Cthulhurotica (2 page)

Thank you to Jennifer Brozek, for suggesting Cody Goodfellow to me (whose story, “Infernal Attractors” is exactly as good as I was hoping it would be) and for writing her own essay, “The Sexual Attraction of the Lovecraftian Universe” which appears at the back of the book. Cody said yes when I asked him to write for me, and was delightful to work with in a way you don’t always expect more established writers to be. Steven J. Scearce initially overwhelmed me with his enthusiasm, but as I got to know him I discovered that his amazing energy is funneled into his writing as well. He turned in a carefully crafted and well-researched piece that includes, I can say, the most Lovecraftian tone in the book.

Kenneth Hite is a monster of Lovecraft-based lore, and in his short essay “Cthulhu’s Polymorphous Perversity” there is enough raw information to make any reader a near-expect on Lovecraft if they take the time to read everything he references. Kirsten Brown allowed me to use two pieces of her art, and then surprised me by submitting a story of such strength I could do nothing else but use it to end the collection.

Matthew Marovich wrote the only noir submission I received, and did so in such a way that I can imagine the smell of the gunsmoke and the feel of motel sheets. Silvia Moreno-Garcia retold the King in Yellow story in a modern, gritty fashion, showing us the only obvious choice when faced with cinematic madness. Gabrielle Harbowy begins the collection with a sensuous tale of what happens when a curious sister comes visiting, and a cultist doesn’t buy sturdier locks for his basement. Galen Dara produced three different images for the book, each reflecting a different example of the relationships possible in a place where man and woman and monsters meet.

Mae Empson gives the world Greek myth for a Mythos universe, and in the process not only added to existing Mythos fiction, but showed us something new. She was also kind enough to go over the completed text for a final round of proofing. Nathan Crowder and Leon J. West both brought the creepy in a way I can’t help but admire, as long as their characters stand very, very far away from me. Dr. Justin Everett, PhD, a professor of writing and Weird fiction scholar, handled my request for an essay with great seriousness, and his writing reflects the love he has for this genre.

K.V. Taylor, in addition to giving us a story that actually makes being alone on a deserted island both terrifying and sexy, has also been (along with Madison Woods and Travis King) a great cheerleader to the rest of the contributors, and her sharp eye caught a few last-minute typos I’d missed. Travis King also carefully reviewed the advance copy of the text and was able to help me correct some important things that needed correcting, for which I am grateful. A big thank you goes out to Lillian Cohen-Moore, for reading and pointing out flaws in sentence structure and grammar, and to Richard Baron, who accepted over 600 additional words in the process of editing, and handled everything with such grace.

Don Pizarro gave me a subtly clever look at a man who loved a woman who might be a monster, but isn’t quite one, yet. He also provided hours and hours of support and conversation about theme, layout, and editing. In the process of being a sounding board for the book, he became my friend. He deserves more credit for editing
Cthulhurotica
than he was willing to accept at the time, but I won’t ever forget.

Between you and me, this is
his
book too.

Readers expecting a collection of monster sex stories might, after all, be disappointed. The characters within these pages are all quite human, though they sometimes dally with creatures who are not. This book turned out to be about the kind of people who live in a world where monster sex is possible, and it looks at how that world and those people would have to operate. Of course, it’s still unbelievable sexy, and scary, and creepy, and that’s exactly what I wanted it to be.
Cthulhurotica
may be a book that HP Lovecraft would never have read, but it began because of him, and exists in spite of him. It is, and always will be, my way of thanking the man for all the words he gave to me over the years.

For Howard.

– Carrie Cuinn

ASTROPHOBOS

By H. P. Lovecraft

In the midnight heavens burning
Thro’ ethereal deeps afar,
Once I watch’d with restless yearning
An alluring, aureate star;
Ev’ry eye aloft returning,
Gleaming nigh the Arctic car.

Mystic waves of beauty blended
With the gorgeous golden rays;
Phantasies of bliss descended
In a myrrh’d Elysian haze;
And in lyre-born chords extended
Harmonies of Lydian lays.

There (thought I) lies scenes of pleasure,
Where the free and blessed dwell,
And each moment bears a treasure
Freighted with a lotus-spell,
And there floats a liquid measure
From the lute of Israfel.

There (I told myself) were shining
Worlds of happiness unknown,
Peace and Innocence entwining
By the Crowned Virtue’s throne;
Men of light, their thoughts refining
Purer, fairer, than our own…

Gabrielle Harbowy
DESCENT OF THE WAYWARD SISTER

It was an unfortunate and shameful predicament that led me to seek lodging with my estranged older brother. We were strangers raised by the same parents with more than a decade between us, like serial lodgers with only a house and a pair of kindly if distant landlords in common. I knew nothing of his secrets, nor he of mine.

His was a stately row house on a venerated downtown block. It was the sort of street along which young businessmen walk with ambitious longing, and ladies make a show of disembarking from their carriages so that other ladies might see them welcomed inside. I came to his doorstep in the evening, in the rain, with the glow of the streetlight forming a halo behind my bedraggled, dripping hair. My brother was a stern-looking man, but I was accustomed to charming my way into the hearts of stern-looking men. The words spilled past my lips: I confessed to him that a grave misunderstanding with a young gentleman had ruined my station, and that I had nowhere else to go. Upon my repeated apologies, sobbed between solemn assertions that I would not inconvenience him and only needed a safe place for my reputation to convalesce in privacy, he took me in with a nod and a long-suffering sigh.

At once, he arranged for me the sorts of diversions appropriate for a lady: music lessons, and embroidery, and dancing. It was an unexpected kindness, perhaps evidence of how deeply he had been moved my plea. Or perhaps to keep me occupied while he was away all day, toiling at whatever labor provided him the financial resources for such a well-situated home. He did not discuss his work with me, and I did not ask. When he returned home in the evening, we dined in formal silence at opposite ends of a long, impersonal table. After coffee, he received callers and retreated to his study, leaving me once again on my own.

I rarely saw him. Still, hints of his secrets soon began to make themselves apparent. The servants – for he had several – were not at sufficient ease with me to treat me as one of their number, as I would have preferred. However, they were unaccustomed to another presence pacing the halls by day, and forgot to guard their tongues. They whispered about him, about the house, about the visitors, about the need to keep a vigilant eye on me to prevent me from wandering where I shouldn’t. There were doors, I learned, that were perpetually locked. To these rooms the house servants were forbidden entry, and strict punishment might befall any well-meaning girl who rearranged his books, or so much as shifted his papers.

A locked door, however, had never been a match for my curiosity. Indeed, I had made my livelihood upon the riches and secrets they shielded. Willpower and gratitude held me back for a full two days, but on my third day in residence I claimed headache in the middle of my piano lesson and sent the tutor away. It was, I thought, something a spoiled lady might often do, and indeed the nice gentleman seemed willing enough to escape my dreadful playing while presumably keeping his full afternoon’s fee. With the servants distracted by the afternoon bustle as they prepared for their master’s return, my slender lock picks and I crept into every room on the upstairs floor, in search of a bit more background on my closest blood-relation.

He was quite a collector of books. Some were slim volumes, but most were old and weighty, with thick leather covers. They were most certainly of value simply due to their apparent age. The markings on many of the spines were in some sort of code of glyphs that made no sense to me, but I was no student of languages, having barely any schooling even in my own. Some of the books were illustrated: ink drawings of fantastical creatures the likes of which I had never seen. I paged carefully through several, but received no further enlightenment as to their purpose.

Soon enough I was bored with my brother’s diversions, and was again craving some more active form of entertainment. The immaculate, well-appointed home was a lovely prison, and a self-imposed one, but after my more accustomed freedom I found it confining nonetheless. I could not divert myself with physical pleasures, as was my inclination. I could not contrive a trip to market as an excuse to get out on my own for a bit, since the household staff took care of the shopping. I had run out of boring, book-filled rooms to explore, and even the thrill of stealing spirits from the bar in the library grew quickly old to me.

It had been kind of him to attempt to turn me into a lady of society, and within a matter of days I had learned enough of the protocol to put on an eager show of it when I was in his presence – it would have been ungrateful to do otherwise – but in truth I was not taking naturally to it. Needlepoint and music were tiresome to me, and the tutors he had called upon to educate me in the domestic arts were as dull and sour as old milk. I had been too long on my own, or perhaps I had simply seen too much of the lively underbelly of the world to be content sitting still. I entertained the notion that one of his companions might be lured away from the page and into livelier pursuits of the flesh.

But my brother made a point of not introducing me to his callers. At first, I thought perhaps he was taking me at my word – I had promised to be inconspicuous. Then I wondered if he might be ashamed of me, concerned that his association with me might mar his standing with his peers. That made me only more determined to meet them.

I should not have bothered. They were stuffy, distracted men, sallow of skin and nervous of disposition in that particular way that marks a scholar. They spoke to each other in low tones, in some archaic language whose syllables sounded as though they damaged the throat to produce. Where I had looked upon their introduction to the evening routine in hopes that it might signal at least a bit of excitement, to my disappointment, they were too lost in their own heads to even notice the charms my low neckline put on display. Whatever it was that they retreated to study, it lured them more convincingly than I could. And the servants were on their guard; when I lingered outside the door to listen, I was quickly shooed away.

I’d heard nothing of much import, anyway. “Soon,” and “sacrifice,” and “summoning” amidst more of that pretentious guttural grunting, the dry turning of pages, and heavy, anxious footfalls.

It was my fifth day of residence and I was pacing yet another despondent circuit through my brother’s richly-appointed halls. So it was that I happened to be passing the cellar door just as a curiously plaintive cry issued from beyond it, quiet enough that had I not been just there, just then, the tread of feet upon the wooden floors or the constant bustle of sounds from the kitchen would have obscured it from my notice entirely. I paused and strained my ears, and in short order it came again. Human it was, without question.

It was quite conceivable that a maid had locked herself in while fetching some stores or other for the kitchen. And while it struck me as strange that the others might not have missed her if she had been trapped in the quiet gloom since breakfast time, I should not have been surprised that her cries had dropped to the desperate, weak wails of one who has lost all hope of being heard. If the others thought her to be on some errand, I thought, they might think her simply delayed in town, not trapped below their feet.

I had not thought to investigate the lower level of the house, but now I hastened to the door, loosening from my up-swept hair two of the slender pins that had been the hallmark of my former trade. “I’m coming,” I called through the keyhole, “hold fast!” Thus saying, I turned my full attention to the lock. Like a proper maiden, it resisted for a token moment. But, upon further adept agitation of its slender hole, it relinquished its charms with smooth, willing finesse.

“Good girl,” I murmured to it. Pausing just long enough to give a fold to the doormat inside the top landing – and thus prevent the door from closing again and delaying the liberation of my panicked charge – I squinted my eyes and descended into the dim cellar, lifting my skirts to avoid a graceless fall down the unforgiving stone stairs. Candlelight flickered from around the corner, but the unseen lass had gone silent.