Not everything I write sees the light of day—and for good reason.
There’s a folder on my desktop that you’ll never open.
It has no name—at least, not one that makes sense. It’s disguised, buried three subfolders deep, beneath spreadsheets, PDF manuals, and meaningless file names. But inside, you’ll find things that don’t belong on bookstore shelves. Not because they’re poorly written. Not because they’re unfinished. But because they went too far.
Even for me.
The Ones I Keep Hidden
People ask where my ideas come from. I usually give them a polite answer—observation, experience, imagination. That’s not a lie. But it’s not the whole truth either.
Sometimes the ideas come from darker places. The kinds of places you only find when you’re not looking for them. Quiet moments. Late nights. Post-coital thoughts. The pause between dreams and waking.
That’s where these stories come from.
And some of them… I’ve never dared publish.
Because they don’t just dance on the line between fantasy and reality.
They erase it.
One Was Too Real
Let’s talk about her.
She wasn’t fictional. At least, not entirely. She was the woman from the café, the one who always read in the corner. Long black skirt, chipped wine-colored nail polish, always with her ankle tucked behind the other like she wanted to hide from the world.
I imagined things. How she spoke when she climaxed. Whether she liked hands on her throat or wrists pinned above her head. The story wrote itself. It spilled out in one sitting—raw, impulsive, unfiltered.
But then I reread it.
It wasn’t erotica. It was an obsession.
It felt too close. Too voyeuristic. And suddenly, I wasn’t a writer anymore. I was a man watching a woman through a window.
I closed the file.
It’s still there.
Another One Crossed a Line I Didn’t Know I Had
It started innocently enough. A couple meets in a hotel lobby. Strangers. A casual exchange. She’s married. He’s not. They talk. They drink. They end up in a room upstairs.
Nothing new there. It’s the kind of scene I’ve written a dozen times.
But then came the twist—hers, not mine. Midway through, she tells him she doesn’t want to remember this. No names. No words. Just bodies.
And that turned the story.
He gives her what she asks for—but in doing so, he erases her. No affection. No tenderness. Just a body to be used.
I didn’t plan for it to go that way. But I followed it. Word by word. Stroke by stroke.
And when I reached the end, I felt… sick.
I had written something arousing.
But I didn’t want anyone to read it.
Because once arousal comes at the cost of humanity, is it still erotica?
Or something else entirely?
Some Stories Were Too Loud for Quiet Platforms
Erotica, for the most part, is tolerated online—until it’s not. Until someone flags a word, or an algorithm deems a sentence “graphic,” or a platform changes its rules overnight.
I’ve had stories pulled down. Accounts suspended. Warnings issued.
Apparently, when a man ties a woman to a chair with her consent and writes his name across her chest in red lipstick, that’s violence.
When a woman begs her married lover to punish her with words he’d never say to his wife, that’s abuse.
When a story features a predator in disguise—charming, intelligent, manipulative—but doesn’t punish him at the end?
That’s irresponsible.
But here’s the thing: fiction isn’t supposed to be safe. Especially not dark fiction. Especially not the kind I write.
Erotica has always been the arena where we explore taboos. That’s its purpose. Not to endorse—but to imagine.
To tempt. To test. To feel something.
And sometimes, feeling is dangerous.
The Platform Didn’t Reject It. I Did.
One story never even left the word processor. I knew I’d crossed a line.
It was called The Sister’s Gift.
You can already imagine where it went. But not quite.
It was a story about two sisters who’d grown up in a fractured home. One always protected the other. As adults, one became emotionally numb—incapable of connection. The other? Starved for it.
The broken one offered herself as a solution.
Not out of lust. Not even out of love.
But out of pity.
That was the emotional turn.
One woman gives her body to her sister, thinking it’ll fix something. But all it does is break what little was left.
I don’t know if it was incest.
I don’t know if it was healing.
I don’t know if it was abuse.
But it felt wrong.
Not because of the act—but because of the motive.
So I shelved it.
I haven’t looked at it since.
Fantasy Is a Dangerous Mirror
Writing erotica is like standing naked in front of a mirror—then handing that mirror to a stranger.
The good stuff—the real stuff—doesn’t come from technique. It comes from truth. Your truth. What turns you on. What scares you. What wounds you.
And sometimes, those truths are ugly.
You realise you’re turned on by control.
Or by surrender.
By danger.
By power.
Maybe you want to be chased. Maybe you want to be held down. Maybe you want to be ruined.
Or maybe… you want to ruin someone else.
What do you do with that truth?
You write it.
And then, if you’re brave, you share it.
Unless you’re not.
And some of mine?
I wasn’t.
Why I Didn’t Publish Them?
Not all censorship is external.
Sometimes, the harshest editor is the voice inside. The one that whispers, “No one will understand this.”
Or worse: “They’ll understand it too well.”
Sometimes the story is so real, so specific, that publishing it would feel like undressing someone else without their consent.
Other times, it’s about protecting the reader. Not from discomfort—but from misunderstanding.
Some stories aren’t ready for daylight.
Some stories aren’t meant for daylight.
They’re written in the dark, for the dark.
And maybe that’s where they belong.
What They Taught Me
Every story I didn’t publish taught me something.
About myself.
About restraint.
About how close pleasure and pain can sit side by side in the same paragraph.
I learned that not every fantasy needs to be shared to have value.
That some stories serve the writer more than the reader.
That keeping something secret can be a kind of power.
But also—some stories are just waiting.
Waiting for the right time. The right platform. The right reader. The right level of courage.
Because maybe the only difference between “too far” and “just right” is context.
And context can change.
What If I Let You In?
There’s a temptation to open that folder now.
To show you what I’ve hidden.
To let you peek inside the drawer of discarded lovers and depraved fantasies.
To prove I’m not afraid.
But that would ruin it, wouldn’t it?
Part of what makes those stories powerful is the fact that they haven’t been seen.
That they’re untouched.
That they live in the shadows, breathing, waiting.
And part of me likes knowing they exist.
They’re mine.
They weren’t written for market.
They weren’t written for readers.
They were written because I had to write them.
That’s how you know they’re the good ones.
The Drawer Stays Closed (For Now)
So, no. You don’t get to read them.
Not today.
Maybe not ever.
But it’s enough to know they’re there. That behind every published piece of mine is a trail of stories that never left the womb.
Still kicking. Still whispering.
Stories that turned me on and then turned on me.
Stories that crossed lines I didn’t know I had.
Stories that dared me to finish… and then dared me not to share.
End Thoughts
You want to know what’s in that folder?
Of course you do.
That’s what makes it erotic.
Not the content.
The secrecy.
The idea that something exists that you can’t see.
That behind the curtain, the writer is still naked. Still aching. Still writing something just for himself.
You can read everything I’ve published.
You can listen to my podcast, flip through SEETHINGS, crawl through my blog.
But the best parts?
They’re locked away.
And that’s the point.
–Michael (Dark fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)
SEETHINGS promises a gripping psychological thriller that blends murder, passion, and secrets of a sexless marriage. Forman’s vivid prose draws readers into a world where lightning illuminates the skies and hidden truths. As the storm clouds gather, Mitchell’s journey promises to unravel more than just the mystery of the murders.
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