The Erl King by Angela Carter

This was such a weird read. Even though it was a short story, it took me a while to get into it. I still don’t think I get what happened. However the imagery and the descriptions were both colorful and highly disturbing. At first it seems to be about someone simply getting lost in the woods and describing his surrounding. It almost reminded me of Snow White or Merlin from the Disney version of Sword in the Stone. Just someone who lives in the forest and that gets along with the animals. I had almost forgotten I had found this short story in the J-Horror section. Then much like in Bloodchild, we start noticing small things that creep you out until the end of the story where we know that the Erl-King is someone’s worst nightmare. Also much like in Bloodchild, I can somewhat compare the character of the Erl-King to T’Gatoi. They appear to be nice superficially, but they have hidden motives and/or plans. To some extend I found this story slightly more disturbing than Bloodchild. This is might seem surprising but this is only because it seemed like the narrator was still somewhat in love with the Erl-King as if he was under some kind of spell. In Bloodchild, Gan was quite aware of the situation and his predicament. I think the part of the story where I knew that something was definitely wrong was when Carter writes, “he lays me down on his bed of rustling straw where I lie at the mercy of his huge hands. He is the tender butcher who showed me how the price of flesh is love; skin the rabbit, he says! Off come all my clothes.” That is straight out of some serial killer’s journal. It reminded me very much of the waterstreet butcher from the Poughkeepise Tapes movie.