Quick announcement — the first half of my story, “Such Lovely Teeth, Such Big Teeth,” is up today at Strange Horizons. The second half will be posted next Monday, March 10th.
If you enjoy Little Red Riding Hood and modern fairy tale retellings, I invite you to check it out. If you don’t enjoy these things, I invite you to check it out anyway. Challenge yourselves! Try something different! READ ME FOR THE LOVE OF GOD READ ME.
I hope you enjoy.
My Geek Blasphemy 
This kind of thing is right up my alley, and damn, your story’s awesome. I am super jealous, and really looking forward to Part Two.
SPOILERS BELOW, fellow commenters!
So far, it reads as ambiguous to me whether the whole wolf/sex/child molester thing is just a metaphor, or if the adults are correct that Reagan is imagining the whole wolf bit as a coping mechanism? Since you’ve stated your hatred of that whole “Is it real or is the protagonist crazycakes,” trope, I don’t know if that ambiguity was the intent or not?
Thank you! And I would really love to respond to your question, but I feel like I should wait until the story is concluded. 😦
That’s fair enough. Telling me now could spoil me.
Seriously – ignoring the fact that it isn’t over yet, if I’d read this story in one of Ellen Datlow’s “Best Horror Of The Year,” anthologies or someplace similar, it would easily be among my favourites in the book. Stories like this are the reason I love horror anthologies in the first place.
(Would you call this story horror? I think it’s definitely horror-y enough that it wouldn’t be out of place in those books, but YMMV.)
I absolutely loved this story. Read both parts and the muddled mix of fantasy and reality works wonderfully for this tale. It is a narrative technique that almost always gets used wrong and gets on my nerves but in this case, it is wonderfully done. Fantasy and viewing events through the lens of folklore and fanciful stories is actually a common response when children who have no idea what sex is and are struggling to frame their experience in a way they can understand. Even in adulthood, the retreat into fantasy and its Manichean tales with the promise of an unexpected hero saving the day persist. As someone who has experienced some of this first hand, I have too say your tale is not only beautiful in its own right, but would have helped deal with so many internal struggles.
Thank you! I’m very glad you liked it.