The Girl Next Door - Kingmaker711

LINK: The Girl Next Door

I don't like erotic stories written in the first person. Hell, I don't like stories written in the first person, generally. I'll make an exception for the greats, i.e. Raymond Chandler, but as a general rule, first person turns me off. I find it clunky and often misused. This is especially true when it comes to erotica. 

More often than not, first person erotica seems more like wish fulfillment and masturbatorial role-play than storytelling. I want to be clear, there's nothing wrong with either of those things, but they aren't my cup of tea. 

All of that being said, there are some clear exceptions to my rule and Kingmaker711's story The Girl Next Door is one of them. This story is good. It's really good. In fact, it is Kingmaker711's best work, by far. 

So what is it about? I won't spoil things too much, but the story is about succubi. Now that seems generic. There are a lot of stories about succubi in the corruption world. The trope is as overused as futanari or crotch tattoos. However, it's Kingmaker711's execution of this trope that elevates this story over every other succubi story I've read. 

The story begins with a down-on-his luck schlub named Tom. A year prior to the events of the story, Tom's father was killed in a car accident, forcing his mother, his brother, and him to move out of their suburban house and into a small apartment. While this is hard on the family, Tom makes the best of a bad situation and begins to build a new life for himself. Central to this new life is a flourishing relationship with a pretty former ballet dancer named Katie.

Of course, things don't remain on the up-and-up for poor Tom. No, Tom is one of those protagonists whose entire ethos can be summed up by the idiom "out of the frying pan and into the fire". More specifically: "out of the fire and straight into the pits of hell".

At the start of the story, a mysterious woman moves in next door, instantly captivating the attention of Tom and his brother. The woman is gorgeous to an almost supernatural degree and carries herself with a strange dignity and poise. 

Shortly into the first chapter, we learn this woman's awful secret. She is an unholy succubus - a monster that consumes the life force of men through sex. This is bad enough, but it gets worse. In the world of The Girl Next Door, succubi are able to spread their affliction to human women. Before long, Tom's succubi neighbor is digging her claws into the women of Tom's life, leaving him a broken shell. 

There are many reasons why this story works. The corruptions represent the best of Kingmaker711's work. They perfectly blend darkness and eroticism. Too often, corruptions fall into a set of categories that render them boring. They either avoid the darker aspects of a fall from grace, becoming generic transformation stories, or they jump the gun, preventing us from adequately enjoying the descent. Kingmaker711 manages to drag out the major corruptions of this story such that the reader can thoroughly enjoy what's happening.

The other reason this story works is due to the way it treats its protagonist. This story easily could have been about a schlubby guy that ends up surrounded by a harem of gorgeous succubi that pleasure him incessantly. Instead, Tom gets the shit end of the stick at nearly every moment. Even when the succubi do fuck him, he can't bring himself to enjoy it. The story avoids banal wish-fulfillment and allows the darkness to seep in. 

The story constantly dangles the hope of salvation over Tom's head. With every corruption or death, there is the possibility that it could have been stopped. Kingmaker711 shows in great detail how this hope dies, replacing it with despair. 

Kingmaker711 is one of those corruption authors that has sadly faded from view. He officially threw in the towel in 2016 and has not written anything since. However, he left a large body of work in the process. If I'm being honest, a lot of this work is repetitive and unimpressive. Then again, that might just be the price of writing so much. There are good stories and bad stories. Still, Kingmaker711's bad stories are still pretty entertaining and his good ones are transcendent. The Girl Next Door is his crowning glory. Check it out.