"oh! Um, hi, sorry, sorry Marge, I--um--I just--" Lacey's words come out in a stammering, incoherent babble, and her face quickly reddens into a beet red blush as she struggles to meet her neighbor's gaze. It would be adorable if the whole situation wasn't so utterly bizarre--when Marge invited the younger woman over for some coffee and pastries while the kids were at school, she never thought she'd even have to go looking for her, let alone that she'd find her…. "I, I can explain," Lacey blurts out, her hands fumbling to pull her sweater down and conceal her exposed breasts.
She sets down the copy of 'The Wizard of Oz' she was holding, and laboriously presses her knees back together so she can adjust her skirt back into position. "It, uh, it was the books," she mumbles, obviously aware of how it has to look to Marge to find her half-naked in her child's playroom. "I, um, I don't know how much you know about h-hypnosis, but my husband and I, we, uhh, we like to play with it sometimes and he… he has this thing he does to me. Where he gives me a book or a newspaper or something and I, I try to read it but the words go all fuzzy and I can't make out what they say and I just… I feel kind of, um, dumb." Marge has to admit, she hadn't exactly pegged the bottle-blonde as a natural intellect, but this wasn't the reason she expected to hear.
"And I mean, um, it's fine," Lacey continues, her voice beginning to get slightly breathy and her legs parting again despite her best efforts. "I, um, I mean, my Donald makes good money, so I don't need to work, and it's not like I get this way when I try to read package labels or street signs or anything, and it's just, kind of--it's a game we play together. And I guess I didn't realize how much it was affecting me until I walked past your daughter's room and I saw all the books, and I just thought… I thought maybe if it was a simpler story, something written for kids, I'd be able to make sense of it, y'know? And I guess I kind of lost track of myself a little. I, I'm really sorry. I w-wouldn't have done it if it wasn't, y'know, just you and me here."
She looks so contrite and apologetic that Marge almost forgets the horrifyingly salient point at the heart of the whole explanation--Lacey's husband has rendered her functionally illiterate with hypnosis, and more than that he's made it a turn-on for her every time she tries to read for herself and her brain shuts down. It means a lot of things, especially for the planned invitation to the neighborhood book club Marge was going to offer later, but chief among them is that it seems to have made the poor thing gullible and malleable and easy to manipulate. And Marge, who's still thinking of the pretty frilly panties she saw in the moments before Lacey managed to close her legs, can't help wanting to find out more about that.
So outwardly, she adopts a sympathetic demeanor as she says, "That's alright, dear, I understand." But she's already thinking ahead to what might happen when she adds, "Maybe you just need a little help to get back into the habit of reading? Why don't you come with me, and we can try some of the books in my bedroom." And as guilty as she feels for taking advantage, she wants to find out just how dumb and suggestible Lacey gets when the words turn to squiggles in front of her glassy eyes.
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