Fifty Shades of Shade - The Fifty Shades of Grey Parady Read online

  Fifty Shades of Shade

  - A Parody

  E. Jay Lames

  © 2012 by E. Jay Lames

  All Rights Reserved.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be resold or given away to other people. If you like to share this book with another person, please purchase and additional copy for each person you share it with.

  Disclaimer: This is a parody about the book “Fifty Shades of Grey” by E.L. James. It is not authorized or in any way endorsed by E.L. James or her publishers. A parody is by definition a work created to mock, comment on, or make fun at an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation.

  Publisher’s Note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Printing, 2012

  Printed in the United States of America

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter One

  I glower with frustration at myself in the mirror. Damn my wet face. I’ve told myself over and over again. Never sleep with your face wet. Now I’m trying to smush it back into place. And damn Melissa McCallahan for being sick and subjecting me to this ordeal. I have two hundred and seven final exams next week that I should be studying for, but instead I’m looking in the mirror at a brown-haired girl with blue eyes too big for her discombobulated morning face. The only solution was pinning my face back into place with a clothespin and hope that I look semi-presentable.

  Melissa is my roommate, and she chose today of all days to get foot-and-mouth disease. Therefore, she can’t attend the super-duper important student paper interview with some world famous, household name, celebrity mega-industrialist that I never heard of.

  I have two hundred and thirteen exams to study for and four hundred essays to write and seven Asian students to bribe. That’s what I’m supposed to be working on this afternoon. But no—today I’m driving one hundred and sixty miles away, to meet the mysterious man who’s in all the newspapers and everyone knows about but he’s still mysterious. He’s the CEO of Shade Enterprises. As a major money-donor person (benefiber, whatever you call them) of this school, his time is very important. The fact that Melissa even got this interview was a hoot. Or a coup. That’s it, a coup.

  “Chastity, I’m sorry. It took me months to get this interview. By the time I reschedule we’ll both have graduated. As the editor, I can’t let that happen.”

  “It’s okay, I understand,” I tell her. “Nyquil or Tylenol for your foot-and-mouth?”

  “Nyquil.”

  “Is that contagious?” I ask, matter-of-factly.

  “Highly,” she tells me. “Here’s all my stuff for you to touch and carry with you.”

  They were the questions I was supposed to ask and a digital recorder.

  “Just press the button and blindly ask the questions on the paper. I wouldn’t even look at them first. That’s what a real journalist would do.”

  “I don’t know anything about him,” I murmur, when I probably should have been louder and pushed for an actual answer.

  “Just let the questions guide you, my child,” Melissa assured me, weirdly.

  The roads are clear as I set off from wherever I was in Washington to someplace the people around here call “Seattle.” I know. I’ve never heard of it either. Fortunately, Melissa lent me her sweet-ass Mercedes CLK. I’m sure Sandra, my old Volkswagen Beetle, would never have made the journey. People tell me it’s mentally unhealthy to name your cars. I do it anyway.

  The miles slip slide away in the Mercedes as I put the pedal to the metal, in the first of many clichés.

  As I eventually make it to this “Seattle” place, I find my way to the headquarters of Mr. Shade. I’m relieved that I’m not late as I walk into the building, which is all glass and steel. I walk through the steel and glass lobby up to a glass and steel, steel glass desk. I’m greeted by a statuesque blonde secretary. She was wearing a collar that read, “IF LOST, PLEASE RETURN TO SHADE ENTERPRISES.”

  “I’m here to see a man, I don’t know if he works here in Shade Enterprises. His name is Mr. Shade? My name is Chastity Stool for Melissa McCallahan.”

  “Excuse me a moment, Ms. Clark.” She arches eyebrow—one of two on her face—at me as I stand self-consciously before her. I should have borrowed one of Melissa’s formal woman suits, instead of the navy blue jacket, brown knee-length boots, and the middle finger I was holding up to the blonde secretary. For me, this is dressing smart (which is a term that nobody in America uses in the way I mean it).

  “Miss McCallahan is expected. Please sign here, Miss Stool. You’ll want the elevator on the right. Twentieth floor.” She handed me a glass and steel pen and I signed on the glass and steel sign-in pad.

  The elevator whisks me at literally the speed of light to the twentieth floor. The doors open to another glass and steel lobby. And the secretary who greets me looks pretty much exactly the same as the secretary downstairs. And they have the same desk. This is not for lack of vocabulary imagination, it really was like that, I swear it.

  “Miss Stool, could you wait here, please?” the literary clone said, pointing me to a seated area of white leather chairs. There you go, a non-glass-and-steel thing finally.

  I sit down and fumble the questions as I pull them from my backpack. I wish I knew something about this globally-renowned individual. He could be twenty, he could be sixty, he could be a dolphin, I have no idea. Why couldn’t Melissa tell me anything? Why didn’t I just look him up on MySpace?

  Get a grip, my recurring inner monologue tells me. Shade is probably in his mid-forties, fit, decent-looking, your average international self-made corporate magnate.

  “Miss Stool,” the stock blonde secretary said. “Mr. Shade will see you now. May I take your jacket?”

  “Oh, please.”

  “Have you been offered any refreshments?”

  “Um—no.”

  Blonde number two frowns and eyes her young blonde assistant. A second later, giant security guards drag the assistant away kicking and screaming into some kind of punishment cellar.

  “Now, would you like any tea, coffee or water?”

  “No thanks.”

  As I turn to Shade’s office the door opens. A tall, smooth, well-dressed African-American man with short dreads—think Idris Elba crossed with Doug E. Doug—is walking out.

  He turns and says through the door, “Golf this week, Shade? Or endangered species hunting, perhaps?”

  I don’t hear the reply. One of the secretaries turns to me, “You can just go in, now.”

  I do just that, nervously. I push open the door to his office and I trip over my own two feet—because that happens all the time to people in real life—and I fall in.

  Double poopy crap! Me and my two clichéd left feet. I am on my hands and knees in Mr. Shade’s office.

  Once I stand up, I lay eyes on him. Holy cannoli! He’s so young!

  “Miss McCallahan.” He extends a long-fingered hand at me. It’s the most handsome finger I’ve ever seen. “Would you like to sit?”

  So young—and attractive, very attractive. He’s tall (of course), dressed in a fine gray suit (naturally) and, get this, gray eyes, too. They stare into me until I break into a quick, full-body seizure. When the
seizuring stops he is still just standing there looking at me.

  “Miss McCallahan is indisposed with a terminal illness. So she sent me. I hope you don’t mind, Mr. Shade.”

  “And you are?” His voice is warm as if his mouth was passing gas, but the gas is really a sweet chimney fire.

  “Chastity Stool. I’m studying English Literaturology with Melissa…um, Miss McCallahan at WSU.”

  “I see.” If this guy is thirty then I’m a monkey’s uncle (third cliché, we’re gaining steam).

  “Would you like to sit?” I see the ghost of a smile in his expression, but I’m not sure. I move in like an inch from his face to get a closer look. Still not sure if it’s a smile.

  I turn and sit on an L-shaped couch in his gi-freakin-normous office. There is exquisite art everywhere.

  “They’re lovely,” I comment.

  “Aren’t they? The artist is a local autistic boy. Once I have him secretly killed they’ll be worth ten times that amount,” he said calmly.

  “Well, they’re beautiful,” I continue to admire. “I think art is so artistic,” I murmur, distracted by him and the paintings. Mostly him.

  “I couldn’t agree more, Miss Stool,” he replies, his voice soft as something that’s soft. I find myself blushing for some reason. I throw up a little in my mouth from nerves, but then I swallow it again before anyone notices.

  I continue taking out the questions and recorder. I fumble with it, and drop it twenty-three times. Shade just sits there, looking at me shrewdly, the crease in his fly making it look like he has half an erection, but I know he doesn’t. Finally, I get the recorder set.

  “Did Melissa, I mean Miss McCallahan, I mean Melissa, I mean Miss McCallahan, explain what the interview is all about exactly?” I ask him.

  “Yes. I’m speaking at the graduation.”

  I didn’t know this. What’s a graduation?

  “Good,” I fix up my face and put it back into place again. “I have some questions.”

  “I thought you might,” he says, with a sly, attractive, hot-bodied wit. He’s so hot.

  I nervously start in. “You’re very young to have achieved so much. To what do you owe your success?”

  “Business is all about people, Miss Stool. And I’m very good at judging people. I know how they work, what makes them excel”—blahblahblah, some other crap about incentivizing or whatever. I was just paying attention to how gorgeous he was. It’s like he could see into my g-spot. I’m not sure what a g-spot is, although I have an idea from overhearing other girls talking about it.

  “You sound like a control freak that got lucky,” I say when he stops speaking. It wasn’t a question Melissa had written, it just came out of the hole in my face before my brain could do anything about it.

  “I don’t believe in luck or chance, and yes, I do exercise control in all things.” I look at him as he holds my gaze steadily, impassively, steadpassively. My heartbeat quickens, and my face breaks out in hives. Why does he have this amazing effect on me? His good looks, his attractiveness, his beauty, his gorgeous face and body? Gee-willickers!

  “Besides,” the complex hottie continues, “Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in”—blahblahblah, he says. His voice is soft as a dryer sheet.

  “Do you feel that you have immense power?”

  “I rule—I mean dominate—I mean enslave—I mean employ forty thousand people. Responsibility for them is, in a sense, power. If I sell the company, they will all starve to death in the streets. Probably die of very curable diseases, too. Which would just be too bad.”

  He was so humble. Wait, what’s the opposite of humble? Oh wait, conceited. That’s what he was, alright: the opposite of humble. “Don’t you have a board to answer to?”

  “I own my company. I don’t have a board.”

  Holy crapdoodles. He was arrogant. I change track.

  “And do you have any interests outside of work?”

  “I have varied interests, Miss Stool. Extremely varied.” He pauses for a long time. “Do my varied interests sound mysterious?”

  “Yes,” I answer, in a rubber ducky squeak.

  “Well, they are mysterious. Very mysterious.”

  Something told me his varied interests were very mysterious. “But what do you do to chillax?”

  “Chillax?” he smiles, revealing perfect white teeth, probably the result of Crest Whitening or Rembrandt. “Well, to chillax, as you say, I do all the things super-rich white people do: I sail, I fly, I take part in secret coalitions aimed at population control, the usual. I’m very wealthy, you know. And I have absorbing hobbies.” He slowed down his voice a lot when he got to “absorbing.” Like all dramatic, kinda. Like he was alluding to something. Oh, well.

  “Are you gay, Mr. Shade?” I just looked at the next question and asked it before thinking first. Why do I lack basic motor functions? Why don’t I think before I act? Damn, Melissa, that foot-and-mouth bitch.

  “No, Chastity, I’m not.”

  It’s the first time he’s said my name.

  “Sorry—er, it’s what was written here.”

  His eyes gleam. My heartbeat, the one that I told you about before, accelerates. Yeah. And my cheeks, they went flush. Again, I know.

  “Those aren’t your questions?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “Are you a colleague on the student newspaper?”

  “No. Melissa’s just my roommate and the girl I steal tampons from sometimes.”

  A knock at the door. Blonde number two enters.

  “Mr. Shade, forgive me for interrupting, but your next meeting is in two minutes.”

  “We’re not finished here, Andrea. Please have my next meeting murdered. His family, too.”

  “Right away, sir.”

  “Wait, Andrea…not murdered, what is it—cancelled. Cancel my next meeting was what I meant to say.”

  “Very well,” she mutters. He frowns and turns his attention back to me.

  “Where were we, Miss Stool?”

  Miss Stool? Oh, that’s me, right. Doi! But what happened to calling me Chastity?

  “I want to know about you,” he says, his eyes looking at me like they want to know about me.

  “There’s not much to know.”

  “What are your plans after you graduate?”

  I assume graduate means the part when school is done. “I haven’t made any plans yet. I just need to get through my three hundred and six final exams, first.”

  “We run an internship program.” Is he offering me a job?

  “No, an internship.” He read my thoughts.

  “Oh. I’ll bear that in mind,” I murmur. “Although I don’t think I’d fit in here.”

  “Why do you say that?” He tilts his head, licks the top of his nose, and pokes himself in the eye, softly, sensuously.

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” I say.

  “Not to me.” The humor he didn’t have at all in the first place is totally gone. I need to get out of here. Now. “Would you like me to show you around?”

  “I have to go. I have a long drive back.”

  “You’re driving back to Somewhere?” he asks, sounding concerned. He looks outside, it’s raining. In Seattle, of all places. “Drive carefully, out there.”

  “Thank you for the interview, Mr. Shade,” I say, packing up my stuff in characteristically awkward fashion.

  “The pleasure’s been all mine,” he says, polite as ever. He stands and holds out his hand. “Until we meet again, Miss Stool.” He said it like a challenge, or a threat. He then said, “Maybe it’s a challenge, or a threat.”

  Hmm, I wonder.

  “Mr. Shade.” I nod and leave.

  “Wait, did you have a coat?” he asks.

  “A jacket.”

  One of the blonde secretaries is lowered down from the ceiling holding my jacket. Before she puts it on, Shade steps in and does it himself. The secretary is reeled back up to the ceiling. He places his hands on my shoulders f
or a moment. I freeze, and my you-know-what down there tingles nervously.

  He summons an elevator to open by simply pointing at it. I get in to leave.

  “Chastity,” he says, as a farewell.

  “Whatever your first name is,” I reply.

  Mercifully, the elevator doors close.

  CHAPTER TWO

  As I drive back, replaying the interview in my head, I feel foolish. And embarrassed. And hungry. Well, I’m hungry because I haven’t eaten. But the other two things are from interviewing Shade.

  He’s attractive, confident, commanding, warmly homicidal, at ease with himself—but on the flipside he’s cold, tyrannical, autocratic, and cold. And tyrannical. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly, nor does he pamper toes sadly. He’s accomplished so much at his age. Doesn’t he deserve to be like that? Oh, I can’t stop thinking about him but I want to. Why didn’t Melissa give me a brief biography? Or at least a notebook and recorder that didn’t touch her sick hands.

  We live in a small duplex close to the WSU campus. Melissa’s parents bought the place for her and I pay peanuts for rent. Literally. I buy Melissa a box of Planters Honey-Roasted every month.

  “Chastity, you’re back!” Melissa sits in our living room, surrounded by books. Her Ebola is looking much better.

  “How was it? What’s he like?”

  “I’m glad it’s over and I don’t want to see him again.”

  “So, it went well?”

  “He’s so…intense. Intimidating. And young. Why didn’t you give me some background info? I looked like a nincompoop there.”

  “Chastity, I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I was busy being crippled by a deadly fever.”

  I huff. “Mostly he was courteous. Slightly stuffy—like he was old before he was young, or something.”

  “Old before his time, you mean?”

  “What?” Anyway, I move on, “You look better. Was it the soup?”

  “No. Life-saving vaccine in my dying moments,” she said casually.

  “Well, I gotta go. I can still make my shift at Ricklin’s.”