Steamy Screams: Anthology of Erotic Horror

seemed splotchy, swollen. Her old gown seemed torn and dirty. Her eyes stared up in terrified passion. The couch seemed to shift to a rock in a field and back again. There was a chuckle behind the couch almost a growl of joy. As she moved closer, her wolf stood up towering over her.

“Isn’t it time, Red? Don’t you want to be free?” he asked her. His muzzle and chest were wrong. They seemed sticky and red. A glint of metal in his hand made her shiver; was it fear or was it anticipation? When he smiled, she felt like she would be gobbled up. “Give your wolf a kiss…” he whispered. She walked over to him and let him wrap his arms around her. She could taste blood.

While she was eating, a little cat that was there said,

“For shame! A slut is she who eats her grandmother’s flesh and drinks her grandmother’s blood.” 

When she finished her meal, the bzou said, “Are you tired from your journey, child?

Then take off your clothes, come to bed, and I shall warm you up.”

His hand roamed over her, ripping her cloak open as he kissed her throat and nibbled her chin. She could feel his nails dig into her arms as he pulled her closer. Her clothes became less and less and she could feel his want. She ran her hands through his fur and pulled him closer. He wanted to devour her, and she wanted to let him. She was riding the needles and she didn’t want to ride alone anymore. He pulled her down to the floor behind the couch and stood over her. He placed something long and metal on the couch and removed his clothes slowly; exposing the animal he was; a wolf wearing man’s clothes. He knelt down and slipped her shell-pink panties down over her shapely thighs; with his long tongue he began to taste her, to clean her of the foulness of the woodsmen. He raked his nails across her thighs as he ate her; his tongue trailing up her belly to her breasts. Her basket lay on the grass forgotten. She wanted him, she wanted what he promised; animal passion.

She says to him, “Grandmother, how hairy you are!”

“The better to keep you warm, my child,”

“Grandmother, what big arms you have!”

“The better to hold you close, my child.”

“Wolves mate for life, Red. Did you know that?” For life… She could do that, she could get lost in this place. He spread her thighs apart with his knee and speared her. His thrusts screamed of need and purpose. She rocked back and forth against him; he was her true high. The worlds seemed to collide in her mind, he was the wolf; he was the man. She moaned gripping his mane as he bit her throat hard enough to hurt. He rose to his knees pulling her with him and just like that she was riding him. He pinned her arms behind her back grinding against her, while he bit at her nipples playfully. She could smell torn flesh and gunpowder; she could smell their sex spilling onto the blue shag rug. She rode him harder and harder, squeezing her walls around him.  Her wolf… come to save her from the open world and take her into the woods with him. She cried out again and again never wanting it to end. He pulled her hair hard, thrusting upwards with finality. The acid moon poured over them in the clearing as he pumped her full. She collapsed backwards in his arms getting her fix, coated in sweat and blood. He pulled her close and kissed her full red lips.

“I’ll tie your ankle with a woolen thread so I’ll know just where you are.”

said the bzou.

On the path of needles they became one. They would stay in this dark garden forever, and nothing would touch them. The shadows were theirs and she was free.

* * *

Author’s Note: 1. Bzou basically means werewolf, 2. parts in italics come from the pre-Perrault version of Little Red Riding Hood.

SHADOWGIRL KV Taylor

She’s always been there, at the foot of the bed—squatting like she wants to look small, unassuming—ever since I was a little girl. She changed as I grew older, and that’s why I believed them when they said she wasn’t real. At first, she was as dark as the shadows, her eyes glinting red in the glow from my nightlight—a leftover Christmas bulb that bathed my room in a festive, sanguine glow. I tried to get up and run to my parents’ room; back then, I could never remember that when she appeared, it meant I would be frozen to the spot. As I grew older, she became paler or darker than the shadows of my room, with long hair, then bald, with green eyes, then violet, then back to red. Always watching, always waiting.

In high school, I would sometimes wake up with her sitting on my chest, my lungs as frozen as the rest of me. I couldn’t even cry, but the urge always passed quickly. By then, I was old enough to know it would pass. I would fall asleep again, and she would be gone in the morning.

But she never really was. She clung to me like a film, like some oil a hot shower couldn’t dissolve. I was sure they could see her glistening on my skin as I wandered those halls, backpack over one shoulder, heart on my sleeve. I was sure that was why they looked at me like that, like I was some insect in a jar, like I was less human, less real. Why I spent my time in the corners alone, why they never even bothered to make fun of me.

Like I was just a shadowgirl at the end of their world. Uncomfortable and inexplicable. Just a bad dream.

It changed in college—no, it changed when I met Ariel. The party was loud, dark; Ariel lingered in the corner. Something about the way her eyes sparked green in the flashing lights lit me up inside. Her arms and legs, an elongated body pulled in on itself, trying to disappear into the cracking fraternity wallpaper. The shadow she cast was familiar and heart-sickening. I couldn’t stay away.

I went home with her that night. She pressed rum-flavored kisses into my lips, kissed me like a girl, sweet and warm and careful. Her cool, dark hands tugged at my jeans, slipped beneath my shirt, and brought me to life. With her mouth against my neck, open and hot, I wasn’t a shadow anymore.

But that’s wrong, isn’t it? I knew her; I’d known her my whole life. The one who’d been watching me, waiting for me all this time. She didn’t make me real: she was just as unreal as I.

It was our type of real, though. The days flew past, the nights were for us. “May,” she’d tell me, “May, I love you so much.”

And I’d say, “I’ve loved you forever. I’ve loved you since I was five-years-old.”

She’d laugh and kiss me, and we’d fall asleep like that, tangled up.

And then, one night, I woke to find two of her: one at my side, stretched out long and elegant, breathing. I felt the weight of her presence in the dark—though I couldn’t turn my head to look—and knew she was in her place. And the other her was at the foot of my bed, curled in on herself like a coiled snake. Her eyes were amber, that was the difference, and the rest of her still dark as shadow.

She, the Other Ariel, watched. I watched too, because there was nothing else I could do. Frozen as always.

She moved—she had never moved before, not once. Unfurled like a silk scarf, first climbing to her knees, then going down on all fours, stretching out toward me and arching so her backside was high in the air. Catlike. I felt her hands on either side of my calves, making small indentations. I felt Ariel still breathing beside me. My heart thundered so loud I wondered how it didn’t wake her up.

The Other crawled forward, up my indifferent body until she straddled my hips. All shadow, made of shadow, no clothes but no nakedness either, just that sick-familiar face and a pair of eyes I’d known forever, staring down into me. She sank lower—the cool, fleshy inside of her thighs, the place between her legs warm against my belly. Breath on my face, scentless, like barely-there wind.

She lowered her body onto me completely, her mouth met mine. Hard, demanding—