Tell the truth. You know you want to.

We all want things we know we shouldn’t have. Whether it’s that last chocolate cupcake, yet another figure for our immense collection, or the sexy so-and-so who takes forever to answer your text, we crave a little of the darkness.

Maybe you furtively Google your desires in the dark, with trembling lips and bated breath. Or maybe, like me, you talk about it out loud on your own blog. Either way, there’s a part of most people that love the dark. Like, love love it. With tongue.

Monster Crush

My first celebrity crush was on Freddy Krueger. Not Robert Englund, the actor who played the character, but on the character himself. I was 7. New Line Cinema, which was responsible for the creation of the franchise, once commissioned a suggestive prom photo shoot of heroine Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) and Freddy in full makeup. With the glove.

Hot, right?

Now, lest you forget, Freddy Krueger is at best a child killer. In an earlier version of the script he was a child molester as well. This is still subtext throughout the series. One that, even as a young girl, I picked up on. He attacks young kids in their beds, after all, when they’re sleeping and vulnerable. It’s not real subtle. When I was 7, of course, I wasn’t thinking about Freddy in a sexy way. But after seeing those prom pictures I definitely thought about him in a romantic way. I wanted him to be my prom date. What can I say? I like clever guys.

Or maybe it wasn’t the pictures. Maybe it was the moment in the first A Nightmare on Elm Street where Nancy is frantically trying to call her boyfriend Glenn (played by a young, dreamy Johnny Depp). C’mon, you all know the scene I’m talking about, don’t you?

The phone morphs into a version of Krueger’s burned mouth with an obscenely licking tongue as Freddy croons, “I’m your boyfriend now, Nancy!”

This was the guy a young me was swooning over. It really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who ever knew me that I grew up to write dark fantasy and erotic horror. When I say I love the dark, I mean I love it. With tongue.

And I’m not the only one titillated by this mash up of genres. 

Resident Hottie

As recently as last year, the internet was in an uproar about the “tall vampire lady”, aka Lady Dimitrescu from Resident Evil 8. And who can blame them? This scary, sexy icon was “designed to embody equal parts beauty and horror”.

More, More, More

Or check out this article on Decider.com, titled “10 Erotic Thrillers Like Behind Her Eyes on Netflix”. Erotic thrillers are good business. You know what else is good business? Horror. And porn. Both billion dollar industries. And, whether they admit it out loud or not, people are buying. Search the hashtag #monsterfucker on Tumblr or Twitter and you’ll find a trove of art, both visual and literary, dedicated to the love of monsters. Or check out the career of author Chuck Tingle, who skyrocketed to indie publishing stardom by writing “tinglers” about sex with Bigfoot, dinosaurs, aliens, and sentient objects. Of course, one might argue Dr. Chuck is relatively new to the scene. And he doesn’t really write horror erotica… But this isn’t some flash in the pan phenomenon.

Only look at hentai, the popular manga and anime subgenre of pornography for longevity. Talk about stamina!

Face it. We like our boys bad and our girls ghoulish.

For those of you who are ready to admit your love for the dark, don’t forget to head over the HellBound Books and pick up a copy of The Devil’s Doorbell 2 anthology, which features my sexy scary story “Swallow the Moon”.