This is my take on the classic fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood. Keep in mind, it is scary and disturbing. It is not for the faint of heart.
---
A long time ago, a man and woman lived peacefully in a village not far from The Great Dark Forest. The man and woman were a large part of the community, but lived with an enormous secret. Some months after they had married, the man told the woman that he was a werewolf, but he promised that he would leave the house and retreat into the woods when he was to turn into a werewolf, so as not to hurt his wife or any of the other people living nearby. However, as an extra security measure, he gave his wife a small, but sharp, knife, with a red ribbon wrapped around the handle. If he turned into his werewolf form while around her, then attempted to attack, she was to stab him until he died. She was distraught at the idea of killing her only love, but reluctantly agreed if it meant her safety.
Eventually, the woman was pregnant with a child, and, naturally, the two of them were as happy as could be. The night the woman was about to give birth to the baby, the man looked into the sky and saw an already-developing full moon. With no time to help his wife get to the village doctor, he attempted to alert a neighbor of his wife's labor. Unfortunately, as he was alerting the neighbors, he began to grow his wolf fur and wolf claws, so the male neighbors dragged him into The Great Dark Forest and tied him to a tree, and ignored his begging pleas to help his wife.
Meanwhile, the wife went into labor alone on the floor of her bedroom. The child, a baby girl, was born at the stroke of midnight under a full moon. The next morning, the woman wondered why her husband still had not come home, and why no doctor had come to her house to help her give birth to the child. The woman was saddened by the absence of her husband, and so she named the girl Red, after the red ribbon around her knife, the gift from him. She realized her husband would not come back for a long time, so she became a cook, and developed her talents to become the best in the village. Every day and every night for years she wondered where her husband was, and none of the men in the village were courageous enough to tell her the truth. She told Red that one day her father had died in a hunting accident, and so it explained Red's father's absence. Meanwhile, Red's father stayed in The Great Dark Forest, where a full moon came about every night. The men had dragged him so deep into the forest that during the day, he would start to come to the edge of the forest, then it would turn to night, and he would lead himself back in, and the cycle continued and never stopped.
Then, when Red was old enough to walk, talk, and make her own decisions, her mother decided that she could further her cooking career by moving to another village on the other edge of The Great Dark Forest, in a house next to the lake. Red did not want to let her mother go, but she realized that she was a child, and children could not dictate what adults do, especially their parents. Red's mother gave her the knife and ribbon from her father to remember her by. So Red's aunt came to her house to take care of her, but her aunt was a very strict woman. She made Red wear clothes made of steel, and told Red that she would only be able to visit her mother after she was strong enough to get the steel off of her.
But Red had a plan. She took the knife and cut off the steel the first night. Then, realizing she had no other clothes, she stole some of her aunt's and ran off to the forest with the knife as protection. She had never before been into the forest, and so she held the knife in her pocket, but did not take it out. Just as she entered, a fork in the path appeared. Just as she was thinking about which way to go, a wolf appeared in front of her. He asked her, "Why, for what reason is there a girl your age wandering about in the forest, alone?"
Red was shocked. Never before had she met a talking wolf, but she assumed it was just another mysterious fact about The Great Dark Forest. "I am on my way to visit my mother. She lives in a house next to the lake."
It was then that the wolf turned around and looked at the two distinctly different directions the path went in. After a moment, he turned back to red and said, "If you want to get to the lake, the fastest way to go would be to take the path to your right. Get along there safely, alright?" Red nodded. She did not know if she should trust someone she had just met, but who would know the forest better than a speaking wolf who must spend all of his time there, she thought. As she walked down the path to the right, the wolf scurried off on the quicker path on the left, eager to get to Red's mother's house faster than Red.
And he did just that. Once arriving at her mother's house, the wolf killed her. Then, he panicked. He quickly cleaned up the mess and threw on one of Red's mother's night robes. He finished his disguise just as Red knocked on the door of the house. The wolf opened the door and invited Red in while using a womanly voice. Red was breathing heavily from the long walk, and so the wolf told her, "Somehow I knew you would come to visit me. There is food and drink for you on the kitchen table."
As Red bit into the meal on the table, a cat walked by the window and said, "I have seen all that has happened. You are eating your mother's flesh."
Red, obviously frightened, looked at her mother and said, "Mother, a cat tells me I am eating your flesh."
"Lies, she tells you. You can see that all my flesh is here, with me."
So Red finished the meal. She took a drink out of the wine in a glass on the table, when a snake slithered by her on the floor. It said, "It is your mother's blood that you drink."
Red looked again at her mother and said, "Mother, a snake tells me I am drinking your blood."
"Lies, he tells you. You can see that all my blood is here, with me."
And so Red finished drinking the wine on the table and started to go to bed, when she realized that her mother looked much different than before. "Mother, perhaps my memory deceives me, but your ears have grown since I have last seen you."
"Oh, my dear, they have only grown so that I could hear your heart beat as you rushed to find me."
Red took another step closer. "Mother, perhaps my memory deceives me, but your eyes have widened since I have last seen you."
"Oh, dear girl, I have widened them only so I could see you better when you've come to visit me."
Red was frightened now. She knew what had happened but was still too frightened to run. "Your-- your teeth, mother..."
And at this point, the wolf attacked Red and ate her. He finished his meal just as the morning sun rose, and he turned back to a man. As a man, he had barely any memory of what had happened. He looked through Red's clothes and found a small knife with a red ribbon around it, and at this point, he looked around him and screamed of fright at what he had done to his own wife and daughter.
No comments:
Post a Comment