ONCE UPON A TIME there was a young little girl who was loved by everyone, but most of all by her grandmother, who had given the little girl a little red cap and mantle which she always wore, which is why she was often called Little Red Riding Hood.
One day, Little Red Riding Hood carefully made her way along the narrow path of a large forest, gently pushing branches and leaves out of her way and so careful in her going that only the sounds of disturbed birds were a mark of her passing through. That morning, her mother had sent her along to visit her kindly old grandmother who had been feeling quite unwell as of late, bringing with her in a small basket some cake, wine, and the little girl’s good spirits altogether.
“For these will all surely do her good,” said her mother before she was sent off her errand. “But make sure not to walk too fast nor skip too high, and not to gawk and stare at every little thing or to stray from the path, for surely the bottle would fall and break and ruin both the cake and your good mood.”
I will make sure to not do all of these things, promised Little Red Riding Hood, who had gone along her merry way.
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I am close to my grandmother's house, thought Little Red Riding Hood after some time of walking through the woods, but before she could crane her neck to watch for chimney smoke across the top of the nearby trees, she was accosted by a voice from behind who called her by her name.
Little Red Riding Hood was greatly startled and looked over her shoulder.
“Who calls my name?” said the child.
“It is I,” said an old wolf, who was long in the tooth and lame by his gait. “I, the wolf.”
Little Red Riding Hood, good of heart and kind of spirit, had never met malevolence nor seen evil first-hand, so she did not recognize it before her eyes.
“Oh. Good day, wolf. I hope that you are well.”
“I am not, in truth,” lamented the wolf, “for I have found myself to be in a foul mood today.”
“That is a shame to hear, master wolf, especially when I myself am in such good spirits this day myself. What is the reason for your distress, if I might ask?”
“I shall tell you,” cried the wolf. “For I am thirsty and so very, very hungry. It has been some time since I have eaten enough to say that I have had my fill.”
“That I am sorry to hear,” said Little Red Riding Hood, who dug into her basket and started taking out the things she was bringing. “I have with me some freshly baked cake, made by my mother this morning, and some very good wine. These were meant for my grandmother who has taken ill as of late, but I am sure she would not mind for me to help a good soul in need.”
The wolf howled and shook its head, saying: “No, I thank you, but I can stomach neither cake nor wine, for I am a beast of the wilds, and not made to drink or eat such things.”
Little Red Riding Hood was surprised by this, for she herself loved to eat sweet cake, and, although she was too young for much wine, every evening her mother would pour her a delicious thimbleful to assure a good night’s sleep.
“You eat no cake and drink no wine?” asked Little Red Riding Hood curiously. “Then, pray tell, what do you drink? And what do you eat?”
The wolf howled again and thought to himself: I lap at the waters of another’s life and I eat from the flesh of great things dying, but to say these things out loud to the child would surely cause her much grief and fear, and the wolf did not want Little Red Riding Hood to run away, for she looked quite plump and quite tasty in the summer shine.
Instead, the wolf tried to trick the girl, saying: “I drink only from the root of life and I eat only what others leave behind.”
Little Red Riding Hood felt pity for the wolf, for she herself did not like neither the roots drawn from her mother’s garden nor did she particularly appreciate last night’s leftovers, and so said: “I think I understand, master wolf, and I wish you quite well on solving your day’s troubles. Now, if you will excuse me, I must continue on my journey lest mother be quite cross with me.”
“And where are you going, Little Red Riding Hood, if I may be so bold as to ask?”
“I go now to visit my grandmother’s house,” said Little Red Riding Hood, who came to stand upon the tips of her toes to point over the reach of the highest trees. “She lives but yet still a mile from here, in the shade of large oak trees. As you are from the forest, I am sure that you will know it.”
“Oh yes, I know of it,” replied the wolf. I know it quite well, thought the beast craftily to himself.
Little Red Riding Hood turned to leave, fastening her basket under her arm again.
“Wait,” said the wolf. “For you have done me a kindness in your offer to feed and drink me, and I should like to return the favor.”
“Oh?”
“Look there,” said the wolf, pointing his nose towards a place off the dark forest path. “Those beautiful flowers that grow even in the shade of such elms. Are they not beautiful?
“Oh, yes, I can smell them even from here!” exclaimed Little Red Riding Hood, already glee-ful at the sight of such pretty, pretty flowers.
“Now, seeing as you are already so close to your grandmother’s home, and that it is still quite early in the day, do you not think it another kindness to gather some for your sickly grandmother? Surely the sight and smell of them would do her great good, along with cake and wine and your presence.”
Little Red Riding Hood looked out through the forest and became enamored by all the colors she only now saw now that the wolf had made her look. Surely to stray for but a single flower would cause her no harm? And it was still so early in the day, she thought to herself, that she surely would not be much delayed.
And so Little Red Riding Hood stepped off the path to collect some flowers in her basket, but as she plucked one flower, she quickly spotted an even prettier one growing in the shade of another elm some distance deeper in the forest. And as she wandered in further to go pick it she soon saw another even further in, and so Little Red Riding Hood went to go pick that flower too, and so on and so on. So invested was Little Red Riding Hood in her pickings, that she did not even notice that the birdsong had come to a stop.
As the old wolf watched the girl stray from the path, he was again left to his own devices. The wolf hurriedly limped his way towards the house of the girl’s grandmother and made sure to knock loudly.
“Who is it?” came a voice from inside.
“It is Little Red Riding Hood, grandmother,” said the wolf. “I bring you cake and I bring you wine. Will you open the door for me?”
“I cannot, for I am too sick to get out of bed, but there is only a latch on the door. Lift it and come inside, for I am glad that you have come.”
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And so the wolf entered the grandmother’s home and devoured her as she lay sick in her bed. When he was done, he dressed himself in the grandmother’s gown and cap and drew shut the curtains to make it dark inside.
And the wolf waited. He waited all afternoon for Little Red Riding Hood and he waited all evening, he waited all night and he waited well into the morning, he waited so long that he became hungry again, the feeling of the grandmother filling his stomach little more than a memory. Still Little Red Riding Hood did not come.
The wolf had grown tired of waiting and undrew the curtains to see if he could perhaps see the little girl coming, but when he so did, he saw nothing. He saw nothing outside at all.
The forest was gone.
The oak trees, trunks once clumped so tightly together to comprise the concept of the forest that had always been its home, were missing. The wolf saw not just the noted absence of the oak trees and the elm shades, the missing colorful flowers and the grasses that made up the small patches of green, but he saw neither bird nor hare, neither sun and not even the sky. He saw nothing. Only black.
The wolf did not even fully comprehend how it could see what wasn’t there, only understanding that what he saw of the window, of the curtains, of everything else in the home, was something, and comparing that what was there outside which was not.
The wolf had always been a beast of savagery, a thing of predation, an eater of things. He had known fear only once, in the face of the huntsman who taught him the bite of his axe that had left him lame, but now, as he saw something that he could neither eat nor outrun, he felt something that should be unknowable to him as an animal, any animal, a feeling that was only ever meant to be felt by those things that walked on two legs. He felt horror.
The wolf gazed out the window into the abyss that was the absence of everything, wondering how he was to sate his hunger, when he heard the latch being lifted off the door behind him. His hackles rose as he turned to face the creakily opening door.
Standing in the doorway was Little Red Riding Hood. No, not standing.
What was left of Little Red Riding Hood was floating some few inches off the ground, her feet cut to ribbons and most of her toes gone like someone had taken a hatchet to them like a butcher having gone to work. The little girl’s clothes were torn to shreds, her little red cap and mantle ripped, and with the left chunk of her torso gone like a cut flank. Her face was a gruesome, gaping hole, her skull caved in. For one jealous moment, the wolf thought the birds of the forest had taught the girl how to fly whereas they had so often refused to teach him, when the smell of familiar danger hit him past the aroma of iron-blood in the air.
His teeth bared instinctively as the huntsman, who had been holding the girl aloft ahead of him, casually flung what was Little Red Riding’s Hood carcass inside her grandmother’s home. It rolled sickeningly across the floor until it flopped with an unceremonious thud against the base of the bed the wolf had been lying in not moments before.
“Fair day to you, grandmother,” said the huntsman as he stepped inside the cabin, a bloodied axe slung over his shoulder.
The huntsman’s face was a bearded wild, with an unnatural grin plastered onto it that was so grotesquely large and wide it seemed to threaten to rip at the corners of his mouth. His lips were smattered with gore and flecked with a black substance that the wolf was unfamiliar with. It smelled of something that was not of the forest.
“Hello there, huntsman. What brings you to my cabin? And why have you brought my granddaughter in such a state?,” asked the wolf cautiously as he tried to pose himself as the grandmother.
“I found her astray in the forest,” the huntsman said as he took a few more steps towards the wolf. There was a wildness in his unblinking, blood-shot eyes, a savagery that the wolf recognized not to be bestial and natural, but rather something terrifyingly alien. A savagery that was senselessly malicious, cruel for cruelty’s sake.
“She seemed to have wandered too far from the path,” the huntsman added.
“I have oft told her to take care where she treads,” the wolf replied in a shaky tone. He felt his tail tuck low as his hind legs brushed against the back of the window, “and not to venture from the path alone.”
“I have heard tale that you were sick, grandmother, and thought it good to see how you were doing. How fare you?” the huntsman asked, smacking his lips.
“I am feeling better, huntsman. Dare I say, I might even feel entirely well again.”
“Is that so?” the huntsman said, bringing the grip of his axe down into his other palm. Blood dripped onto the floor from the handle. The wolf’s eyes were desperately looking around the cabin for a way out, but his gaze kept being drawn to the axe, again and again. The familiar throb in his lame leg became a painful pounding.
“Because you seem rather unwell to me, still,” the huntsman continued, the grin on his face impossibly widening even further. “What big ears you have, for example.”
“Oh, these are just so I can hear you better, huntsman. I am old, after all.”
“But, grandmother, what of your eyes? They are so big. Perhaps a symptom of your sickness still remains?”
“Oh no, huntsman, these are my normal eyes. It is good they are as big as they are, so I can see you better.”
“And your hands, grandmother? They are so large and hairy, while I remember them to be dainty and delicious.”
“Delicious they are surely not, dear huntsman, for I am old and frail. As for their size, all the better that they are so large, so that I could hug my granddaughter better.”
The huntsman tilted his head as he took a final few steps forward to come before the wolf, his unblinking eyes glancing towards Little Red Riding Hood’s corpse crumpled by the bed.
“Not much left of her to hug now, is there?” he said in a low tone.
The wolf’s heart was beating fast, so fast that he felt it might burst out of his chest. He was cornered with seemingly no way out.
“But enough of you. What of me, grandmother?” the huntsman asked loudly as he motioned to himself.
“You look rather well today,” replied the wolf in a fearful whisper. “Although I must mention the size of your mouth, huntsman. It is oh so terrifyingly big.”
“Why thank you,” replied the huntsman, bizarrely pleased at the compliment. Then he raised his axe high above his head, the corners near his mouth finally tearing into a wide, bloodied rictus that could no longer be confined by the limits of his lips. Black drippings burst free from the exposed muscles, juicing down his chin, revealing rows and rows upon rows of teeth that had been hidden from sight.
The wolf yelped out of fear and tried to dart to the left past the huntsman in an attempt to avoid the downward swing of the weapon, but the lameness in his leg had made him slow. Too slow. The axe came down faster, splintering the wooden floorboards ahead of the wolf. There was ground no longer under the grandmother’s home the wolf saw, but rather the same black of nothing that had taken away the world outside the window.
“I’ve been looking for you, sinner,” bellowed the huntsman as he raised the axe again for another chop.
“I’ve been looking for you, wolf!” the huntsman screeched as he swung a second time, cutting off the wolf’s attempt to flee from the right, and leaving another splintered hole leading to nothing in the floor. The wolf was pressed back against the window again, entirely cut off from escape.
“Please,” begged the wolf. “Please let me go. Never again shall I prey upon another, this I promise you. I ask only that you let me go! I shall return to the forest and not a shadow shall see me ever again, this I swear!”
The wolf whined uncontrollably, every tendril of fur aquiver out of fear.
“You wish to go back to the forest?” asked the huntsman, axe held high again. His eyes were wide and strained and looked like they could pop out of their sockets at any moment.
“What forest, wolf? There is nothing out there anymore. It’s just you and me,” the huntsman said. He paused for a moment, then his frenzied tone seemed to fade.
“And that shall be The End of it,” the huntsman said reverently as he brought the axe down low, straight for the wolf’s skull.
But that moment of pause had given the wolf an idea. All he could hope was that the huntsman had lied. The axe came crashing down towards his head and the wolf waited until the very last possible moment before he skirted with all paws to the side. He narrowly scampered out of the way of the axe’s third blow, but the wolf was as long in the tooth as he was lame in the leg, no longer as quick and spry as he used to be. A jolt of pain shot through his rear and he saw half of his tail, severed and bleeding, left to flop in the wake of the huntsman’s blow amidst the splintered wooden planks.
“A good beginning to a fitting end,” the huntsman shouted in a scream-song tone as he raised his axe for a final blow, but the injured wolf was already scrawling straight towards the freshly-made hole into the floor. He slipped down inside and tumbled into the abyss below, not falling as he originally thought he would, but rather sinking into a thick, tarry black, threatening to drown.
As he sunk further and further into the black, the consistency of it like a thick sea with the liquid above pushing him further down, he could hear the otherworldly maniacal laugh of the huntsman somewhere far, far above him.
The voice then that echoed in the wolf’s drowning wake was a distorted reverberation, as if the words were traveling through miles of water before reaching him.
“I’ll find you, wolf,” promised the huntsman. “Across the width and breadth of all the worlds, I’ll find you again.”