Behind Scenes - "The Subway Succubus" (Patreon)

First up, as I suspected would happen, "The Subway Succubus" did get bounced by Literotica for being a little too nasty.  At least that lessens the blow of failing to finish it in time for the Halloween competition.

That means it is now a patron-exclusive until I find a spot for it in a collection.  As this month got a little rough in the middle, I'm glad to have something as a temporary exclusive to give you.

As always, I like to put up a post a few days later with some behind-scenes notes on the story.  There will be spoilers, so if you haven't yet read it, check it out first.  I've attached it to the previous post.

The inspiration was a viral video floating around from Russia where a girl kept jumping into the laps of random men on the underground.  There have been a few of these with various pranks including pouring bleach into the laps of men that spread out a bit too much.  I suspect they're staged, but it gave me a nice little plot bunny to run with.

Russia isn't always easy for Brits to get to, so I originally relocated it to Prague, then switched to making it an unspecified Eastern European city.

I wanted to reference the "is it sexual harassment?" argument, but didn't want to go too deep on that as it would likely end up coming off preachy whichever side was taken, and too many writers make the mistake of putting message before story nowadays.  It's more in there as a device to flesh out the main characters.  I let the characters expound the various viewpoints and left it to the reader to form their own opinion.

I wanted to have Nevill be the one to shut off filming and also be the first to attempt to go to Gage's aid.  It's a minor thing, but it's to highlight he would normally be the responsible friend and is only being a prat at the moment as he's suffering from the after-effects of a messy break up.  I like to add nuance to characters where I can.  Although there's nothing wrong with letting a monster chew up a bunch of cardboard characters, I think if you can add a bit of depth to them (without slowing the flow of the story down too far), it makes for a better story.

The four characters are meant to be a regular bunch of lads.  Not angels, but not assholes in need of a good succ-ing either.  Gage doesn't really deserve what happened to him, which is the point.

Did the ending need to be as gratuitously icky as it was?  Probably not, but it was fun.  Have to keep readers on their toes.  The nasty moments make the nicer moments stand out more.

The biggest concern I had was over the succubus.  She's just the monster in this tale, and I didn't really have much opportunity to give her a personality.  That's why I thought to run it as more of a regular horror story than erotica.  I'm not sure how well I succeeded.  As with "The Succubus in Mr Herbert's Summer House", I'm not sure how well the story built the atmosphere over its length.  That's a tricky thing to get right in horror fiction.

The plot device with the victim being excised from reality is something I took from another unfinished short story idea.  It fulfils the role of explaining how the succubus could hunt without anyone noticing the increasing pile of bodies.  It also gives a nice little barb at the end.  I'm guessing everyone has those nagging little moments when they're sure they've forgotten something.  Now imagine that every time you've had that thought it's because an extra-dimensional demon has eaten someone you knew and expunged them from reality so thoroughly you no longer remember they even existed.

A nice little thought for Halloween. ;)

I hope you enjoyed the story and as always, if you have any questions or further thoughts, please post them below.