by Anna L. Deh (@annadehwrites.bsky.social)
YA Horror Romance
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Query
Nosferatu meets Monsters Inc in SUCH MONSTROUS WANTS, a dual POV young adult horror romance with crossover appeal complete at 95,000 words. It’s perfect for readers who love their horror with ample yearning like in C.G. Drews’ Hazelthorn, and morally complex protagonists straddling a fine line between monster and human like in Kalynn Bayron’s Make Me a Monster.
Eighteen-year-old Mariana Cross loves horror movies and dreams of making them. When she secures a coveted acceptance to the top artistry program in the country, she imagines a new life of prosthetics, fake blood, and creating the monsters she’s long admired on screen. Theatrics aside, she wonders if any of the stories might be real. When she attempts a ritual to cross over and contact her dead cat, Mari brings something back—something that hovers nearby each time she sleeps. While unsettling, she won’t let the hauntings interfere with her Hollywood ambition.
Though the fallout with her terminally ill mom does. Desperate to make post-death amends with her mom, Mari performs the ritual again. She ends up stranded in a haunted, twisted realm, bleached of color and full of monsters worse than any horror movie. They thrive on fear; Mari is prey.
Sevrin has spent the last year haunting Mari, hovering at the foot of her bed and making friends with the dust bunnies in her closet to make sure she never crosses over into his realm again. When he fails, it cements Sevrin’s biggest fear—he’s bad at his job, for what kind of monster can’t even keep one (infuriatingly stubborn) girl away? To hide his failure and avoid demotion to a shadow entity with no agency, he sneaks Mari into the house of monsters to buy time and figure out how to snuff this nightmare.
To survive, Mari must emulate the very thing she paints with her makeup brush: a monster. While Mari must decide how deep she’ll immerse in method acting in order to return to the life she left on pause, Sevrin starts to see her as more than a pest to squash. She’s smart, cunning, and a vicious monster. Better than him. Instead of being his ruin, she might be his ally and salvation. That is, if he can convince her to commit to a monstrous life and leave her own behind.
SUCH MONSTROUS WANTS is inspired by my love of my two favorite genres. Like Mari, I spent my early adulthood caring for my chronically ill mother, often times making difficult sacrifices along the way. I hold an MFA in fiction and juggle my time between writing, teaching English, and ensuring my cat has enough treats to keep her satiated.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
First Five Pages
CHAPTER 1
I love to watch the pain meds flow into Mama’s veins because it means there is still something to pump into. Mama’s arm still has blood pulsing through her, a heart fighting for every beat.
And yet, sometimes I wish it wouldn’t fight so hard. That it might stop. If it stops, then all of this would too. I’m tired of everyone’s positivity, telling me to stay strong or hold on—that one irks me most, makes me think of late afternoons spent gripping the rust-eaten monkey bars of my childhood playground, desperate for the other kids to notice. Look. Look how much stronger I am. How much more I can take. I’d dangle for minutes though it felt like hours, getting red in the face as my body betrayed me while I wished someone would tell me it was okay to let go.
Mama shifts in her bed. She doesn’t notice the way my eyes stay glued to her veins, making sure they behave and absorb the way they’re meant to. She’s locked in on the TV blaring overhead. Mama likes her horror movies loud, indifferent to her neighbors thumping their fists on the other side of the wall.
“How long you think this one’s got?” She points at the screen where a girl runs out of a house in nothing but a towel. Still damp. The heels? A choice. The right one? Probably not. They click clack amidst the silence of the suburban streets at rest. She peers over her shoulder in bursts. Fear ripples through her face, plastered in the rise of her eyebrows, the permanent o shape of her mouth.
“Five minutes?” I say.
“Too generous.” Mama chuckles. “I give her two.”
The girl stops running. The still landscape reflects in her pumps, ones she might have worn to prom, still shiny and pristine, mirroring the green lawns and white picket fences.
Don’t do it. Don’t stop. Keep running. Take your heels off and GO.
It’s like she hears me. Maybe it’ll buy her another minute. Five minutes or two, the outcome stays the same: bare, grimy feet up in the air, the girl face down in the sand. She will never make it to prom.
And neither did I. It was scheduled only two days after we learned just how sick Mama would get. Dancing and pretending everything was a perfect teenage dream was the last thing on my mind. I tell the girl we’re not missing out on much. The lie makes it easier than imagining all the memories being made without you.
“Knock, knock.”
I pause It Follows and the girl stills, encased in a static bubble. Aside from her outfit (or lack thereof) I feel just like her—on pause, waiting for death’s arrival. Maybe this is best. If I stop the movie now, she will never meet her gruesome end. I could save her. Call it stupid, though I like to think of it as stubborn optimism, a splash of purposeful delusion.
Horror needs delusion. After all, girls don’t put themselves in danger without a reason. Even if curiosity so often kills the pajama clad girl who has the nerve to investigate the mysterious sound in her basement at 3:00 a.m., she will always think she’s being brave. Right until the killer bursts from the shadows and stabs her in the throat.
It’s a different nurse today. She’s shorter and wears FIGS scrubs—bright fuchsia.
Mama groans. “Already?”
“It’ll be a quick one,” says the neon nurse as she bursts into the room cart first. “I promise.” She steadies the cart and replaces the saline bag. Her arms have a sheen, like she had put on a shimmery body oil before walking into Mama’s room.
I try to not hate her for it but it’s hard. Today is Friday. People—other people—live their lives outside these sterile walls. They get to clock out, leave, exist. Not me though. I can’t remember the last time I did my hair or changed my clothes and let myself look forward to something, sniffed the floral sharpness of my going-out-perfume instead of the slow rot of sick bodies.
There’s something off about hospital air. Recycled from vent to vent like a deathly fog, lodging itself within eroding lungs and festering in drippy nostrils. No wonder Mama isn’t getting better.
“Okay, good job. Now I’ll get you the good stuff,” says the nurse, grabbing another syringe. She hums as she works and it sounds like she’s gloating. Counting down the minutes. I pull at a loose thread of my shirt just to stop myself from asking for another nurse, the older one Mama had last week. At least with her I felt better knowing the most exciting part of her night was a new episode of Wheel of Fortune waiting on her DVR.
I readjust in the lounge chair, realizing I haven’t felt my butt or legs in a while. Shaking them out, I wish for the father who left when I was born. For nonexistent siblings to trade off uncomfortable shifts in this stubbornly stiff chair so I can make it to the campus tour at UNSCA. No one is coming though. It’s only ever been me next to Mama. Every day, I grip the bars. I hold on.
“How are you feeling, Olga? Comfortable?” asks the nurse. Her Apple Watch lights up with a flurry of text messages. She takes a quick glance and smiles, likely imagining the night ahead. All of the people waiting for her.
Rub it in some more, I guess.
Mama pauses, blinking slowly like an exhausted cat. “Not really.” She sighs. “I’ve never felt well. I was born sick and sick I shall leave this world.”
My fingers dig a hole into the leather of the armrest. I know Mama’s plot points, can lay them out clean in my mind. First, she’ll bring up the pneumonia from the cold Ukrainian winter of 1972 that almost killed her. Next, it’ll be the story of her birth: how she was supposed to be one half of a twin, only she came out so sick and brittle they didn’t think she’d make it. She tends to leave out the part about eating the healthier twin in utero.
Sometimes, I think Mama is a vampire. Though instead of blood, she feeds on the looks of pity, gorging herself on sorries and poor yous.
The nurse frowns. “I’ll get you something even stronger later.” She moves to the sink and washes her hands. We lock eyes.
I yearn to uncork each terrible thought, to let them spill onto the hospital floor and make a mess. To not have to clean it up or apologize. One day I’ll erupt. I know it. I can practically feel the prickling, fizzy pressure behind my lids, pooling in my skull. But it can’t be today. It’s too soon. She reaches for a paper towel, drying her hands. “You’ve been there a while,” she says, her tone overly sweet. “You sure you don’t wanna go home? Take a break?”
An escape chute, the door cranked wide. I look over at Mama and I can see worry on her face. Not for me. For herself, at the thought of being left alone. Who would fluff her blankets? Who would listen to her every thought?
“No thanks,” I say. “I’m okay.”
Because it isn’t about me. It never is.
When the nurse leaves, I grab my makeup pouch and crawl into Mama’s bed, making sure all three blankets are on her body and not mine. Even still, her skin feels cold to the touch.
The bed isn’t meant to fit two, but every night, I will my body into its crammed borders, making sure to give Mama more than half so she can stretch her legs. Day by day, my body mass takes over the bed and I have to sacrifice less space as if I am bloating and growing, feeding on the poisonous hospital air while Mama shrinks into her own skin, withering away.
“Mari, can you change the movie to the other one? The one we like?”
I obey. I know she wants something scarier. Something with a monster she can see. I turn the lights off, swapping the fluorescent lighting for the TV glow.
We live for the moment of anticipation right when the music stops. The flutter of our hearts as we wait for the scare to come, like a safe electric shock to the system. For Mama and I, it’s the equivalent of skydiving, getting right to the edge of death without the worry of a failing parachute. We crave those moments of heart flutters like addicts, waiting for our next fix.
This is our time. Our special thing.
Halfway through the movie, I unzip the makeup pouch and turn Mama’s head towards me. “Hold still, Mama.” I start to draw the eyeliner on, pulling her shut eye taut, trying not to notice the way her skin gives under my touch. How it isn’t fighting back, letting me take over. I do it because I love her. I do it because I hope she’ll forgive me for the escape chute I’ve created for myself and haven’t told her yet. One I’m taking in two days.
Because I can’t hold on much longer.
I have to let go.