A/N: Hey! This story kind of popped into my head after sitting through Into the Woods 5 times in one weekend because I'm in pit... anyway please review but be kind! I'm not sure if I like it yet.
My name is Kristi Holt. Never heard the name? Doesn't surprise me. Most people haven't. I'm more commonly known as Little Red Riding Hood. Yes, the Little Red Hood of all those sappy fairy tales. I've come to tell my story, the real story I mean, not that corny one children fall asleep to. The real story would give them nightmares. I'm not sure when my story first got as distorted as it now is, perhaps it was those Brothers' Grimm. Mine wouldn't have been the first story they've messed up... Cinderella's was just as bad... but that's off the point. The point is I've come to set the record straight...
Most of you know the basic story. Once upon a time (actually it really wasn't that long ago... in a land far, far away (otherwise known as England) I lived in a cottage (it was more of a rundown shack) with my dear mother (well maybe not so much dear as mortal enemy). The kindest thing to say about my mother was that she started out with good intentions. You see, she had been brought up in a very wealthy home. Her parents, my grandparents, were very well off merchants. As it often is in these tales my mother hated growing up in this privileged life. No amount of bows or expensive dolls could please her. Dolls can't substitute for a missing mother. She did whatever she could to get back at them, finally cumulating in her teenage years when she started sleeping around with the neighborhood boys The inevitable eventually happened and she became pregnant, with me. My grandparents were shocked, abhorred, appalled, disappointed (pick any of those adjectives, they all work fine) with their daughter. Not wanting to be disgraced by their ungrateful daughter her parents kicked her out before the pregnancy started to show.
Lost, scared, and alone my mother wandered into the woods where she found a tiny village. They had an unoccupied shack in which they would let her have for free. The village didn't have a name, it was so small and in such a remote part of the land people just called it the village. My mother raised me there as best she could. She wanted me to have a better life than the one she led. I was an ugly child from the beginning. I wailed through my first 3 years of life, and after that became eerily silent. When I was 5 my mother made me my first red cape. I was so proud of it, I wore it until it's blood red color turned to a dusty brown. My mother then made me another and when that when that one wore out she would make me a new one. This cycle continued for as long as I lived with her. The villagers eventually started calling me Little Red Riding Hood. It was sad in a way that the most interesting thing they could find about me was my cape. I eventually learned not to mind.
Some people start to die the second they are born. Everyday they die just a little bit more for no visible reason. I was 16 when I realized that my mother was one of those people. Nothing had ever been clearer to me in my life then that my mother was going to and leave me all alone in the woods. My mother knew this as well, and for some reason decided to try and make amends with her family before she died. Why? I'm not sure, perhaps she regretted what she did, or maybe perhaps she wanted them to take me in once she was gone. The reason doesn't really matter, what matters is that she was to weak to make the journey through the woods, and that I had to do venture through the woods to my grandmother's house.
