Bitten: Dark Erotic Stories

Bitten

DARK EROTIC STORIES
EDITED BY

SUSIE BRIGHT

Compilation copyright (c) 2009 by Susie Bright.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Page 191 constitutes a continuation of the copyright page.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Bitten: dark erotic stories / edited by Susie Bright.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-8118-7491-5
1. Erotic stories, American. 2. Gothic fiction (Literary gnere), American.
I. Bright, Susie, 1958- II. Title

PS648.E7Q58 2009
813’.01083538—dc22
2008049365

Cover illustration by Hannah Stouffer

Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
www.chroniclebooks.com

“I have cultivated my hysteria with pleasure and terror.”

—Charles Baudelaire

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
Susie Bright

THE DEVIL’S INVISIBLE SCISSORS
Sera Gamble

THE RESURRECTION ROSE
Anne Tourney

SMOKE AND ASHES
Shanna Germain

THE LEGACY
Donna George Storey

THE UNFAMILIAR
Allison Lawless

THE WITCH OF JEROME AVENUE
Tsaurah Litzky

HISTORICAL INACCURACIES
Julia Talbot

CROSS-TOWN INCUBUS
E.R. Stewart

THE ROOKERY
Jess Wells

HALF-CROWN DOXY
Cate Robertson

PANDORA’S OTHER BOX
Greg Boyd

TWINS
Ed Falco

MASTER SARAH
Patrice Suncircle

LAY ME OUT SOFTLY
Francesca Lia Block

GET THEE BEHIND ME, SATAN
Ernie Conrick

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

CREDITS

INTRODUCTION

G
OTHIC STORIES ARE THE ROMANTIC ROOTS OF ECSTASY AND TRAGEDY.

They seek out magic in everyday life; they read the symbols instead of the fine print. The gothic storyteller doesn’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

When I approached the authors in this collection for their original stories, I wrote a poem for inspiration.

This, I told them, is what I’m searching for:

Perverse fairy tales

Erotic spirits

Sexually compulsive haunts

The baroque savage

Bohemian, post-punk, Dark Wave,

an obsession

sacred taboos

a mystical view of the sexual body

Elizabethan, Victorian, Cajun, Latin, African, and Catholic tastes

Give me lugubrious passion, unrelieved thirsts,

the lushness of black, the velvet hammer

Noir effects

“A marked preference for dark colors and sentiments”

Sexy-spooky, ethereal carnality,

Daily horror as subversive social critique

The erotic arc of the unconscious,

The bawdy kitsch and cocky comedy of horror

Les Fleurs du Mal!

Whatever served as their erotic muse, our writers performed as if flames were licking their ink. I hope you’ll enjoy their bent, and beautiful, instincts.

Susie Bright, Editor, All Saints Day, 2008

THE DEVIL’S INVISIBLE SCISSORS

Sera Gamble

T
HE SOUL ISN’T A GLOWING ORB.
It doesn’t look like a halo. It has no wings. It doesn’t live inside your heart. Everything you ever learned about the soul is wrong.

If you asked Gina to describe the human soul, she’d tell you to picture a cluster of shiny balloons bobbing in the air a couple of feet above your head, tethered to you by invisible strings. Except, the strings aren’t strings, of course—they’re lines of energy. Perhaps, if you’re the type, you sometimes sense them. The bottom of each string, she’d tell you, is tied to your solar plexus.

To you or me, Gina looks like a slightly bored executive assistant with a naughty streak and a hidden sad story. She’s the only woman in the bar wearing stockings, maybe the only woman in Los Angeles wearing stockings with a black seam up the back. Gina has on a silk blouse, sleeveless; pencil skirt, tight; black slingback shoes with scuffed points. Gina has cherub lips and “Black Dahlia” hair and slightly crooked teeth that make you trust her. Sometimes she finishes off the look with a baby gold cross, but that only really works on guys from the Midwest. Out here, it’s all God-doubting sometime Buddhists from Protestant or Jewish families, thirsty only for big money or kind eyes, likely to pray only in the moments before they receive their test results.

Cool by Gina. Big-city boys are easier, though you’d think the opposite; you’d think their hard shell would prove tougher to penetrate. Truth is, they’re usually farther from home, lonelier, smarting from some recent screwing-over of the professional or personal kind. You know how people say everyone in L.A. is fake? They’re being dramatic. It’s not that bad. Nevertheless, truth is, a man in a bar like this, a bar with expensive chairs and designer shot glasses, is surprised to find a woman like Gina really listening to him. Not sizing him up. Not glancing at the door. Not waiting for an opening in which to wedge her pointy leather toe so she can talk about herself.