Every week I sample the goods and spit out the juiciest pieces of prose and poetry for you—heavy on flavor, light on fat. In spirit of the month leading up to Halloween I thought I’d entertain you this October (and torture my poor susceptible imagination) with some wickedly well-written, terrifying tales. This week I said I’d bring you some freaky fairy tales, but somewhere between sickness, overbooking my life, and plunging head first into Dracula (yea, get ready) this week flew by without a moment to spare. Thus, instead of a lengthy thought-and-criticism-filled post on fairy tales (oh, like you’re reading anyway, it’s Friday), I present to you a skeleton post–bare bones and badass.

ok, he might be cheating with the trench and boots…

Basic ingredients (of today’s post):

A few fairy tale links, a short section of one of the creepiest fairy tales I found, and then more links to some freaktastic short stories—cuz there’s a little fairy tale in every tale.

First, I give you il ovvio aperitivo–Grimm’s Fairy Tales. I’ve provided a few links for this. The first two are full translations of the collection and the other (which is a repeat from last week, but so cheezy and worth it) is an interactive, animated Grimm adventure:

Margaret Hunt’s 1884 translation 

A more recent translation by D.L. Ashliman (site also has the German versions)

Website with interactive, animated Grimm’s Fairy Tales–if you didn’t visit it last week, here’s your chance

Now, for your entrée, a slice of the modern, creepy fairy tale “The Minder” by Natania Rosenfeld:

I took a big knife to cut my minder off, but she only grew back, bigger than before, like a fungus lump on the trunk of a tree.

When she was a child, she stole my dolls.  “No more imaginary games,” she said, and gave me a shot that dulled my mind, so that I could not invent identities or set the dolls dancing.

If you’re familiar with O.V. Vijayan’s short story “The Wart,” this is like a PG-13 version of that. If you’re not familiar–it’s definitely got some traces of that creepy in a surrealist, I-know-this-is-philosophical-somehow-but-the-physical-descriptions-are-so-gruesome-I-can’t-think-about-philosophy-right-now kind of narrative, but it’s not toe curling. If you find yourself in the lovely LOC anytime soon, try and read “The Wart” (if you’re looking for something uberly stomach churning that will make you afraid of your own body and refuse to eat for 3 days). It’s in Vijayan’s collection After the Hanging: and Other Stories (Penguin, 1990). Munch on that a while.

Lastly, for your dessert I give you a jar full of maraschino cherries for you to gobble up at your leisure:

Highlights of this site: Poe’s The Tell Tale Heart and Edith Wharton’s Afterward

An Aesop fable: The Ass and the Grasshopper…not sure if it’s scary, probably supposed to teach some important moral, but I thought it was both creepy and hilarious. Read.

If anyone has seen this movie, please review. The end.

Next week: I will suck your bloooood.