Mich_Mosh has writer's block and when she has a bizarre trick-or- treater visits her door, her stories come to life for her readers. Taboo, romance and control, "Read My Story" weaves the lives of three couples in this fun story by Talyis Bagley.
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Ghosts
The cursor blinked repeatedly.
Peggy sat at her computer, while the TV drama droned in the background. Her mind was blank; she couldn't find the words to even stimulate a good story. She started with a single word: Ghosts.
She had promised herself that she would write a good ghost story. It was a genre she enjoyed reading but had never had the guts to write. She had high standards for ghost stories and she felt it wasn't worth writing if it wasn't up to par with the many stories she had enjoyed reading.
Still, nothing popped into her mind -- no characters, no plot line, no conflict. Nothing.
She tapped on her mouse lightly, humming to herself, "Ghosts, ghosts, ghosts."
Nothing.
"Argh!" she growled, throwing her head back in frustration.
The doorbell rang and she quickly jumped to her feet to answer the door. She grabbed the bowl of candies she had already prepared for the early evening.
"Trick or treat!" a princess and a pirate screamed at the top of their lungs.
Her small Michigan neighborhood organized trick-or-treating for the children the Sunday before Halloween weekend because in previous years the local teenagers had caused so much trouble on Halloween night that it rivaled Detroit's Devil's Night.
"Hi, Peg." Ray grinned, standing behind his kids. They each had a pillowcase and were eager to fill them up.
"Hi, you're my first customers." Peggy smiled brightly, trying to not seem too eager to please Ray's children.
Peggy and Ray had gone to high school together and had been good friends. She had always hidden her deeper affections for him. She even hid it when she attended his wedding to his college sweetheart. The only place she expressed her angst was in her stories on Literotica. The rogue men she described were always based on Ray.
"Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat!" The little pirate sang hopping up and down. His pillowcase billowed in tempo.
"Adam," Ray scolded. "Be nice. Sorry, Peg."
"It's no problem. Here you go, kids." Peggy put two pieces of candy into the kids makeshift goodie bags and smiled at Ray. "Here's one for you too."
"Aww, thanks, Peg, but I've had enough sweets for a lifetime," he declined, patting his barely-there pudge. And they say Hagen Daas is for women," he joked. His laugh always made her want to melt.
"It's still hard?" Peggy asked sympathetically.
"Yeah, at times." Ray said."You're lucky you've never married."
"Hmm." Peggy arched her eyebrows but said nothing. "Hey, did you read any of my stories yet?" she asked, eager to change the subject.
"No, sorry, haven't had the time." It was always the same answer, Peggy noted with frustration. "Hey, we should have dinner sometime."
"Yeah, that would be nice," she said. She always said that but they never would actually make arrangements to have dinner. It was a friendly ritual. "Well good luck trick-or-treating, kids." She patted the little heads and smiled again at Ray.
"Say 'thank you, Ms Randolf'," Ray instructed his kids.
"Thanks," the kids echoed.
"Bye, Peg. I'll try to read your stories tonight," Ray said, and guided his kids down her doorstep to the driveway.
Peggy closed the door and sighed, leaning back against her door. Since the day that she had learned about Ray's divorce she had felt incredibly awkward. Her small flirtations seemed to fall embarrassingly flat. She didn't know why she had even told Ray that she wrote erotica, or why she was so insistent that he read her stories.
Ray's wife had had an affair, and she knew that the possibility of having a romantic chance was near impossible as he had taken the infidelity hard.
She pushed away from the door and returned to her computer.
Ghost.
The word stared at her defiantly, declaring that she was not going to get anywhere with this story with the first word of the first sentence. The doorbell rang again. She quickly erased "ghost" and ran to the door to treat more neighborhood kids.
Eventually the sun set and the kids on the street had returned to their homes. Peggy tried to think of ideas for her story hoping to get some inspiration from the dozens of interesting costumes that roamed on the street. Sighing, she closed her door and unwrapped the only piece of candy she allowed herself that night. Dieting was never easy but she was very proud of her will power that night. The doorbell rang again.
Peggy eyebrows creased over her eyes. "You're a little too old for trick-or-treating."
She had opened her door to a tall, skinny body encased in a skin tight black suit and gloves. He or she wore was a bright yellow and green round mask, the kind you see in Japanese animation films that look innocent but are very eerie and creepy with their round face, vacant black eyes and empty expression.
The person said nothing, did not even hold a bag, or move. He only stood.
"Um." Peggy shrugged her shoulders and bit the inside of her mouth,."I'm sorry, I just ate the last piece of candy."
The strange person said nothing, only turned his head slightly to the right.
"Maybe next year...?" She stepped back but the person didn't move from her doorstep. She was getting more and more anxious. The bizarre person's blank face was really scaring her.
She screamed and jumped back as he contorted his body. He bent towards her, the black abyssal eyes in the masked face staring into her soul. His arm snapped up above his body in an impossibly straight line as if he dislocated his shoulder. Long black fingers touched her forehead and the world went black.
***
Jason had one hand on his cock and the other on the cursor button, scrolling down the screen. His roommate was playing a gig with his band and he had the room to himself.
Jason was embarrassed to admit that he read erotica; in his opinion it was really for women, but he loved to read incest/taboo stories on Literotica. He clicked on a title he had read often. He scrolled quickly past the writer, Mich_Mosh's thanking of her editor and other inspirations to start reading the story he so identified with.
His parents had divorced and then his mother remarried during his senior year of high school. His mom met a guy on the internet soon after her divorce. Things had progressed rapidly and she eventually relocated them to his town and married him.
Mitch -- Jason couldn't bring himself to call the new guy "Dad" -- his age. He had fallen in love at first sight with Kelis, but it was impossible to be with her since she was his step-sister. Jason and Kelis shared many of their high school classes together and had graduated sitting next to each other. His mother had insisted he take Mitch's last name. Then they went their separate ways. Kelis got into an Ivy League school on the East Coast while Jason was stuck at the state school.
Jason couldn't find too many stories that had unrelated siblings and the idea of mother/son and sister/brother was too taboo for him. Mich_Mosh had the perfect story for him: the girl was in-love with her step-brother, but he was away at war. Jason had just reached the moment when the step-sister welcomed her step-brother back in his bedroom at the end of his homecoming party. She had padded into the room, her perky young breasts had strained against her bra, highlighting her aroused nipples. The step-brother was sitting at the edge of his bed. his penis stirring as his step-sister began to pull her tight t-shirt revealing her navel, the bottom of her...
"Jason?" a voice called from outside his door. He looked down at his penis -- red and standing at attention as he had been stroking it. Precum leaked.
"Who is it?" he called, grabbing a t-shirt from his bed next to the desk and covering his pulsating cock.
"It's me. Kelis."
Was this real? Was Kelis really outside his door? Jason got up, pulled his sweats on, whipped deodorant under his arms and used the hand sanitizer he got from the school in their anti-swine-flu welcome-back kit.