Dream Work

As a medium, I am usually called upon to advise people about their personal lives and choices, and occasionally asked to do something really juicy, like talk to active spirits, or investigate haunted locations. My dream last night involved both: it was an epic story of two ghosts who needed counseling.
I was invited to the scene of a haunting, a rambling Victorian house, where I identified two distinct spirits: an angry, controlling one, who seemed determined to thwart any remodeling project, and a tricksterish one, who seemed to delight in making messes. The owners of the house, a young couple who were attempting to convert it into some sort of hostel, were frightened by the strange apparitions and frustrated by the monkey-wrenching, and begged me to help.
I caught a glimpse of the more severe spirit in a mirror: a small, tightly-laced, furtive woman in Victorian dress. Her goal seemed to be to preserve the architecture in its original state.
The other ghost treated us all to a display while I was there. A wild-eyed young man, wearing a straight-jacket, dove into a tray of green paint, sending it splattering all over. I knelt next to him, as he thrashed on the floor, and asked him about himself; and about the lady.
"She said she adopted me!" he crowed gleefully, tossing his head like an unruly paintbrush, "She said she would tame me, yet! But it cannot be done! I shall never behave! And now that she's gone, how can I be redeemed?!"
I did some historical research.
I found a photo of the lady I'd seen in the mirror. It seems she'd inherited the house from her father, along with a considerable fortune. She never married, and died a recluse, leaving the house and money to a local orphanage.
Among her few servants was an alumnus of that same orphanage: a man many years her junior, who was known for his ridiculous, disruptive behavior. She took him in, and employed him until her death, after which he was institutionalized, and lived out his days in a mental home where, between shock treatments and other horrors, he amused himself by throwing food, and painting with his feces, for the benefit of the nurses and orderlies.
I sat alone in the house, and asked the spirits to speak with me, to let me into their secret world. I was filled with an image of the two of them: she, clutching a riding crop, breathless from punishing him, and he, prostrate at her feet, suckling at her stiff boots; both of them very aroused.
I could see the situation clearly. In my culture, today, they would be regular kinksters. He might ask her to cinch the straight-jacket a little tighter; maybe to lock him in a closet. She might write to Dan Savage for advice on handling her bratty bottom, and make it clear that she was happy to give him the punishment he was seeking, but that playing with feces really crossed her boundary. They could have attended BDSM social events together; she could have enjoyed her tea with him happily leashed at her feet.
But in the time when they were alive, their pairing would have been a source of deep shame. No wonder she never married.
I returned to the owners of the house with my report. I recommended that we speak to the ghosts, and try to let them know that it was ok to let go of old patterns, and simply be a couple. They should be informed that they were frightening people in the present, and that no one minded them enjoying their kinky love, as long as it wasn't disruptive.
"You can be with her now," I told the straight-jacketed spirit, because you have died, too. You don't need to search for her any longer."
"You are so lucky that you are both dead," one of the owners of the house chimed in. "We have to worry about every-day stuff, like fixing the roof, earning money, and what's for dinner, but you two are free to explore one another for eternity, in a way we can only dream of."
"...As long as it is in a room that no one else is using," his partner added.