In Horror Stories, They Fuck Like Me (A Kink in Five Lessons) by Anonymous

I

When I was eighteen, I saw Hostel for the first time. Growing up, my parents didn’t want violent films in our house (to such a degree that I wasn’t even allowed to watch Forrest Gump until I was eighteen because of the war scenes). I was an anxious child, so I started my journey into horror slowly and cautiously. Up until Hostel, my viewing had been mostly ghosts and demons. Now I was curious about human monsters, too.

I expected to feel sick to my stomach; I expected to cover my eyes. But as I watched a character’s simulated mutilation on my laptop screen, my body began to wake up. The twisting in my stomach was the wrong kind. When I found the scene on YouTube later, needing to watch this man die a second, third, and fourth time, it dawned on me that this wasn’t how I was supposed to feel while watching scenes of torture. 

I watched the scene over and over again, trying to make sense of it. Was it just that the actor was attractive? He was in his underwear so it had to be his body I was admiring, not the holes the power drill made in it. I’d had crushes in the past, on people of all genders, but nothing had ever felt like this. When I watched his throat get cut, why did I want to slip my fingers into the wound?

Why was this what I’d be watching during my first orgasm? Was it because I was a human monster too?

Lesson learned: To achieve climax, I must imagine someone’s gruesome demise.

II

On my worst date ever, we watched Hellraiser in my dorm room. I was struggling to gauge when was the right time to mention this grisly kink to new partners, but by now I was knee-deep in the BDSM scene. I’d met this man that way, so the third date would be fine. 

“Wait, seriously?” His eyes glittered. “Murder?”

We sat on my bed to watch the film. There was nowhere else to sit. He kept his arm around me the whole time, and every time there was a drop of blood onscreen his hands would start to wander. 

“Is this turning you on?” Hooks had just sunk into Frank’s body and the answer was absolutely yes.

I shushed him, shifting away from his groping. His questions were adding a layer of pressure to the situation, an othering I didn’t know what to do with. I felt like I was on display in a freak show tent. Look at the monster, they find flaying sexy. 

If it had been his kink too, if he’d wanted to feel threatened, it might have been alright. I’d been in the scene for a while and had quickly learned that my preferred way to start negotiations was by asking my partner how they wanted to feel during a scene (my ideal answers were always “helpless” or “afraid”). But my date that night gave me the sense that he wanted to feel like he’d survived something; to feel like he’d dodged a bullet by not dying in my bed. 

Lesson learned: dump the people who make me feel like a carnival curiosity they’d fuck for the story.

III

No matter how many times I explain that I have a clear picture of the distinction between fantasy and reality, I have had therapists tell me my desire to kill the ones I love comes from a fear of intimacy. The first time I was told this, I stammered out the more boring truth that I don’t really want to kill anyone, not in real life. The second time, I asked her why she thought I didn’t want to get close to my partners when you can’t get much closer than slipping a hand into their abdomen and exploring their insides. 

I’ve since found better therapists (in large part by specifically seeking kink-aware professionals). But somewhere between the shy and brazen answers is the real truth: even playing this way is an act of profound intimacy. While you’re pressing a knife to a person’s skin, you’re the only person in their world.

David Cronenberg was one of the early artists who helped me embrace the darker parts of myself, my needs, and my desires. Watching Videodrome, Crash, and Existenz helped me understand that I wasn’t completely alone in finding bodily destruction both highly appealing and deeply intimate. 

Crimes of the Future was one of the rare films that felt like it was made with me in mind. “Surgery is the new sex,” this movie said. Incisions were made with delicious sensuality, and pain was pleasure. Although much of my kink is based in fear and suffering, it was so refreshing to see the carving up of the human body displayed as something sensual and loving. When Caprice unzipped her lover’s abdomen and slipped her tongue in the wound, I saw stars.

Lesson learned: if sexy surgery can gross $4.6 million, I can write all the sexy murders I want.

IV

I was recently caught off guard by a Big Five mystery novel when I encountered a scene where a woman sits in her lover’s lap and threatens his life in an explicitly titillating and consensual manner. When I finished the scene, I immediately had to call my spouse. I felt a bit silly for how excited I felt, but I had to tell them I’d read a mainstream novel where two characters had sex that looked familiar to me. Haphazard negotiations aside, these characters had fucked in a way that was reminiscent of how I do it, with a hand on a throat and dirty talk that wouldn’t be out of place in a slasher film. 

When I first started learning about myself, I’d assumed that my desire to play with knives would be something partners tolerated at best. I’m now fortunate enough to be married to someone who loves it when I explain to them the ways I want to destroy their body. We can watch horror movies together, and if a kill is especially graphic and I cast them a meaningful look, they know I’m picturing their murder and they smile and squeeze my hand. It took years to realize that this kind of thing could be desirable, and seeing fear used sensually in a mainstream novel had me elated.

Much of the conventional sex I had in my twenties was performed as a sort of penance—a way to give back to the people who’d so graciously let me put blades on their bodies. When they experienced their own pleasure as I traced sharp objects over them without breaking the skin, I refused to believe it was real; and I dismissed the fact that they’d asked me to hold the knife to their throat. The sexual aspects of these encounters were consensual, but never fulfilling. It took years to learn that their enthusiasm was likely genuine. There were people who had the same feelings that I did, but from the other end. Eventually, I was comfortable enough to tell them the things I felt. If I’d had this joyous depiction of murderous play when I was in my twenties, how much mediocre sex might I have avoided?

Lesson learned: it’s okay to say what I want—I may not be the only one who wants it.

V

I’ve been writing erotic horror since I was in college, but I didn’t think to call it that until later. I called it horror porn, or just “my smut stories” if I didn’t want to get into it. When I started posting it online (for free, since I assumed there was no market for it) I was shocked to find that people read it, and liked it. By witnessing people’s responses to this work, I was able to open up more and more about my own feelings on the matter. I began to write for more mainstream publications, but have only recently begun to see any success there. 

And now people are explicitly asking for this sort of work. Erotic horror publishing imprints and online magazines are cropping up more often, as are general horror markets that welcome erotic horror with the rest. I’m not saying everyone who writes erotic horror has a murder kink, but I am saying that explicitly inviting work like this is making a home for people who do. 

Every time I see another call for submissions with erotic horror on its wishlist, I think about people like me—the non-practicing lust-murderers—who are languishing in the knowledge that there are whole aspects of themselves that they can’t share with anyone ever. Every time someone writes something horny and horrifying, they’re telling these people that it’s alright to bear their bloody, beating hearts. In my writing now, I celebrate these aspects of myself. This writing has the power to make people squirm. Writing for a physical reaction is one of the joys of writing horror. But as long as they’re enjoying the ride, it’s far from my desire to police the type of squirming my stories elicit. 

Even now I sometimes struggle with self-acceptance. When I do, I think of a younger version of me and how much they would have loved to read the things I’m writing now. I think about them, I smile, and I start writing again.

Lesson learned: it’s an outlet, it’s an art, and you’d probably look amazing covered in blood.