Choosing Life

(c)2008 Jon Pumpkin

"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 ... She will lay his fearful head on her lap and she will put the lice into her mouth and eat them, as he will bid her, as she would do in a savage marriage ceremony ... See! sweet and sound she sleeps in granny's bed, between the paws of the tender wolf." Angela Carter (1979), The Company of Wolves in The Bloody Chamber, Penguin, London.