Little Red Riding Hood

Once upon a time there was a little girl, who was loved by almost everyone who looked at her, but most of all by her grandmother. There was nothing that she would not have given to the child. Hugs, sweets, ebola—she were an unpredictable old lady, Granny Smith, and a notorious liar (she claimed to have invented apples which, everyone knows, were invented by a man named Jonathan). Once she gave her granddaughter a little hood of red velvet, which suited her so well that she would never wear anything else. Confronting, yes, but these were more forgiving times and nudity wasn’t as scorned then as it be now, so she was usually called Little Red Riding Hood. Sometimes people called her Nude Girl in da Hood, but it was rare. Either way no one remembered her real name, which is sad really.

One day her mother said to her, “Come, Little Red Riding Hood, (for that is how they spake in ye olde days) here is a bag of hair and a cask of Fruity Lexia. Take them to your grandmother, she is ill and weak, and they will do her good. Set out before it gets hot, and when you are going, walk ‘nicely’ and quietly and do not run off the path, or you may fall onto a stick and pierce your eyeball, and then your grandmother will get nothing. And when you go into her room, don't forget to say, good morning, and don't mention apples. For Christ’s sake, don’t mention apples.”

“I will take great care”, said Little Red Riding Hood to her mother, and gave her hand on it.

The grandmother lived out in the wood, half a league from the village. Just as Little Red Riding Hood entered the wood, she was confronted by a wolf. His name was Milko. Red Riding Hood did not know what a wicked creature he was, and was not at all afraid of him.

"Good day, Little Red Riding Hood," said he. It was common for wolves to speak back then. Today it is less common.

"Thank you kindly, wolf."

"Please, call me Milko. Whither away so early, Little Red Riding Hood?"

"To my grandmother's."

"What have you got in your basket?"

"A bag of hair and some goon. Yesterday was hair-cut day, so poor sick
grandmother is to have something good, to make her stronger."

"Er, where does your grandmother live, Little Red Riding Hood?"

"A good quarter of a league farther on in the wood. Her house stands under the three large oak-trees, the nut-trees are just below. There is a large faggot out the front of it. You surely must know it," replied Little Red Riding Hood.

“A large faggot?”, asked the wolf.

“Yes. It’s what we call a bundle of sticks. Surely you know that”, said Little Red Riding Hood.

“Oh, yes, I forgot for some reason”, mumbled the wolf while he thought to himself, “What a tender young creature. What a nice, plump mouthful. She will surely be better to eat than the old woman. Not only that, I can wash them down with some lovely, warm cask wine. I must act craftily, so as to catch both”. So he walked for a short time by the side of Little Red Riding Hood, and then he said, "See, Little Red Riding Hood, how pretty the flowers are about here. Why do you not look round. I believe, too, that you do not hear how sweetly the little birds are singing. You walk gravely along as if you were going to school, while everything else out here in the wood is gay." Gay meant happy in those days. It were a simpler time.

Little Red Riding Hood raised her eyes, and when she saw the sunbeams dancing here and there through the trees, and pretty flowers growing everywhere, she thought, “Suppose I take grandmother a fresh nosegay”. It’s a kind of flower, Lumpy. “That would please her too. It is so early in the day that I shall still get there in good time”. And so she ran from the path into the wood to look for flowers. And whenever she had picked one, she fancied that she saw a still prettier one farther on, and ran after it, and so got deeper and deeper into
the wood.

Meanwhile the wolf ran straight to the grandmother's house and knocked at the door, thinking to himself, “This is a terrible door. It is a door for a clown.”

"Who is there?"

"Little Red Riding Hood," replied the wolf, lying. "I have brought you hair and wine. Open the clown-door."

"Lift the latch," called out the grandmother, "I am too weak, and cannot get up."

The wolf lifted the latch, the door sprang open, and without saying a word he went straight to the grandmother's bed, and devoured her before apples could be mentioned. Then he put on her clothes, dressed himself in her cap, laid himself in her bed and drew the curtains. It had always been a fantasy of his. A dark fantasy. Of course his wife didn’t know. How could she? How could he tell her? He knew he couldn’t. This would remain his secret.

Little Red Riding Hood, however, had been flamboyantly running about picking flowers. When she had gathered so many that she could carry no more, she remembered her grandmother, and set out on the way to her. She had mind like a sieve, that girl.

She was surprised to find the cottage door standing open, and when she went into the room, she had such a strange feeling that she said to herself, “Oh dear, how uneasy I feel today. Most other times I like being with grandmother so much”. She called out, "Hello?" but received no answer. So she went to the bed and drew back the curtains. There lay her grandmother with her cap pulled far over her face. She looked different. Almost lupine.

"Oh, grandmother," she said forgetting to say good morning, "what big ears you have."

"The better to hear you with, my child," was the reply.

"But, grandmother, what big eyes you have," she said.

"The better to see you with," my dear.

"But, grandmother, what large hands you have."

"The better to hug you with."

“Did you invent apples?”

“What? I don’t know.”

"Oh, but, grandmother, what a terribly big mouth you have", she said, rudely.

"The better to eat you with."

And scarcely had the wolf said this, than with one bound he was out of bed and swallowed up Little Red Riding Hood. When the wolf had appeased his appetite, he drank the entire cask of Fruity Lexia, lay down again in the bed and fell asleep, dreaming of the Egg of Mantubi. It would be his soon.