Textual Seduction: the Case of the Missing Author

Disclaimer: Although this story was inspired by my love of such well-known girls\' detective series as Nancy Drew, all characters in this story are my own.

Eight inches of throbbing manmeat lay atop the kitchen table. “Eww. What the hell is that?” Cecily asked, horrified fascination in her voice.

Anne shrugged. “Probably some hack author,” she said matter-of-factly. “Madame Editor has a reputation for doing away with them, ruthlessly.” She grabbed Cecily’s forearm and dragged her away. “Come on,” she said impatiently. “Let’s get this over with.”

“You almost sound as if you admire her,” Cecily said accusingly as they quickly moved through the ground floor. The house was spartan, immaculate, well-organized; only the ubiquitous stacks of books, and the occasional bloodstain, hinted at the occupant’s deranged state.

“I sort of did,” Anne admitted, making her way to the staircase. “She’s legendary. But if she’s harmed Mabel in any way...” she left the threat unfinished, and Cecily touched her arm, trying to convey both empathy and calm. They were both deeply concerned about their cyber-friend’s disappearance, but getting sidetracked by anger wouldn’t help them find her.

“Tell me again what her last message said,” Anne suggested as they climbed the stairs.

“She sent me this address, and she said she was sure this was the right house,” Cecily replied, “because she’d been watching, and she’d seen Madame Editor coming and going.”

“Did Mabel say what she looked like?” Anne asked.

Cecily shook her head. “No; she just said Madame Editor looked just like she’d always pictured her, and that she knew it was her because she’d had a ‘feeling’.” Anne swore under her breath. Mabel’s tendency to over-dramatize was one of the reasons Anne had much less patience with her than Cecily did.

“She told me she’d made up her mind,” Cecily continued. “She was going to print out a bunch of her fanfiction, and approach Madame Editor the next day.

“And you’re sure no one’s heard from her since?”

“Not so much as a single text message,” Cecily said solemnly as they stepped onto the upstairs landing.

The first three doors they opened revealed two guest bedrooms and a bathroom. Quickly and methodically they searched the rooms, opening drawers and cupboards, seeking some sign that Mabel had been there. The rooms, though, were devoid of personality, almost completely bare: they might have belonged to a hotel rather than a private house.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Cecily asked timidly, and Anne shook her head, looking grim. She tried not to think of the trace evidence they’d seen downstairs in connection with their friend, but then again, maybe it was best that Cecily brace herself for the worst.

“Mabel’s writing was pretty bad,” Anne said gently, and then stopped, shocked into silence as she opened the fourth door. It was, clearly, Madame Editor’s study, and the ghastly tools of her trade were all on display: the floggers, paddles and hairbrushes, the manacles hanging from the oak beams, the battered copy of Strunk and White lying on the desk. Cecily peered around her shoulder, and shivered at the sight.

Still, once they’d examined the restraints and paused to admire the floor-to-ceiling bookcases, it had to be admitted that there was no proof Mabel had ever been in the room. Until, that is, Cecily pulled open one of the desk drawers and found the file folder containing the printout of her work. “Ghastly self-insertion,” someone had scrawled on it in red ink, “but shows promising signs of good grammar.” Cecily’s eyes filled with tears.

“Poor, poor Mabel,” she whispered.

“Buck up,” Anne said bracingly. “Look on the bright side: at least she wasn’t eliminated immediately, like that poor bastard downstairs.”

Having searched the study, they returned to the hall, where the fifth door opened on a staircase. “The attic,” Cecily said breathlessly, and Anne nodded; they had both read enough to have high expectations of attics.

Dustmote-studded sunlight slanted in through a cobwebbed attic window to fall directly on a large, wooden trunk, so Anne and Cecily wordlessly decided to start their explorations there. “It’s hot up here,” Cecily complained, unbuttoning her white shirt and trying to unstick it from her skin. Anne, who had already knelt to open the trunk, didn’t answer. It was filled, they saw, with journals. The one on top had a pink, glittery cover featuring a picture of a unicorn, and instinctively they both knew it had to have been Mabel’s.

“It’s got to be,” Anne said, lifting it out.

“It looks exactly like something she’d own,” Cecily agreed, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to Anne so she could read over her shoulder. Anne flipped the journal open to its first page.

“I can’t stand this horrid place,” it read. “Madame Editor isn’t like what I thought at all. She’s mean. I showed her my Princess Alexandria Shimmergem Silverhair story and—“

“Oh, good,” Cecily said out loud. “It is Mabel. She’s alive.”

Anne had wrinkled her nose. “Suddenly I’m beginning to wonder why we cared,” she remarked, and Cecily smacked her shoulder reprovingly.

“—and she was awful,” the journal continued. “She said it was talentless tripe. The only nice thing was that she said my spelling wasn’t atrocious, and then she looked at me and invited me to stay, and my heart pounded.”

Anne made an irritated noise and turned ahead a few pages. “She’s like Captain Janeway, or Mme. Giry, or Emma Peel,” the journal babbled.

“But those people are nothing like each other!” Anne exploded, running both hands impatiently through her short curls.

“Shh,” said Cecily soothingly. “You’re right: they’re not. But you know what Mabel’s writing is like, Anne. There’s no point in having an aneurism over her inability to describe anyone sensibly.”

They read further. “She said my characterization was weak,” said one particularly scrawled page, on which the writing was so shaky as to be nearly illegible, “and that endless physical description wasn’t an adequate substitute. Then she said the penalty was ten strokes with the paddle, and told me to lift my skirt and lie across her lap.”

“Oh, my,” said Cecily expressively, squirming slightly.

“Quite,” Anne agreed, her voice huskier than usual. She flipped a few pages further.

“Tonight she said,” the journal went on, “that I’d learn to outline a plot, supposing she had to beat it into me—but she promised that she’d lap up every decent paragraph I produced.”

Cecily whimpered quietly. “You don’t approve?” Anne asked. “I agree, it’s a novel approach, but I think it has merit.” She looked over at Cecily’s flushed face and wide eyes, and re-evaluated the whimper. “Ah. I see. Well, enough of this,” she said, and set the journal facedown on the floor. “Mabel’s obviously alive, and in good hands.” She reached over and helped Cecily out of her shirt, then lowered her head to delicately lick the droplets of sweat that were beading Cecily’s cleavage. Cecily unsnapped her bra, and while she was still shrugging her way out of it Anne captured one erect nipple in her mouth, circling it with her tongue while she gently sucked at it. She half-pushed Cecily to the floor, following her, kissing her hungrily.

“Should we be doing this?” Cecily managed to ask, between kisses. “I mean, here?”

“No,” Anne said, “probably not.” But she didn’t stop, and Cecily didn’t ask her to.

The hardwood floor was far from comfortable to lie on, but for some reason Cecily barely registered this. Her breathing had quickened, and her palms were damp. Anne was half-kissing, half-biting her neck, with a lack of restraint that suggested she’d been seized by the same sudden arousal. She moved down to nibble at Cecily’s breasts, the pressure of her teeth stopping just short of painful, and Cecily felt the muscles in her stomach clench in response. She found herself reaching with one hand to pull Anne’s head closer, wordlessly urging her to continue.

Anne had been lying half on top of Cecily, but now she knelt beside her, running one hand along the smooth length of her girlfriend’s leg. Their eyes met and Cecily’s lips twitched, amused.

“Well, one thing’s obvious,” Anne said thoughtfully. “Mabel’s writing has improved.”

“She’s certainly learned how to effectively convey a mood,” Cecily agreed.

“Do you think we should stop?” Anne asked cautiously. “I mean, are we safe here?”

Cecily shook her head slowly, rolling it from side to side on the floor. “I don’t care if we aren’t safe,” she said firmly. “You’d better not stop.”

“I see,” Anne said, laughing, and reached out with both hands to push Cecily’s skirt up above her waist. Cecily, already slightly uncomfortable with her shoulder blades digging in to the hardwood floor, now had her skirt bunched up under her hips and ass, but somehow it didn’t matter; her eyes were still alight with playfulness and desire, and she felt too turned on to care where they were. No, she thought, that wasn’t it, either; she did care where they were, but she liked it. The cobwebs, the mysterious trunks, the forbidden attic: it was all perfect. It was all, strangely, desirable, and recalled her earliest excitements. She reached for Anne, pulling her down for more enthusiastic kisses.

When Anne pulled away she protested, then wriggled helpfully as Anne expertly peeled off her boy-briefs, rolling them down her legs and then tossing them aside, a small sodden heap. Cecily gasped at the first flickering touch of Anne’s tongue, and lay still, dissolving in gentle waves of desire, melting under Anne’s skillful nibbles and insistent strokes.

Cecily made barely a sound when she finally came, just the softest private cries as she arched her hips upwards, her sweating feet flat against the dusty floor. It was an experience, not a performance; that, Cecily thought with drowsy satisfaction, was the difference between sex with Anne and sex with anyone she’d known before her. They lay for a while, Anne’s head against Cecily’s thigh and her arms wrapped around Cecily’s waist, just luxuriating in the warmth of one another.

Anne shifted first, when her arms started to fall asleep. They sat up groggily.

“You know,” Cecily reminded her, “we still haven’t really solved the mystery of why Mabel disappeared. Do you think she just gave up and stopped writing, and that’s why she’s not online anymore? Or do you think she fell victim to Madame Editor?”

Anne picked up the journal and turned to the last handwritten page. “I know it’s cheating to skip to the end,” she said in response to Cecily’s disapproving look, “but you can only defer gratification for so long.” Cecily half-shrugged, half-nodded, and scooted over closer so they could read the ending together.

“She says,” the final journal entry read, “that my writing is like porn, or like a pop video: everything displayed on the surface, forced into view, so that the reader quickly gets oversaturated and bored. I was so angry, and I wanted to cry, but she was speaking to me more kindly than she ever has before. She said I should trust my own imagination, and not just reproduce shiny images that I’d had thrust on me repeatedly. She said I should spend some time alone, quietly, and discover for myself what I find tantalizing and seductive. She even said that if I paid attention to my own fantasies and wrote to please myself, I could be an original, someone worth reading. I went away and read over some of my stories, and I felt so embarrassed, because she’s right: they were just a replay of what everyone else says is good. So I’ve decided to disappear for a while, and find my own voice. Whoever finds this journal, please tell my online friends that I’ll be back when I’m better able to satisfy them—by pleasing myself. Love, Mabel.”