Carrie Cuinn - Cthulhurotica

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.

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.