Fifty Shades of Fairy Tales Omnibus Read Free Page A

can, but they tend to have less hang ups overall than homo sapiens.”
    About a hour later, after we drove down close to the wharf, Mike directed me through a tunnel that led to an urban area in shambles. The places were falling down all around us, and the buildings, mostly brick with tattered awnings, looked like they hadn’t seen paint or modernization since the 1980s. I frowned and thought what an odd setting for a regal fairy court. But, then, Mike had told me to expected the unexpected with fairy.
    “ In this world, not everything is as it seems,” he told me as we exited the car and walked toward what looked like an old, abandoned pharmacy.
    Inside, I found an entirely different world, and the strange finery surrounding me made me gasp in awe and surprise.
    It was like a scene out of Pan’s Labyrinth, or some old paintings of fairy courts. The grey stone walls sparkled as we entered a narrow corridor that sloped steeply downward. The more we traveled, the more oddities I discovered, and the path was an erratic roller coaster of up and down. Hands, clad in silken gloves of red, or gold, or silver, reached out from these sparkling walls and caressed my skin. The floor under our feet appeared to boil and bubble, yet we stood on solid concrete. The lights that lit our way didn’t rest on the walls, but rather these tiny blue globes floated and hovered close by us, zipping around our heads, occasionally annoying me, then shooting far ahead.
    Mike laughed when I swatted at one like a fly. He said, “Be careful. Don’t piss them off. They’re small but they pack some bite.”
    Finally we stopped in front of a massive, rounded door made of gold and filled with an intricate scene someone had carved into the soft metal. The depiction was one of a satyr playing a flute while nymphs danced around a waterfall, but this morphed into other fairy scenes as we drew near. An incubus perched on a lovely woman’s chest. An undine lifted up out of the water to snatch at a passing traveler and take him down into a watery grave. An elusive sprite guided a lost child home.
    Mike wrapped one big hand around the onyx loop hanging in the center of one door and he knocked. Once. Twice. Three times.
    The door quietly swept open.
    The interior, and the beings gathered within, reminded me of a masquerade ball. The gold and red ballroom was packed with people in fine costumes made of silk, satin, finely spun thread. Their shoes and attire looked sixteenth century French. But Venetian masks hid their faces from view, as these partygoers passed by in swirling skirts and ruffs at the neck and wrists.
    When they started to part as they noticed us, I spotted the focal point of the room. Two tall, slender figures dressed in costume sat on vaulted thrones of crimson intertwined with gold. On the floor before them, masked partygoers performed carnal acts. And I had a feeling Mike and I would soon be joining the display.
    Mike led me up to the two thrones and said, “Here she is.”
    The masked being on the right, wearing a bouffant wig of silvery curls, nodded at me and him.
    “ She wants to know how to control her power, wants to cure her insomnia” he continued. “Will you teach her?”
    The one on the left spoke in an eerie voice that sounded ancient. “Yes. Perform first.”
    “ Just follow my lead,” Mike whispered in my ear as he took my hand.
    “ Do I have much choice?” I muttered back.
    He chuckled, grinned a Cheshire grin. “Oh, sweetie, make no mistake--ultimately, you’re the one that’s in control of me.”
    I smiled at that. My heart did strange things I wasn’t sure I was comfy with, but I didn’t have time to think about it at the moment.
    Two wooden, antique bureaus were wheeled out by masked beings dressed like jesters. The doors in these bureaus were made of glass, and I could see practically everything inside. And the contents were all about play and pleasure. I spotted handcuffs, whips, paddles, and things I