Fifty Shades of Neigh - A parody

by Anna Roberts

  "Well...we're trying to," he says, disentangling himself. "But there's still a chance of internal bleeding and that would definitely not be good. Perhaps you'd like to try again and tell me what happened?"

  I step back and nod. "Yes. Yes, I think I can do that."

  "Hallelujah..." mutters my mother. I glare at her and steel myself to tell my story.

  "We were in the bathroom," I explain. "Getting ready to...you know."

  "No."

  "You-know-what."

  "Vagina?"

  "No. The other you-know-what."

  He frowns. "Penis?"

  I frown back. Why does everyone seemed determined to keep saying 'penis' at me tonight?

  "I'm guessing both were involved," says Uncle Tate, sighing. "I think what she's trying to say is that they were about to have sex."

  "Yes," I say. "That."

  He sighs again. "Mind if I step in, Hanna? Otherwise we're going to be trying to tell this story via semaphore in order to spare your blushes while your boyfriend slowly bleeds out into his brain. It's pretty simple, Doctor - he yanked her tampon out in order to get to the goodies, saw the blood and went down like a blowjob aboard the Titanic."

  "Oh, I see," says the doctor. I want to die. I actually want to die. Oh my God. And yet he doesn't seem that bothered by it all. "Has he fainted at the sight of blood before?"

  I nod.

  "And he didn't convulse or anything when he passed out? He didn't shake uncontrollably or lose control of his bladder?"

  I shake my head.

  "Sounds like a pretty straightforward syncope," says the doctor. "And the x-ray would indicate he's a hard-headed young man."

  "You have no idea," I say. "He's very stubborn. Can I see him, doctor?"

  "Very shortly, Miss."

  "Thank you," I say, and decide to do something for him since he's been so nice to me. "You know...I don't think you pronounce the e on the end of syncope. It's sin-cope. The e makes the o long, you see. I don't know how you pronounce it in your country..."

  "...Hanna..." interrupts my mother. She pushes me aside.

  "...no, Mom - he might have difficulty because of his native language..."

  "English," says the doctor. "My native language is English. I'm from England. Leicester, if you want to be specific..."

  "I think you'll find that's pronounced Ly-cester, actually..."

  "Oh my God, get her out of here," groans my mother.

  Uncle Tate leads me towards the snack machine. "Come on Hanna - let's get some candy," he says. “You like candy, don’t you?”

  "...I'm sorry," my mother is saying. "She doesn't mean to be racist. Her father was nominated for a Darwin Award, you know..."

  "Nominated but didn't win? I hope that means he survived?"

  "No, he died. But he was disqualified for already having added Hanna to the genepool."

  I take one look through the glass of the snack machine and start to cry. Staring back at me is a bag of the same off-brand Cheetos we ate that night in his apartment. What will I do without him? What if he's a vegetable? What if he's all mashed up and gimpy like Mr. Rochester?

  The doctor comes back towards me. "Would you like to see him?" he says. "Just to set your mind at ease?"

  I nod, sobbing uncontrollably. "I feel like Jane Eyre..." I wail. "Is he...is he...badly disfigured?"

  The doctor frowns. "No. No - not at all. It was just a scratch. He must have caught the back of his head on something as he fell."

  "Hanging basket bracket," says Uncle Tate, shooting a dark look at my mother.

  "What?"

  "You put a hanging basket over the bidet, Teresa. I think you need some kind of macramé intervention. Who the hell wants a plant and a bunch of macramé tassels dangling in their face when they're trying to wash their balls? It's distracting..."

  I walk away, light on my legs, my head feeling as floaty as the Applejack balloon Crispian bought me. His last gift. Well, that and the case of champagne. Oh God, what if he’s not okay?

  Crispian sits in a chair beside the window. He looks...normal. Not mashed up and gimpy at all. He has both hands and hasn't been set on fire. Not like Mr. Rochester. Thank God.

  "Hello you," he says, uncertainly.

  I practically skid across the polished hospital floor and fall at his feet. "Oh my God - I was so worried. Are you okay?"

  "Think so," he says, and raises his hand to touch the back of his head for a moment before thinking better of it. "I've got stitches. Am I in the hospital?"

  I nod and clutch his hands, my tears raining down on his fingers. "My mother drove us here."

  There is a brief flash of anxiety in his eyes when I mention my mother. I don't blame him - she's kind of a bitch.

  "So..." he says, slowly. "Refresh my memory...who are you, exactly?"

  I stare up at him. "It's me. Me!"

  He squints at me for a moment and then recognition dawns. "Of course," he says. "Bella!"

  "Bella? Who the fuck is Bella?"

  "Uhm...not you, I'm guessing? Sorry - you just kind of look like a Bella."

  "Crispian, don't you remember my name?" Oh my God - he has amnesia. He doesn't remember me!

  The doctor takes out a tiny flashlight. "Well, this is odd," he says, advancing on Crispian. He shines the light in Crispian's eyes. "Okay - follow my finger. Good. This way. The other. Good. Look up. Look down."

  He puts the flashlight away and steps back. "Strange," he says. "All the scans were clear. Who's the President?"

  "George Bush."

  "Senior?" says the doctor.

  "No." Crispian laughs. "Junior. Dubya. Unless I've fallen through a hole in time to 1991 or something."

  "Oh dear," says the doctor. "What's two plus four?"

  "Er...beans?"

  "And you don't remember your girlfriend's name?"

  I'm torn. On the one hand I want to skip with joy that the doctor referred to me as Crispian's girlfriend and on the other I'm worried that he doesn't remember me and may also have some major traumatic brain injury. Still - girlfriend!

  Crispian looks at me and shakes his head. "Nope...sorry."

  "Rhymes with 'spanner'," says the doctor, helpfully.

  "Anna? Blanna...no, that's not a name. Um...Hanna?"

  "I knew it!" I cry, jumping up and down. "I knew you'd remember me eventually! How could you ever forget me?"

  "How indeed?" says the doctor. "Listen, Mr. Neigh - I don't want to release you just yet, if that's all right with you. The memory loss is a bit of a concern - might have to run more tests."

  "Why?" I say. "He's fine. He remembers me now, don't you honey? The helicopter and the car and the money and the tiara you bought me and the state of the art laptop computer - you remember all those beautiful things about our relationship, don't you?"

  He nods, but his eyes say no. After everything we've been through together how can I lose him and go on living?

  "If we go back to Seattle..." I say. "To your apartment. And you can see the girls again! That'll jog your memory! How can you forget the girls?"

  "Girls?"

  "Yes! Rarity and Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie and Twilight Sparkle! They're your whole world, remember?"

  He frowns. "So let me get this straight - we have four daughters together?"

  I start to laugh. Even though he's lost his memory he thinks I could be the mother of his children! We're destined to be together.

  "And for reasons best known to ourselves we chose to give them...those names?"

  "No, silly! They're ponies! My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. It's your favourite thing in the whole world. Don't you remember?"

  He shakes his head slowly. "Isn't that for like eight year old girls?"

  "Well, yes, but there are..." I start to say, and then realise that I have an opportunity here. It would be foolish just to squander it, wouldn't it? "Yes," I say. "Yes, it is."

  "And that's my...what...hobby?" he says

  I nod. "Yes. Only I wouldn't call it
a hobby. It's more of an obsession really."

  "Right," he says, nodding. "Okay. Um...that's a little weird. If it's okay with you, I'm not going to do that anymore."

  "It's okay with me," I say. "Whatever you want is okay with me."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Serendipity

  The beach is beautiful in the late afternoon. I lounge under the sun-umbrella, sipping a cold Bloody Mary, the warm Gulf coast breeze fanning my skin. Everything is perfect, so it would figure that Kate decides to phone.

  "I need to tell you something," she says, sounding breathless. "I need to tell someone or I'm going to explode."

  "Um...okay, I guess?"

  "I can't stop fucking Jesús."

  "Huh?" I sit up and put down my drink. "Wait...you're sleeping with Jesús?"

  "Sleeping with? Hanna, who says 'sleeping with' outside of network television? I'm fucking him. Boning him. Banging him. And I do mean banging - we put a dent in the wall with the headboard last night. It was his fault. He was lying there on my bed wearing nothing but a pair of my panties, reading the hot parts of Cien Anos de Soledad in the original Spanish. He'd handcuffed me naked to a chair and wouldn't let me touch him until he'd finished reading and as he was reading he was getting harder and harder from just looking at me until the top of his perfect, perfect beautiful fucking gorgeous cock peeked out from the lace at the waistband of my panties and oh holy shit...you have no idea. It was ridiculous. Once he unlocked the handcuffs we just went to motherfucking town on one another. Like beasts. I think I'm in love."

  I hold the phone six inches from my ear and blink at it, wondering what I have done to merit a dirty phone call from Kate, of all people.

  "And when did this start?" I ask, dispassionately.

  "The sex? Oh, I don't know exactly. I mean, he gave me sloppy drunk oral one time when we were lying around shitfaced at the old apartment. You know how he loves to do that when he's drunk, right? He said something like 'It's your turn to get the beers from the fridge' and I said 'Eat me' and I guess he took me at my word."

  I blink again. "I'm sorry - am I following you correctly? You let a man you didn't love kiss you...there?"

  "Fuck yeah. I'd heard from his freshman year girlfriend that he had a tongue like Gene Simmons and really enjoyed giving head. I mean, he made me come pretty hard but it wasn't like an 'Oh my God, marry me' orgasm. It was more of it 'Okay, that was fucking boss and you can totally do that again sometime' orgasm. You know what I mean?"

  "No...absolutely not."

  "...and then he started getting into my underwear drawer and it was like...oh my God. You know those sheer black panties of mine? With the tiny little red hearts? As soon as I saw those on his tight little round ass it was like a switch flipped in my fucking brain. I couldn't keep my hands off him. It's so freaky - I don't know why it does it to me but every time I see him in something pretty and lacy and girly I'm just like rrrrrrrrooooowr fuck yeah, drenched to the fucking knees I swear to God..."

  "That's all very interesting but..."

  "...I can't stop thinking about him. There isn't a single working battery in this apartment and I've burned out the motor on my vibrator because he loves watching me come. What the hell am I going to do, Hanna? He says he loves me and I think I might kind of love him back, or is it just sex - like, really, really good sex."

  I sigh. "Kate, there's no easy way to tell you this, but Jesús has been carrying a torch for me for the longest time."

  "What?" She laughs. "Because he tried to eat your pussy that time? He told me that he explained that to you - that he would never have hit on you if he wasn't drunk out of his fucking mind..."

  "...yes, but you and I know he was trying to hide his feelings for me so that I wouldn't feel so bad about going with Crispian instead..."

  "What the fuck? No he didn't - he told me he told you that he'd never hit on you sober because quite frankly, Hanna, you can be a self-absorbed little see-you-next-tuesday..."

  "...me? Self-absorbed? From the woman who calls me to talk about her foofy for ten minutes at a time without so much as a 'How are you?'..."

  "Oh please. I figure you could stand to hear about my love life for a change, since we hear enough about your boring-ass boyfriend..."

  "...you don't know what I'm going through here, Kate. Crispian's in the hospital and I don't know if he'll ever be right again..."

  "Whoa dude, back up," she says. "Did you say he was in the hospital? What the fuck, Hanna? Are you okay?"

  I sniffle into one of Crispian's monogrammed handkerchiefs and sigh. "I don't know. He's an outpatient at the moment - they said there's no reason for his memory loss and the brain scans were clear, but Uncle Bob's taken him to the neurologist this afternoon..."

  "Wait, what? What the hell happened? He's in Florida with you?"

  “Yes. He followed me here.”

  “Creepy, but carry on.”

  I explain what happened, leaving out the most embarrassing parts.

  "Amnesia?" says Kate. "He has amnesia?"

  "Yes, that's what I said."

  "Holy shit, Hanna - your life is like an episode of Sunset Beach. He doesn't remember anything?"

  "He remembers me...I think?"

  "You think?" I can hear her cigarette lighter over the phone. "So let me get this straight - you're trying to carry on your relationship where you left off when he doesn't even fucking know who you are?"

  "Well...not exactly..."

  "Dude, you're not fucking him. Please tell me you're not fucking him."

  "Of course not. That would be gross."

  "It would," she says. "Gross and deeply creepy."

  "I know. I'm still in the middle of my period."

  Kate snorts. "Nice to see you still have some ethics," she says, sarcastically. "Hanna, come on - this is fucked up. He doesn't know who you are."

  "He knows I'm his girlfriend. So okay, he's never heard of Barack Obama and thinks four plus two makes beans, but he's still the same Crispian I fell in love with. Sort of."

  "No, but he doesn't remember falling in love with you. Hanna, this is wrong. This is flat out fucking wrong..."

  "You're breaking up on me," I say, moving the phone to a distance.

  "...so he's a douchebag but he doesn't deserve..."

  "...sorry, this signal is terrible..."

  "...Hanna, don't do this. What kind of sicko are you?"

  I hang up the phone just as Crispian comes down the beach towards me. He wears a straw panama and a pastel blue short-sleeved shirt I bought for him yesterday. We're talking about getting his ear pierced - I always liked an earring. Gives a man a bad-boy edge.

  "Did the doctor say anything new?" I ask him.

  He shakes his head. "Not really. Just that the brain scans don't show any reason for the memory loss. He says it could be traumatic - people do that sometimes. Block things out because they can't cope with them. He recommended a therapist."

  "Aren't I therapy enough?" I ask.

  He nibbles on the celery from my Bloody Mary. He never ate vegetables before. It’s like he’s a different person. A better person. "I guess,” he says. “It depends if you can meet my needs."

  "Why? What do you need?"

  "Show me your boobs."

  I peer discreetly out from under the sun umbrella and seeing that nobody else is around, I flip down my bikini top and flash him. He laughs and kisses my neck.

  "I don't know what I did to deserve you," he says, taking my hand.

  We lie side by side on the sunloungers for a while, not talking, just enjoying the sound of the ocean. Then it comes back to me - that strange Eric guy at the party. He said it was all about visualisation - imagine the thing you want most in the world. Then imagine it again, and harder. Imagine every aspect of it, imagine the sun on your face, the sand under your toes, the ice melting in your drink and his hand in yours.

  This.

  This is what I imagined. This is what I wanted. Oh my God. It's perfect - call it ka
rma, call it fate, call it a gift from the universe to me.

  "It was luck," I say.

  "Hmm?"

  "Luck. Some kind of serendipity that brought me to you. If my roommate hadn't gone on an Ecstasy and coke binge the night before she would have interviewed you instead of me, and we'd never have met."

  "Perhaps she'd be here instead," he says.

  "I doubt it. I don't think you're her type."

  "What's she into?"

  "Latin men in women’s underwear. Apparently."

  "Oh. Right. No - that's not me," he says, shaking his head. "Although, you know - I don't know what is me." He fingers the shirt I bought him. "Pastels. Am I a pastels person?"

  I remember his garish rainbow pony t-shirts and Hawaiian silk shirts and shudder. "Definitely," I say. "Pale colours bring out your eyes."

  "Do you think so?"

  "Oh, I know so." He has the most wonderful brown eyes. When he wears light colours they look much darker, more mysterious. He smiles across at me and I lean over to kiss him. "I'm so in love with the person I'm turning you into," I tell him.

  “You have awesome tits,” he says, and kisses me again.

  We don’t need a sequel. We’ve found our happily ever after.

  The End

  Oh, you wish.

  - Oh God. Not you again.

  Yes, me again.

  - The book’s over. Go. Away.

  How can this be over? This shit’s messed up – he nearly smashes his brains out and you turn him into your own personal Ken doll? I can’t believe I ever thought he was creepy...compared to you...

  - What part of ‘go away’ do you not understand?

  What part of ‘Chapter Eighteen’ do you not understand?

  - What?

  Turn the page, numbnuts.

  - Wait, what? That’s not fair! There is no Chapter Eighteen. This is it. This is the end.

  Sorry.

  - You are not sorry.

  No, you’re right. I’m not.

  - You know, you really are a cunt.