Fifty Shades of Shade - "The Fifty Shades of Grey Parady"

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

             
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 someplac
e 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 sign
ed
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.”

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

             
“Now, would yo
u 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.”