Retelling of Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Josephine wasn't terribly bright. Nor was she terribly stupid. She was somewhere in the middle, or, as her mother liked to say, just right. At ten years old she was your average girly girl who played with dolls in her mother's flower garden outside their cabin in the forest. She had long curls of golden hair. Josephine was more commonly known as Goldilocks.
One day Josephine's mother called her into the cabin.
"Honey," she said. "I need you to do me a favour. Grandma's sick, and I'm currently very busy getting dinner ready for when daddy comes home. So I need you to take this basket of food to grandma's house."
Josephine wasn't very pleased with this news. "But mom," she complained. "Little Red Riding Hood went to her Grandma's just last week and a wolf ate both of them!"
"Oh, well, don't worry," Josephine's mother said. "That wolf's in jail. Here, I'll give you my frying pan in case you meet any other big bad wolf."
Josephine eyed the frying pan her mother handed over to her dubiously. It was a very big frying pan. No doubt it could knock out a wolf. Or herself if she swung it the wrong way. Fine, Josephine thought. Here I go with my trusty frying pan.
Josephine was lost in the forest. Really lost. She was hungry, too, but was a bit dim-witted to realize she could eat her grandma's food. As she wandered around, forlorn, she passed a girl with short black hair, along with seven very short men. They were picking flowers.
"Um," Josephine said, clearing her throat. "Excu-"
One of the short men burped.
"-se yourself, you disgusting pig," was what came out of her mouth instead. Sixteen hands stopped working and eight heads looked up. Sixteen eyes narrowed. Josephine covered her mouth in alarm, aware that there was only so much one could do with a frying pan against eight people.
"Um, I mean, excuse me, you robusting fig," Josephine quickly said. It was the prime moment of intelligence of her life, that. "I was wondering if you could help me? I seem to have lost my way to my grandma's house."
"Just as well," a scowling short man said. "Probly got eaten anyway by some desperate wolf, the poor bastard."
"Grumpy!" one of the other men said, looking at the man who'd just spoken with disapproval. He turned to Josephine. "There's an old lady living in a house just-"
"-around the corner," Grumpy interrupted. Immediately the short men burst into sniggers. The girl with short black hair watched in silence. She gave Josephine the creeps.
"Thank you!" Josephine said, in a hurry to get away from these weirdos.
"Wait!" one of the short men called out, the one who had reprimanded Grumpy. But Josephine was already running down the path, and was around the corner before you could say frying pan. And there was, indeed, a house nestled among the trees over there.
Doesn't really look like Grandma's house, Josephine thought in another rare moment of intelligence. Looks like a stranger's house. But I'll go in anyway, she thought, abruptly ending her moment of intelligence. She walked up to the door and pushed. It was locked. So she did the next best thing, and climbed through the open window.
Because it just totally makes sense to leave your doors locked and your windows open.
Of course, Josephine hadn't counted on getting stuck. Fat little bottom she's got there. After some excessive wiggling she managed to squeeze through and land with a thump in the kitchen of the house. She rose to her feet...and froze at what she saw.
A small, chubby grizzly bear was sitting at a table in the kitchen with its back to her. It sounded like it was eating. It seemed to be so engrossed in eating that it hadn't even heard Josephine fall through the kitchen window.
Oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh, was all that Josephine was capable of thinking at a time like this. Oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh it's a bear.
….awww and it's cute.
In a brief moment of total weirdness, she wondered if she could take the bear home and make it be like a real live teddy bear. But Josephine decided that wasn't a good idea. No, because her mother would beat her with a frying pan if she brought a bear home.
While Josephine sat there on the kitchen floor eyeing the bear in contemplation, the bear turned around.
"……………………………....."
silence
"AAAHHHHH HUMAN IN THE HOUSE!" the little bear shrieked. Josephine started in surprise. It speaks! she thought. ……and it's English, too!
The little bear was up on its hind legs, pointing at Josephine with big round eyes. Suddenly, with a roar, it dived towards her. Up came Josephine's frying pan in defence; her ears were met with a loud CLANG as something bashed into it, followed by the sound of a thump. Lowering the frying pan, Josephine looked down to see the bear out cold on the kitchen floor.
"Well, knock yourself out indeed," Josephine muttered. "But phooey. What if there are more bears around?"
She waited in silence for a few minutes, listening, but no indication of any other bear being home came. And Josephine was still hungry. So she sat down at the kitchen table, which had three different sized bowls of porridge on it, and ate all the porridge. Now her main problem was what to do about the bear.
"I suppose…" she said, looking around, and spying some rocking chairs in the next room, "that I could leave him on a chair so that it seems as if he were asleep."
So Josephine dragged the heavy little bear out of the kitchen and into the family room, hefting him up onto a gigantic chair. But little bear looked forlorn there. Too forlorn. So Josephine moved him to the second, smaller rocking chair. He still looked forlorn. So, finally, Josephine dragged him over to the third, last, smallest chair, and deposited him there. Her arms now aching from lifting and moving the fat thing, she thought she might sit. So she sat on the bear. And the chair broke.
"Oh dear," Josephine gasped, jumping in shock to see the little bear on the ground, surrounded by wooden splinters that once formed a rocking chair. She backed away in fear - whoever might come home, what would they think? - and fled…. Upstairs. For she wasn't terribly bright at the times she most needed to be. It didn't occur to her that the best course of action would be to run away out of the house.
So up the stairs Josephine went, and she dashed into a room with a gigantic bed. She dove on top of the bed - and promptly scrambled right back out as the mattress began to sink at an alarming rate. Panting, Josephine ran to the next room, thinking she might hide under the covers there, but that bed had an awful, overpowering smell of perfume all over it. Coughing, Josephine staggered into the third and last bedroom to find a small bed. She collapsed onto it, taking deep breaths of air, and lay her head back on the bed. And fell asleep.
When Josephine woke up, she blinked her eyes slowly… and had to stifle a scream at the sight of three very angry furry brown faces staring down at her.
"What have you done to my son!" the biggest one roared.
Josephine quaked in fear.
"I-I-I-" she began to explain when she was interrupted by the smallest bear.
"You hit with me a big metal weapon!" it yelled.
Josephine had hardly thought of the frying pan as a weapon, but that wasn't the point. She had to get out of there, and fast. She now realized just who's porridge she'd eaten, and just who would be hungry as a result…
"You thief! You scoundrel! You inconsiderate butt!" the first bear roared again. All it really seemed to do was roar. Definitely a male bear.
"I suggest," the in-between-small-and-big bear said, speaking up for the first time, "that you leave my house and never come back again."
"I was… the little midget guy said…grandma's house here-" Josephine garbled.
"Go now," the in-between bear growled, suddenly brandishing Josephine's frying pan with obviously unfriendly intentions. Josephine winced, and quickly scrambled out of the bed, out the bedroom, down the stairs, into the kitchen, and out the window. Yes, out the window and not the door. Alas, some people never learn.
And when Godilocks returned home with neither frying pan nor basket of food, her mother was very angry at her and sent her right back along the forest path to deliver more food again. Unfortunately, she met the short men again… who directed her in a different direction, telling her it would take her to a lovely gingerbread house occupied by a lovely lady in a pointy hat…
The End.
Author's note: Ey well it's finished. I didn't really like this story, to be honest. I'm more of a novel-length story writer but I have a bad habit of never finishing my long stories, and a friend of mine really, for some reason, liked my retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. So I wrote this for her… anyway leave a review if you can. Thanks!
-Nabila