Is this a prank?

I closed the leather cover of the book with shaking hands. Was this a prank? It seemed wildly unlikely that anyone would go through the trouble of fabricating something like this just to prey on my baser needs. At the same time, the picture of the woman on her knees hit just the right note of embarrassment, humiliation and the shameful arousal that seemed to grab at my soul like a demanding lover with an unyielding grip. I haven't even read the personal account that accompanied that erotic sketch, but if the writer put her innermost feelings on the paper as skillfully as she sketched the scene, I suspect I'll be masturbating again and again as I read and reread that particular section of the journal.

As much as I wanted to, I did not trust myself to start reading this intimate account without a little more information.

Less than a minute later I was on the internet doing the easy things. Yes, the law firm of Holland, Scharz and Jacobs was an actual firm based in Savannah and had been around in one iteration or another for three generations in the Holland family. The company webpage was as elegant and professional as it was discrete and uninformative. I got the impression that much of their work was done on retainer and that they did not engage in anything as tawdry as auto accidents or divorce.

That much at least checked out. It turns out that there are no fewer than forty historical museums in the Savannah area. Some like the Georgia State Railroad Museum could probably be eliminated as likely candidates, but there were at least five plantations that gave tours and three others that specialized in history of the area.

I could take an entire month to reach out to each of these institutions and judging by what little I was able to glean from the letter, I doubted I could just call them up and get straight answers. Picking up my mouse, I pretend it is a phone as I play out what that call might be like.

“Hi this is Melissa Gordon from UNC, I'm interested to see if you know anything about a journal of erotic musings written in the early 19th century. Why? Well, I'm just trying to determine if I am related to the author, and why the idea of being enslaved and fucked makes me so horny ... hello? ... hello?”

The mouse comes down on the table so hard that one of the plastic pieces flies off. I have a few more answers, but my frustration is starting to get to me. The best thing to do is drop this journal off at the University library and forget I ever saw it.

I knew however, that that was not going to happen.