February Issue, written by Brianna Malotke
Love Bites
An exploration of the inherent horrors in love and romance
By: Brianna Malotke
As both a romance and horror writer, I often have to stop myself from letting the creepy crawlies and ghost stories ooze into my romance storylines. It’s not something that my editors want in my contemporary romance series. However, adding a little romance to my horror? That is right up my alley. Most of my horror poetry and short stories have some romantic element woven into them. For this blog essay, I want to focus more on the way in which the lines between love and ‘something else’ get blurred, creating the inherent horrors in love and romance that lead to the creation of horror plots.
Once you start looking, it’s easy to notice all the real ways that horror lurks within relationships and different aspects of “love.” In my opinion, it’s through these connections, that you can draw ideas for some thrilling and terrifying horror stories. Personally, I love a good relationship revenge plot. Give me a love scorned femme character who seeks vengeance by going on a killing spree any day. But I understand that’s not really an everyday situation.
Last year I was asked to write the introduction for the poetry anthology, Beautiful Tragedies 3, from HellBound Publishing and edited by Xtina Marie. In my introduction I elaborate on the connection between romance, love, and horror. Here is a snippet from my introduction,
“Love can be an overwhelming feeling and oftentimes indescribable. But love isn’t always about the butterflies in the stomach when you first kiss or stolen glances that cause your heart to race. Sometimes it can be ugly and dreadful. It can lead to shattered hearts, melancholic souls, and tear-stained pillows. In some cases, it can even lead to murderous thoughts…and questionable and frightful actions.”
It's this sort of tangent that allows the reader to see just how romance and horror can be mixed. Through the tragic ending of something wonderful, whether it’s a broken heart or grief of someone you love dying, these events can have a dark side to them.
Love and Obsession
There is a clear a difference between getting to know someone you're interested in and learning every little aspect of them. Think back to your high school crushes? Did you know their favorite color, the tv shows they watched on the weekends, or even their favorite pizza place and why? To everyone around you these little tidbits of information were normal, nothing unusual. However, there can be something much more sinister when the line between love and obsession blurs.
Within dark romance there is an entire category of stalker storylines where the male main character (MMC) stalks the female main character (FMC) like prey. In some books it’s just that he falls hard and fast. Incapable of professing his feelings the MMC tries to woo the FMC and keep any potential suitors away from the her. Other times, it’s much darker and the MMC is seeking the fear and despair the stalking creates for the FMC. These types of stories showcase the different routes that stalking takes, and while they can be realistic, they’re not necessarily the types of obsessions we see manifesting in the real world.
When obsession starts to take the reins of the relationship, people can get hurt. Lives get overturned and it’s not quite like the dramatic thriller tv show You. The show stars Penn Badgley as the stalker who takes his toxic and obsessive feelings and twists them into stalking and murder to get the girl he wants and feels he deserves. In the first season Badgley’s character, Joe Goldberg, meets Guinevere Beck and becomes infatuated with her. He uses social media and other methods to track her, keep tabs on her, and even spies on her while she’s in her own home. As the season progresses, he removes people from her life that he perceives as obstacles to being with him. This includes Joe murdering both Guinevere’s boyfriend and her best friend. However, this is just a TV show. In everyday life, it’s much more likely that you would notice when little red flags will pop up.
Where jealously lurks around every corner, there is the inherent horror of obsessive love. One person may fall in love with new people instantly and need to control every aspect of the relationship that they can. This includes everything from friends, clothing, and even what their partner eats. If their love interest tries to leave, they may threaten to hurt themselves or those they love. Some people can’t escape these relationships, or it may take years to become free. For those who do leave, they may have to relocate and start fresh with a new job and home to try to avoid the abusive partner.
Love, Control, and Marriage
Relationships take work, commitment, and trust. All these things can be scary for people. Then throw in marriage? Something that locks you in legally with another person? Terrifying. Monogamy and making a life commitment to one person forever can be overwhelming. However, finding the right person could prove to be the easiest decision you’ll ever make.
Personally, I feel very lucky to have found my partner. We met at a thing called Tuba Christmas (and it’s exactly as dorky as it sounds). We shared music and from there it blossomed into dating. While we were together for years before getting married, we both grew and changed as people. Nonetheless, we’ve continued to be compatible and in love. We’ve been married for six years and not once have I ever regretted my decision to marry him.
Not every person gets a happily ever after with marriage though. With the wedding itself, you hear the term ‘bridezilla.’ The bride who will do anything to have the perfect wedding, sometimes even if it results in the groom leaving. Others may be left at the altar, standing alone in front of all of their closest friends and loved ones. That’s something that can be quite difficult to overcome. Those feelings of trust and commitment once shattered are not so easily pieced back together.
The common statistic people throw around is that half of all marriages end in divorce – that’s wild! Though some wish they could be on the other side of the statistic. In more distressing situations, people may use marriage and love as a way to coerce a person into a relationship by tying the knot and thus tying themselves to their prey. They can then use marriage to control the other person financially, emotionally, and perhaps even physically.
Domestic abuse has no gender filter, it can affect anyone. This nightmare scenario is not as uncommon as you think. The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) reports that on average, “nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States (NCADV).” That’s over 10 million people each year. Using marriage to weave love and control together, can produce very devious actions that can turn violent depending on the relationship.
Love and Loss – Searching for Control
Another combination that can take a turn for more horrendous outcomes, is love and loss. Death can affect people differently. Dealing with grief can cause some people to become distant or to lash out at those around them. Love and loss are a duo that I find myself writing about quite frequently. I use poetry as my primary outlet when dealing with my own grief. For me, it’s a lot easier to put words to paper than it is to discuss my feelings with others.
When you lose a loved one your life changes, this seems to be inevitable. When love and loss blend together, we begin to question everything. How can we continue to love someone who no longer lives? We’ll never speak to them again. Will you even remember the last words you exchanged?
Consider horror and the actions one might take to bring back a loved one. Think about how powerful their love and connection could be and the depths that someone would go if it meant seeing their loved one again. Some of my favorite horror movies that center around a character experiencing grief include films such as Midsommar, Hereditary, and Anything for Jackson. In Anything for Jackson, Audrey and Dr. Henry Walsh have lost their only grandson, Jackson. In their grief, they search for a way to bring him back from the dead. This leads to them kidnapping a pregnant woman in hopes to perform basically a “reverse-exorcism” and put Jackson’s self into the unborn child. Nothing goes according to plan as many spirits desire a new vessel. But despite every possible gruesome and horrible thing that could happen, the couple still go through with their plan to try to bring their beloved grandson back to life.
These horror movies are filled with tension, sadness, the search for what happens next, and always the pain that comes when dealing with loss. Outside of the grief there’s cults, witches, and devil worshiping – all in the hopes of finding an answer to their pain.
On a different note, some grief can cause pain so immense that it makes everyday life difficult to navigate. If you were to write a zombie book, you could simply replace zombies with people dealing with depression and you have a horror book, just less brains being eaten. It wouldn’t be much of zombie tale, but think about it. Slow movements, unable to perform daily tasks, wandering about in a catatonic state? There’s a lot of overlap between the two. In addition to this concept, there’s a lot of ghost stories where someone’s spirit hangs around because they miss their loved ones. It works both ways – the dead grieving the loss of their loved ones and the living dealing with the loss of the dead.
Love and loss go hand in hand. You can love someone but you know that at some point you’ll lose them. Grief can bubble up in different ways. For more natural ways that horror creeps in, look at the five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. If you’re writing a horror story you could just stick your protagonist in one of the first four stages and add any dash of “supernatural” to the mix to make it feel a little less realistic. But at its core, you’re still dealing with the loss of a loved one and that’s a universal feeling that will connect with your readers.
Loving Yourself
The last topic I want to touch on is the idea of loving yourself and the inherent horrors that can pop up. This may be the most difficult of all for some people. Mental illnesses such as depression can hinder this, causing the darkness to fester until you’ve become the monster you feared.
One example of this inherent horror is dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts. To feel as though you are so insignificant and unimportant, that you’d rather not be alive. As a way to deal with suicide and the loss of a loved one, I’ve taken to writing about death as a figure coming to take away the protagonist. One of my favorite poems I’ve written is titled “Death in a Velvet Suit” and it’s about Death greeting a person who’s committed suicide. Death waits with them as their life ends, and the two embrace. Death is melancholic while the protagonist has finally found peace. Here are the two final stanzas as an example,
“He holds my wrists now, the porcelain
Beneath just as cold as his touch at first,
Soon warmth spreads throughout my body
For the first time in years, I’m at peace.
Death stands now, with hands outstretched
Ignoring the blood-stained palms,
I embrace him, inhaling the floral scent
I welcome Death into my heart.”
Another example is the idea of loving yourself even as your mind goes. Dealing with a disorder such as Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, where your sense of self awareness, your cognitive functions, your memory, all start to slip away. You become a shell of yourself. It’s terrifying to consider that you may start to forget the words for things, then childhood memories, and finally who you are as a person. You can write about a person losing their mind without them knowing, it’s been done before, but it’s so realistic that it’s always going to be frightening.
Love can be uncomfortable, and these inherent horrors can make it seem like it’s almost impossible to grasp. Love and obsession can create toxic relationships, rife with control and fear. As people navigate through life searching for love, there is always the chance of horror creeping in. You can find yourself on the other end of an obsessive relationship, or dealing with the very real aspects of domestic violence. Marriage isn’t always the magical day that a person dreams of and losing someone you’ve loved deeply can change you forever. In regards to loving yourself when your brain is dealing with mental illness, it’s going to be a tough battle that is full of dark thoughts and uneasiness.
Amidst the search for love, as a horror writer, you can illustrate to your readers how one should be cautious when it comes to love and relationships. You could write a whole horror story using these very real situations. By pulling on these fears, the dark sides of love and relationships, you can create these very horrifying situations for your characters.
Brianna Malotke is a writer based in the Pacific Northwest. In addition to being a member and on the social media team for the Horror Writers Association, she’s also co-chair of the Seattle Chapter. She’s a staff writer for Monstrous Femme and is working on the second season of The Hallow Ian Horror Hour tv show.
Her most recent horror work can be found in Dark Town, Lost Souls, and The Nottingham Horror Collective. She has horrifying poems and short stories in the anthologies Beautiful Tragedies 2 and 3, The Dire Circle, Out of Time, Their Ghoulish Reputation, Holiday Leftovers, Under Her Skin, and HorrorScope: A Zodiac Anthology Volume 1 and 4. In August 2023, her debut horror poetry collection, Fashion Trends, Deadly Ends, was released by Green Avenue Books. During October 2023 she was a “Writer in Residence” at the Chateau d’Orquevaux in France.
While most of Malotke’s work is within the realms of horror and nightmares, she enjoys writing about love. Her romance novella series, Sugar & Steam, written under the pen name of Tori Fields, had its third book released February 2024.
Her next poetry collection, Lost Cherry, will be published with January Ember Press in fall of 2024. It’s centered around mortals falling in love with “evil” beings and is a blend of romance and horror.
Additional Resources:
Please note, if you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts – dial 988 in the United States. The 988 Lifeline provides 24/7, free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones, and best practices for professionals in the United States.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, you can call The National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE).
Sources:
“NCADV: National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.” The Nation’s Leading Grassroots Voice on Domestic Violence, ncadv.org/statistics. Accessed 4 Jan. 2024.