One Great Short Story To Read Today: Angela Carter’s “the Company Of Wolves”

According to nan powers that beryllium (er, apparently according to Dan Wickett of nan Emerging Writers Network), May is Short Story Month. To celebrate, for nan third twelvemonth successful a row, nan Literary Hub unit will beryllium recommending a azygous short story, free* to publication online, each (work) time of nan month. Why not publication on pinch us? Today, we recommend:

Angela Carter, “The Company of Wolves”

It’s difficult not to emotion Angela Carter: nan luscious, playful prose, nan consciousness of brutality, nan general experimentation, nan surprise. This, nan penultimate communicative in The Bloody Chamber, Carter’s influential postulation of reworked fairy tales, is 1 of my favorites of hers. Every clip I publication it, I expect a different outcome. Every clip I publication it, I spot thing I missed. Every clip I publication it, I consciousness a occurrence burning. What amended to fend disconnected nan wolves?

The communicative begins:

One beast and only 1 howls successful nan woods by night.

The wolf is carnivore incarnate and he’s arsenic cunning arsenic he is ferocious; erstwhile he’s had a sensation of soma past thing other will do.

At night, nan eyes of wolves radiance for illustration candle flames, yellowish, reddish, but that is because nan pupils of their eyes fatten connected acheronian and drawback nan ray from your lantern to flash it backmost to you—red for danger; if a wolf’s eyes bespeak only moonlight, past they gleam a acold and unnatural green, a mineral, a piercing colour. If nan benighted traveller spies those luminous, unspeakable sequins stitched abruptly connected nan achromatic thickets, past he knows he must run, if fearfulness has not struck him stock-still.

Read it here.

*If you deed a paywall, we urge trying pinch a different/private/incognito browser (but listen, you didn’t perceive it from us).