fact that the woman I loved was on top of me, out of breath or whatever passes for ghost breath and she had said she loved me back. I smiled to myself and stared up at the ceiling. I was hers. And now, I think she had just admitted that she was mine, too.