Of Devils & Deviants: An Anthology of Erotic Horror

by Graham Masterton

  Of Devils

  &

  Deviants

  An Anthology of Erotic Horror

  Crowded Quarantine Publications

  First Edition Copyright © 2014 Crowded Quarantine Publication

  Individual works are Copyright © 2014 by their respective authors

  This Edition Published 2014 by Crowded

  Quarantine Publications

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All characters in this publication are fictitious

  and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,

  is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any

  form or by any means without the prior

  permission in writing of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or

  cover other than that in which it is published

  and without a similar condition including this

  condition being imposed on the subsequent purchase.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-0-9928838-1-2

  Crowded Quarantine Publications

  34 Cheviot Road

  Wolverhampton

  West Midlands

  WV2 2HD

  Table of Contents

  Lucy Taylor | Introduction

  Graham Masterton | Camelot

  Kenzie Mathews | Courbet and DeSade Share Secrets in Hell

  Taylor Grant | Masks

  Jeff Gardiner | Green Man

  Claude Lalumière | Our Love

  Maynard Sims | Sliding Down the Slippery Slip

  Ralph Robert Moore | The Middle Leg

  Adam Howe | Stiletto

  Shaun Meeks | Date Night

  Jenn Loring | A Taste for It

  Eric LaRocca | Her Body, Incarnate

  Aaron J. French | The Devil: A Love Story

  C.W. LaSart | The Gift of Infidelity

  Cameron Trost | Lauren

  Lucy Taylor | Prenuptials

  Ken MacGregor | The Mummy’s Curves

  Bear Weiter | Words Unbound

  Christian A. Larsen | She Never Says No

  J. Daniel Stone | Devil Made of Crystal

  Mandy DeGeit | Le Petit Mort

  Stacey Turner | Martin

  John McIlveen | Succumb

  Kenneth W. Cain | A Window to Dream By

  Introduction

  Lucy Taylor

  The stories in this anthology aren’t necessarily ones you’ll want to read to your lover in bed. These stories are audacious and raunchy, disturbing and dark. They may shock and even disgust you. In these pages, you’ll find sex-bots, cannibalism, necrophilia, and sex among those whom I’ll only describe as exceedingly differently abled. And sometimes—dare I say it?—love even rears its Janus face amid the bacchanalia.

  Many of these tales have to do with obsession. Our obsession with experiencing whatever, for each of us, constitutes the ultimate erotic high, then taking it several steps farther. About the delicious thrill of tempting fate one more time by partaking of fruit that’s not just forbidden, but corrupt and indecently gorgeous, sweet as peaches and lethal as ricin.

  Are these stories that will make you want to seize the object of your ardor—be it lover, fuck buddy, dildo, or high-tech Japanese sex wench—and have at it with wild abandon? Or do they give pause, even tamp down lust with a small frisson of dread? What drives us to infuse what is potentially the most ecstatic, life-enhancing experience available on the physical plane with the macabre, the menacing, and the deadly?

  Throughout human history the link between sex and death has been inescapable. Not for nothing do the French refer to orgasm as le petit mort or ‘little death.’ And as legions of horror fans well know, nothing foreshadows an imminent and hideous demise like hot young bodies in the throes of carnal rapture.

  It’s also well-known that the physiological reaction to fear—rapid breathing, fast pulse, dilated pupils—are virtually identical to those of sexual arousal. Small wonder then that it’s in the body that sex and horror cozy up, for sex can often lead us to reflections upon death, the brevity of our time here, the inevitability of our dissolution. Even when there’s no possibility of physical danger, there’s the chance of something arguably even more terrifying—the loss of control and the potential erosion of our carefully crafted self-image.

  As these stories show, to be sexual is, in one way or another to become vulnerable. Desire nullifies defenses and raw need short circuits the hardwiring for self-preservation. Sex, especially sexual excess, is also one of the last-ditch efforts of a number-out, jaded psyche’s urge to feel something—anything—at any cost. And the cost, as you’ll see in these pages, is often greater than the protagonist could have possibly imagined.

  To be sure, escaping unscathed from a risky activity offers an undeniable rush—and the sex in these stories is fraught with danger that’s by turns enticing, lurid, and profoundly perverse. From a seductive young woman trapped inside a mirror to a boy who sheds his innocence and inhibitions at an ancient pagan festival to lovers mutually revealing the hideous reality behind their human façade, the stories plumb the dark side of our erotic yearnings and touch perhaps the greatest fear of all—that in exploring these urges, a subterranean aspect of our natures will be revealed that craves not just physical release, but also complete annihilation, of oneself or of the other.

  Sexual urges and inclinations comprise the deepest core of our being, a territory of the psyche that some believe is on a par with spiritual longing. The desire for transcendence, that fantastically blissful moment when the ego falls away and identity dissolves—is it ultimately the same experience that the monk seeks through meditation and renunciation and that the s & m enthusiast chases after in a tricked-out dungeon with whips and ball gags?

  And isn’t the potential outcome of either path—loss of self—also a possibility that many find both alluring and flat-out terrifying?

  Erotic horror taps into one of humanity’s most profound paradoxes—the powerful pull toward physical intimacy with the corresponding fear of physical and emotional vulnerability. It dares us to ask not just who or what might be in the bed with us but, once restraint and inhibition have been ripped away, who or what might we find ourselves to be?

  It’s a question some may wish to leave unanswered. But for those who plunge with gusto into these stories, I’ll say only: read at your own risk.

  Camelot

  Graham Masterton

  Jack was scraping finely-chopped garlic into the skillet when he heard somebody banging at the restaurant door.

  “Shit,” he breathed. He took the skillet off the gas and wiped his hands on his apron. The banging was repeated, more forcefully this time, and the door-handle was rattled.

  “Okay, okay! I hear you!”

  He weaved his way between the circular tables and the bentwood chairs. The yellow linen blinds were drawn right down over the windows, so that all he could see were two shadows. The early-morning sun distorted them, hunched them up and gave them pointed ears, so that they looked like wolves.

  He shot the bolts and unlocked the door. Two men in putty-colored raincoats were standing outside. One was dark and unshaven, with greased-back hair and a broken nose. The other
was sandy and overweight, with clear beads of perspiration on his upper lip.

  “Yes?”

  The dark man held out a gilded badge. “Sergeant Eli Waxman, San Francisco Police Department. Are you Mr Jack Keller?”

  “That’s me. Is anything wrong?”

  Sergeant Waxman flipped open his notebook and peered at it as if he couldn’t read his own handwriting. “You live at 3663 Heliograph Street, apartment 2?”

  “Yes, I do. For Christ’s sake, tell me what’s happened.”

  “Your partner is Ms Jacqueline Fronsart, twenty-four, a student in Baltic singing at The Institute of Baltic Singing?”

  “That’s right.”

  Sergeant Waxman closed his notebook. “I’m sorry to tell you, Mr Keller, but Ms Fronsart has been mirrorized.”

  “What?”

  “Your neighbors heard her screaming round about nine-thirty this morning. One of them broke into your apartment and found her. They tried to get her out but there was nothing they could do.”

  “Oh, God.” Jack couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Which – what – which mirror was it?”

  “Big tilting mirror, in the bedroom.”

  “Oh, God. Where is it now? It didn’t get broken, did it?”

  “No, it’s still intact. We left it where it was. The coroner can remove it for you, if that’s what you want. It’s entirely up to you.”

  Jack covered his eyes with his hand and kept them covered. Maybe, if he blacked out the world for long enough, the detectives would vanish and this wouldn’t have happened. But even in the darkness behind his fingers he could hear their raincoats rustling, and their shoes shifting uncomfortably on the polished wood floor. Eventually he looked up at them and said, “I bought that mirror about six months ago. The owner swore to me that it was docile.”

  “You want to tell me where you got it?”

  “Loculus Antiques, in Sonoma. I have their card someplace.”

  “Don’t worry, we can find it if we need to. I’ll be straight with you, though – I don’t hold out much hope of any restitution.”

  “Jesus. I’m not interested in restitution. I just want—”

  He thought of Jacqueline, standing on his balcony, naked except for a large straw hat piled ridiculously high with peaches and pears and bananas. He could see her turning her face toward him in slo-mo. Those liquid brown eyes, so wide apart that she looked more like a beautiful salmon than a woman. Those brown shoulders, patterned with henna. Those enormous breasts, with nipples that shone like plums.

  “Desire, I can see it in your every looking,” she had whispered. She always whispered, to save her larynx for her Baltic singing.

  She had pushed him back onto the violently-patterned durry, and knelt astride his chest. Then she had displayed herself to him, her smooth hairless vulva, and she had pulled open her lips with her fingers to show him the green canary-feather that she had inserted into her urethra.

  “The plumage of vanity,” she had whispered.

  Sergeant Waxman took hold of Jack’s upper arm and gave him a comforting squeeze. “I’m real sorry for your loss, Mr Keller. I saw her myself and – well, she was something, wasn’t she?”

  “What am I supposed to do?” asked Jack. For the first time in his life he felt totally detached, and adrift, like a man a rowboat with only one oar, circling around and around, out of reach of anybody.

  “Different people make different decisions, sir,” said the sandy-haired detective.

  “Decisions? Decisions about what?”

  “About their mirrors, sir. Some folks store them away in their basements, or their attics, hoping that a time is going to come when we know how to get their loved ones back out of them. Some folks – well, they bury them, and have proper funerals.”

  “They bury them? I didn’t know that.”

  “It’s unusual, sir, but not unknown. Other folks just cover up their mirrors with sheets or blankets, and leave them where they are, but some doctors think this could amount to cruelty, on account of the person in the mirror still being able to hear what’s going on and everything.”

  “Oh, God,” said Jack.

  The sandy-haired detective took out a folded handkerchief and dabbed his forehead “Most folks, though—”

  “Most folks what?”

  “Most folks break their mirrors, sooner or later. I guess it’s like taking their loved ones off life-support.”

  Jack stared at him. “But if you break a mirror – what about the person inside it? Are they still trapped in some kind of mirror-world? Or do they get broken, too?”

  Sergeant Waxman said, solemnly, “We don’t know the answer to that, Mr Keller, and I very much doubt if we ever will.”

  * * *

  When the detectives had left, Jack locked the restaurant door and stood with his back against it, with tears streaming down his cheeks, as warm and sticky as if he had poked his eyes out. “Jacqueline,” he moaned. “Jacqueline, why you? Why you, of all people? Why you?”

  He knelt down on the waxed oak floor, doubled-up with the physical pain of losing her, and sobbed between gritted teeth. “Why you, Jacqueleine? Why you? You’re so beautiful, why you?”

  He cried for almost ten minutes and then he couldn’t cry any more. He stood up, wiped his eyes on one of the table-napkins, and blew his nose. He looked around at all the empty tables. He doubted if he would ever be able to open again. Keller’s Far-Flung Food would become a memory, just like Jaqueline.

  God, he thought. Every morning you wake up, and you climb out of bed, but you never know when life is going to punch you straight in the face.

  He went back into the kitchen, turned off all the hobs and ovens, and hung up his apron. There were half-a-dozen Inuit moccasins lying on the chopping-board, ready for unstitching and marinating; and yew branches for yew branch soup. He picked up a fresh, furry moose-antler. That was supposed to be today’s special. He put it down again, his throat so tight that he could hardly breathe.

  He was almost ready to leave when the back door was flung open, and Punipuni Puu-suke appeared, in his black Richard Nixon T-shirt and his flappy white linen pants. Jack didn’t know exactly how old Punipuni was, but his crew-cut hair looked like one of those wire brushes you use for getting rust off the fenders of 1963 pick-up trucks, and his eyes were so pouchy that Jack could never tell if they were open or not. All the same, he was one of the most experienced bone chefs in San Francisco, as well as being an acknowledged Oriental philosopher. He had written a slim, papery book called Do Not Ask A Fish The Way Across the Desert.

  Punipuni took off his red leather shoulder-bag and then he looked around the kitchen. “Mr German-cellar?” (He always believed that people should acknowledge the ethnic origins of their names, but translate them into English so that others could share their meaning.) “Mr German-cellar, is something wrong?”

  “I’m sorry, Pu, I didn’t have time to call you. I’m not opening today. In fact I think I’m closing for good. Jacqueline was mirrorized.”

  Punipuni came across the kitchen and took hold of his hands. “Mr German-cellar, my heart is inside your chest. When did this tragedy occur?”

  “This morning. Just now. The police were here. I have to go home and see what I can do.”

  “She was so wonderful, Mr German-cellar. I don’t know what I can say to console you.”

  Jack shook his head. “There’s nothing. Not yet. You can go home if you like.”

  “Maybe I come along too. Sometimes a shoulder to weep on is better than money discovered in a sycamore tree.”

  “Okay. I’d appreciate it.”

  * * *

  He lived up on Russian Hill, in a small pink Victorian house in the English Quarter. It was so steep here that he had to park his Ford Peacock with its front wheels cramped against the curb, and its gearbox in Backward. It was a sunny day, and far below them the Bay was sparkling like shattered glass; but there was a thin cold breeze blowing which smelled a fisherman’s dying b
reath.

  “Jack!”

  A maroon-faced man with white whiskers was trudging up the hill with a bull mastiff on a short choke-chain. He was dressed in yellowish-brown tweeds, with the cuffs of his pants tucked into his stockings.

  “I say, Jack!” he repeated, and raised his arm in salute.

  “Major,” Jack acknowledged him, and then looked up to his second-story apartment. Somebody had left the windows wide open, Jacqueline probably, and the white drapes were curling in the breeze.

  “Dreadfully sorry to hear what happened, old boy! The Nemesis and I are awfully cut up about it. Such a splendid young girl!”

  “Thank you,” said Jack.

  “Buggers, some of these mirrors, aren’t they? Can’t trust them an inch.”

  “I thought this one was safe.”

  “Well, none of them are safe, are they, when it comes down to it? Same as these perishing dogs. They behave themselves perfectly, for years, and then suddenly, for no reason that you can think of, snap! They bite some kiddie’s nose orf, or somesuch. The Nemesis won’t have a mirror in the house. Just as well, I suppose. With a dial like hers, she’d crack it as soon as look at it – what!”

  Jack tried to smile, but all he could manage was a painful smirk. He let himself into the front door and climbed the narrow stairs, closely followed by Punipuni. Inside, the hallway was very quiet, and smelled of overripe melons. Halfway up the stairs there was a stained-glass window with a picture of a blindfolded woman on it, and a distant castle with thick black smoke pouring out of it, and rooks circling.

  Punipuni caught hold of his sleeve. “Your God does not require you to do this, Mr German-cellar.”

  “No,” said Jack. “But my heart does. Do you think I’m just going to hire some removal guy and have her carted away? I love her, Pu. I always will. Forever.”

  “Forever is not a straight line,” said Punipuni. “Remember that your favorite carpet store may not always be visible from your front doorstep.”