Little Red Riding Hood, the Remix

ONCE UPON A TIME, whatever that means, there was a little girl, who lived, for reasons unnecessary to the continuation of the plotline, on the very outskirts of an incredibly dangerous forest. The girl's mother, having had a rather rough childhood herself in which her parents had been gored to death by a rogue bull while vacationing in Pamplona (yes both of them, yes at the same time), had decided to craft a beautiful cloak all in red as a sort of psychosomatic coping mechanism. For some inadequately researched reason, she had chosen to name her daughter 'Red.' "Red," she told her one day, "In life, we must face our own fears head-on if we wish to succeed." "You mean to say," said Red, "that you are going out into the forest to face the wild beasts and atone for Grandma and Grandpa's deaths?"
"No." said her mother, "whatever gave you that idea? Now I want you to go run along and get your bright-red cloak and go into the woods and deliver these baskets to your Grandma while I stay here and wait patiently for you to come back."

By now even the dimmest of readers will surely have picked up on the fact that I already told you little Red's Grandma was dead. By now, you are no doubt shaking your heads in condescending disbelief at how I, the self-proclaimed narrator could have made such an obvious blunder. My dear readers, it gives me great pleasure to say that you are all, completely WRONG. This was, in fact, Red's paternal Grandmother, her father having run off to join the Crusades. There. Happy now?

Now Red's Grandmother lived in the very heart of the woods. The extremely dangerous woods which Red, a mere child, was now walking through all by herself.
There was, due to a great series of hunting expeditions, only one wolf left in these woods. Of course, Red did not know this. The Wolf in question was also, rather conveniently, roughly three times the size of the average timber-wolf, and twice as nasty. He had smelt the little girl in the woods, and come to see.
As any of you out there reading this who are predators will surely know already, it is exceedingly rude to devour someone without properly introducing oneself first. To this end, the wolf suddenly sprang out of the bushes and landed right smack in front of little Red.

"Good morning, little girl," he said, in a voice like someone whose throat enjoyed pain, "and how are you on this fine day?"

It is a popularly accepted fact of nature that animals with bright colors are usually the ones to leave alone. The Monarch butterfly, for instance, is bright orange-gold-and-black, to signal the unpleasant poison it contains. The Coral snake has bright bands of color to signal the deadly poison that it contains, and as previously stated, Red was wearing bright-red cloak.

Before the wolf even had time to think, Red had kneed him in the groin, grabbed him and thrown him against a nearby tree, and given him a nasty flying scissor-kick to the back of the head. "Don't you EVER come near me again, or I'll kill you." Red told the wolf. Then she calmly picked up the basket from where she had set it down, checked to make sure the contents were still intact, and skipped off whistling the theme from "Mortal Kombat" pleasantly.
The wolf came too some time later. He spat out a tooth, massaged his head, and limped back off into the woods. He was hurt, in fact he was covered with booboos, and he desperately wanted his Mama. Crying great wolfish tears, thankful for once that the other wolves couldn't see him, he ran until he came upon a cottage, conveniently placed on top of a hill in the middle of the forest. He knocked on the door, but no one answered, so he let himself in.
He found it to be comfortably furnished, with that persistent old-people smell. For some reason, he liked that smell, and followed it into the bedroom...

Meanwhile, (how was THAT for a transition) little Red was just entering the clearing where her Grandmother's house was located. She ran up the hill, and rang the door bell. There was no answer, so she let herself in. "Grandma?" she called, "It's Red; I brought you some goodies..." Red wandered through the quiet house, checking every room until she came upon the bedroom.

Red peeked inside, and saw an incredibly ugly woman lying in bed in a pink nightie, her hair in curlers, beauty mask smeared on her face, reading a gossip magazine.

"Grandma?" asked Red. The woman looked up, gasped, held the magazine in front of her face and said "yes, I am your Grandma little girl" in a rather bad falsetto.

Red, who wasn't the most intelligent girl, took a step closer to 'Grandma,' and said "My, what big ears you have."

"Really?" said her Grandmother, "because I've been meaning to talk to my stylist about that..." Red took another step closer "My, what big eyes you have." "do these questions have a point?" asked Grandma sharply dropping both magazine and falsetto for a moment, "'cause frankly I find that a bit offensive." Little Red stared in astonishment "My what a big mouth you have."

"Alright, that's it" said Grandma in a startlingly masculine voice, "I've had it come here-"
But it was at that moment that the front door opened and in walked the real Grandma with a bag of groceries. When she saw her granddaughter and the ugly woman in her clothes, she dropped the bag with a shattering noise on the kitchen floor.

"Grandma?" said Red

"Uh-oh" said the woman

"You again!" shouted Grandma, pointing at the woman.

The Ugly woman hopped out of bed, and began running around the room on all fours, trying to get around Red's Grandma who was blocking the doorway.

"Always forget to lock the back door and you come in here, waste all my beauty-mask, ruin all my nice clothes, read my magazines, and you're a BOY WOLF for cry-eye...!"

There was a loud "AHA!" from the back of the room, as Red had found the closet where Grandma kept her collection of medieval weaponry.

What? I get to have some fun, don't I?

"YAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!" screamed Red, as she came running at the wolf with a great double-handed battle-axe. Grandma jumped out of the way, and the wolf seized his chance to get free. He turned to see if he was getting away, and slipped on the puddle of milk seeping from the broken groceries, got tangled in his dress, and slammed headfirst into the closed kitchen door.

He had only a few moments to savor the bitter irony, when suddenly Red was upon him, and brought down the axe.

Fortunately for the wolf, Red had very poor eyesight, as should have been apparent earlier when she mistook a wolf for her Grandma. She misjudged the distance, and took out the door rather than the wolf. The wolf tore free from the nightie, eliciting a sob of horror from Grandma, and fled off into the early evening with Red and her battle-axe in hot pursuit.

Grandma watched them run off and disappear into the woods. Grabbing a spiked mace for herself in case the wolf came back, she sat down and peered into the basket.

"A fruitcake?" she asked indignantly of the surrounding air, "That girl really does have issues."

THE END