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Tuesday 31 May 2011

The Bloody Chamber

"I have seen the cage you are weaving for me; it is a very pretty one and I shall sit, hereafter in my cage among the other singing birds but I - I shall be dumb from spite."
The Erl King



"Every wolf in the world now howled a prothalamion outside the  window as she freely gave the kiss she owed him.

The girl burst out laughing; she knew she was nobody’s meat. She laughed at him full in the face, she ripped off his shirt for him and flung it into the fire, in the fiery wake of her own discarded clothing. The flames danced like dead souls on Walpurgisnacht and the old bones under the bed set up a terrible clattering but she did not pay them any heed.

Carnivore incarnate, only flesh appeases him."
The Company of Wolves


"To these upland woodsmen, the Devil is as real as you or I. More so; they have not seen us nor even know that we exist, but the Devil they glimpse often in the graveyards, those bleak and touching townships of the dead where the graves are marked with portraits of the deceased in the naif stule and there are no flowers to put in  front of them, no flowers grow there, so they put out small, votive  offerings, little loaves, sometimes a cake that bears come lumbering from the margins of the forest to snatch away. At midnight, especially on Walpurgisnacht, the Devil holds picnics in the graveyards and  invites the witches; then they dig up fresh corpses, and eat them. Anyone will tell you that."
The Werewolf

These are three illustrations for Angela Carter's 'The Bloody Chamber'. You just can't beat a bit of Angela Carter. 

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