I'm switching things up today and, rather than post one of my own stories, I'm providing a link to Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman, which is a horror retelling of a certain old fairy tale (skin pale as snow, lips red as blood). It's not erotica, but if you know the tale you're familiar with Prince Charming's proclivities, and Mr. Gaiman is too...
Begging the question, why do we want to fuck monsters?
Maybe fifty years ago that question would be worth a quick laugh or an ugly look, but we're living in the new millennium where Edward Cullen and Sookie Stackhouse have come and gone, and that sensualist rogue Lestat is over forty at this point. Hell, even Bram Stoker's musty collection of diaries managed to evoke a certain appeal to the Count and his brides that drove poor Lucy Westenra wild. And further back, before Frankenstein's sad creature vowed vengeance on humanity, what did he seek?
Answer: a wife.
So it's nothing new for people to be attracted to the creatures that bump and grind in the night. But where does the instinct come from?
Maybe it's transactional, like the witches dallying with Old Scratch back in the day. After all, if you can't beat the monsters, join 'em. Anita Blake sure did.
But a lot of folks seem less interested in becoming monsters and more interested in, well, coming with monsters. Perhaps it's the appeal of the bad man and the lady of sin: beauty outside the mundane, outside the conventional morality. Walk and dance and fuck where the wild things are, and if the wild things get to be too much to handle, well then you shouldn't have strayed from the safe path, huh?
Or maybe there's a certain pang in the chest that comes with loving the accursed and afflicted. Belle didn't care much for the Beast's macho posturing, or his big, hairy slabs of muscle (mmm), but love bloomed when she found the kindness hiding underneath. Not that they ever consummated anything until he changed back (that we know of...).
Or it might be the little charge one gets at the thought of being ravished, of being willingly taken by a thing more powerful, more intelligent, more dangerous than you are or could ever be. The part of us that welcomes the incubus and the succubus at night, the one that longs for the vampire's kiss, the werewolf's bite.
Because the monsters are seductive, frightening, captivating, exciting, and ultimately, safely fictional.
Maybe.
-Lea
