The King In Red: An Eldritch Monster Romance

THE KING IN RED An Eldritch Monster Romance AVA HALL Copyright © 2023 Ava Hall All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. Cover design by JoY Author Design Studio Created with Vellum CONTENTS Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 A Note from the Author 1 “The author is putting the future of our country at risk with every backwards, offensive moral platitude portrayed as absolute fact,” my professor read from his laptop before closing it and looking around the stadium seating in the classroom. “That’s one review. And honestly… I liked the book. I think it presented some valuable fodder for discussion. But, unfortunately, being on the right side of an issue doesn’t protect you from a very specific form of criticism. Can someone give it a name?” I raised my hand. The answer was easy enough if you read the syllabus. We were spending a week and a half on this lesson, and it was literally in the title. Most people just didn’t bother reading the syllabus, and even fewer had it in a protective sleeve at the front of their Media Reception Studies binder. Actually, maybe only one person had that. Me. “Jade?” Professor Wilmarth pointed at me with a slight smile. “Moral panic,” I answered. “It’s when society or certain parts of society latch onto something like a piece of media and claim it’s a public danger.” “Exactly!” He nodded and turned to the whiteboard, writing ‘Moral Panic’ in dry-erase. “Who can give me an example? Someone besides Jade, maybe.” I pursed my lips and sat back in my chair. I hated when he did that. This was one of my favorite classes. The name was fairly self-explanatory, but Media Reception Studies was basically a class where we analyzed how the public reacted to different movies, books, songs, things like that. The positive, the negative, the apathetic, and everything in between. I sat in the same spot in the front row every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning. Okay, honestly, I sat in the front row at all my classes. Miskatonic University was not a place I was going to slack off. It used to be a pretty big party school, but they got a new dean five years ago, and ever since then, grade averages were rising, as were graduation rates and the rate of students employed within six months of graduation. Now, it was known as one of the more prestigious universities in the country. It was a big liberal arts school that didn’t even have a football team, which I took as a positive, because it meant they spent more money on other programs, like English and Communications. That was what I was double majoring in. We were nearing the halfway point of the fall semester, and by now, most people were settling in. It was my sophomore year, where you sort of walk around feeling all big and bad because you aren’t a freshman anymore. You survived the first year of school, you made friends, and you made the choice to come back because you liked the school enough. Those things were… mostly true for me. Sort of. I mean, I did make the choice to return to Miskatonic. My problem was that during my freshman year, all the friends I made were senior English and Communications majors, which meant I arrived at school for my sophomore year feeling just as lost and alone as I had freshman year. “Wasn’t there a major panic over Harry Potter when it came out?” A girl a few rows back asked. “Like, Christians didn’t like it very much.” “Correct!” Professor Wilmarth nodded. “There were and still are people who wouldn’t let their children watch it because they believed it promoted witchcraft. This is not to say that Harry Potter is a flawless piece of media, as we discussed last week, but I think it’s fair to say that particular argument was a bit over dramatic. Now, let’s talk about some other examples.” He went to the front row and passed out a stack of papers for us each to take and pass down. I grabbed one and saw it had a list of books on it. “I’d say one of the earliest examples of moral panic over a book that I can think of,” he continued, “is probably The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe. The plot follows a young man experiencing intense misery, and it culminates in his suicide. The media at the time was concerned that young people would read the book and take their lives in the same method as the young man. Then we have more modern examples, such as Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe. In the years after it was published, it became the target of a conservative movement against queer media. Some of these examples are the results of targeted campaigns against minorities, while other examples are more asinine. Take Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. The major panic over its content was the use of ‘obscene language,’ to the point that the Boston DA threatened prosecution over its distribution.” People laughed at that. It did sound a bit ridiculous to a classroom full of students whose teachers said ‘fuck’ on a regular basis. I knew from the syllabus that we were going to have to create a short presentation on this topic. And assuming we didn’t have to choose something