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 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. ( )

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 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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*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 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. ( )

About two years ago, my friend Monica gave me the key into the world of Bizarro fiction by lending me The Baby Jesus Butt Plug by Carlton Mellick III. Afterwards, I decided to venture home into other worlds of bizarro writers through internet stories by "famous" underground writers of punk literature. Carlton Mellick III, however, has been my favorite.

After The Baby Jesus Butt Plug I tried his other book, The Menstruating Mall. The book was just as bizarre as the first one.

Now after reading The Haunted Vagina I wonder what's left for Mellick. The book was a fun, but quick, read. However, it seemed as if the writer has become disenchanted with his genre. I just didn't feel that the book lived up to his normality of strangeness and the lack of wonder was greatly noticed.

What happens to you when your girlfriend's vagina is the gateway to a ghost world where a three-dimensional anime-esque ghost girl walks around naked and playing equals sex?

It's something I'd rather not think about again. ( )

A typical awfully written fetish erotica right until the protagonist fell into a hole, had his skin turn into a latex suit, and his skeleton unzipped him from the inside so it could leave to start dancing. Pity the ending is the same as being john malkovich. ( )