Holly and Her Naughty eReader

by Julianne Spencer

  “Does she always work Sundays?” I asked.

  “Pretty much. Saturdays too. Very competitive at her office.”

  I shook my head. Who would have thunk that crazy Moongirl would end up as a nose-to-the-grindstone attorney?

  Before I left, I went back down to Vivian’s basement, in large part to confirm that the place was real. I found the room exactly as I remembered it. Weird, witchy decorations on the walls, shelves of candles and herbs, and a tree stump in the middle with five candles on it. The room smelled like the smoke that had made me so loopy the night before. My Kindle laid face-down against the far wall. Feeling embarrassed about my behavior the night before, I grabbed the Kindle and ran back upstairs.

  My cab arrived at eleven. Max opened the front door for me and said, “Bye now.”

  “Bye.”

  Have a nice life. Don’t forget to write. If you’re ever overtaken by extraordinary guilt for what you did to me ten years ago, you should give me a call and we’ll talk about it.

  The cab driver took me to the Sheraton, site of my reunion, and I found my rental car sitting alone at the back of the lot. I drove to a nearby Walgreen’s and bought a gallon jug of water and a bottle of Advil. Then I went back to my hotel.

  I was staying at the Wyndam by the airport. It was strange, to say the least, to come to Albuquerque and stay at a hotel rather than the house I grew up in. A year before, my mom decided to sell her house and move to my sister’s neighborhood in Toledo. My sister, Emily, had a perfect life in a perfect house with three perfect children. Unlike me, Emily hadn’t gotten bogged down in academics or career. She chose the fast track to suburban bliss. She went to the gym twice a day, she never ate more than 1400 calories, she spent most of her money on makeup, hair, and clothes, and she snagged a dentist for a husband. Now she spends a few hours a week coordinating things with the nanny, the maids, the handymen, and the accountant, and the rest of her time screwing around.

  With my mom and sister gone, with our house sold, and my old friends having moved on with their lives, I really didn’t have any roots left in Albuquerque. The trouble was, I didn’t have many roots in Dallas either. What little I had put down got ripped from the earth when I caught Derek in bed with a teenager.

  I arrived at Room 552 and went straight to the shower, where I tried to wash the stench from the night before off my skin. From the perfume I had spritzed before the reunion to the cigarette smoke at the bars to whatever weirdness happened at Vivian’s house, I was a stinky mess, and I stayed in the shower for a good twenty minutes. When I got out, I tied a towel around my hair, put on a robe, and hopped into bed. Without a thought to what I was doing, so ingrained was the habit, I snatched my Kindle out of my purse, forgetting that it was broken.

  Or that I thought it was broken.

  It wasn’t until I was on my back with my legs under the covers, with the screen bright and clear and my finger flipping through the carousel of books on the screen, that I remembered the scene of a Kindle clattering on the airport floor and refusing to wake up.

  “It’s fixed,” I whispered.

  I reached down and pushed the button on the bottom of the unit. In and out with ease, the screen going black when I pushed the button the first time, waking up again when I pushed it the second. The screens and the menus were all in order. My bookshelf was exactly correct. The battery was full.

  That last one was particularly strange. Even before I dropped the Kindle, I could have sworn the battery was half-empty.

  “Huh,” I said, as my finger swiped through the carousel until it landed on Mane of the Werewolf. Was I misremembering what happened at the airport? Maybe the Kindle just needed some jostling around in my bag to fix itself.

  Then I remembered a strange moment during Vivian’s trippy ritual when I tossed the Kindle across the basement. Could it be that the first drop broke it, and the second drop fixed it?

  Whatever. A rare stroke of good luck for me. I opened Mane of the Werewolf and started reading right where I left off.

  It was a frigid morning. Sula awoke to find herself huddled underneath Blair’s arm and chest.

  My brain must have been on hyperdrive after that weird incense Vivian had burned the night before, because I swear I could feel my own back pressed against the big, beefy chest of Blair the werewolf.

  His hand slid gently across her bosom and she touched his arm, ever so gently, guiding it downward, encouraging his hand to explore her nether regions.

  It was on that line that I completely lost myself in the story. No joke, some after-effects of Vivian’s little smoke ceremony, perhaps combined with a night of drinking and a handful of ibuprofen tablets…whatever it was, my brain didn’t just create a vivid picture of the story I was reading. It put me inside it.

  I was right there, lying on the ground while Blair, the werewolf with the heart of gold, was pushing his hand into my “nether regions.” I could feel the cool bed of grass under my cheek, the hot, wet breath of Blair on my neck, and the strong touch of his hand as it worked across my hip and into my panties.

  Blair was in human form at the moment, but I remembered how he was full-on wolf when we fell asleep. I remembered not only because of having read it, but like it had really happened. My memories of the story were as vivid as the story itself.

  I was in it. I was Sula Valkyrie, the heroine of Mane of the Werewolf.

  Blair’s fingers found their destination and a “shiver of pleasure” went up my spine. Even though I was well beyond the point of a passive observer reading the words, I felt them as they happened. I knew the author had used the words “shiver of pleasure” because it was exactly what I felt, and let me tell you, a shiver of pleasure is pretty darn nice.

  Then “Blair licked at my neck” and I felt my own “carnal canine” awaken. We turned and pressed our lips together. Blair used his tongue to “tease my mouth open wide” and I moaned like “a salty bitch in heat.”

  He pulled me close with inhuman strength and my breasts were crushed against his sternum. Our hearts pounded in time. His hard cock burst forth and reached out like a striking snake, and before I knew it, he was inside me, our bodies writhing together as one, and I cried out in joyous pleasure as he rocked me again and again until I howled like a dog in…

  You get the picture. Suffice it to say, I had a lot of fun that afternoon. After Blair took me on an hour-long journey of animal sex, a shapeshifter appeared and stole me away to his cave where he made me his sex slave until Blair retrieved the Amulet of Angoroth from the Crystal Palace which he used to find me and free me and we almost got away but the shapeshifter and his minions caught us and we all fought and Blair sacrificed himself to set me free and he died in my arms THE END.

  Suddenly I was back in my bed, looking at my Kindle and listening to my phone buzz. I put down the Kindle and reached for my phone. The screen told me it was my mother calling.

  Confused, no…baffled…utterly baffled about where I was and what had just happened, I answered the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi Holly. Just checking to see how things went last night,” my mother said.

  “It was good,” I said.

  “Oh, I’m so glad to hear. High school reunions are so special. I remember the time I…”

  As my mother recounted some story from days gone by, I tried to orient myself. I was back in my room at the Wyndham Hotel. I was in bed. This was the real world. My name was Holly Pritchett, not Sula Valkyrie. Mane of the Werewolf was a novel on my Kindle.

  Clinging and beeping sounds crept through the phone line as my mother spoke. It sounded like she was in a video arcade.

  “Where are you, Mom?” I said.

  “Oh Holly, we’re at the casino! Emily took me here for lunch and I’ve been playing the slots for an hour now. I’m up three hundred dollars!”

  Weird. I was in a hotel in Albuquerque, apparently suffering from some sort of hallucination, and my mom and sister were at a casino somewhere in Ohio. O
nce again the what-am-I-doing-with-my-life feelings welled up inside me.

  My mom decided to tell me all about what she had for lunch at the buffet. “Salad and corn bread and stir fry and lobster and prime rib and…” I waited patiently for her to finish all she wanted to say, then I bid her a good afternoon and ended the call.

  My head a bit more clear, I looked back to my Kindle. The screen had gone blank. I pushed the button to wake it up and was about to slide the yellow arrow when I wondered if I was up for more. I had gotten so deep into that story—I completely lost myself as a reader. I wasn’t seeing words or reading sentences; I was physically immersed in the book. I was living as one of the characters!

  My heart racing, I decided I wasn’t ready for another out of body experience just yet. I put the Kindle down and called Vivian.

  “Hey, how are you?” Vivian answered, speaking like an old friend who hadn’t heard from me in weeks.

  “What was that incense we were breathing last night?” I asked.

  “Incense? You mean the mojo?”

  “Mojo? What’s mojo?”

  “Well, technically, it wasn’t just mojo. It was my own special brew. A little mojo, a little mescaline, a little wormwood, a lot of peyote…”

  “Peyote? Vivian, that stuff really messed me up!”

  “Relax, Holly. I’ve been smoking this brew for years. It’s all natural and completely safe. Plus, if your work does drug testing like mine does, you’re in the clear. They don’t look for anything I put in there.”

  “I’m not worried about drug testing, Viv.”

  “Then what’s the problem? I don’t know how much you remember, but you were pretty darn funny last night when you were high. I think you had a good time”

  “I’m sure I did,” I said. “But that’s just it. I think I might still be high.”

  “Lucky you. I’ve never had a high last longer than a few hours with that brew.”

  “Vivian, I was just reading a book on my Kindle, and I had this crazy hallucination that I was inside it.”

  “I thought your Kindle was broken,” Vivian said.

  “Turns out it’s fine,” I said. “And when I got home this afternoon I started reading the same book I had read on the plane, and…I don’t know. It was so weird. It was like I left the real world and entered the book.”

  “What book is this?”

  “It’s called Mane of the…you know, I don’t think it was the book. There was nothing special about the book. I started reading it earlier in the week. It’s just paranormal erotic boilerplate.”

  “Paranormal erotic boilerplate? You’re a real book snob, aren’t you?”

  “I’m being serious, Viv! I had this crazy hallucination while I was reading.”

  “Was it a good hallucination or a bad one?”

  That question was easy. Thinking about Blair’s sinewy body rubbing up against mine, the faint smell of wet dog, the perfect length and girth of--

  “It was a good hallucination,” I said.

  “Sounds like you should be happy,” said Vivian. “You should read some more before it goes away. I’ve never had something like this happen with my brew. I’m kind of jealous. So you were like…in the story?”

  “Completely inside it. I turned into the narrator.”

  “Like some Neverending Story for grown-ups?” Vivian said.

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “Wicked. Did you know Moongirl is the name Sebastian shouts out the window at the end of that movie? You can’t really hear it, but that’s what he says. My nickname saved Fantasia.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Forget it. I wonder if there was something different in that batch we burned last night. I did use Miracle Grow on one of those plants. You know, if you’ll excuse me, I think I should go home and smoke, then I’ll try reading a book to see what happens. I know just the book to try. I’ll tell you tomorrow if anything exciting happens. In the meantime, maybe you should go find another book to read before the party’s over.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It was pretty intense.”

  “Trust me Holly. If it was good intense like you said, you’ll be sad you didn’t go back for more. I’ve been through this. When you’ve got a high that’s hanging around, you need to take advantage of it. Grab your Kindle now and read another book.”

  Chapter 6

  Deciding to take Vivian’s advice, I went back to the Kindle and brought up a new book, this one a 99-cent Hunger Games knockoff titled The Octagon In Winter.

  A lone flower, a daisy, lay quietly on the ground amidst the dust that rained down from the heavens. The battle of Trichtostan was over, and all were dead save Chanci, who reached for the daisy from beneath a pile of bodies.

  And then Chanci was me, and I felt the solemn wait of death on my back.

  The solemn wait of death? What the hell was that, and why was it in my brain? I had this vision of the grim reaper, standing patiently at the end of the battlefield, waiting to take me, but somehow I knew it wasn’t quite correct.

  Then I found myself craving a “daisy butt” even though I had no idea what a daisy butt was. I imagined a girl wearing Daisy Dukes, or the tailfeathers of Donald Duck’s girlfriend. In both cases, I wanted to put my hands on the imaginary ass and give it a good squeeze.

  This story is so weird. Get me out of here, I thought.

  And I was back on the bed, holding the Kindle.

  I glanced at the screen, and saw the words “solemn wait of death,” followed in the next sentence by, “Chanci desperately wanted to hold the daisy butt found it to always be just beyond her fingertips.”

  Typos. On the first screen of this novel there were two egregious errors that had floated into my brain while I was the character. Those typos had changed the world. The author intended for Chanci to long for the daisy, but instead Chanci wanted a “Daisy butt.”

  I deleted the sample of The Octagon in Winter and moved on to the next book in the carousel, Basic Principles of Self Defense by Dolph “The Fist” McDougal.

  This was a weird download for me, but it was free so I grabbed it. I don’t read a lot of nonfiction, but I remember thinking that this one sounded interesting. Written by an ex-Marine, it promised an overview of what to do if you found yourself in a violent situation.

  I suspect Basic Principles of Self-Defense would have been a bore had I simply read the words. But in this new world, where I lived in the books, it was amazing! I wasn’t just reading about how to do a judo sweep or the correct form on an elbow swipe; I was getting a one-on-one lesson from Dolph McDougal. It was like that scene from The Matrix where Lawrence Fishburne and that surfer dude actor are training in the dojo, with Dolph McDougal yelling at me to hit him harder.

  “Don’t stop your punch at my skin. Stretch out your arms and punch through me!” Dolph yelled. I tried to hit him, imagining my punch going through him, but he blocked the punch and yelled, “Too slow, try again!”

  By the time I finished Basic Principles of Self-Defense, I felt like I could hold my own in a fight. I was well-versed in knees to the groin and open palms to the face, and had gotten to practice until I mastered the techniques.

  Next I went inside a fantasy book where I rode on the back of a dragon. After that I entered a teen romance where I was a mermaid who went ashore to pose as a high school student and learn why the humans were polluting my home. I went into a book where I became a smoking hot superspy with a penchant for tight leather pants, and another where I was a frustrated housewife who had sex with my son’s best friend.

  All afternoon, through the evening, and into the night I visited one fictional world after another. It was the most ridiculous fun I’ve ever had in my life. And after a dozen trips in and out of the story world, I felt confident enough to swing the carousel of books to the big one. I brought up my favorite novel of all-time. Wuthering Heights.

  When’s the last time you read Wuthering Heights? If you haven’t had a look
at this novel since high school, please indulge me while I tell you why this book is so great, and why I make all my 12th graders read it.

  Wuthering Heights is the most erotic novel ever written. I know--that’s not how you remember the book. In your mind, it was a long, tedious exercise in foreplay, with Catherine and Heathcliff madly in love and never able to get together.

  But you see, that’s why the novel is so intense. Social convention wouldn’t allow Emily Bronte to write a hot sex scene, so instead she teased her readers with it. She teased so much it’s clear to me that, in her mind, Catherine and Heathcliff got together many times, and there was probably a more spicy version of the story hidden in a drawer somewhere in the author’s study.

  In chapter 11, Catherine, who has moved on from her childhood love of Heathcliff and married Edgar, finds herself meeting up with Heathcliff again. He has just returned from a three year absence where he somehow became fabulously rich. Heathcliff comes into Catherine’s house, the sexual tension is palpable, Catherine’s husband throws Heathcliff out and forbids Catherine from ever seeing him again, and Catherine locks herself in her room, where she is so sad she becomes sick and never recovers.

  Sound familiar? There’s no doubt in my mind that Chapter 11 of Wuthering Heights had a profound impact on Stephenie Meyer. The first half of New Moon owes a great debt to Wuthering Heights. Boy and girl are in love, the cruel world keeps them apart, they nearly die from the sadness of it all.

  Isn’t it funny how these things go? Half of Amazon right now is flooded with knockoffs of 50 Shades of Grey, which itself was inspired by Twilight, which owes a great debt to Wuthering Heights. If you’re spending your days reading about psychologically tormented sexually dominating billionaires, I humbly suggest that you take a break and read Wuthering Heights to see how it all began.

  But I digress. Back to me and my Kindle. I used the Table of Contents to bring me straight to Chapter 11 of Wuthering Heights and began reading Emily Bronte’s delicious prose.