Disappointed by the Prince

by Annabeth Leong

At first I thought I was the only one unsatisfied by the ending of Beauty and the Beast. On paper, the story ought to work. Beauty learns to see through the Beast's monstrous veneer and falls in love with the man underneath. At the right moment, that man—a prince—emerges. I suppose it's meant to play as if the prince is the person she has learned to see, so that his appearance is confirmation and validation of the feelings she develops over the course of the story. There's a moral to that story, the idea that true beauty and goodness are inside, not on the surface.

Except that to me the prince always seemed like an imposter who showed up and usurped the place of the dear beast. I knew my heart was supposed to leap with romantic joy when the thin blond man joins Beauty at the end of the story. But I couldn't make myself feel that. I missed the monster, with his awkward sweetness, his turbulent moods, and, yes, his sexiness. Before I was old enough to put that into words, I sensed that Beauty had a lot more chemistry with the Beast than with that perfect-looking prince.

I know plenty of people hate to see the Beast replaced. In the foreword to Kristina Wright's Fairy Tale Lust, Angela Knight discusses this at length. "Personally," she writes, "I liked him better with fur, claws, and a bad attitude." Indeed, the opening story of that book, Delilah Devlin's "The Obedient Wife," is a riff on Beauty and the Beast and allows the beast to remain a beast.

You could talk about kinky sex and bad boys, but believe it or not, that's not where I'm going with this.

My favorite case of this realization (that the beast should stay) is in the body of work produced by fantasy author Robin McKinley. Her first retelling of Beauty and the Beast, called Beauty, was an early work. I remember liking the book, and recognizing that it had been a heavy source of inspiration for the Disney movie (bookish Belle seems to have been cribbed from McKinley's story). This book follows the traditional script and changes beast to prince at the end.

However, in 1998, twenty years after writing Beauty, McKinley produced Rose Daughter, another retelling of Beauty and the Beast (and one that I consider to be better, deeper, and much more original). I've lost track of my copy and there doesn't seem to be an electronic edition, so I'm afraid I can't pull out exact quotes, but I recall a fascinating introduction in which McKinley discussed why she felt the need to revisit the story. Then, at the climactic moment, the Beauty character sees the Beast beginning to change into the prince and feels loss, because that's not who she's fallen in love with. The Beast's body reasserts itself, however, and she is glad of it. I remember being so pleased by that moment, that revision of the story.

I think it's because it's actually truer to the moral of Beauty and the Beast than the more common ending. "Rewarding" Beauty for falling in love with a monster by replacing him with a non-monster is actually a slap. It disrespects the nature of the sort of love she's experiencing. Learning to love a person as is, flaws and ugliness included, is a beautiful thing, and I think the true romantic vision of it is not just about acceptance, it's about embrace. Taking away the flaws and ugliness, once they are included in the love, diminishes the love.

Not only that, who's saying those things are flaws? To me, the Beast generally looks better as beast than as prince. Correcting his supposed flaws becomes doubly misguided.

The point is that the Beast of this story actually isn't a monster—not in the sense of evil. As people have written on this topic over the past couple weeks, I've realized that this is an important distinction. Garce and Lisabet, for example, both gave examples of true monsters—beings who by nature aren't capable of loving back. A story about loving a monster, as in loving a being of implacable evil or utterly alien disposition, is disturbing to say the least. Stories about loving a bad person and believing that person will become good make me cringe because to me they ring with the rationalizations of victims of domestic violence.

On the other hand, there is Beauty and the Beast, which I think is about loving someone who is considered by society to be a monster—a very different thing altogether. In my vision of this story, Beauty falls in love with someone who doesn't look "right" and has moments of monstrosity, but is deep down a fundamentally good person fully capable of returning love. This could simply be a comment on how everyone is human and all of us have unlovely parts. I think it's more, though, because of the important role that prejudice and societal judgment often play in the story.

Whenever a monster appears, the question is always whether this is a real monster (implacable evil) or something that seems to be a monster because of prejudice (the Beast, beneficial and nonvenomous snakes, and so on). I look at Beauty and the Beast and see a representation of people who don't live lifestyles approved by the mainstream, or who don't look attractive in a traditional way. I really don't want the message of this story to be to transform and conform (to turn into that bland and supposedly handsome prince). I want to see the Beast stay the Beast, because he's awesome that way.

The Monster In Us

by Daddy X

When we hear of monsters we think of the alien, the otherworldly, the strange and unexpected. When we explore a notch deeper, we imagine those archetypal fears common to all of us on a survival level: the fear of the dark; of the dead; fear of the unknown; fear of being eaten; fear of the Other.

Last week Giselle mentioned her suspicion of the black/white absolutes: Good and Evil.  She questions whether or not these poles actually exist. Perhaps they do exist, but not as opposing poles. Instead, they’re lying side-by-side within us.

The Christian fundamentalist feels he’s doing a righteous and holy act when he shoots an abortion doctor or blows up a clinic. His supporters label him a hero, a preserver of lives. How hypocritical in our terms, but he, and the world he associates with, believe he’s doing the right thing. They can recite biblical passages to render useless any self-examination of their own actions.

So too with the uneducated Islamic militant who gives his life in a suicide bombing. His primary basis of knowledge consists of hand-selected quotes from a single ancient document. But in this man’s own conscience, he’s doing his part in making the world a better place. As a martyr, maybe he’s thinking of heaven for himself. In his perception, he’s not only making the ultimate sacrifice; he’s doing a favor for mankind in the process.

Religious dogma is not the only guilty party. Atheist conventions of thought produced the communist doctrine that caused such havoc in 20^th century Eurasia. For that matter, the far right Hitler thought he was making the world a better place. He’s a monster, just as Stalin was. Together, these monsters conceived, propagated and exacted disaster after disaster in the name of righteousness. The evil was there, cuddled up right next to the altruism.

Of course, I’m noting extremes here, and perhaps that’s the point. It’s the system of values that embrace the absolute acceptance of extreme behavior that leads us to those horrors.

Dogma requires an uncompromising confidence in certitudes.  As a world, we’ve been in a nonstop forward intellectual thrust since the Renaissance. Lately, our understanding of the physical world has accelerated at an unprecedented pace, with the results benefitting mostly those in the upper end of the economic spectrum.

Now, the capitalist “Market” has acquired the authority of a god. “Remove all regulation, and the ‘Market’ will take care of itself,” they tell us. “Just have faith,” they say.

What happens if this disparity in knowledge and understanding becomes even greater? Those people in the lower income societies will receive even less of an education.  Power will continue to concentrate in the upper echelons.

Those relegated to ignorance, become ever more vulnerable. As always, power will use that ignorance to preserve its own dogma. A likely scenario could be the dawning of a new dark age. Whether it’s Christ, Allah, or an economic idealism run amok, in the eyes of the believer, it’s all exacted in an air of absolute certitude in the path, as well as unwavering faith in a common goal.

So perhaps the monster is not so otherworldly after all. Maybe the idealistic human spirit, operating without the benefit of critical approach, could be the culprit.

Monster (Nympho)Mania

Sacchi Green


We’ve mentioned the current craze for monster erotica before, chiefly with regard to the monstrous book sales (actually mainly short story sales) the writers in this sub-genre are enjoying. Virginia Wade’s Cum for Bigfoot seems to be the classic in this group, if not the first, with reported revenues of $30,000 a month at one point. If only we more pedestrian smutscribes had known enough to get in on all this before the market was glutted! Or is it glutted yet? There seem to be some problems lately with Amazon suppressing these books, but Smashwords is said to still have plenty of offerings.

Writing erotica requires an understanding of what turns on the target readership. It helps to share that particular kink, but that’s not absolutely necessary. If writers couldn’t portray characters totally unlike themselves there wouldn’t be much worth reading. So what is the appeal of, say, a Sasquatch? Bigger than ordinary men, stronger, probably fierce, not talkative or softened by civilization? Check. Pretty sexy. Hairy all over? Well, not necessarily a deal breaker. And everybody’s heard of them.  Just minutes ago, as I sit here typing, I’ve seen two commercials for some brand of beef jerky featuring “Messing with Sasquatch” vignettes, wherein the jerks trying to play tricks on the big guy get their comeuppance. No sex, of course, but quite possibly inspired by the porn.

Sasquatch was a brilliant choice for erotica. Close enough to human for sexual attraction to seem at least remotely possible, imaginary enough to endow with whatever monsterly powers (or superpowers) the writer (or reader) desired. But now that Sasquatch has been, well, taken, other writers’ flights of erotic imagination have soared on into less believable realms.

The least believable, to me, are the apparently wildly popular dinosaur “heroes”. Taken by The T-Rex? What possible appeal would a mammalian female have for a reptile, except as lunch? But Chrissie Sims and others have made it big with the biggest guys of all. Dinosaurs, being extinct but not imaginary, might not seem to qualify a monsters per se, but the way they’re presented here is as imaginary as any bug-eyed alien monster slavering over a scantily-clad human female on the cover of an old pulp scifi magazine, so I guess I shouldn’t quibble about cross-genus pairings.    

Creatures from various mythologies are popular sex partners, too, which makes a certain amount of sense, since those mythologies were created by humans in the past whose carnal urges must have influenced their imaginations, if only subconsciously. I was disappointed to see that someone has already done recent fiction about a Minotaur; I would have liked to have a go at the two-legged Raging Bull, who was, after all (so the story goes) born from the union of the Queen of Crete and a white bull given by Poseidon to King Minos. The Greeks were way ahead of the current curve when it came to monster sex, what with Zeus taking the form of a bull or a swan to have his way with maidens who caught his fancy.

The alien monster pulp stories were ahead of this curve, as well, with the difference being that they didn’t include much if any explicit sex, and they were aimed at males, while the current batch is out to fulfill female fantasies. Why fantasize about monsters? Let’s face it, in sexual fantasy, size does count, but there’s more to it than that. Power counts, too, not just the power wielded by the impossibly huge, wild, dangerous creature, but the woman’s power in attracting him. And in a culture where sex still has a lingering aura of the forbidden, yielding to an unquestionably overpowering lover, the more dangerous and terrifying the better, might intensify the fantasy sex while canceling out guilt entirely. Really, though, I think it’s pretty much the impossible size factor, and the power trip. (And, for the writer, a way to make the sex seem more and more over-the-top without trying to think up new and original metaphors to describe it. Monsters don’t need metaphors, especially when they’re metaphors in themselves.)

Yes, I’ve been too flippant here, ignoring the truly scary aspects of monsters. The fear and fascination we feel regarding monsters seems to be both universal and timeless. The creatures we should fear the most in modern times are tiny viruses and bacteria, but we’re probably still wired to ancient times when real, savage danger lurked outside the circle of firelight in our caves. Sabre-toothed tigers and giant cave bears and other tribes of slighty different varieties of competing hominids, for instance. That sort of fear may be bred into us.

I’ve had an even more disturbing thought about the modern linkage of monsters and sex. If a child has real, human monsters to fear, and discovers that submitting sexually is the only way to pacify them, if only temporarily… No, I’m not saying that many, if any, people who enjoy reading about monster sex were abused as children, but the thought won’t quite go away.

Let’s be flippant again, okay? Or even just practical, from the writer’s point of view. Which potential monsters haven’t yet been overdone in erotica? To tell the truth, woolly mammoths rather appeal to me. Who needs tentacles when you have a huge, flexible trunk? Hmm. Mastered by the Mammoth? Or does Mastered by the Mastodon have a better ring to it? I have to admit, though, that I don’t like to portray my female characters as being “mastered” by any male creatures at all, even when I'm writing the occasional heterosexual story, but oddly enough “Mistressed” doesn’t seem to be a word, and if it were, it just wouldn’t have the same feel to it.

Still, for that many sales…

Let’s wind down with a brief snippet from a story I wrote about dragon sex (published in She-shifters edited by Delilah Devlin for Cleis Press) except that the dragon was a shapeshifting deity masquerading as a greenery-covered island in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam, and took human form for most of the sex. Here’s a bit of pre-shapeshifting foreplay:

Seok-Teng stumbled, unbalanced, and still managed to slice the kris across the smuggler’s throat before he toppled backward into the sea.
She swung around and saw what he had seen. A golden eye gazed down at her from the island’s greenery, and then two eyes, in a long, elegant, emerald-scaled head that lifted to regard her full-on.  
“I had him! He was mine!” Seok-Tengs’s blood-madness ran still so hot that she felt no fear, no amazement that a dragon such as she had seen only on painted screens or the prows of festive longboats was here before her in the flesh. If indeed dragons were made of such. “I needed no help!”
The dragon seemed to laugh, though what difference there might be between a dragon’s laugh and its snarl Seok-Teng did not know. Indeed, as her blood slowed, she scarcely knew whether she herself dreamed, or imagined, or even lived. She held the kris upright, flat between her breasts, as talisman rather than weapon; it quivered, but gave off no heat. 
Heat of another sort did warm Seok-Teng’s flesh as the dragon’s gaze moved slowly along her body. Did dragons lust after human women? She had never heard such tales, but after all, she herself lusted after women, though so far only in her dreams.
“Why not?” The voice was not her own, yet unmistakably female—and it spoke from inside her own head. “Who can know so well how to please a woman as another woman?”
A dream, then. That sort of dream. Already Seok-Teng’s loins stirred with longing. Her bedroll would be damp and tangled when she woke. If only this dream would take her far enough for relief!
The boat she stood upon had floated nearer to the island. Seok-Teng looked full into the golden eyes, not flinching when the dragon’s green coils, their scales textured to resemble leaves, loosened from the rough limestone enough that its neck could arch outward above her and descend. Even when a flickering forked tongue, impossibly long, darted across her belly, Seok-Teng held her ground, though she could not suppress gasps and jerks at the tantalizing sensations it aroused. 
“Set aside your noble blade,” the voice said, “if you would taste of more tender delights.”
She sheathed the kris but kept it belted at her hip. This time the dragon’s laughter echoed inside her head, drowned out soon by Seok-Teng’s own cries as the deep-coral tongue lapped at the paler coral tips of her high breasts, teasing and tweaking at them until they hardened and darkened and sent bolts of pleasure close to pain down through her belly into her cunt.
“How brave are you, girl? Enough to follow me?” The voice seemed uneven now, almost breathless. The long tongue reached down between her thighs and slick lips to find the jewel of pleasure there, and a low, rough moan was wrenched from deep in Seok-Teng’s throat, followed by a keen wail as the stimulation ceased.

   

Little Monsters

Post by Lily Harlem

Mice…. and I'm not talking about these…

I'm talking these!

Mice with long tails and twitching whiskers are little  monsters - though I do find them quite cute and I'm not scared of them. This winter a family have set up home in our old stone garage. Mr H and I call them the Mickey and Minnie (not very original I know) and have yet to see them, but we know they're there.

We live out in the countryside, there is farmland and woods and bracken-covered hills all around us so it's not surprising that they've found their way into the peripheries of our home. The garage, where we only happen into on occasion in the colder months, seems to have been perfect for them.

The evidence these little monsters are there…

There is a bag of old horse feed that has been munched from the bottom up, spilling the contents on to the floor. I'd imagine that Mickey and Minnie are now obese as it was high-calorie horse feed!

Mr H went to wash his car the other day only to discover his bright yellow sponge half gone and teeny tiny pieces of it spread around the base of the bucket - oh yes, they can climb.

I then went to get a vase from one of the shelves and was greeted with a few droppings - yuk!

I do have a cat, rescued like all of my animals, and she is actually a pretty good hunter (or she was in her younger days) so I could set her in the garage to solve the problem. But no, I can't, Mickey and Minnie are all fat and cozy in their yellow sponge bed with a feast fit for a king and no doubt reading from their Kindles. They can stay for now, because soon they'll be off. Once we start banging around and clearing out the garage they'll dart away into the hedgerows once more, no doubt multiplied but that's just the way it goes. I guess I'm a live-and-let-live kind of gal - as long as Mickey and Minnie stay in the garage and don't bring all their mates for a party that is, because that would be a disaster!

The Monster at the End of This Book

by Giselle Renarde

The Monster at the End of this Book: Many, many adults name this book as their favorite Little Golden Book. Generations of kids have interacted with lovable, furry old Grover as he begs the reader not to turn the page for fear of a monster at the end of the book. "Oh, I am so embarrassed," he says on the last page... for, of course, the monster is Grover himself!

Today I cracked the final chapter (the epilogue, actually) of my first erotic "monster" novella.  I'm a sucker for a good ghost story.  I've got the first draft of a ghostly erotic romance wasting away on my hard drive right now.  But this new project?  This monster project?  Well, it came to me while watching some kind of "When Ghosts Attack" show.  I got thinking, "What if an incubus-poltergeist could jump inside living bodies to use and abuse his victim?"

Pleasant thought, eh?

Anyway, I pushed this idea aside because a) I was in the middle of another project and b) it's kinda rapey, and that's not really what I do.

The day after watching "When Ghosts Attack" (or whatever cheesy show it was), a friend announced she was putting together a collection of MONSTER EROTICA.  The timing blew me away.  I had this idea that seemed a little iffy, a little frightening, and I wasn't going to do anything about it until this opportunity came about, like a clap on the back telling me, "It's time. Go do it."

So I finished the novella I had on the go, and then started Monstrous Obsession (aka "The Rapey Monster Book"). I'd written about a chapter and a half before getting cold feet.  I'm not exactly known for writing rapey monster books.  Should I really be delving into this area?  I know it's a lot of people's fantasy, but it's not mine.  Do I have any right writing it?

Just like Grover in the above-mentioned Little Golden Book (that series sounds really dirty all of a sudden), the more I wrote, the more skittish I became.  In particular, I had an idea of how the final chapter would play out, and it was definitely not my usual "consensual sex between humans" scenario.

Well, today I finished that chapter.  Took three or four days to get there, which is a ridiculously long time for a prolific professional writer.  What's more, as I got closer to the end, I found myself staying in bed longer and longer come morning.  I'm chronically depressed, so having trouble getting out of bed is nothing new, but in this case there was a direct connection between my book and my inability to start the day.

I was scared of my own monster.

Every time I left the house, I found myself looking over my shoulder... well, more than usual.  The rapey monsters were OUT THERE, weren't they?  Out to get me.

The harder I tried to finish the damn book, the longer it took to write. I've barely cracked 1,000 words per day. That's no good.  I want it to be done. Now.

Thank goodness I'm close.  No more rapey monsters in the epilogue.  Only a biker wedding.  Nothing to be afraid of.

Because, you know, the monster at the end of this book?  It's me.  It was me all along.

"Farewell Dear Shadow": A Monstrous Story

She shoved him roughly in the shoulder and then shoved him again. She couldn’t stand seeing him just standing there like a noodle in front of the closed door of her daughter’s bedroom. Not another two seconds could she abide it.

“My baby in there, she’s hurting is all,” said the woman to the young man. “She’s your wife, my little girl. Your wife, she’s in there and she needs you.”

“No,” he said. “I can’t. Not again. Not no more.”

“Are you a man?” She held up the Palmetto Credit Union Preferred Customer calender in her hand, with the days crossed and the temperature marked with a pencil, always the same temperature. “By my good Catholic reckoning its her time abed. That makes it your time, sweetie.”

“I can’t get it up. Not this time.”

“Oh - you can get it up when you want to. We both know that.”

“Jesus Christ - “

“Don’t we?”

“Ruby!”

"Don't we?"

"Please!"

“Don’t we both know that?”

She moved in, poked the spiral wire corner of the calendar under his chin like the tip of a knife. “You don’t say no to mama, not in my house. Sweetie. Its my baby’s time. I will be a grandmother. I will have a grandchild. Now you do your duty to her.”

“Ruby,” said the young man, looking gray-green. “You gotta be shittin’ me by now. I can’t.”

“You git abed. What happened to her, it ain’t her fault. Its the Lord’s wrath. Because we was wrong. My little girl is hurting and she needs her husband’s seed inside her field.”

“Seed? Ruby, that field’s gone bad.”

”Are you a man? I know men. I know men clear through. Man would fuck a hole in a tree if a tree stood still. I know you.” The room was warm and small. Straw smelling air blew in off the drought toasted corn

field outside in the summer heat of the open window. A dragonfly clung to the screen and was gone. “I know you, sweetie. Don’t I know you clean through?”

“It was a different time, Ruby. It was a different world.”

“Honey.” She shook her head maternally at her wayward son-in-law. “Times don’t change. No, they don’t. You can talk to me. I’m your wife’s mama. That makes me your mama too. Talk to mama. I was a married woman 27 years. There’s nights I know, the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. A man wants to show up and it just lays there on him like a dead dog. But you a young man. You just scared is all.”

“That girl, she’s dangerous like she is.”

“Performance anxiety’s all it is. A clear case of performance anxiety. All men gets it. Nothing to be ashamed of, honey.”

"You ain't hearing me?”

“All men gets it.”

“Mama!”

“You’ll see I’m right,” Ruby said, speaking slowly and softly, putting her hand on his arm. “You go in that room now and see my little girl layin’ there waitin’ on her husband. She’s all wet and good. All head up and ready. Waiting to feel you movin’ in her deep inside, all warm, skin on skin. She open up her dress for you and let you get a good look at ‘em. Don’t you like that? Sure you do. You and me, we both know that. Any man likes that.”

“You got to stop this. Somebody’s got to stop this thing.”

“World needs children more ‘n ever now. Look at me, sweetie. Nothing to be scared of in that room. Woman in that room loves you and wouldn’t hurt you.”

“That woman ain’t there, Ruby - “

“Woman in that room there. You and her, you the light of the world now. The world needs healthy babies - ”

“Ruby!”

“You got the hardest damn cock, Ulysses. You got a real hard cock when you want it. Your cock harder than her daddy’s when you had it in me. You got a cock like a hammer handle. You got the hardest, hottest, meanest, drivingest damn cock any woman ever felt humping in her. You know what’s good? Women, we talk among ourselves. Here’s what’s good. She told me about you. She did. She told me how she likes it how you hold both her shoulders tight in your hands like you do just when you’re about gonna come. Holding her shoulders tight, like you steadying her in place for that hot, hard thing a yours moving in her, moving in her, moving good in her. You come good. Real good. I felt it every time you came in me. Every time. Felt your splash deep in me. A woman feels that little hot spurt of love, she love you holding her shoulders tight while you lie on her then she feel that hot little love splash way deep in her belly, make her feel like a woman. Satisfy you. Satisfy - your appetites. I do love me some grandchilden, Ulysses. I surely do. You owe me. We owe her. For our sins against her.”

She moved in close and pressed her sweating body against his. He took a step back and she pressed in harder. “Remember?” The staleness of her unwashed clothes now that water was scarce, the musky scent of her body reached his nose and stirred him below. “Remember how it was?” He closed his eyes, felt the movement of her hands and agile fingers descend to her blouse. The snap of buttons being undone for him. Clothes pulled down for him as she wiggled them off her shoulders.

“Look at me. Sweetie. Look at mama. Don’t look away, look at my eyes. That’s right. Just look at me. Nothing else, just look at me. Now look down at me. Look what women got. Look at these. Get a good look for inspiration. On account of your performance anxieties. Put your hands on ‘em. Don’t look around. Look at me, dammit. Now your hands.”

He was looking. He was remembering. Now he was holding and remembering, falling under her spell. He was weary of fighting. He let his senses go to her.

“Put your lips on ‘em, Sweetie. I know you want to, you can. Go ahead. That’s it. You can do it. Now, the other one. You sweet man. Put your lips all over them.”

“Why can’t it be you?” he whispered, pressing his face into her damp skin. He opened wide, flattened his tongue and sucked her whole breast into his warm mouth and held it like huge fruit tasting her bitter-salty, rigid nipple tapping on the back of his throat. His strong arms wrapped around her and crushed her tight to him. The wheezing breath of his nose was hot on her skin as he sucked with his whole mouth around her breast.

“Because it can’t,” she gasped, rising on tiptoe to meet him. Her left hand twined in his hair and gathered him possessively. “It can’t.” Twining his hair in her fist to hold him tight as she pressed her chest into him drawing him deeper into her possession of him. “Babycakes done called your name.”

Her other hand reached down and caressed his swelling cock under his jeans.

“Let mama help.”

She unzipped him, unbuckled him, opened him. Reached inside. He was almost ready for her daughter. Good. Very good.

She lifted his cock out. It was stiff enough, but she wanted to see it the way that she remembered it. Hard as a hammer handle. Stiff as a fence post. It was a beautiful phallus, heavy, circumcised and bald. Thick and brutal. She smoothed the skin back with her fingers gently as she settled onto her knees.

She spit in her hands.

“Mama, maybe we shouldn’t do this.”

He said it every time. He never meant it.

She slicked it top to bottom with wet fingers, pulled the skin back tight and spit on the red knob of it and slicked it with her palm hard and roughly, palming his knob which made him grind his teeth with the intensity of his pleasure. Rubbing his knob in a circle with her palm, heating it up good, always made his cock huge for her. Made it hard as a damn hammer handle, it did. She could feel his urge building to take her down and just have it out with her right down there hot and heavy on the damn floor, polishing his knob till he was all dick and no brain. She pulled his cock to her so that he staggered, overwhelmed by her power over him. She placed it in her lips, dwelling on the unwashed saltiness for a moment. It was the hardness that moved her everytime. It was the unrelenting, threatening stiffness of it that made her weak in the knees and weaker in the will. She squeezed it hard with her fist. Slapped it a little like a cat swatting a ball. Hard. He was hard enough for Annie now.

There were sounds in the field outside. Ulysses’ eyes were closed in her trance of lust. She looked past him beyond the window and a dead walker was stumbling blindly through the corn, bits of dead skin dangling from his skull. He’d likely fetch up on the barb fence wire and stick on it. There’d be time later to walk out and put a shovel blade through his neck. Once you got the head off clean they stopped moving.

She reached around him and opened the bedroom door.

The huge smell of rotting meat, days old, staggered them.

Annie had been at the flea market shopping for what had been her idea of antiques. Mostly dishes and old soda bottles. Ulysses and Ruby were sitting on the old sofa watching a Gary Cooper movie. They had noticed each other almost from the day Annie and Ulysses had noticed each other. There had always been an unspoken state of sexual truce, of cautious understanding. There had been contact too. If they bumped too close past each other in the narrow hallway or touched knees under the table there were a flurry of quick earnest apologies.

That deeply familiar sofa with its friendly old cushions that sagged in the middle like an old horse with the material memories of all the butts they had contained, had a way of involuntarily colliding bodies together in the middle so that they had to make a conscious effort not to land in each other’s laps. Warm bodies that wanted to be chaste, could quickly be seduced by dim rooms and flickering screens. It became easier to just put his arm around Ruby. It became easier for Ruby to just let herself sit close, thigh touching thigh, then head on broad shoulder in that restive afternoon full of light and time and distant thunder, and a sensuous laziness that hinted of naps and soft beds, lying very close side by side in the summer heat.

He cuddled her, with his warm, confiding, bedroom baritone chattering about the movie, the corn crop and this and that, humming close to her ear as she snuggled back.

And in that forever air a man just forgot.

Forgot his obligations. Forgot his fear of reaching over the line. Ruby’s loose blouse, which, if you looked just right, revealed the dark stippled rim of a forbidden nipple. He tried the nipple. She did not resist. Only raised her eyes to look him stern and straight while his hand remained under her clothes. To chastise him. Or defy him to go further.

She coughed. She couldn’t help it. The first day or two the stink of the dead attracted hungry dogs and cats, believing in the kindness of all humans, and so to their doom. Which kept the walkers fed. Rough on the animals.

She turned him towards the door. “Go to her, she’s waiting on you.”

But he was already bending over, starting to gag. He unloaded part of his breakfast on the carpet and the sight made the bile rise acidly in her throat as well. She shook her head violently, slapped herself. If he went on too long his cock would sag. A limp dick was too hard to revive. She reached into a pocket and took out a small tube of Ben Gay cream and stuffed a ferociously minty smelling dab in each nostril and then up his nose too. She took his shoulders and shoved him inside.

“Not supposed to shut the damn window,” she muttered. “Who shut the damn window on her?”

His wife, her darling daughter who - according to the calender was in her fertile time, at least in better days, was tied to the bed with leather horse tackle. Hands and feet. Not the mouth. She’d chew through leather and dislodge her teeth on it from her decomposing gums. The bed was getting soggy with her draining juices. On the bed beside the chair was an old towel, blue with mold, and a tennis ball.

Annie turned her head at the sight of them and her eyes sparkled like a cats in a light. Her mouth opened showing twisted teeth, her lips long gone. She was naked. She was always naked. Always available. Always untouched. Almost always.

“He’s ready for you, honey.”

But he wasn’t. He was losing his erection fast.

“Lord, Ruby I can’t do this again.”

“Lord yes,” she said. “The Lord’ll give you strength. I’ll give you strength.” She spit on both palms and went down on her knees.

She took his sagging cock in her mouth and pulled him to her.

She covered her teeth with her lips and bit down on it and sucked on the tip until she felt it swell. She slicked her hands up and down, twisting on the shaft, up and down. Twist. Up, down, twist. He wasn’t fighting back now. He was under her spell again. She felt it. She had tamed him for a while.

When she stood he was almost swaying, looking a little ridiculous with his eyes half closed and his resurrected cock standing straight out of his open pants.

“Now let’s get this done,” she said, “because my man’s waiting on me too.”

“Bill?”

“I ain’t asking you to nothing I ain’t gonna do. I want me my grandchildren. Now you do right by her.”

He removed his jeans. He was naked from the waist down. He looked towards Ruby’s exposed breasts and she pushed them out for him. For inspiration. After all, poor boy, Annie had been been laying in the hot air for days and someone had closed the damn window. She was getting pretty ripe.

He took the towel and the tennis ball. He dropped the towel over her mouth. Over her champing teeth. He squeezed the tennis ball tight between them. He closed his eyes and stroked his phallus, remembering Ruby. Remembering the afternoon when Annie had been off in town at the flea market. He climbed onto the bed, took up the position between her knees and lowered himself onto her.

Ruby had laughed, slapping at him as he had pressed her back against the arm of the sofa and lowered himself onto her. “Don’t! Don’t!” But he did. “Want to go for it?” he said. And when he had both her breasts out all the way and she laughed and said “Don’t!” he did anyway. And there they were, in the room. Two people alone. A woman who was not his wife. And her breasts were . . . Out.

“Don’t you want to go for it?” he said and when his hand was finally under her dress and his fingers up her pussy and her pussy was out too, she had whispered “We need to stop this, sweetie. It’s just all kinds of wrong.” But they didn’t.

He opened his eyes, with an effort made out Annie’s slit and tried to stuff his cock inside. It wouldn’t go. He felt her rotten flesh starting to tear a little and drew away. “Can’t,” he said.

“You got to wet her up,” said Ruby.

He spit in his hand and reached for her vagina.

“Not like that,” snapped Ruby. “You know not like that. You know how. Like you used to for me.”

He looked at Ruby. There was no mercy in her face. He looked at Annie, his wife.  He licked his lips.

It was his beastliness that afternoon on the sofa that seduced Ruby. The beastliness that seduced her for many reckless afternoons after that. His male beastliness and his primal male energy and the thrill of feeling herself lusted over so illicitly by somebody at last and the danger of being taken at any moment in any place and roughly plundered by his beastliness and then discovered in their sin. On the afternoon of the sofa the beastliness of his powerful arms lifted her, having by now undressed her, the wet of her pussy on his fingertips still, carrying her down the hall to the bed Ruby shared with her second husband Bill who was also away, and throwing her down hard upon bed, shaking the room, tearing off his clothes, showing her his hard veined cock and then quickly mounting her like a beast, shouting her name eleven hard plunging seconds later when he came deep inside her, his face straining red with the raw beastliness of his pleasure. How he wanted her, this beastly gorgeous man. He stayed hard and called her name again when he came the second time ten minutes later. And then thirty minutes later, and would have taken her again except they heard Annie’s car coming up the gravel driveway and jumping up laughing had hurried down the hall weeping for fig leaves to cover themselves with.

He licked his lips again and his mouth felt too dry. The Ben Gay was masking the smell okay, but nothing could save him from the taste to come. He ducked in, closed his eyes and put his tongue to her dead vagina.

Ruby was standing in the doorway watching with her arms over her breasts. She dipped her head, gagged daintily and turned away. She closed the door on them.

Ruby went down the hall to the other bedroom. She stopped at the door and put another gob of Ben Gay up her nose to be safe and went in. Her husband Bill lay on the bed, trussed up in belts and horse bridles like Annie, as if he had been readied for a randy sex game. Except Bill had been a walker for awhile longer than Annie. It was he what done it to Annie.

A strange thing, his cock had become erect when he passed. This was a common thing for corpses someone said, even walker corpses.

“I’m sorry honey,” she said as she undressed. “It’s all God’s punishment for what we done by you and Annie. Let’s get it over quick. I just want to do right by you so you know I’m sorry.”

She spit in her hand and wet herself. She put a towel over his mouth and pressed the tennis ball between his teeth. “Now you’re safe,’ she said.

She unwrapped a condom and carefully rolled it on him as all the while his teeth champed and chewed on the tennis ball. She spit on the condom covering his phallus and wetted it. She straddled him and slipped him inside. “Do you love me, honey?” she said. “Do you forgive me now?”

She began to jiggle her hips up and down on him vigorously, remembering how it used to be when they were first married and fresh and new. This man who was Annie’s father and the rightful grandfather of Annie’s children.

And then. Something.

He was still inside her. She could feel him inside her.

Yet she felt . . . unanchored.

Ruby reached down and felt the rubber rim of the condom dangling freely between her thighs. She looked down at her husband’s groin. “Oops,” she said.

It was fizzy, sweet-sour and high on his tongue like a well chilled champagne from Hell. On the fourth lick an immense ammoniac puff of decay swamped his senses like rancid cheese, even cutting through the shielding smell and sting of the gob of Ben Gay up his nose. He thought about baseball scores as he licked her and licked her one more time trying to spit her out of his mouth as best he could.

When she seemed ready he lifted up, took up the position again and plunged his half flagging cock into her. She was all rank, cold, spoiled meat. The acid taste in his mouth was of his own breakfast fighting to rise up his throat.

Annie’s busy mouth had stopped moving. His late wife lay very still as if she were accommodating his weak thrusts. His manhood stiffened up. He came quickly. Like many things, it wasn’t so bad if you didn’t think about it. He spurted and pulled out instantly. His cock was alive with a writhing blanket of semen soaked maggots that dripped off onto the sheet in clumps. He frantically wiped it on the stained, foul smelling sheet. Annie was struggling with the tennis ball in her teeth again, lying still no more, trying to get at him. He climbed down and sat on the floor beside the bed with his head in his hands for a long time. Her straps were coming loose. He let them come loose and waited. His lips moved silently with a prayer. Or possibly a curse.

Her feet touched the floor as she tottered over him.

Ruby scooted off Bill, opened her legs quickly and gingerly took the condom in her fingers and lifted it out of herself. He was in there alright. She flicked it across the room. “Bill, I can’t do anymore to make up for you,” she said. She climbed off of him and sat on the bed. She began to weep. “I can’t carry it no more. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, what I did. I’m sorry you found out. I’m sorry you went out and got bit. I can’t carry it no more. I’m so sorry.”

He struggled against the leather straps. One was coming loose. She reached over and tightened it. “We done been through it. Did all we could to make up. This is hell we’re in. I reckon now we had it coming but not you and Annie. I can’t carry it. But you got to know we got a nice grandbaby on the way. For you, honey babe.” Her eyes stung with tears of relief. Clean and human. “If we’re all damn lucky he’ll take after his daddy and not his mommy.”

She closed the door on him and went down the hall to Annies' room. It was quiet in there, though she sensed something going on. And then she made out the wet sounds. She listened hard, hoping. No. Not kissing sounds. Chewing sounds.

She sat on the floor and thought of the shovel leaning on the broom closet. And the pick axe next to that. And then nothing. She was tired. She watched the door knob as it turned.

How do they still know how to turn a knob, she wondered.

Scary times. J.P. Bowie

I haven't seen a decent horror movie in years, despite the fact that there are scads of them around - mostly going straight to video or HBO on demand. Years ago Horror Movie meant just that - the ability to scare you off your seat or nearly pee your pants. Maybe because I've just outgrown them but I can't remember the last time a scary film scared me, or made me shudder.Maybe because my own family endured a very scary time when my niece was the victim of telekenesis.

For several weeks we were subjected to violent noises, lights flashing on anf off, faucets suddenly turned on, doors banging, rugs flying through the air, to mention just a few of the hair raising occurences that plagued us at night. Years later I wrote a novella  - A Ghost Story - and drew on some of what happened then.

This snippet is what occured the first night I was home. I had traveled up from London after my mother told me what was happening. Robbie is a fiction, the rest actually happened...

 Laura blinked then smiled up at him. “Oh, you just missed Robbie.”
Jamie glanced around the room but could see nothing that might have indicated she’d had company.
“Well, that’s a pity,” he said, determined not to show his niece his concern. “Now go back to sleep, sweetheart.” He stayed long enough to give her another goodnight kiss.
She must just be dreaming about these visits from Robbie. He ran downstairs and joined his mother in the kitchen.
“Would you like a drink, Jamie? I have some sherry.”
“Lovely. She said I just missed Robbie.”
His mother shook her head sadly as she poured out the sherry into two glasses. “I’ve never seen him, which makes me think she’s either dreaming or seeing things. Either one, I’m worried about it. She began seeing him when the noises started.” She handed Jamie a glass of sherry. “I would say ‘cheers’, but I’m afraid I’m not feeling very cheery right now.”
Jamie bent to kiss her cheek. “It’ll be all right, Mum. We’ll get it straightened out.”
“How? This isn’t anything like I’ve experienced before—” She cocked her head to one side as if listening for something. “Here it comes.”
Jamie heard it. A hammering sound seeming to come from a long way off. But it was getting closer, and louder.
“Jesus,” he muttered involuntarily. Now it was really loud—really, really loud. “Mum, you said it was a knocking sound. This is like a bloody thunderclap!”
She stared up at the ceiling.“It’s louder than usual.”
It was as though some giant was standing outside, pounding the roof with an enormous hammer.
“Look...” His mother pointed towards the dining room.
Jamie gaped at the dining chairs. They were…dancing, was the best way he could describe it. Moving up and down and sideways without falling over. The rug under his feet moved, the hammering intensified, then suddenly, like someone had yelled, ‘Stop’, everything went still. Jamie heard Laura call him from upstairs.
“Uncle Jamie!”
She sounded scared. He set his glass down and ran for the stairs, taking them two at a time. She was sitting up in bed, pointing. Her wardrobe door was wide open and her clothes were scattered about on the floor.
His mother was behind him, panting slightly from her hurried ascent up the stairs. “Oh, not again!” She stooped to pick up the clothes.
“This has happened before?” Jamie asked, helping her.
“Last night was the first time. There’s no lock on the doors, so it’s easy for him to open them.”
It took Jamie a moment to realise what his mother had just said but decided to let the ‘him’ reference slide for the moment.
Laura sighed and lay back down. “It wasn’t Robbie. He tried to stop it.”
Jamie heard a rustling sound from out on the landing and darted to the door to investigate. Nothing. He opened the door to his room and stared at the mess.
“Mum, look at this.”
His mother gasped at the state of the room. The bed had been completely stripped, the sheets, pillows and blankets strewn over the floor and furniture.
“What a wanker! Oh, sorry, Mum, didn’t mean to say that, but what the heck is going on? How is this possible?”
They were both startled by the chime of the doorbell. Jamie ran downstairs to see who was there. He swung the door open and stiffened with surprise at the sight of two rather grim police officers staring at him.
“Mr Barrett?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Police Officers Wilkins and Walpole, sir. We’ve had complaints about noises coming from your house, sir. Very loud noises. Can you tell us what you’ve been doing?”
“I wish I could.” Jamie stepped aside. “You’d better come in.”
Jamie’s mother was coming down the stairs as the policemen stepped into the hall. It was obvious from their expressions of faint surprise that they had expected to see the house in a shambles, not the neat and orderly interior they were looking at.
“So, what happened then?” P.C. Wilkins asked, taking in his mother’s shaken appearance.
“I’m really not sure. My mother phoned me earlier today—I live in London—and told me she’d been hearing some strange knocking noises—”
“Knocking? The way it was described to us it was more like a thunderous hammering.”
“Yes, that’s what it sounded like tonight,” Jamie agreed.
“It’s never been as loud as it was tonight,” his mother said. “This was the worst ever.”
“And what exactly causes the noise?”
“Well, I thought at first it might be the water pipes, but I had a plumber out and there was nothing wrong.”
“Water pipes?” The two police officers glanced at one another.
“Not water pipes,” Jamie said. “Not what we heard tonight. Honestly, we don’t know what it is. The uh, chairs over there, were uh, moving. And the rug in the kitchen was sort of…undulating.”
P.C. Walpole regarded him like he’d just grown another head.
“Are you taking the Mickey, sir?”
“No, of course not.”
Jamie’s mother stepped in front of the officers and shook a finger at them. “You think we’re making this up? This has been going on for over a week. My nerves are in pieces. If my son hadn’t come up from London today, I don’t know what I’d have done.”
“Right then, Mrs uh…Barrett, we didn’t mean to infer that you were making it up, of course, but you must admit it sounds a bit strange.”
“Of course it does, that’s why I haven’t been able to talk to anyone about it, except my son. My sister didn’t believe it, but the first time she heard it she ran out of here like her hair was on fire.”
Jamie chuckled at the vision his mother had created in his mind.
He cleared his throat. “Mum, I’m sure the police officers will investigate and come up with a solution, if not an answer.” He smiled sweetly at the two burly men, daring them to say he was ‘taking the Mickey’ again.
“Well, yes, we’ll do that. Seems quite quiet now, though.”
His mother nodded. “It doesn’t go on all night, thank goodness. Once my granddaughter is asleep it usually stops.”
“Your granddaughter…” Wilkins rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “How old is she?”
“She’ll be twelve next month,” Jamie told him.
“Hmm…” He took a pad from his jacket pocket and a pen from another. After referring to a business card from his wallet he wrote down a name and number. “You might want to give this chap a call, sir.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s a member of a team of psychics.”
“Psychics…?” Jamie noticed that P.C. Walpole was looking at his fellow officer with a startled expression. “Now who’s taking the Mickey?”
“Very reputable group, sir,” P.C. Wilkins assured him. “They study psychic phenomena and the like. They might be able to help you.”
“You seemed to see a connection between what’s happening and my niece, or was I mistaken?”
“I’m no expert in this, sir, but I’ve read a couple of articles linking strange noises and, uh, moving things, to young children in puberty years, or if they’re emotionally upset.”
“Oh, yes?”
Laura certainly comes under both those criteria. Jamie looked at the number on the paper. Why not? It might be worth a phone call.
“Well, thanks, Officer, I’ll give him a call in the morning.” He glanced at the name… Kevin Singleton. “You know this man personally?”
“Sorry, no. My wife knows him. Not personally, but she goes to some of the meetings… Says they’re very interesting.”
“All right then. I’ll phone him tomorrow.”
“Right, sir.”
The officers turned to go.
“Hope your evening isn’t disturbed again,” Wilkins said.
Jamie grinned at him. “I think the neighbours are probably hoping the same thig."

I did contact the psychic group and they were very helpful, though not in the way my story progresses, LOL.
My niece eventually 'got over' her nightly terrors and my mother sold the house and moved in with her sister-in-law. Some time later I heard through a friend that the people who bought our house - a group of medical students - complained about hearing strange noises at night. Woooooo!