The Haunted Vagina

‘The Haunted Vagina’ es una novela bizarra que desafía las convenciones literarias tradicionales. La premisa es tan absurda como sugerente: Steve, el protagonista, descubre que la vagina de su novia Stacy es un portal a otro mundo.

La trama se desarrolla cuando Steve decide explorar este extraño universo, adentrándose literalmente en el cuerpo de su pareja. Lo que encuentra allí es surrealista, ya que está poblada por esqueletos y seres gelatinosos con costumbres peculiares.

Mellick combina elementos de terror, ciencia ficción y fantasía para crear una historia única. A pesar de su premisa extravagante, la novela sorprende. El estilo de Mellick es directo y sin pretensiones, con toques de humor negro y situaciones grotescas. show more Sin embargo, bajo la superficie de lo bizarro, la novela explora temas más profundos sobre las relaciones y la identidad.

‘The Haunted Vagina’ no es para todos los gustos. Su contenido explícito y sus situaciones extremas pueden resultar perturbadoras para algunos lectores. No obstante, para aquellos dispuestos a adentrarse en lo extraño, ofrece una experiencia de lectura única y memorable.

En resumen, esta novela corta, mezcla de romance, horror y sátira, es un ejemplo destacado del género bizarro. show less

Cue music from "The Exorcist.”

Okay, I'll give you a moment to clean your screen off after you just read the title and spit out what you were drinking.

So, what is The Haunted Vagina by Carlton Mellick III about? Really, you're going to ask that? Okay. Imagine if your girlfriend's vagina was the portal to another world with strange creatures inhabiting it. That's the situation that Steve finds himself in. And...that's pretty much it.

The really odd thing about this is that the simple concept actually works. Through Steve's exploring this strange new world, it gives Mellick a chance to perform an almost straight-up world-building exercise. It's a strangely interesting world with a mysterious history.

Steve himself goes through an show more interesting if very quick character evolution. The character is believable, switching between a coward and pretending to be brave because his girlfriend tells him to do something he really doesn't want to do (who hasn't been in that situation?). At the same time, the character evolution seems a little too quick and convenient. While it fits with the story, it also feels like the story itself could have been changed a little to slow down the character development.

One thing, which should be obvious, is that this book will not be for people who are squeamish around sexual situations. At least I really, really hope that's obvious. Mellick doesn't shy away from being fairly descriptive in these scenes, nor does he mince words. But, then again, if you're going to pick this book up, you're already expecting this, so I'm not sure why I'm even mentioning it.

The prose and editing are clean, which is a huge plus. Again, it's a pet peeve of mine, so I'm glad this one was a smooth read, and I could stay in the book very easily without my inner editor distracting me.

While The Haunted Vagina is actually a decent book (quality-wise), and Mellick seems to have put a disturbing amount of thought into how a miniature world inside a woman's womb would actually work. While the story is short and works in its own way, sometimes things feel a little convenient for pushing the plot along towards its conclusion a little too quickly. It ultimately feels more like an exercise in building an interesting world, but sacrifices a more involved story in the process.

The Haunted Vagina earns 3.5 tubes of lube out of 5. show less

*Rant incoming*
I'll tell you why I am giving this 5⭐: my brain is too shocked to fully process this bizarre thing. Rating might lower to 1 or 2⭐ as soon as I regain cognitive function.
I picked this book because of its cover. Did I know a thing about it? No. Do I wish I did? No. Clearly, knowing would have ill prepared me more than going into this blind.
I am going to let you, my dear poor human being reading this for some weird reason find out it's bizarreness on your own if you dare, I'll just say this:
- it's not an erotic novel;
- wherever you think this is going, you are wrong;
- Stacy is a bitch;
- Steve is an idiot;
- This thing has its own lore.
I am not kidding. A 100 page story about a haunted vagina has: a love story, an show more adventure story, an Stockholm Syndrome story, and a little mythology explaining it all. In just 100 pages.
I'll wake up in the morning and assume it was all a dream because I can't have read this.
Also, I kinda want a full adaptation to anime. It'd be gloriously bizarre. show less

Bizarro is the closest thing to a modern Penny Dreadful in terms of offering a contemporary shock value to the reader.
I am both vastly impressed, yet at the same time appalled by what I have read.

If there is a travelling freakshow where hardcore pornography drinks from the same trough as art, then this book must surely be the filthy circus cage where they are left chained together to fornicate unashamedly for the paying pleasure of a slightly guilty public.

In case you haven't gathered - I liked this book; but, feel unclean for having done so.

The Haunted Vagina By Carlton Mellick III was by far the weirdest book I’ve ever read. Weirdly imaginative, oddly explicit but not pornographic, kind of sweet but definitely not sexy, it’s about Steve, who goes in search of the strange voices inside his girlfriend Stacy’s vagina, from which a skeleton emerged one night after having awkward sex. It turns out her vagina is a portal to another realm. Inside Stacy’s womb, Steve finds friendly skeletons and Fig, Stacy’s childhood imaginary friend, living in a strange landscape that could have come from a Salvador Dali painting. Will Steve find his way back to Stacy, or will he fall in love with Fig and stay in her world? If you want an extremely odd short story unlike anything show more you’ve ever read before, read it and find out. show less

So… this is a thing I read. 😂

One of my book groups decided to read Carlton Mellick III’s The Haunted Vagina after it popped up on some of our feeds least week, and I’m not going to lie, I had no idea what to expect. Based on the description (slide to read), I assumed it was going to be more smut than anything else. To my outright surprise, this turned out to be an almost touching story about loneliness and learning to love the person you find yourself with. Of course, that’s after you get past the fact that Steve basically goes naked spelunking in Stacy’s vagina after a corpse crawls out of her while they’re having sex. Once inside her, Steve finds an entire world in there inhabited by meandering skeletons and Stacy’s show more former imaginary friend. So, don’t get me wrong, this is probably the weirdest book I’ve possibly ever read, but it did prove to be more than I was expecting.

The book falls into the bizarro fiction genre, something I had not heard of before. According to Wikipedia, the term was coined in 2005, and is a “contemporary literary genre, which often uses elements of absurdism, satire, and the grotesque, along with pop-surrealism and genre fiction staples, in order to create subversive, weird, and entertaining works.” All of which accurately describes this book.

This is definitely not going to be for everyone, and I honestly don’t know that I’d actively search out more books in this genre, but I appreciate it for what it is, and I’m glad I got to learn about a genre I hadn’t known about before.

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One of my Facebook friends posted about this book and at first I thought that there was no way this book could possibly be real. I trotted off to Goodreads and Amazon and sure enough, The Haunted Vagina is a real book. Having read so many books in this genre, I'm always looking for anything quirky that brings something new and so I simply couldn't resist the lure of The Haunted Vagina.

I don't even know where to begin with this review. I suppose I should start by saying that I read the majority of the book with my legs tightly crossed saying, "no, no, no". I don't know about you, but the very idea of a vagina being spread wide enough to encompass a full grown man just made me never want to spread my legs ever again. Pause and read that show more sentence again. A grown ass man crawled inside a vagina.

It all begins when Steve and his girlfriend Stacy are all cuddled up and he hears a strange sound. At first he believes they left the television on and then he wonders if something is living in the walls. Finally, Stacey admits that her vagina is haunted. That's enough for Steve to decide that he's really not interested in sex with her anymore. Stacey, not being down with abstinence, forces Steve into doing the 69. As Stacey reaches orgasm, a skeleton begins to crawl out of her vagina. Stacey is freaked out for awhile but it's enough to make her decide that if Steve really cares about her, he'll crawl inside her vagina and figure out what the hell is going on in there.

For the most part, Steve is the reluctant participant in The Haunted Vagina. He is physically put into a position to have oral sex with Stacy after explicitly saying he's not interested.
"Same goes with oral sex. We both like to receive it, but neither of us want to give it. Normally we can compromise on oral. If I give it to her, she will give it to me. Unfortunately, I’m not willing to go near her vagina anymore. Not with my penis, not with my tongue.
“It’s not like you have to stick your tongue inside of me,” she says. “You can just lick my glowworm.”
"Glowworm is her pet name for a clitoris.
“It’s on the outside,” she says.
“But still . . .” I say.
“I’ll keep my legs closed,” she says. “You won’t even hear it.”
I don’t reply. She turns away from me and takes off her work clothes, as if I agreed. Folding her glasses and putting them back in their case. Her movements are cold and mechanical. She must be pissed. Giving me the silent treatment like the time I washed her white fuzzy coat wrong, or the time she found pictures of my old girlfriends and I wouldn’t let her throw them out. On those occasions, she ignored me and locked herself in the bedroom. On this occasion, however, she wants to get intimate. She won’t look me in the eyes as she unbuttons my shirt and pulls off my pants. She picks me up and turns me upside-down, then plops us on the bed."
The above is written as just another bizarre incident particularly given the fact that a skeleton climbs it's way out of Stacey's vagina when she begins to orgasm but make no mistake, this scene is describing a sexual assault. Steve actually says that he's been "consumed" by Stacey since the day they met. The fact that Steve enjoys the fellatio he receives doesn't negate the fact that he said no to a sexual encounter. Steve enters her vagina twice through coercion to prove his love for her. Once he's transformed inside the vagina to some sort of creature, it only takes a month for Stacey to have sex with someone else in an attempt to drown him in another man's semen. Yes, it's as gross as it sounds.

Once inside the world which for whatever reason exists in Stacey's vagina, Steve meets Fig, who is just as controlling as Stacey. When Steve declines an offer to play with Fig, she locks him up which forces his body to change into a male version of hers. Steve then becomes violent with Fig, when she initiates sex, mimicking all of the sex acts Stacy made him do, leading to Fig's confusion. In the end, Steve knocks up Fig and they remain trapped in the uterus of Stacey's unborn child, with no hope of release until Stacey's child reaches maturity. This does not bother Steve because he falls in love with Fig and experiences an extreme passion for her.

I'll admit that The Haunted Vagina is certainly unique in this genre, though the execution could certainly use some work. The entire premise of this novel seems to be that women are powerful and can and do exert power using their vaginas. When this happens, the relationship is necessarily unhealthy. Men are held captive and are powerless to resist because they are so enthralled. This very much makes Steve read as a self insert trying to deal with a bad relationship he had participated in.

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