When I Arrived at the Castle by Emily Carroll

The image is, itself, grotesque-stomach-churning even. You can hear the tendons tear as the fleshy shell gives way to birth a slippery beast, gore and muscle and mucus spat into the air, blood dripped onto the floor. In one particular sequence, a body emerges from another body the way a moth emerges from a chrysalis. Here it takes shape through Carroll’s incredible capacity to scare-a facility that her readers will recall from her haunting Through the Woods, or her webcomic, The Hole the Fox Did Make. The countess offers the unnamed cat a bath-the water as black as the abyssal shadows that surround the tub-and, after being disturbed by an inexplicable pounding on the bathroom door, the cat ends her perverse R&R early to discover things in the castle that might have been better left undiscovered.Īs with any good fairy tale, there is magic (of sorts). As the title suggests, an anthropomorphic cat arrives at the castle of a countess, and, while their relationship remains opaque throughout, Carroll suggests they have, in some form or fashion, met before. Like many of her earlier stories, When I Arrived… is a fairy tale of sorts. These are the questions Emily Carroll seems to be asking in her latest, When I Arrived at the Castle. What does pain look like-to us, to others? How does it impress itself into our bodies, moving through us, reshaping us? Where does it go when it is through with us? What do we do when we are through with it?

When I Arrived at the Castle by Emily Carroll