As I'm building my list of favorites from the EMCSA, I've reviewed a number of other people's lists, and there are a few authors which seem to be like mushrooms after a rainstorm, and the listmaker's particular bent seems to modify only the choice of story from the author, not whether the author is present. One of these authors is Tabico. One of her stories which gets quite a bit of attention is "Yellow".
I've tried to like this story, but for me, it's like a description I've heard of Tchaikovsky; there seems to be two of him: there's the one everyone loves and the one everyone respects. For example, everyone loves The Nutcracker ("Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy", "Waltz of the Flowers") or the 1812 Overture (who doesn't love a piece of music which uses cannon fire as a percussion instrument?). On the other hand, there're pieces everyone listens to once then say they respect such as the Sixth Symphony or the 1st Piano Concerto.
This is how I feel about Yellow. I respect it. It creates a wonderful world with different and interesting characters, but in the end, the squick doesn't work for me. "Lord May" is another matter.
A man and a woman are living together, are happy together, and are progressing well in their careers. A package is mis-delivered to their condo. Being good neighbors, they step over and give the package to the proper addressee who lives a few doors away. The neighbor is a gentlemen who refers to himself as Lord May, and is the height of courtesy and generosity. The man is parapalegic, but there is a stream of attractive women who seem quite taken by the man.
The reason for this is that he has invented a unique pleasure-giving system which I'll let you, dear reader, discover on your own by reading the story, and as the friendship between the couple and Lord May progresses, the woman is offered a chance to experience this system. Both the man and woman overcome their uneasiness because they are both drawn to the possibilities, one of which is that the woman's pleasure can be controlled via a remote control. This leads to a thermonuclear section after she's had the device installed, and they discussing it's use. This is a taste:
"Harder." She spread her legs a bit, dropped her head, braced her arms against the floor, tears still squeezing from her eyes. "Hurt me."
I slid the intensity knob up. My finger hovered over the button.
"Tom?" she asked, looking over her shoulder.
"Yes?"
"Call me a bitch, and push the button."
I blinked, but the look in her eyes was electric, demanding. I swallowed, then hardened my expression.
"Bitch," I said. "Take this." I pushed the button.
She shrieked and collapsed to the carpet, writhing and gasping, crying. Her eyes were flooding with tears. "Oh," she gasped, "oh. That felt... so..." She whimpered a bit, folding into a fetal position, hands across her chest.
"Good," she said at last, quietly, lying curled on the floor.
I was a bit disappointed in the ending; it was as though a villain was needed, and the character shoehorned into that role didn't fit into the slot, especially how the ending of the story left things much as they had been before the climax of the story, except with the 'villain' being viewed as 'bad'. However, there is an alternate ending which changes things some, but I don't believe it's any better.
Still, member #3 of the list, joining "Gospel" and "Trailer Park Tango" is "Lord May". Read it. Love it.
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