Image: John Anster Fitzgerald (1823-1906)

Fairytales. Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, The Red Shoes, Hansel & Gretel, Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Six Swans… I could go on and on (and this somewhat-comprehensiveWikipedia list does.) Is there a literary genre better suited to eroticizing? I can’t think of one. But maybe that’s because from my earliest memories of reading erotica, fairytales had a deep erotic allure to them. Eroticism winds subtly through so many of them, beating a steady, throbbing drumbeat just below the surface. Even the most innocent-seeming have a sensuality that tugs at my imagination.

Do they tug at yours as well? Do they inspire you to write or photograph something erotic and sensual, moody and dark, terrifying and creepy?

This week’s Wicked Wednesday challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to take a fairytale of your choosing and turn it into a piece of erotica. You can write a story, a snippet or a piece of poetry; or take a photo that you feel emphasizes an erotic element of a fairytale.

– Prompt by PiecesofJade

When I was a little girl, I had something of an obsession with Andrew Lang’s The Blue Fairy Book. My grandmother and grandfather had a copy and, despite its unassuming cloth cover and acres of dense text, it was one of the most exciting reading discoveries of my early childhood. Inside, the most brilliant collection fairy stories. Not the saccharin-sweet versions depicted in pretty picture books but ones with bite and grit. The endings weren’t always happy. Many of the tales were downright violent. Dark and painful.

I was both shocked and fascinated.

Thorn King, my very first published story (which appeared in A Princess Bound) was a fairy tale and, perhaps not surprisingly, it owes a lot in terms of tone and approach to Andrew Lang’s collection. In fact, my favourite reviewer comment to-date warns people about its content. I am exceedingly pleased (perhaps strangely) by this because it tells me that, like Lang, I succeeded in creating something provoking and different. (Many online reviews for The Blue Fairy Book state how ‘shocked’ they are by the rawness of its stories.)

Around the same time I penned Thorn King (which is an original), I wrote an erotic adaptation of the French fairy tale Bluebeard. (Of all the traditional tales, this remains one of my all-time favourites, not least because it still scares the living cr*ap out of me as much now as when I was a child!) It’s been sitting on my computer for quite some time but this Wicked Wednesday prompt seems like the perfect time to reveal a snippet. I really hope you enjoy it.

 

BLUEBEARD

You probably know our story. Or think you do.

Let me guess.

You heard about how I took a wife. Threw temptation in her way by giving her a key to the door I’d told her not to open. That I promised to kill her when she disobeyed and discovered the bodies of my dead wives.

That I’m a cruel, wicked man who deserves death for what I would do to her.

It’s funny how we twist things to hide the uncomfortable reality, isn’t it? How we secret away those dark little parts society doesn’t want to see in forgotten corners. Paint them in a lighter colour.

Oh, don’t get me wrong – there are fragments of truth in the tale you were told, such as it is.

I am cruel.

I am wicked.

My wife did open the door. But she didn’t find bodies behind it. Oh, no. She found her salvation.

 

I can still remember slipping the key in the lock. How cool the smooth, black iron felt against my fingertips, how hard it was to turn the latch. Can remember with vivid clarity the sound of the bolt finally lifting and the feeling of the thick oak beneath my palm as it opened into a room that was more frightening than any I could have imagined. Or dreamed about. That first time, a glance was enough; I turned and fled me as quickly as I could, barely remembering to lock the door behind me. But the next day I went back, stood on the threshold and looked a little longer, ventured in a step further.

And I went back the day after that.

And the day after that.

And the day after that.

Until one afternoon my blue-bearded husband came home from his travels and found me standing in the middle of the room, the key glowing red in my hand.

 

I can still remember the way she looked as she stood there, fear flooding her eyes, her body frozen in fright at being discovered. A tiny, crushable mouse before a great, stalking cat.

Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

I smiled at her. Made sure I showed her my teeth.

She shrank back slightly, but even as she did she gave me a curious look. Did she think I wouldn’t follow through on my threat? That I was bluffing?

I strode forwards, watched her irises widen in fright, and plunged my hands into her hair, making sure I pulled hard enough to hurt.

“Did you forget your instructions, wife,” I said softly.

She trembled, looked at me beseechingly, but didn’t answer.

“Well did you?” I said, tightening my grip even further.

Her lips parted and I thought she might speak, but then she was shaking her head, each slight turn putting further pressure on the strands bunched in my fingers, increasing the pain.

“Hmph,” I grunted and tugged her over to a waist-high wooden table, its smooth surface marred with knots and scars, its edges padded with dark brown leather. She scrambled after me – she had no choice – and didn’t resist as I bent her across it. Nor did she protest when I cuffed her wrists to the manacle chains bolted to its corners. But when she saw me pick up the large, sharp knife from a nearby shelf, her eyes filled with tears and she began to struggle. To cry out for mercy and beg for forgiveness.

She was truly delightful in her panic.

I moved behind her where she couldn’t see me, knowing that doing so would increase her terror. Enjoyed watching her whimper and squirm – but, eventually, I leaned over her body so that my chest pressed against her back and whispered “Be still” in her ear.

She froze like a statue.

I could smell her fear curling in my nostrils.

 

The way he stared the day he caught me. The way he smiled that cruel smile.

My heart began to beat so fast it seemed as if it had grown wings. Yet the fright I felt seemed to be gilded with horrifying excitement.

When he pulled out the knife my stomach dropped to my knees.

Fight or flight, fight or flight …

Fight.

He slipped behind me, became an unseen threat; I fought my bindings harder then ever. Pulled and yanked against them until my wrists and arms ached and my hipbones felt bruised from my thrashing against the hard wooden table-top.

Then the feel of him against my back, a great warm weight.

“Stop.”

His voice was like iron, my sense of self-preservation like a thick smoke. To have refused his order would have been madness.

When he pulled back moments later I felt his hands at the back of my gown, gripping the collar, something smooth and cool sliding between it and the skin of my neck – the knife! – and I stopped breathing.

“I’d suggest you don’t move.”

A tugging sensation – my gown drawing tight across my breasts, the feeling of being pulled upwards like a puppet – and then a great long tearing sound. Air kissing my shoulders, the skin tightening in response; the feeling of the blade continuing its journey, down, down, down, until, at last, it cut through the hem near my feet.

He’d sliced my dress clean through.

I lay there, prone, in my corset and bloomers, grateful to still be in one piece. Unmarked. But then the tip of the knife was biting at the waistband of my muslin underwear, pricking at the material before sinking through the gauzy fabric like a great silver fang.

There was a heart-stopping moment as its length brushed against the crease of my bottom, lay between the cheeks like a cool branding iron, before lifting up and away. A feeling of exposure as the two halves of the cut garment slid down the curves of my buttocks, leaving me bare-bottomed and unprotected.

Vulnerable.

 

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