Once upon a time, there was a young Blutbad who lived with his father. His father was a clockmaker renowned for his cleverness in making and fixing clocks of all shapes and sizes. The young Blutbad wanted to be even cleverer than his father: he wanted to be the cleverest Blutbad that ever existed.
He had just turned fourteen, and was about to go on his first solo hunt. Because he was very excited, he barely heard his father warn him about keeping his hunt as simple, quick, and clean as possible.
He went off into the woods early in the morning to find a nice, succulent girl to eat. It was a big woods, and though he stayed near the path that the humans used, nobody came by until the afternoon. But what a fine girl this was! She was wearing a lovely red coat that covered her all the way from the top of her head to the bottom of her legs. Her face was nice and clear, the type that it is a pleasure to sink your claws into, and her neck was long, perfect for a great big bite. She was just the right size to fill up a young Blutbad.
But this Blutbad wanted to prove to everyone just how crafty he was. So instead of eating the girl in the red hood at once, he went up to her, saying, "Good day, miss."
"Good day, sir," she replied.
"Whither away this afternoon, miss?"
"To my grandmother's."
"What have you got in your apron?"
"Cake and wine," replied the girl in the red hood. "Yesterday was baking-day, so poor sick grandmother is to have something good, to make her stronger."
"Where does your grandmother live, miss?"
"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; you surely must know it."
The young Blutbad did indeed know it, and he could not resist the idea of a woman who had been already fattened up by her young grandchild. 'Besides,' he figured, 'If one human will fill me up for a week, then two will fill me up for two weeks. Won't my father be proud when I come home and tell him I ate two women!"
So he said to the girl in the red hood, "See how pretty the flowers are about here – why don't you 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 merry."
The girl in the red hood looked around and saw that what the Blutbad said was true. With a grateful smile, she danced off the path and into the woods, looking at the beautiful flowers and listening to the lovely birds in the trees.
The Blutbad immediately ran to the grandmother's house and knocked on the door.
"Who is there?" called a voice from inside the house.
"Your granddaughter, bringing cake and wine," said the young Blutbad. "Open the door."
"Lift the latch," said the Grandmother. "I am too weak, and cannot get up."
Now the young Blutbad almost started drooling at these words. Like most young Blutbaden, he loved fat even more than lean meat, and a grandmother who was too weak to move and who had been eating the delicious food her granddaughter brought her was sure to be very fatty.
So, as soon as the young Blutbad lifted the latch and opened the door, he went straight to the grandmother's bed, tore her throat out, and guzzled all the nice warm blood pouring out of her before eating the rest of her. And she tasted just as good as he thought: all fatty, with a faint trace of basil.
And now the young Blutbad decided to prove his craftiness in another way. He took the grandmother's clothes and put them on, and then got into her bed to wait for the girl in the red hood to see if he could trick her into believing he was her grandmother.
Having just eaten, the Blutbad was a little sleepy, but he kept himself awake by imagining the reaction of his father when he came home and told about how clever he was.
Soon, the girl in the red hood came through the door, and the Blutbad could barely contain his excitement. But he lay still until the girl in the red hood came up to him.
"Oh! Grandmother," she said, "what big ears you have!"
The Blutbad thought quickly. How could he explain his ears, which were bigger than the grandmother's ears? "All the better to hear you with, my child."
He was proud of his response, as it was a rather clever answer.
But the girl in the red hood continued asking more questions. "But, grandmother, what big eyes you have!"
"All the better to see you with, my dear."
The young Blutbad couldn't wait to eat her. She looked so tasty! He woged a bit.
"Oh! But, grandmother, what terribly big teeth you have!"
The young Blutbad couldn't resist any more, and said, "All the better to eat you with!"
And with that, he jumped up and devoured her. The girl in the red hood tasted of sugar and sage, and the young Blutbad had never tasted anything so delicious in his life.
But now, very full and proud of his cleverness, the young Blutbad decided to rest for a while in the grandmother's bed. After all, it was a big forest and it was unlikely that anybody else would come near.
But stalking though the dark forest was one of those dread scourges of the night: a Grimm.
The Grimm crept through the open door and saw the bloodstains and the torn-up red hood. Knowing there must be a Blutbad nearby, the Grimm quietly stalked toward the bed with its ax high above its head. It pulled back the covers over the Blutbad and its ax slashed through the air, cutting the Blutbad's head right off! Blood gushed from the Blutbad's neck and stained the bed and drip, dripped onto the floor. The Grimm knelt down and drank the spouting blood, and when the young Blutbad had no blood left, the Grimm found a dark corner where it could lie in wait for the Blutbad's father to come looking for his son.
When the young Blutbad's father arrived, he smelled his son's blood and the scent of his killer. Guessing that his son's killer was waiting for him, the father decided to sneak into the cottage through the chimney in order to surprise the Grimm.
But the Grimm heard the father on the roof and guessed what he was going to do. When the father Blutbad jumped down the chimney he fell right into a huge pot completely full of water! Before he could get out, the Grimm slammed the lid on the pot and tied it closed as tightly as it could. The father Blutbad thrashed around to try to get the lid off, or even to just knock the pot over so some of the water would spill out, but the Grimm, filled with unnatural strength from the young Blutbad's blood, held the pot steady so it didn't rock. Knowing he could do nothing to save himself, and hating the Grimm for killing his son, with his last breath the Blutbad cursed the Grimm.
"May the skins of thine descendants hang in the halls of thine enemies forevermore."
But the Grimm just laughed, as curses do not affect creatures such as these, for Grimms are themselves curses.