Highgate Heat
"Cemetery tour guide Nneka finds her dark fascination matched by Priya—a thick British-Kenyan death doula who sees beauty where others see endings."
Highgate Cemetery attracted peculiar people.
Priya was the most peculiar—and the most beautiful.
She attended Nneka's tour every week, thick body draped in flowing black, asking questions about death with an intimacy that unnerved the other tourists.
"You're back," Nneka observed.
"You noticed."
"You're hard to miss."
After the tour, Priya approached.
"I'm a death doula. I help people die well. Your tours—they honor the dead beautifully."
"Thank you."
"I'd like to honor you." Those dark eyes held secrets. "Dinner? We can discuss our shared obsessions."
Nneka agreed, intrigued against her better judgment.
Dinner became drinks became Priya's Highgate flat.
"Death and desire are connected," Priya said, pouring wine. "Both require surrender. Both transform us."
"That's morbid."
"That's honest." She approached Nneka. "When was the last time you surrendered completely?"
"I don't—"
"Let me show you."
Priya kissed like someone who understood endings.
Deep. Complete. No hesitation.
She undressed Nneka slowly, reverently, like preparing a body—but for pleasure, not burial.
"You're so alive," Priya whispered. "So warm. Let me feel all of it."
They made love surrounded by books about death.
Ironic, Nneka thought, to feel so alive.
Priya's thick body moved against hers, soft and strong. Her mouth found places that made Nneka understand what surrender meant.
"Let go," Priya urged. "Like falling. Like dying. But better."
Nneka let go.
Afterwards, tangled in dark sheets, Nneka laughed.
"This is the strangest relationship I've ever been in."
"Relationship?" Priya smiled. "I like that word."
"We met over graves."
"We met over truth. Death strips everything false away. What's left is real."
"Is this real?"
"As real as anything we'll ever have."
Nneka's tours gained new depth.
She spoke about death with intimacy now, with reverence learned in Priya's arms.
"You understand," visitors would say.
She did. She understood life and death and everything between.
And every night, she went home to a woman who taught her the difference.
Highgate's dead had never been so well served.
Or its living so thoroughly loved.