The Midpoint #2: Introducing Monster House

Part I - The Vampire (a monster girl romance)

Welcome! Everything is terrible, so I started writing a story about a house of monstrous girls living together in a retrofitted manor in the middle of nowhere, New Hampshire. It’s called Monster House. This is how it’s going to work:

• There are 5 monster girls. Each one gets a part of the novel.

  • Part I - The Vampire

  • Part II - The Mermaid

  • Part III - The Werewolf

  • Part IV - The Succubus

  • Part V - The Gorgon

• I’m going to post a chapter every two weeks, though I hope to make it weekly after April when I’m done with my Rebel Angels deadline.

• As you read, keep in mind this is very lightly edited and proofread. I want to use this space to experiment and write something that is truly just fun for me, and hopefully you.

• Tell your friends! Tell your mom—but only if she’s into monster romance.

• Don’t be shy with the comments. It won’t hurt my feelings, and I’d love feedback on what you’d love to see from the characters. Like, choose-your-own adventure, though really more of a “suggest”-your-own adventure.

• I’m writing this as Zoey Castile.

  Happy reading.

  

What’s Monster House about? Welcome to Foxwood Manor, a home built in the 19th century to one of the richest families in the region. After the bloody scandal that befell the original owners, it fell into the hands of Athena Hall, a real estate agent—and immortal Gorgon. She repaired the house, and accrued four roommates over the years. Each girl is a monster. A Miami vampire frozen at the edge before turning twenty one. A cursed mermaid who loves to cook. A Brooklyn werewolf living her cottage-core dreams. A succubus trying to get her groove back. And a glamorous Gorgon waiting for her past to come and get its revenge.

They say good fences make good neighbors. Every month, three of the girls go on a trip called the Fever Hunt. They stock up on supplies, run and swim in the wild, and then return to the safety of the manor. But this trip brings a surprise—their meticulously planned hunt is interrupted by a blizzard, and a bachelor party stranded on their hillside road.

Karli Perreira has been a vampire for thirty one years, and a vegetarian vampire for twenty five of them. The sordid details are not important. Turned in the 90s, she’s perpetually a day short of twenty-one. Like, total bummer. She’s made the most of it living in a decked out manor with her monstrous besties. Karli’s always been afraid of losing control again. Her recent cravings and the group of handsome strangers who seek shelter in the storm is about to test that self-control. Especially the charming Ryder Vega, a budding singer and disarming flirt. Somehow Karli feels like she’s known him all her life.

But as the blizzard snows them in, and delays their leaving, the monster girls of Foxwood Manor struggle to reign in their hunger. For Karli, it’s been so long since she’s fed on a human, but she’s on the brink of breaking every rule that keeps them safe. As Ryder pursues her through the halls of the manor, and she allows herself to open her heart, and her bedroom door, she’s starting to wonder—who is really the hunter, and who is the prey?

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Once, the house on the hill was called Foxwood Manor. Built in 1838 by Atticus Birch, it comprised of thirteen bedrooms—one for him, one for his wife, and the rest split among their dozen children as well as the constant guests who appeared at their magnificent doors. The guests in question enjoyed the Roman baths and ice plunging pools made of marble quarried across the river in Vermont. The men stalked the forest and ladies followed the paths of neat gardens and manicured mazes. The grand ballroom was the show stopper, hosting exquisite parties for friends and business partners and those lucky enough to be in the same orbit as the eccentrically handsome and handsomely eccentric Atticus Birch.

Once, the house was full of life. Long dinners and balls. Champagne and wine spilled from Waterford glass and down wanton lips. Music echoed from the west to east wing. Servants washed and folded, dusted and polished; grounds keepers chopped wood and plowed winding roads through the forests to have better access to the town at the bottom of the hill and surrounding universities.

When Atticus Birch disappeared, more rumors than truth followed his legend. They say he was lured out of his bed in the middle of the night by a banshee, but banshees were messengers, not avenging angels. They said it was his business partner, Elias Sanderson, who’d coveted Mrs. Francine Birch, but Elias was found, half eaten by wolves, in the forest a few months later.

They said all of the wealth Atticus Birch had amassed was on behalf of the devil himself, and his life was the price. No one truly knew, because the winter after the disappearance, disease spread through the neighboring towns, slowly making its way up the hill to the great house, claiming the life of every person within its walls. Only the groundskeeper survived.

And so, too haunted to live in, the house passed on to a distant cousin who sold the property on day one.

Foxwood Manor remained hollow, gathering dust and mold and spiderwebs. Only the bravest, foolhardy locals broke the rusty chains keeping the gates shut. Only reckless lovers snuck into the ancient master bedrooms to fuck and party and squat in the place which nature had started to reclaim.

[Photo by Nathan McDine on Unsplash]

But all of that stopped in 1970 when the land was bought by the mysterious Athena Hall. The real estate mogul refurbished every nook and cranny, firing each contractor at her whims, which changed like the New England weather. There was talk she’d turn the place into condos, or sell it to the universities, but when every repair and addition was made, the doors remained closed.

Athena fortified the iron agates and installed “PRIVATE PROPERTY” signs at every road that led to the driveway. She added security feeds and traps in case they were ever attacked. She kept the world out until the townsfolk, and would-be ghost hunters, and nosy neighbors gave up trying to break in.

New rumors surfaced. They said Athena Hall was a witch. That she was a monster and each of the four women who were allowed entry through the front doors were her coven. That they howled at the moon. Sacrificed men in Atticus Finch’s wine cellar. They said they were demons. Cannibals. All who entered were doomed a fate worse than death.

“Do not go Foxwood Manor, monstrous women live there,” wrote a local priest in the paper. But wasn’t “monstrous women” redundant?

The town had one thing right. The five residents of Foxwood Manor were monsters. And that’s why Athena had fortified her fences, because the real danger always came from the world below.

My dreams are never pink, not unless Alia is at the wheel. My succubus roomie has this sick ability to psychically connect, which I’d normally be pretty stoked about, but it comes with an annoying side effect—it only happens when she’s horny, and after what she’s been through, she’s always horny.

Look, I love loving myself. I do. But I also love sleep. I know, I know. Karli, you’re a vampire, you can sleep for, like, ever. Blah blah. If we want to be technical about it, yes. But I’m still a walking, talking, sentient—however dead—creature. A body needs rest. My body specifically.

In my very pink-lit dream, I’m in my bedroom which is, albeit, already very pink. Raya, our resident mermaid, once called my suite’s decor “if Barbie had a cloaca.” I don’t really get underwater humor. Anyway, I’m brushing my hair at the vanity. Ever since I got turned, I’ve been frozen in time. Sometimes it surprises me all over again. I always took care of myself. Latina home remedies and tithing half my paycheck to creams that sounded more like witch’s brew than cosmetics. Ingredients include: frozen placenta (species irrelevant), dessert rose cold pressed oil, shea butter left out to absorb full moon beams. That type of stuff. If I’d known I’d die, and then come back as something more and less human, I would have saved my paychecks. Still, I continue to have an extensive skincare routine. I’m dead, but I’m still not getting younger.

My dream reflection looks up at the man who enters my room. He’s got a human body, jacked in all the right places. Though, instead of a human head, he’s a retro tv. You know those ones from the 70s? With the dial and the plastic mint green cover. His face is the static of dead air, threaded by pixilated colors. His body is smooth, with a tuft of hair snaking down his abdomen.