GHOST LOVER

The Warmth of Fantasy

With the first light of morning, leaving Kerem’s door and crossing to her own apartment, Selin carried an indescribable tranquility inside. That “fountain” joking with Kerem, that old childish joy continued to echo somewhere in her mind. But the moment she closed the door behind her, she noticed the air in the house had changed. The icy ghost scent she was accustomed to wasn’t in the air; instead, the house was filled with the smell of fresh hyacinths and that woody, spicy perfume Murat had used when he was alive.

“Murat?” Selin whispered.

No answer came, but from the old record player in the middle of the living room, the slow jazz tones they’d loved most began to rise. Selin walked toward the living room in amazement. The curtains were drawn, daylight seeping only through the tulle, enveloping the room in a hazy, romantic atmosphere. On the center table stood one of Murat’s favorite wine glasses; there was no wine inside but an energy fluctuation could be felt around the glass.

“Welcome, Selin,” Murat said. His voice this time wasn’t like a storm but soft like velvet. He was standing right behind Selin, very close to her shoulders. “Today there’s no Kerem, no betrayal, no death. Today there’s only us.”

Selin closed her eyes. She felt Murat’s phantom hands land on her shoulders. This time his touch wasn’t a chilling cold but like an electric current that made Selin’s blood boil. When she imagined Murat’s arms wrapping around her, his head burying in her neck, her body instantly responded to this desire. The dirty sediment of betrayal was falling away piece by piece with Murat’s soft and possessive manner.

“Come closer to me,” Selin whispered.

Murat slowly guided Selin toward the bedroom. Selin lay on the bed with a feeling as if floating in air. Murat settled beside her, on the sheets. Selin could feel the weight on the other side of the bed. Murat’s fingers (or that intense energy) traveled across Selin’s face; passed from her forehead, the tip of her nose, and her lips. As Selin trembled under these touches, she felt Murat’s phantom body closing over her own body.

“I missed you so much,” Murat said, his voice hoarse with desire. “Your skin, your scent, your belonging to me…”

Selin opened her eyes. In the half-light of the room, she could almost see Murat. Not clearly, but as an outline, a suggestion of presence. And in that moment, the boundaries between physical and metaphysical dissolved.

What followed was both real and unreal. Selin felt sensations—coolness that turned to warmth, pressure that was there but not there, intimacy that defied physics. Her body responded as if he were truly there, truly touching her, truly loving her.

And maybe, in the only way that mattered, he was.

Afterward, they lay in silence. Selin stared at the ceiling, her heart racing, her mind struggling to reconcile what had just happened with any version of reality she understood.

“Was that real?” she finally asked.

“Does it matter?” Murat’s voice came from beside her.

“I don’t know. Maybe not.”

“Then let’s not question it. Let’s just… be.”

And so they were. In that liminal space between life and death, between sanity and madness, between letting go and holding on. They simply were.