Life with Lona became a little weirder now that we were official. I thought she was forward and affectionate before. It turns out that was just how she treated friends. Every moment I was not at work, she would find a way to be physically touching me. She would hang off my shoulders or lay her head in my lap, or lay my head in her lap (without really asking me for permission. She would just put her hand on my head and pull me down to her thighs), wrap my arms around her, wrap her arms around me, and perhaps the most aggressive and weird thing she would do is to just grab my head and force it into her chest, constantly. She forced me to use her as a pillow as often as she used me as a pillow. I found it a little annoying at first, but then it just became a part of our routine. And . . . Well, it was kind of nice getting all of this attention.

When I was at work, she would send a lot of different messages and memes and jokes. Literally, anything she found even remotely funny, she would send to me. And she found pretty much everything funny. I had to mute my phone after a while. Victor had not been back in the office since the day he left early. I did not have his number and could not ask after him. And honestly, I was a little busy anyway. Over the next few weeks, we spent a lot of time working with Karen to organize different experiments. She bought the domain ExperimentingWithGhosts.com and was going to post all of our results there. Her tagline for the site was “Not a ghost porn site. Unfortunately.” While we were waiting for the Ouija Boards to come in, we tried some other experiments. The first one is to see what effects ghosts have on the environment around them.

“Alright, Lona. Get outta here for a moment, we gotta make sure the room is as normal as it can be.” Karen said, setting up the video camera she had went out and bought so that she could record all of the experiments for posterity's sake. It was an expensive one that had a pretty advanced thermal setting and could record at sixty frames per second. I bought the same camera and we set them up side by side. One of them would record for thermal changes and the other would record in regular video. For the first video, we let the cameras run for a while in the otherwise empty room for about fifteen minutes. Then we had Lona walk through and just stand there for a while. Which was probably the hardest thing for her to do. Lona loved to move around and dance and pick things up. She did not appear at all on the camera set up to record in normal vision, but she did appear as a vaguely humanoid blob of cold on the thermal recording.

Getting her to focus was all but impossible. But eventually, we figured out a way to get her to behave for the experiments. In essence, for every three experiments she successfully did as she was asked, she would get to do one “experiment” on me in return. It was Karen's idea. Because of course it was. Now I had two women in my life devoted to making things hard on me. Not like that, pervert. Well, for Lona, a little like that.

“Lona, this footage is no good, we'll have to do it again,” I said, as I watched the footage at three times speed from both files.

“Whaaat? But I, like, tried so hard that time!” Lona whined. “I was good.”

“You started teleporting around the room after a minute of waiting,” I said.

“So? Like, aren't we trying to see how fast the temperature around me sinks? Besides, we should also do a teleport-y experiment.”

“Loans, we are def going to do that. But they got to be one at a time. And you didn't stay still long enough to see the full extent of your . . . Coldness.” Karen added, watching the footage from over my shoulder.

“But,” Lona whined. “It's soooo totally boring? Why can't we do them all at the same time?”

“Because then we won't be able to form accurate descriptions of the events and subsequently form new hypotheses and theories,” I said.

“Ugh! When you guys said we were going to do some experiments, I thought they would be funner! Not, like, all of this standing around doing nothing stuff that, like, totally sucks!”

“Funner isn't a word,” I said, rubbing the bridge of my nose. “Also, this is what science is. Slow, methodological observations to see the effects of stimuli in certain circumstances.”

“Your nerdy beau is right. Not about funner. Funner is definitely a word and he's just a hater. But we need to be careful. This could make us rich. Definitive proof of the supernatural! Of ghosts! Of the afterlife!” Karen said, pumping her fist.

“Doubtful,” I said, turning back to the screen.

“Why's that?” Lona and Karen said at the same time. The more time they spent together, the more often they did that. It was especially weird because they were on opposite sides of me, Lona splayed over on my lap, her head resting on my shoulder, and Karen standing next to me. The stereo effect was so weird.

“People aren't just going to start believing in ghosts because some nobodies just put some nonsense on the internet. No matter how scientifically sound our experiments are.”

“Lots of people believe in ghosts,” Karen countered. “I did and I didn't believe you when you told me that you could talk to them.”

“But doesn't that kind of prove my point, though? You have been hearing ghosts for God only knows how long, but didn't believe you could.” I responded, skimming ahead in the videos a little more. It was absolutely worthless. “It took a real, live . . . er . . . Existent? Ghost to really get you to accept it. And you already believed in ghosts.”

“But we can show that Lona exists. Like. We'll have hard evidence.”

“Yeah,” Lona added in, wiggling her butt against my lap. “I can make all kinds of hard evidence for you, Johnny-poo.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. She had been trying out different nicknames, too. All of them were terrible. “Not that one, either, Lona. And yeah. We could. But we would have to go to every individual skeptic and show them individually. Or develop a falsifiable experiment that was so well done that the entire scientific community could accept and replicate. And since there's only one Lona, it would be a hell of an ask.”

“But possible.” Karen pointed out.

“Possible. But most people are just going to call us frauds. That's why we have to be so deliberate. There are tons of those awful ghost-hunting shows that are going to give all of this a bad name. So, even if we have the best possible footage, controls, and methodology, it is going to be impossible to convince a lot of people.”

“God, Loans, this is really what does it for you? All of this nerdy shooting down of great ideas?” Karen asked, grabbing my head and rocking it back and forth. Lona giggled and nodded.

“He gets super serious some times, but he can also be a lot of fun.” The ghost said, playfully.

“If you say so,” Karen said, a grin spreading across her face. “Hey! I gotta idea!”

“Hmm?” I asked, non-verbally.

“Loans, c'mere. I'll tell you and then we can see if it'll work out.” Karen said. Lona disappeared off of my lap and appeared next to her, putting a hand on the woman's shoulder. She jumped and shuddered from the cold. “God! I hate it when you do that!”

The two walked away and started whispering off in the corner. My stomach sank. I was not going to like whatever they were planning. The two came back after a few minutes and looked at each other, then at me.

“We've come to a decision,” Lona said.

“Uh-huh . . . And I don't suppose I get any input on this decision,” I responded, skeptically.

“Oh, I'm sure Lona will let you have plenty of input,” Karen said, emphasizing the last word.

“For a lesbian, you sure are dedicated to mentioning us fucking whenever possible,” I muttered.

“If the breeders are going to constantly flaunt their relationship in my face, I'm going to make fun of it just as constantly. Also, it's really, really funny to watch you squirm.” Karen responded.

“It really is, J-dawg,” Lona said, wrapping her arms around me and pulling me into her chest, before kissing the top of my head.

“Definitely not J-dawg. God, that's awful.” I said. Lona giggled and Karen just grinned, brightly. “So what's this . . . idea that you two concocted?”

“Well, Lona isn't going to benefit from this as much as we are. So we just have to incentivize her a little. Ya understand?”

“Oh, I do not like where this is going,” I said.

“So, when she finishes a couple of experiments, we think she should get to design some of her other experiments. With you. She'll set up whatever “test parameters” she wants to, and you have to listen and abide.”

“So . . . Basically, she gets to do whatever she wants to me, and I can't do anything about it?” I asked in my dryest tone. “How is that different than normal?”

“Oh, I've been holding back. I didn't want to scare you too much, my little Jizzle.” Lona said, brightly.

“Jizzle? Really. You do know what tha . . .” I looked at Karen who was barely managing to keep herself from falling over laughing. Lona was also barely holding herself back. Karen definitely gave her that one.”I hate you both.”

“Oh, Jizzle. Don't say that. You'll hurt my feelings.” Karen managed to say with a more or less straight face. After the sentence was over, all bets were off and she started laughing so hard she bent over and clutched at her knees to keep herself up. Lona joined in. I even found myself smiling.

“Why do I have to be the subject? What about you, Karen?”

“Nope. She's not my type.” Lona said. Karen sobered and nodded, wiping a tear from her eye.

“Yeah, your girl's the straightest arrow I've ever met. Also, if I wanted to freeze my pussy off, I could just buy that freezer-safe Twilight dildo.” Karen added, reminding me of one of the darkest parts of internet history. The height of Twilight's popularity. Oh well. It's still better than reality television, I guess.

“Alright, fine.” I sighed. “Let's say for every ten experiments we complete properly, you can devise one 'experiment' that you can perform on me, Lona.”

“Every ten? No way. One for one!” Lona said. “I get one experiment for every one that we complete.”

“No way!” I said, defiantly. “We'd never get anything done!”

“Oh, I'm not going to be anywhere near you two when you're experimenting, kids. I love you both but, straight people are fucking gross.”

“That's fair,” I said. “One for every seven.”

“No! Like, what if we did one for every two?” Lona countered.

“That's still too many. One for five?” I asked.

“No, that's too few. One for every three. Final offer.” Lona said. Karen nodded her approval, as though her vote counted. Lona took it as assent. “See, even Kare-bear agrees.”

“Oh hell no!” Karen said, gagging. “Call me that again and I'll find a way to re-kill you.”

I grinned. It was nice not to be the butt of the joke for once. “Deal, I guess.”

The first experiment we did was one to test the temperature differential and how far it extended. Lona managed to sit relatively still for a full thirty minutes. Her temperature was about 60 degrees Fahrenheit, or 15.5 degrees Celsius. We tested a few different variables to see if it changed at all. We set up cameras in a walk-in freezer for an hour to see if her temperature would drop. It did to about 50 degrees Fahrenheit or 10 degrees Celsius. It took her about twenty minutes for her temperature to drop that far and stayed stable for the rest of the hour. She was absolutely miserable about this, shivering and rubbing her arms the entire time. “Not only was this long and boring, but I'm freezing!”

Interestingly, when we reviewed the footage, we saw that occasionally there were puffs of frozen air when she spoke. They were smaller and less consistent than when a person spoke in the same circumstances. We know because I tested it myself, staying in the freezer for an hour myself. It was incredibly uncomfortable and I needed a blanket afterward. We also determined that my temperature had only fallen from about 98 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius) to about 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius). I was risking hypothermia but the change was less dramatic than ten full degrees. The next experiment we tried was a little harder to manage, so we took it in three steps. The first is that we raised the temperature in the original room to 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.66 degrees Celsius), which was unpleasant for Karen and I, causing us to sweat. But Lona's temperature only raised by about a degree or two from her usual 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

We did not have an industrial heat room we could just throw her in, so we bought some large heat lamps and put her under. There is a lot of variation in the strength of heat lamps, but we found some that would give us a variety. We tried one at 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius), 150 degrees Fahrenheit (65.55 degrees Celsius), and 200 degrees Fahrenheit (93.33 degrees Celsius). With each of these temperature changes, we had her spend an hour under the bulbs sitting as still as possible. After an hour of being under the 100-degree bulb she was at 69 degrees (nice) Fahrenheit (20.55 degrees Celsius). With the 150-degree heat lamp, she capped out at about 87 degrees Fahrenheit (30.55 degrees Celsius). And finally, with the 200-degree bulb, she capped out at 98 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius). Apparently, there was some heat loss when it came to her absorbing it in either direction. That was pretty curious. We also determined that Lona could really only affect the temperature of an area about a foot and a half (or half a meter) around her in any direction.

I tried to count this under the header of one larger “Temperature experiment”, but that did not fly with Lona. She argued that because there were three different methodologies, that meant it was three different experiments and I owed her an experiment of her own. Karen said this was for the best, because she had to leave, as she had work the next day. Lona's experiment was not very scientific, but she did insist on using the cameras. Her idea for her first experiment was to see how many times we could cause each other to climax. We did not write anything down. But the recording did capture the results of our efforts floating mid-air inside of her as she danced over to the bathroom and dispelled it. Lona thought this was hilarious. When Karen found out about it, she thought it was both fascinating and disgusting. She did not post those particular results onto the website, stating “I already said that it wasn't going to be porn and I'm not going back on that. Buy your own website and post it there.”

“Please God no,” I said. I looked to Lona. Her face was alight.

“I never got to the big screen but I could get to everyone's screen that way! Lona Anderson, the first ghost porn star!”

“You could call the website Sex-PerimentsWithGhosts.com,” Karen suggested, laughing.

“I'm deleting the footage,” I said. Both Lona and Karen wrestled me for the mouse. They won. Because of course they did.