Going Underground

What is it about tunnels and caves and mines that fascinates us so much? I for one, have loved going through tunnels and into caves since I was a little girl. And yet the thought of caving, going into tight, dark places terrifies me. I can’t sleep in a totally dark room. I have to have enough light so that I know I’m not trapped in a broom closet or a coffin. Though not precisely intentional, bandoned tunnels and scary dark spaces are a recurring theme in my writing. Perhaps it is because I can put my characters into the places that terrify me and enjoy that frisson of fear without actually putting myself at risk. One of the best things about reading fiction, after all, is that ability it gives us to live vicariously.

I’ve been in caves and mines in Colorado, Japan, Poland, the Lake District. I’ve even been in a few that I probably shouldn’t have been in, and that little touch of fear that raises my pulse rate and makes my stomach flutter is always there. Then there was the time I was stranded on a malfunctioning train in the Eurostar tunnel beneath the English Chanel … that experience inspired my first novel, The Initiation of Ms Holly. Yes, I’m sure sex in dark, forbidden places must figure into my unconscious on some level as well. It certainly seemed to resonate with readers. Truth is, that while I may keep myself out of places that are too scary, my characters, well, I give them the full frontal, sex in the haunted mine, down deep and dark scare-the-bajezus-out-of-me treatment.

It’s amazing to me just how often the dark and dangerous, tight and forbidden places underground figure into my own writing. That secret world where no one goes is full of magic and fraught with danger. And yes I have had enough psychology to realize I’m probably writing about my own unconscious every time I take a character into the scary underground. Can we just call it therapy? That being the case, Freud and Jung would have a field day with my Medusa’s Consortium stories, full of crypts in deconsecrated chapels, slate quarries, abandoned subway tunnels and storm tunnels. Dark places, vampires gotta have ‘em, demon’s love ‘em and nightmare’s are populated with them.  

Morlocks, Mole people, monsters – that place underneath is the place for more than a few of my nightmares. If it’s dark and deserted and underground, it’s a fiction writer’s wet dream. Remember the Horta from The Devil in the Dark episode of original Star Trekseries. If you’re too young to remember, check it out. While the effects may seem hokey in the age of green screens and CGI, and the plot a little corny, it was scary shit when I was a little girl, and definitely some serious psychological parallels in the telling. My favorite scary abandoned underground place has to be The Mines of Moria from Lord of the Rings. But you get the idea. Digging too deep -- DO NOT DO IT! 

Fun Fact: Fleetwith Pike in the Lake District is actually a hollow mountain. It’s true. The inside is riddled with slate mines from the extraction of the gorgeous green Honister slate. The whole Fleetwith and Honister Pass area figures prominently in my Lakeland Witches series because of those mines and quarries and the tales attached to them. I have done a bit of exploring there myself. Slate quaries, the Mines of Moria, even Indiana Jones. These are all tales of taking treasure from forbidden places, and the consequences thereof. While it’s usually a no-no in fiction, a cautionary tale of sorts, in my own fraught unconscious, the treasure is mine for the taking IF I’m brave enough to endure the dark to get to it. And that’s a damn bit if.

How many horror movies have subway tunnels in them? Abandon New York City tunnels and stations are a favorite. They figure prominently into the Medusa novels. Fun fact: Did you know the oldest subway tunnel in NYC is the Cobble Hill tunnel, which runs nearly the entire length of Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue? It was built in 1844, but abandoned in 1861 – mostly due to some corrupt politics. Can you imagine such a thing? 

Buried Pleasures, book three of Medusa’s Consortium, was inspired by the storm tunnels under Las Vegas, which have become the default shelter for Sin City’s homeless, along with the hang-out for a good bit of the population of scorpions. Oh, and of course it’s been the hide-out for a dangerous criminal or two. It’s serious fodder for urban legends, and it figured strongly in my jet-lagged dreams the last time I was in Vegas.

The storm tunnels in Vegas were constructed as flood control in the seventies. Vegas is built on bedrock in the center of a huge basin surrounded by mountains. A flash flood would funnel all of that

water right into the Strip, the financial heart of the city. The original plan was for a thousand miles of tunnels beneath the city all draining into Lake Mead thirty miles away. The project was never finished, but there are roughly six hundred miles of channels and tunnels in the Las Vegas Valley, with several of the tunnels running right beneath the strip. While an estimated three to four hundred people live in these tunnels, they were built for flood prevention. In heavy rains the tunnels can fill up at a foot per minute with currents of up to twenty-five to thirty miles per hour. Home can be washed away any time.

Most of the horrors in these really fascinating underground places are fictional. While they inspire the imagination of writers the world over, they resonate with me because in my sleep, in my dreams, in my deepest neurotic self, the monsters in the dark are real. The only escape is to wake up. The worst fear of all is not being able to. Having said that, I carry those terrifying underground places and what lurks inside with me everywhere I go, in the underneath of my unconscious. They’re never more than a breath away from giving me goose bumps and disturbing the light-filled, heavily populated open spaces of my waking world. 

Mortal Remains - #death #surrender #immortality

By Lisabet Sarai

I went to bed last night wondering what I could write for this cycle’s topic, “Lifting the Veil”. I woke this morning from a vivid, disturbing dream that seemed like the answer to my unspoken question.

In the dream, I was about to be dismembered, literally sawed into pieces. I’d somehow fallen into the clutches of some cabal who quite calmly informed me of their intentions. I had no idea why they wanted to do this, what they hoped to accomplish, or why I had been chosen (though there was some sense that other people had been subjected to the same fate). Immobilized, strapped to a table, I didn’t even try to escape. It’s as though I’d accepted my lack of choice.

Despite this tacit acquiescence, I was terrified. It seemed they planned to hack away at me while I was awake and alert. I pleaded with them to give me some sort of drugs or anesthesia, and they agreed. At first I just felt a bit foggy-headed, all my sensations muffled in cotton wool, but soon I began to sink into unconsciousness. As I slipped away, I imagined what awaited me. Were these the last thoughts I’d ever experience? Was I about to be obliterated, erased? Or was there some spark, some spirit, some essence of my being that would endure after my body was nothing but a pile of bloody meat? I didn’t know the answer. Even if I did, there was nothing at all I could do. I had to let go.

I’m not the type to brood, but when you’re in your sixth decade of life and your partner is in his seventh, it’s hard not to think about death at least occasionally. It could come at any time, for either of us. Am I ready? Is anyone, ever? (Actually, I think some people are. My ninety four year old aunt told me before she died that every morning she woke up thinking, “Well, I guess I’m still alive.) Am I afraid? As in the dream, I am probably more frightened by the possibility of pain than of oblivion.

I do believe (with varying degrees of certainty depending on the day and my mood) that there is a dimension of energy or spirit beyond the material world, that indeed spirit engenders and shapes physical reality. Death might destroy the ego, the self, personality and memories, but our life energy must be recycled. I try to convince myself that death is just another stage of existence, that what awaits on the other side of the veil might well be revelations impossible to grasp when we’re shackled and smothered in our meat selves.

Some days I am more successful in fostering this enlightened view than others.

I really don’t know where my near-nightmare came from. I might have been influenced by this article I read just yesterday:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90243453/meet-the-foot-soldiers-in-the-radical-war-on-aging

In case you’re too busy to follow the link, the topic is RAADFest, the Revolution Against Aging and Death convention, part of a movement to use science to defer or reverse the effects of age. The ultimate mission? Immortality.

It’s easy to snicker when you read this article, but who knows? The human life span has more than doubled in a few centuries, and seems to still be on the upswing. Of course immortality has been staple fare in science fiction (not to mention paranormal erotica) for a long time. I recently finished Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway, a scifi novel bursting with provocative ideas, including some notions about immortality. A technology is developed to “scan” a person’s mind, upload and store the entire sum of his or her thoughts, memory and personality, and later reconstitute the “person” as a disembodied intelligence running on a computer. In particular, this technology makes it possible to “reboot” you after you have physically died. The process is far from foolproof, and can be highly disruptive, emotionally, to the person involved. Probably the most traumatic aspect, when your scan is loaded and activated, is dealing with the idea that you’re actually dead.

But what does that mean—“actually dead”—when extinct animals can be cloned from historical DNA? When new organs can be 3D printed (already possible for some sorts of tissues)? When stem cells can be teased into any sort of body part needed? We’re used to thinking about death as a sharp line, “The undiscovered country, from whose bourn, No traveller returns”, but maybe things aren’t that simple. Ghosts. Vampires. Clones. Sentient androids. Energy beings from space. Who knows what the universe holds?

Another strand in this tangle involves the eroticism of death. Most of my stories tend toward the sex-positive and sunny, but when I pen a paranormal tale, I often find myself spinning into darkness. I’m drawn to the experience of surrender. Could there be a more profound surrender than releasing oneself to death?

I have a story releasing on the 17^th that explores this idea, mixing it up with a bit of magic. My protagonist in Underground craves the experience of orgasm as she hovers at the edge of death. She spends long, frustrated years looking for a lover who can satisfy her needs, until she meets the mysterious Z at an exclusive sex club reputedly frequented by beings with occult powers.

He places his silver blade between my breasts, a sweet reminder of the blood he might or might not shed. The chill metal sucks warmth from my skin. His mouth dances over my lips, my straining nipples, my fresh-shaven mound. With every contact he draws the life from me, leaving exquisite languor in its stead. My limbs grow heavy. It becomes impossible to move, even if I wanted to. Meanwhile, profound pleasure circles and settles in my pelvis like a purring cat.

I open myself to him, mind and body both, desire overwhelming any residual instinct toward self-preservation. His luminous body is a magnet, attracting my essence. He drinks deep, taking what he requires.

To give him everything is my only desire. 

~~~~ 

Maybe working with this story kindled the strange dream. On the other hand, I’ve been aware of the emotional link between BDSM and death for years. Here’s something I wrote almost fifteen years ago, which captures this connection better than most of my tales.

Ritual

To GCS

They meet, infrequently, to perform the ritual. She waits for him to arrive, heart slamming against her ribs, stomach twisted with nervousness. When he enters, they embrace, awkwardly. It has been so long. She attempts lightness, a joke, a jibe, pretending that she does not know why she is here. Then he gives the sign - a mere eyebrow, arched in a question - and her protective humor slips from her along with her clothing.

The ritual demands much of them, the steps choreographed, but always with room for improvisation. First he binds her, with rope, or silk, or leather, ceiling-hung with thighs spread, or splayed across the bed, or bent double over a hassock. Sometimes he will position her limbs and bind her to stillness with his command alone.

Then he teases her, dabbles his fingers in her wetness, lovingly mocks her sluttishness. She melts at his slightest touch, sinks liquid and helpless into the ritual spirit, moaning just as he intends. She could drown in his rich voice, nuanced and full of power. He pinches her nipples into aching peaks, captures them in clothespins, or cinches them with rubber bands. All the while he strokes her pussy, calls her his pet, muddles the pains and the pleasures besieging her.

Next, he beats her. Here the ritual has many variants, but all with a single purpose: to invoke the purity of her surrender. She writhes under the lash, twists away from the hairbrush, whimpers as his bare palm reddens her buttocks. She does not wish to resist him; her only thought now is to please. But the pain is difficult to endure. Breathe, he says, soothing, encouraging, even as he scourges her. Open yourself. Yield yourself to me once again.

His voice is the key that unlocks her. Some barrier shatters and she floats free, each stroke of the whip an ecstatic kiss. His mind moves with hers now, sharing her agony and her joy. His breath comes in gasps like hers. His organ is granite. Now, come to me, my love, he whispers, entering her front or rear or spraying her marked thighs with his burning seed. She obeys, sliding into climax as he slides inside her, white hot fringed with red streaks of the pain.

Transcendence. Communion. Completion. They do not speak of it as they dress. There is no need for speech when the ritual is complete.

They meet infrequently. Sitting alone, on the plane or the bus taking her homeward, she savors the gaping, twitching sensations in her rear hole, the sharp echo of her stripes as she shifts in her seat, the slickness, still, in her sex. His voice echos in her mind.

Theirs is an old love. She thinks of him daily, imagines his life, her chest swollen with bittersweet aching. He thinks of her less frequently, but when he does, he gnashes his teeth, driven almost to madness because he cannot possess her. Then he recalls her sweet pliancy, her willing debasement, and his lips curve in a smile as he strums on his cock.

The ritual renews them. When she lies in a dentist's chair, or on the surgeon's table, when she wakes in fear in the night, she remembers him. Breathe. Open. Surrender. She relaxes into the fear, trusting as she trusts him.

She is sure that she will think of him, that way, when she surrenders herself into the arms of death. And then, perhaps, their meetings will be more frequent, and the ritual will be perfected. 

~~~~ 

Despite the terror, my dream held hints of this epiphany. I would like to believe that when the time comes, I will cross the threshold in grace and trust, not in fear.

The Thin Line #madness #obsession #passion

By Lisabet Sarai

I have some acquaintance with madness.

In my late teens, I spent three months in a state psychiatric hospital, struggling with anorexia. Though I’d starved myself down to eighty five pounds while still perceiving myself as fat, I didn’t think I was crazy—which just goes to show how truly delusional I was—but my fellow patients sometimes acted that way. I became accustomed to people mumbling to themselves, shrieking in terror at invisible threats, or sitting for hours in one place, rocking back and forth. A few years after I was released, when I saw George Romero’s original “Night of the Living Dead”, I had nightmares for weeks. His mindless, shuffling zombies reminded me too much of my Thorazine-numbed fellow inmates.

Still, I’m in some sense attracted to insanity. In my early years, I devoured tales by Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft, two authors known for skirting the edge of madness. One of the books that influenced me most as a teen was Lilith by J.R. Salamanca, the story of a fascinating, creative young woman with acute schizophrenia who gradually draws an innocent hospital attendant into her world of glittering, terrible hallucinations. I fell in love with Lilith right along with Vincent. I couldn’t help myself. Indeed, madness and brilliance are closely linked in both fact and fiction. From Vincent Van Gogh to Sylvia Plath, we can all name crazy geniuses who produced great works of art despite—or perhaps due to—their disordered, tortured minds.

Madness is particularly relevant in erotica. There’s often a thin line between erotic obsession and insanity. Intensely focused desire can distort everything else in a character’s world, eclipsing rationality and silencing conscience. I’ve written a number of stories that explored the difficult distinction between normal lust and insane passion. Unfortunately, such tales rarely end happily. Also, they tend to make readers distinctly uncomfortable.

Consider, for instance, “Renfield’s Lament”, in my paranormal collection Fourth World:

Do I seem mad to you? If so, they are responsible. They've driven me mad with their beauty and indifference.

They don't even bother to hunt anymore. They spend their days in their king-sized coffin, alabaster limbs entwined in a frozen tableau of passion. They devote their nights to surfing the Internet, listening to Bach or Dvořák, or lounging on their deck, the endless grid of the city sparkling below them.

Except, of course, for the nights when they feed.

Occasionally, on rainy days when there's no risk, I muster the courage to lift the polished rosewood lid of their communal casket and peek inside. I'm always startled by the scent that rises from their inert forms, orange blossoms and sun-warmed stone, no hint of dankness or decay. Their exquisite pallor complements the perfection of their naked bodies. They seem like statues modeled from translucent, milky glass.

He slumbers with one palm cupping her pert breast, the other arm wrapped around her waist. Her honey-brown hair fans over his chest, fine as spider silk. She curls her fist around his cock, which is rampant even as they sleep. The bold gesture contrasts with her innocent features. She has the smooth cheeks, pointed chin and plump lips of a teenage cheerleader.

My fingers twitch. The urge to trace the shape of that sweet, ripe mouth is almost irresistible. More times than I can count, I've seen those lips distorted by a fiendish grin and those girlish cheeks smeared with gore. It doesn't matter. She will always be my angel, my inspiration, my heart's desire, my doom. My beloved mistress.

My master is equally magnificent in his own way, with a dancer's subtly muscled arms and legs and a head of glorious ebony curls like some pale gypsy. He has a bookish look, with a high forehead rising above bushy black brows and a sensitive mouth that cries out for kisses.

I've never dared to lean close and take advantage of his immobility, much as I ache to feel the chill of his flesh against my own. If I gave way to temptation, would he know? I'm not certain that their death-like daytime sleep stills their minds the way it freezes their bodies. I doubt he'd punish me, if he discovered my transgression. He knows I'd welcome the mark of his bullwhip or the icy invasion of his knife. No, more likely he'd mock me, or simply ignore me, refusing to acknowledge my existence. I couldn't bear that.

The sight of them, locked together in eternal stasis, holds me captive. Blood pours into my cock, blood I know they'd savor if they'd only take it, until I'm hard as the concrete walls of the basement room where they sleep. My pulse pounds in my temples as my futile erection strains my trousers. I am their creature, their slave, stunned into helpless worship by their unearthly beauty.

I know they need me. That should satisfy me—the knowledge that without me they'd might fry or starve or succumb to some overly zealous reader of horror fiction. Month after month, year after year, I guard them and I procure them their victims. It's my privilege to serve them. That should be enough. But I want more from them, God help me, more than I can ever hope they'll give.

Renfield’s desire is so powerful that he offers himself to a sadist’s blade in order to trick his master and mistress into drinking his blood. Set against his awful need, death means nothing.

My recent story “Underground”, in the recently published ERWA anthology Unearthly Delights, has a somewhat similar theme.

So maybe it’s not totally sane. I’ve always been fascinated by madness.

As for safe, where’s the thrill in safety?

You can’t, however, deny that it’s consensual.

Ducking into a blank alley, one of thousands in this city, I make my way to the metal door near the end. The keypad gives off a faint green luminescence. I tap in the combination and the door swings open; my pulse is already climbing. My boot heels ring hollow as I descend the industrial steel steps, and the thump of the bass rises to meet me. Excitement wells up, flooding my cunt, even before I’ve buzzed the final door and been admitted to this most particular and perverse playground.

The techno soundtrack punches me in the solar plexus. My heart stutters like I've been shocked by a defibrillator. Delicious weakness sweeps over me, a premonition of what’s to come.

A few black clad figures shuffle to the hypnotic beat, clinging to one another as though drowning. Beyond the dance floor, naked bodies are draped over couches, shackled to walls or splayed wide on the bare concrete floor. Familiar scents reach me—pussy, cum and blood.

Some of those who frequent Underground are actual vampires, or so I’ve heard. I believe it. Others just like to play with knives.

Then there's me.

My heroine Elena is intelligent, well-educated, self-aware—and consumed with a craving for a perilous but intoxicating erotic experience no responsible or rational human will give her.

My nameless protagonist in “Fire” (in Rule 34: Weird and Wonderful Fetish Erotica) becomes an arsonist to satisfy his fire fetish, and almost ends up committing murder. He doesn’t think he’s crazy. After all, he plans his fiery escapades down to the smallest detail.

I’ve written a few characters who were literally insane. In Necessary Madness, my hero Kyle has uncontrolled prescient visions which have driven him into psychosis. Meanwhile, my unpublished lesbian story “Countertransference” features an exquisite teen-aged schizophrenic who tantalizes her therapist with her grace and creativity. There are echoes of Lilith in this tale, but the truly crazy character is Doctor Gardner, so obsessed with her patient Alisha that she risks everything to consummate her lust.

At one point, I planned to write a novel called Asylum, set in a psychiatric institution. I’ve dropped that idea for now, partly because I realized how similar my notions were to Lilith. The theme, however, continues to fascinate me—the fuzzy edge between sanity and insanity. What’s real? What’s a delusion? What is more important, passion or safety? Ecstasy or order?

I do think I’m pretty sane these days, but when I write some of these stories, I start to wonder. What am I missing?