All Comments on 'Animal Crackers'

Don'tchu never dance wit da devil!

A powerful and well-written short story with a lot of potential that is not really made the most of here. Not erotic.

Wrong site? Yep. Does seem that way. Lets do this. Lets pretend the gators are phallic symbols!

A very good story. After rereading it, I am still wondering if Mary lived or died. But that is the subtleties of this peace. There is nothing direct and in your face. I say that it does have a place on this site.

After all, who judges what is or is not erotic?

Not everything erotic is tab A and slot B. What greater seduction is there than the devil coming for your soul? This can be yours if you say yes. Say yes. This, for you. And this. Say yes. So easy. Look what I can do for you, yes, say yes. What you want and what you need. Say yes. The bad will go away, say yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Are you ready? Just whisper it...yes.

Has he never whispered in YOUR ear?

It took me a while to "get" the title, but clever. Nice 'un on that too. No idea how well you've captured the dialect, but I will say that it seems fitting and not the caricature that results when someone has no idea of what they're writing. I'm not sure I see the erotic side of this Horror story, but it's definitely got the latter down.

I'm not gonna pour out endless praise for an excellent story, just saying five stars and great work.

On a completely unrelated note, am I the only one who wanted to pull up the song "Proud Mary" for the ending? So fitting!

*yawn*

Leeches are a factor if you go swimming in southern US swamps, and the deadly spiders aren't the golden orb weavers, but the black widows and brown recluses. Pretty sure male and female convicts weren't placed in the same camps together in the 1920s(?) era. You went a bit overboard rendering the dialect--you don't have to write every mangled word out phonetically.

I'm not saying this to bash you... you've got potential. If you're interested in getting published professionally, I think you could get there with practice and determination. (Or back there, if you were midlisted.)

Not really sure why you posted this on Literotica... it's a good story, but not sexystuff.

TL;DR good writing, good luck.

The convict lease system went from Reconstruction to 1926, in Florida. Contractors paid the state good money to lease convicts, and all the state need do is keep them supplied with labor. Men, women, and kids were leased and confined in the same camps. Sheriffs and judges got kickbacks from the contractors. Most of the kids were orphans without families to care for them. The state archives has photos of them in their small striped suits. As draconian as the system was the convict lease system saved the lives of many felons who otherwise would have hanged; Florida had no prisons back then, and felons were hanged soon after conviction.

The slave vernacular in this story is pretty accurate. Ditto the Cracker vernacular. Regardless, tho, blacks didn't speak white English. That said, blacks in the 1870s (the time of this story) spoke distinct regional variations of Colonial English (what all black dialects came from); Joel Chandler Harris said that blacks from different places couldn't understand each other, even within the same state. It makes sense: confine and isolate people to specific areas for a few generations, limit their exposure to white English, and soon enough they have their own language.

The heroine is an engaging character, and the supporting cast and dog keep the story moving. I enjoyed the poetic description of the terrain.

Animal Crackers is a clever and intriguing story that not only leaves you wanting more, but allows the reader to exercise their imagination! It's a brutally accurate depiction of the old south. This clearly took the green E for a reason! Thank you for an excellent read!