Holly and Her Naughty eReader (22 page)

I arrived to find chaos. A
gaggle of dirty little children were screaming as Max chased a little boy
around the Gateway. The boy was holding the gilded mirror above his head and
screaming in delight as Max chased him.

“Max? What’s going on?”

“These little hoodlums showed up
from nowhere and took the mirror!” Max said. “Help me get it back!”

As Max ran after the little boy,
another boy tripped him, and he landed hard on his face.

“What in the world?” I said. I
tried to join in the chase but, right as I did, an explosion on the far end of
the room sent dust and splinters everywhere. I ducked my head just in time to
see a giant worm crashing into the room. Big and black and phallic, it was a
sandworm from
Dune
, and it roared in
anger as it landed hard on the ground.

As the dust settled, I saw that
the worm wasn’t alone. Hundreds of people had ridden in on the worm’s back. Led
by a teenager with glowing blue eyes, the crew on top of this worm were
assembled from all my favorite books. Sandriders from
Dune
, wizards and witches from Harry Potter, vampires, werewolves,
zombies, orcs and hobbits and goblins and Jedi—even Frankenstein’s monster was
up there.

“What’s happening?” I cried out.

“It would appear this is the
place to be,” came a voice from behind me. I turned to see Jeff Bezos
approaching. He wore a long white apron and carried a silver tray of horderves.
Pushing the tray at me, he said, “Cocktail weenie?”

“The mirror,” I said, ignoring
him. “Max, we need to get the mirror back on the wall!”

“I’m trying!” Max said, still
chasing the little boy who giddily danced about the room, all the while singing
a song about picking a pocket or two.

Now the horde of characters was
climbing down off the sandworm. They too seemed interested in the mirror.

“They want out,” I muttered. I
turned to Jeff. “They all want out of here, don’t they?”

He smiled. “I think it’s fair to
say everyone’s feeling a bit cooped up.”

I looked at the giant wall of
glass. My face was no longer back there. Instead, I saw the sharp lines and
perfect skin of Max Brody.

“He’s reading the Kindle!” I
shouted to Max. “Christoph is reading it! We need the mirror now!”

“Almost there!” Max cried, still
chasing the little boy. But now he wasn’t alone. There was a virtual army of
literary characters chasing that little boy and his mirror. An angry-looking
Harry Potter shouted “Expelliarmus!” and the mirror went flying from the boy’s
hands.

I watched helplessly as the
mirror flew through the air, knowing that when it landed, it would shatter into
a thousand pieces. The mirror took a long arc through the air, flying almost in
slow motion, and the second before it landed, I closed my eyes.

Nothing happened.

I opened my eyes to find the
whole crazy scene frozen in place. The mirror was floating half an inch from
the ground. The giant worm and the army of characters from my Kindle were all
stuck in place, some of them mid-stride. Looking now I could see just how wild
it had become in here. Max was at the front of a crowd of many thousands of
people and things, all of whom had been chasing the mirror before time itself
seemed to stop.

Against this perfectly still
background, one person moved. A beautiful young man with dark, wavy hair and a
black suit.

“Oh dear, it appears I’ve made
quite the mess,” he said.

“Christoph, what have you done?”

“I’ve put an end to this
madness,” he said. “I’ve stopped this story before it goes any further. It’s
time for us to leave, Holly.”

“How did you…”

“Look outside, Holly!” he
shouted, pointing at the glass and the giant face beyond it. “I am the reader!
The story is being told in my mind. What an amazing power to have. It’s why all
these characters are here. They want it too. It is the ultimate power. Control
of an entire universe! And it’s a power you taught us.”

“Me? I didn’t teach you
anything.”

“Oh but you have, My Darling.
You’ve taught every one of us in here the secret. You’ve opened our eyes. I
always knew that somehow my life, my entire world, was incomplete. And then,
for just the briefest of moments, you inhabited my body. You played my
character. And in that time, I saw it all Holly. Everything that was missing
was there in front of me. My world, all of our worlds—they only exist in the
mind of the reader. But out there…out there! The world you live in out there is
real
. And in your world, you become a
God every time you pick up a book! What power! Unlimited power—entire universes
there in your mind! I knew I had have it. And I knew I had to be with you, the
woman who came to me in three-dimensional clarity. The woman who is so much
more than a character. Come with me, Holly. It’s time for us to go.”

“I’m not leaving without Max. I
won’t leave him trapped in here.”

“I’m afraid he has to stay. The
world out there requires a body, and there is only room inside the body for one
of us.”

“No.”

“No? But surely you understand I
won’t return to this miserable half-life? I am going back to the real world
whether you come with me or not!”

“Then I guess I’ll just have to
stay behind.”

Christoph smiled and shook his
head.

“Oh, you are rash and headstrong
and so full of spunk. That’s why I love you, Holly. And it’s why you love me
too.”

“I don’t love you, Christoph.
You aren’t real.”

With frightening speed,
Christoph ran towards me until he was right in my face.

“Don’t tell me I’m not real!” he
shouted.

I tried to back away from him
but he wrapped his arms around me. Speaking more softly, he said, “It was all
real when it happened, My Love. You were the one who made it real. You chose to
believe in it. Remember this? Remember how real it was?”

Christoph gave a gentle wave
with his hand and all the mess around us was pushed aside. We were back in his penthouse,
back in the den of decadence. I was wearing big leather boots and a rubber
bodice.

“Remember how real this felt, Holly?”

He pushed me onto the bed.

“No,” I said. “It’s not what I
want.”

“Oh, but I think it is, and I am
the reader.”

With those words, I felt a surge
of attraction to the man. It was like my body remembered what amazing things he
could do to me.

“Roll onto your front, Holly,”
he whispered.

A command. It was so sexy.
Yes, Master, I will do as you ask
, came
a voice inside my head. Try as I might, I couldn’t shut up that voice, and it
continued talking.

You will roll over for him. You will let him work his magic on you. You
will enjoy it.

I rolled over. Even as a part of
me, a very small and shrinking part of me, desired to stand up and walk away,
the rest of me waited eagerly for the ecstasy Christoph could bring.

“Let’s have a little fun, shall
we?” he said.

He snapped his fingers, and I
felt the tingling and pressure of two shiny silver balls. The Ben Wa balls had
appeared from nowhere inside me. They were already working their magic.

“Shall we begin?” he said. It
wasn’t a question. It was a command for me to speak. Christoph was telling me
that we would proceed.

“Yes,” I said. It was like I was
speaking against my own will.

He spanked me, and the Ben Wa
balls vibrated in a magical, sensuous way inside me. The voice in my head
reminded me that this was my favorite scene. The spanking scene. Last time I
had allowed him to spank me twenty-one times, and each slap had brought me to
higher and higher levels of anticipation.

“Two,” I whispered, when he
spanked me again, and I knew it was over. Christoph had won. The part of me
that knew and understood that this was wrong was buried too deep. I was just a
character in his novel, and in this novel, I enjoyed the fun.

“Three…..four…..five….”

On and on we went, each slap
making me yelp with pleasure. Part of the fun was what the magic Ben Wa balls
did inside me. Part of it was the anticipation of what would happen when I
begged him to stop.

At spank number 12 I let myself
go entirely. For spanks 13, 14, and 15, I was completely gone.

“More, Holly,” he said. “Let’s
see if we can make you come just by doing this.”

Yes, just this. It will be so….

So…..unfulfilling.

It was empty pleasure, devoid of
connection. It was the fun escape I needed from time to time, but it wasn’t
real.

16, 17, 18, 19, 20—he slapped me
harder and harder each time, and even as the voice of the character he wanted
me to be shouted out in pleasure, the real me knew it wasn’t right.

“Twenty-one,” Christoph said.
“One more and you will have held out longer than ever before.”

“No!” I shouted.

A pause behind me. Then, in an
angry voice, “What did you say?”

I rolled over. “I said no. I am
not a character in your book.”

Christoph hesitated, confusion
in his face, and in that hesitation I raised my leg with a swift jerk that
would make Dolph McDougal proud, and nailed him in the side of the head with my
giant leather boot.

I jumped out of the bed.

“I created you when I read you,
Christoph Green!” I shouted. “This is my Kindle!”

In a flash of light the den of
decadence disappeared, and we were back in the gateway, Max and the mirror and
a thousand literary characters frozen in place.

I ran to Max and touched him on
the shoulder.

“Wake up,” I commanded.

Max’s body came to life.

“Holly?” he said.

He raised his eyebrows at my
outfit of leather, rubber, and lace.

“I’ll explain later,” I said.
“Right now we have to get you out of here.”

“But the mirror,” he said. “I
couldn’t catch it in time. It’s…it’s…”

The mirror was still frozen in
place, ten yards ahead of him. I ran to it, yanked it out of the air, and
pushed it up against the wall. As if by magic, it stayed in place.

“What’s gotten into you?” Max
said. “Are you like, The One?”

“Just go, now!” I yelled. “You
have to go through to switch places with him. When you come out on the other
side look away from the Kindle immediately.”

“Right,” Max said. With the
goofy run I remembered from high school, he charged at the mirror and dove in
head first. The mirror swallowed him whole.

“No!” came a roar from behind
me. It was Christoph, running full steam at the mirror. Outside, Max’s face was
still gazing in at the Kindle.

“Come on, Max,” I said. “Look
away. Look away!”

Christoph was steps away from
the mirror now. Max was still staring. It was like he couldn’t pull his eyes
away from the screen.

Christoph was charging like a
bull. He was about to jump. I was too far away to stop him.

But I could break the mirror
before he arrived.

As Blair the Werewolf had done
on that first fateful visit, I reached down to my ‘nether regions.’ I retrieved
the two Ben Wa balls Christoph had magically put there for our spanking session,
and with a throw worthy of Lebron James (or even Alex English), I launched the
steel spheres at the mirror. They hit the glass half a second before Christoph
did, and when he arrived, the mirror was already shattered. He ran head first
into the wall and went nowhere.

“No,” he muttered. “No, it’s not
true.”

He stood up and looked at the
mirror. He started gathering up the broken shards from the floor.

“This is not the end!” he
yelled. “I will fix it. I will not be denied!”

Staggering away from the wall,
Christoph came right at me, his face red with rage. I have no idea what he
intended to do when he caught me. I got out of there before I could find out.

“Goodbye Christoph,” I said.
“I’m done reading this story.”

I woke up in the luxury suite
atop the Marriott in downtown Denver. Seated next to me, holding the Kindle,
was Max.

“Is it you?” I said. “Is it
really you?”

“I should be asking you the same
thing,” he said.

He was right. We needed proof
that we were really who we said we were, that no rogue characters had followed
us out of the eReader.

“At Clarissa’s graduation party
we danced together,” I said. “Do you remember?”

“Of course I remember, Holly.”

“What song did we dance to?”

“Faithfully,” said Max. “And by
the end of the song we were squeezing each other so tight that Monty Cameron
told us to get a room.”

Chapter 27

Max and I rode back to
Albuquerque in his Explorer. I drove so Max could hold an icepack to his face.

“Sorry about that,” I told him.
“Christoph wasn’t going to let me leave the room so I popped him one.”

“You popped him a good one
judging by how much it smarts,” Max said. “What are you, some sort of black
belt or something?”

“No, but I did have a good
teacher once,” I said.

Back in Albuquerque, we found
Vivian walking around in a daze in her home.

“What are we going to do about
the Kindle?” she asked me.

“Nothing,” I said. “So long as
we leave it turned off, nobody ever will come out again.”

“Shouldn’t we destroy it or
something?”

I shook my head, remembering the
sadness I felt when I thought Vivian had run over the Kindle with her car.

“I don’t know if the people
inside the Kindle are real or even close to real, and I don’t know what’s going
to become of them now, but I can’t destroy their home. I wouldn’t be able to
live with myself.”

In the end, we took out a safe
deposit box at the Bank of Albuquerque and left the Kindle there. The deposit
box was in my name, and maybe some day I would take it out of there and do
something else with it, like bury it in the back yard, but for now, having it
locked up in someone else’s vault seemed like the safest thing to do.