Happy Valentine's Day! "The Monster Fucker Club" by A.V. Greene
BogiReads brings you the daily speculative reading recommendation of editor Bogi Takács.
Today's recommendation -
Before today's recommendation, let me briefly note that my new collection Power to Yield and Other Stories is out today from Broken Eye Books, with beautiful cover art by Galen Dara. Here are some shopping links: Amazon US / Bookshop / Directly from the press. (The first two are affiliate links.) If you like my recommendations, you might like this too!
And now on to today's highly timely story I handpicked for Valentine's....
Author: A.V. Greene
Title: “The Monster Fucker Club”
Venue: Apex, July 2023 (eds. Lesley Conner, Maurice Broaddus, Marissa Van Uden, Jason Sizemore)
Type: Short story – 2395 words
Themes: Horror, monsters, relationships, high school, sex, self-harm
Where to read: Text free online
Happy Valentine’s Day! Here is a story about monster fucking.
This isn’t smut – there’s little detail about the sex and it’s not written to titillate. (I have some coming up which have more, but I was in the mood for this one today.)
“It’s not a relationship,” as one of the characters puts it. It’s uncomfortable, dangerous, occasionally lethal – yet the protagonists, a group of high school girls, just can’t tear themselves away from their paramours. From a faceless angel to a she-wolf with gouging claws, there are all manner of monsters lurking in and around town.
Instead of the possibly expected erotica, it’s about how the not-relationship is a relationship, and how despite all common sense, the girls keep on going back for more… as long as they can. The whole setup is also reminiscent of teen girls’ self-harm groups, like pro-anorexia, etc. (including the occasional complicity in crime), but speculative. I read it a while ago – it’s from last summer –, and it stayed with me.
Until next time,
Bogi.