Mary was a voracious reader. When she was a kid, she read her parent’s entire volume of encyclopedias. In elementary school, it only took her until 3rd grade to read the entire non-fiction section of the school library. In middle school, while her classmates were paying attention (or zoning off) in class, she was reading college textbooks, and breezing through homework while at school. In high school, her parents got her a tablet, and she was soon binging Wikipedia, pirating books from sketchy Russian sites and filling her brain with as much as she could.

Now a freshman in college studying physics, she was only two years away from graduating, because of how many AP and honors credits she had taken in high school.

Mary was on top of the world, and the only thing she lamented was how isolated her reading habits made her. But she was sure the years of loneliness would be worth it when she graduated. The years of passing on every party, ignoring her roommates’ attempts to socialize, turning down every boy who came her way. She was sure she would be happier this way. So sure.

Mary was on her way back from the school library, reading instead of looking where she was going when she bumped into a girl who was walking in the other direction. Books and papers went flying everywhere and Mary and the other girl both ended up on the ground.

“Ohmygosh! I’m so, like, sorry,” the girl said. She was blonde, with a curvy body that Mary would never admit she envied, and the Greek letters of one of the sororities on campus emblazoned across her chest.

“No, no, it’s fine,” Mary said. “I just wasn’t paying attention.”

Mary’s reading glasses had fallen off and had landed a few feet away. She reached over and picked them up, placing them back upon her nose. A strange tingling sensation played across her face where the glasses touched her. Or was that her imagination?

The two girls gathered up their stuff, and the sorority girl seemed to search around for one more thing before letting out a triumphant, “Yay! I found the glasses my boyfriend gave me.” The sorority girl replaced her glasses, which looked almost identical to Mary’s and the two girls got up, brushed themselves off and were on their way.

Mary tried resuming her reading of the book, but didn’t even notice as she started reading backwards from the place she had stopped. She continued to walk, more careful not to bump into anyone this time, and had gone back through several dozen pages by the time she got back to her apartment just off campus.

She made a poor college student’s dinner of ramen noodles and sriracha, and finished reading the book she had been working on. When she closed back to the front cover, she saw the title: “SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome.”

“Huh,” she thought aloud. “I don’t know anything about Roman history. Seems like this might be an interesting book to read some time.”

She went to her overflowing bookshelves, and found the history section. She put the book in the “to be read” section of the shelf. Then she paused when she noticed the titles of some of the books in the “already read” section.

‘The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome’,

‘The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic’,

‘Ancient Rome: A New History’...

How had that happened? She was normally so meticulous about how she organized her books, but somehow a few books she had never read had ended up in the “already read” section. Oh well, she could always read them in the future—she liked having a backlog to work through.

Then she turned her attention to her schoolwork. She had finals to review for, but she wasn’t worried. She had aced her midterms, practically breaking the curve in a few of her classes, and so she just needed to read back through her notes, and she was sure she would be fine.

Mary picked up her notes and cheat sheets for math, and started going over them. Once again, she wasn’t conscious of the fact that she opened her notebook to the back and read backwards through her notes. She worked through sample problems from the textbook for an hour, trying to do a quick refresher of everything they had done in Calc class that semester.

When she was done, she looked down confused at what she had just done. Everything she had worked on for the last hour looked like a foreign language to her. What did “lim” mean? What was that squiggly ‘s’ thing? She kind of recognized the x’s from algebra—they were a variable of some kind, right? But what did dx/dy mean?

Mary ran her hands through her hair in frustration. All of this had seemed so easy just minutes ago, but now it was like looking at a foreign language. She tried to work through the problems from her midterm, but that was no help either. She couldn’t follow the steps she was doing at all.

She had a few fleeting moments of insight, where she realized the procedure wasn’t far off from algebra, but the insight left as soon as it came. She realized with a groan that she had a lot of studying to do this weekend before her tests. She’d have to brush up on algebra tonight, to give herself a solid foundation for reminding herself of calculus.

Mary went to her bookshelves, and found her high school textbook on algebra and started working through it. Backwards.

By the end of the night, Mary was looking bleary eyed over hours of work on algebra. She felt a bit like when her brain was finally done after a long night of studying, but also… different. She felt strangely empty. She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes.

Blinking a few times, she realized that she was craving something, but she wasn’t quite sure what. It was like something was missing from her, but she was also exhausted from all her studying. She just wanted to relax and veg out on her couch until she fell asleep.

Mary flipped on her TV, but instead of watching a PBS science documentary or another intellectually stimulating show, she found herself flipping mindlessly through the channels. She didn’t know what she was looking for exactly. Just something less exhausting than the marathon she had just gone through. Finally, she found herself on a channel she always avoided in the past.

It was a trashy reality TV channel, and right now a show following a bunch of dysfunctional but entertaining young adults was airing. Mary sighed. It wasn’t normally her cup of tea, but she found herself drawn to the petty drama of it. She watched, and absorbed what she saw happening. Strangely, the indescribable “empty” feeling she had had lessened a few minutes into the show, and she found herself watching trashy show after trashy show with the same rapt attention she usually reserved exclusively for books, and educational programming.

She didn’t even notice that it was 3 AM when she finally fell asleep.

The next morning, Mary crawled out of bed, feeling a little sore. She gingerly rubbed her breasts, and her butt wondering why they were causing her pain. Had she sat wrong or something? That might explain her ass, but it didn’t seem like a good explanation for her tits.

It took her a few seconds before she noticed the words she had thought. “Tits”? “Ass”? She didn’t usually think of her body parts that way. Her inclinations had always been to use more neutral, almost clinical terms for these body parts.

She was shocked out of this train of thought, when she saw herself in the mirror. The comfortable top she normally wore to sleep was stretched and threatening to have her tits spill out of it any second, and her ass was stretching her poor underwear to its limits. Were they swollen or something?

More awake because of her confusion, Mary took off her clothes to investigate. She tried to force herself to be clinical. Her breasts seemed to have grown at least a cup size overnight, and her ass- butt looked bigger and juicier than before. She had never been all that curvy, so this was quite a shock to wake up to.

She shrugged. Oh well, probably something hormonal or something. She wasn’t going to complain if nature finally saw fit to make her a late bloomer. She took an ibuprofen for the slight soreness, and tried to continue her morning routine.

She showered, and when she got out, she was about to put on her make up when her empty drawers reminded her that she had never had make up. That was… odd. Why was she suddenly feeling the urge to participate in the pointless and stupid beauty pageant of life. She was a gifted young woman, and she preferred to let her cultivated mind speak for her, not some painted on pretense to titillate men.

Mary did her normal, make-up-less routine, drank a Soylent for breakfast, and started studying. It was Saturday and she had the whole day ahead of her.

Mary put on her reading glasses, and looked at the algebra review she had done from yesterday. How was this possible? All of this looked completely unfamiliar—she had spent hours working on this!

Trying not to panic, she decided she had had enough math for now, and decided to try and study her physics work.

Even that was rusty. Her struggles with calculus caused her to not understand how formulas were derived anymore, and she found herself missing some of the deep connections between everything that had come so easily before. However, she was able to plug-and-chug through a few problems, and was able to come up with correct answers for a little over half of the physics review this way.

But after she was done, she had no idea how she had managed to do even that. She was completely lost following her own work. Had she just lucked out in banging a few numbers in the right place by accident or something?

Fuck. The morning wasn’t even over, and her prospects for her finals in a few days were not looking good.

Mary took a few deep breaths in and out, and decided to study for one of her easier classes. She got out the textbook for her women’s studies class and tried to refresh herself on the important concepts from the class, by reading the review sections at the end of each chapter.

When she got to the front of the textbook, she looked in confusion at the front of the book.

‘Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach’

“Who’d want to study women?” she said curiously. She squirmed in her seat. She already knew the answer.

Men.

Why had she never had a man in her life? She had always been a pretty enough girl. A few guys had even asked her out. But she had always said no. She couldn’t for the life of her understand why.

Men were big and strong, and they smelled so… masculine. She rubbed her thighs together unconsciously.

And she had never really thought about it, but most of the politicians and rich people she could think of were men. And growing up she remembered how happy most of her friends in relationships were. Mary had always had her books, and what had that amounted to? She couldn’t remember a single thing about calculus the weekend before the test.

Maybe, she could take a break and find a man. She knew a few spots off campus that were notorious hook up spots. She took her glasses off.

A determination filled her. A longing, something missing between her legs. And also between her ears. She was so empty, and she needed something, someone to fill her up.

She went to a bar she had heard stories about.

It was around lunch, so she was unhappy to see the bar wasn’t very full. There was just a greasy man in leather, day-drinking his cares away. He did look kind of cute though…

Mary sat next to him. She could smell the tobacco and whisky on him, as well as that masculine scent she realized she needed so much.

“Hi there, mister,” she said. “Do you like what you see?”

He looked blearily over at her and grinned.

Flirting was a foreign and alien concept to Mary, but she tried to remember what she saw in the reality TV shows last night. She was a natural. She leaned over, playfully punctuated her words with light touches across his arm, and brushed up subtly against him whenever she could make it look natural.

After a few minutes, the two of them couldn’t wait much longer.

“Whaddya say we go back ta my place?” the man slurred.

Mary could have taken him right there, but she let him lead her out of the bar. He drove, something he was definitely not sober enough to do, but luckily the two of them avoided an accident, and soon the two of them were tearing off each other’s clothes in his house.

“You ever given head before?” the man asked.

Mary shook her head. She was dripping wet for him already. She would have done anything he said at this point.

He grabbed her hair roughly from behind and guided her down to his cock. She started sucking, and noticed the way he grunted as she bobbed her head up and down. She studied his reactions with the same studious eye she had applied to her academic career—etching every action and reaction into her head. Training herself to give pleasure. Filling her empty head.

Soon, his warm cum was filling her mouth, and she swallowed without a second thought.

Then he guided her to the bed.

“I give as good as I get,” he said. Then his head migrated down between her legs, and she felt his tongue between her legs.

This man was a god. He knew how to work her clit like a pro, and soon she was moaning harder and heavier than she ever had before.

Why had she skipped this part of life? Why had she shunned men, and avoided learning her true purpose in life: to give pleasure, to receive pleasure.

Well, no matter. She was learning her lesson now. Filling the emptiness in her head with all these important new lessons.

Around 4 PM, she came stumbling fuckdrunk back to her apartment.

Fuck.

She still needed to study.

She dutifully put her glasses on, and tried reading her notes for chemistry. As soon as she was finished, she realized she knew nothing about chemistry.

She shook her head, trying to clear it. What was up with her today? It was like she couldn’t remember anything.

She decided to do an experiment. She went to her bookshelf, and picked up a book she had bought years ago at a Goodwill. It was titled, ‘Stuff You Should Have Learned at School: Get All the Benefits of an Expensive Education in One Easy Book.’

It had all been advertising guff of course. There was no way you could fit an entire education in just 139 pages, but it had a good smattering of material from elementary school through high school.

The table of contents promised about 20 pages each on the basics of English, Math, Science, History, Geography, The Classics and Music.

She started reading and, voracious reader that she was, she had read everything in a single sitting. The sky outside the window was dark as she neared the end. When she had gotten to the front cover, she looked at the title confused.

“Stuff you should have learned in school?” she said aloud. Sounds boring.

She went to her shelves to put the book away. She was going to put it into the ‘completed’ part of the shelf, where there was a space, and where she remembered having just grabbed it. But that was wrong, wasn’t it?

She put it in the to-be-read part of the shelf, and then looked over her books. Most of them seemed to be in the wrong place. She went through each category, realizing that 90% of her books were in the ‘completed’ section, even though she had no memory of ever reading them.

She wanted to reorganize them, but she realized she suddenly didn’t care. Why did she have such a big collection of books anyways? They were long, and boring and had a ton of big words.

Mary walked over to her couch, took off her reading glasses, and put on some reality TV. She soaked in the attitudes of the women she watched. Most of them were shallow, short-sighted, slutty… fun. In other words, perfect. Exactly what men wanted. She hardly had any serious thoughts left, and with each hour of reality TV what little remained was being crowded out with new lessons. Filling her suddenly, ever-so-empty brain with easy, simple, sexy thoughts.

It was another late night by the time she fell asleep.

Mary awoke to a knock on her door.

“Huh,” she grumbled. “Who, like, is it?”

She looked down and smiled. “My boobies have gotten so big!” she said.

Another knock.

“Oh, right, can’t get distracted,” she giggled. She would have to play with her big boobies later.

Not worrying about her relative state of undress, she answered the door.

“It’s you!” Mary said cheerfully, seeing the sorority girl she had bumped into earlier in the week. “And who is this?”

The sorority girl was standing next to a guy who looked like he was probably on a football team or something.

“I’m Marcus,” the guy said. “This is my girlfriend, Emily,” Emily waved excitedly. “I think you accidentally ended up switching glasses with her.”

“Oh my gosh, did I?” Mary said. “That sounds just like me. I can be so forgetful sometimes. Lucky the world is full of smart, sexy men like you to do all the smart thinking for us, huh?”

“Uh, sure,” Marcus said, glancing at the wall-to-wall library behind Mary. “Hey, I was about to take my girlfriend shopping, do you want to come with?”

Mary jumped up excitedly, drawing Marcus’ attention to her bouncing chest.

“That sounds like so much fun!” Mary said. “I just noticed yesterday that I didn’t have enough make up, and I could totally use more clothes.”

Marcus took the glasses off of his girlfriend, and replaced them with the ones Mary had on her coffee table. He offered Mary her original glasses, but she let him keep them. (“I think I look sexier without glasses—and I don’t have any reading I want to do anyways!”)

The trio walked off to Marcus’ car, and Mary was so exited for how her life was going to change when she had clothes and make up. Her empty life would be complete. It would be so simple, and easy, and sexy and fun!

And maybe, she thought with a grin. Maybe, she could swing a threesome with Marcus and Emily. She wanted to learn what it was like to have a threesome.