"Dude, look at her. Ain't she beautiful?"

Mitch Ricker beamed with pride as he gazed upon his latest acquisition from the local cemeteries, a life size statue of a nude woman. His increasing obsession with funereal objects tended to make his friends somewhat uneasy. However, Mitch was always fun to be with, always doing something outrageous and exciting.

For its size, the statue was remarkably light, requiring little effort on the young men's part to carry it into Mitch's hideaway. Living in the daylight basement of his parents house, Mitch could come and go as he pleased, often not seeing his parents for days at a time. Since they all pursued their own interests, Mitch was pretty much on his own.

"She's a pretty one, Mitch," Bobby Crawford enthused. "Who's grave was this from anyhow?" Mitch had called him and his other friend Johnnie Brody around midnight to help him load the statue in his van. He had taken it with little effort from the confines of the old Perpetual Rest Cemetery at the outskirts of town, but then when he went to put in his van, inexplicably he could not lift it.

"Don't know," Mitch replied, wiping the dirt from the statues beautiful carved face with a wet cloth. "I found it lying on it's side in the leaves. It was as if someone had left it there. I figured no one wanted it, so I took it."

The statue was Mitch's largest procurement since he began prowling cemeteries nine months ago, looking for things to steal. His collection of urns, smaller statues, tiny gravestones and other ephemera filled the hollowed-out crawl space adjoining his living quarters. His parents were oblivious to Mitch's offbeat hobby, as he kept the door to the space locked and hidden behind a floor to ceiling poster of a ghoul feeding from a demolished coffin.

The three young men carefully moved the statue into the musty crawl space, the top of its head barely clearing the floor support beams. In the glare of the one dangling light bulb, the statues face glowed, lips curved in a sweet smile. This subtlety was lost on Mitch and his pals as they continued wiping the dirt away, commenting on the statues voluptuous breasts and buttocks, laughing about 'feeling her up' as they worked.

Mitch closed and locked the door, hanging the poster over it once more. He bid his friends goodbye and thanks for their help. His job as a driver for a local courier service left his nights free for his midnight prowls, not to mention horror-themed parties and all-night slasher movie marathons. His long-standing interest in the bizarre and the occult had inexplicably increased in recent months. No movie, web site or video game was too horrific and gory to suit him. Had Mitch's parents paid closer attention to their sons increasingly outré behavior, they would have been genuinely concerned for his mental stability. However, they were blissfully unaware as their offspring descended deeper into a fantasy world of horror and death.

Kathy Hanna, Mitch's last girlfriend, had labeled him a 'weirdo' and left him after he suggested they have sex on a catafalque in the cemetery when the moon was full. She enjoyed partying with her boyfriend, but this was the last straw. That was five months ago and Mitch's twenty-two year old hormones were raging. It was as if the sculpture called to him from the old cemetery as he drove up in the night. He searched its gloomy confines until he found it half hidden in the fallen leaves. Being of average strength, he marveled at how easily he moved the statue down the path and through the rusted iron gates to his van.

Mitch looked at his desk clock, almost two AM, 'Gotta get up in time for work, ' he thought. 'Better wash up and get some sleep'.

Mitch awoke with a start. The moon illuminated his bedroom, shining through the sliding glass doors. He felt a thrill of fear as a shining figure materialized at the foot of his bed. His eyes widened in shock, it was a woman. Not just any woman, it was the statue, pulsing with life and radiating a soft glow not unlike the moonlight shining through the glass., It was weeping silently and Mitch heard a woman's' voice in his head, "I'm so lonely, so lonely."

He gasped in wonder as his boxer shorts disappeared, and he felt a chill wind on his naked body. The woman moved toward him imploring "Love me, love me. I'm so lonely."

Mitch gasped as she climbed on the bed. The feel of her icy skin on his sent a chill through him yet he was fully aroused. He tried to embrace this mysterious beauty, but his arms would not move. "Not yet," the woman's throaty voice rang in his brain, "not yet, my darling."

She began making love to him and he responded in kind. He felt as if he had lost control of his body as his brain looked on dispassionately. Her wails of pleasure soared through Mitch's mind, urging him to greater heights of passion.

At the height of their mutual excitement Mitch's arms were suddenly free and he embraced his mystery woman. They rolled about on the bed, making love repeatedly until Mitch passed out.

When he awoke the next morning, he was alone in his bed. Both his head and his muscles ached abominably. He stumbled into his bathroom and stood under the shower, the warm water washing away the dried sweat caked on his body. "Man, what a dream," he wondered aloud. "That was so intense ... how did I keep going all night?" He paused, "Wait a minute" he mumbled, "I did a statue last night, how could I... ?'"

Drying himself quickly, Mitch removed the ghoul poster and stared at the crawl space door. Grabbing his keys, he unlocked the door with trembling fingers and turned on the light. There was the statue, exactly where he and his friends had put it, its carved face smiling in the glare of the bulb. Had he looked more closely, he would have seen the statues marble 'skin' had turned a light shade of pink. He closed and locked the door, replaced the poster and began dressing for work.

"Dude, you look like crap," exclaimed Bobby as they waited for their daily courier assignments. "You go out again after we left?"

"Yeah," Johnnie chimed in, "Didn't you get any sleep last night, man? Your eyes look like they're packed for a long trip. Get it, bags, packed." He laughed at his own joke as Mitch drained his third cup of coffee, trying to get his energy level up to face the day.