Quite Contrary (46 page)

“Please, I don’t want the Wolf to catch you again,” the wooden girl begged.

“Please, I want to help you escape the Wolf and your mother both,” the rat begged.

Cruelty took fire in Red Riding Hood’s heart, and she raised her hand to strike them both. She had seen her mother do the same thing countless times, and been afraid like the fear she saw in the rat and the wooden girl now. Realizing that did not break the spell. Anger and fear and cruelty raged within her, but she refused them.

“All I have left is to go home to my mother,” Red Riding Hood said. “Her horribleness will repel the Wolf, and keep me safe. Being her daughter is better than being murdered, and I can try not to grow up like her.”

The puppet girl and the rat did not like this choice, but they had nothing else to try. They ran again, straight for Red Riding Hood’s home. It took the Wolf a long time to eat the doctor’s innocent daughter, but not long enough. The Wolf caught up with them next to an old sawmill.

“Stop running, Red Riding Hood. There’s no one to get in my way this time, and the chase is over,” the Wolf called to her.

He was right, and she knew it. Every step took him closer, and her home was still far away.

“I can still stand in your way,” said the puppet girl. Once again she stood between the Wolf and Red Riding Hood.

This time he didn’t slap her aside. “Never again,” he growled, and threw her into the blades of the mill, where she was torn apart.

“I can still stand in your way,” said the rat. He jumped and bit at the Wolf, knowing he could only buy Red Riding Hood moments.

“Never again,” the Wolf growled, seizing the rat in his jaws, ripping at him and throwing the rat aside. He did not kill the rat, but he thought he had.

Red Riding Hood thought he had as well. Her feet stumbled, and she fell. Her friends had died for her, and she had been too afraid to do anything but run.

She could never escape her own wickedness, but she had refused it. Now she refused her fear. She stood up again, and told the surprised Wolf, “You don’t want to kill me. You want me to love you. If I die without returning your love, my death is worthless to you.”

The Wolf stopped. She had surprised him, but he too was determined. He circled her, making sure she could not get away as he said, “Your fear is enough. Your fear means that when I take your life it is special, intimate. I wanted your willing love, but that would be enough.”

“I don’t fear you anymore, Wolf. I won’t let anyone else decide who I love,” Red Riding Hood said.

“That makes me love you more than ever. I will follow you to the ends of the Earth now. I need your love, and I will keep trying until I find a way to take it from you,” the Wolf answered.

What needed to be done next could not be done by a girl who was sweet or innocent. Red Riding Hood knew she was not sweet. She would not let her cruelty rule her, but she was cruel. She took one of the lumberjack’s axes that lay near the sawmill, and stood next to a tree stump.

“I will give you only one kind of love. Lay your neck upon the stump, and I will love you the way you love me,” she said.

The Wolf squirmed. He was no fool, and the trick was obvious, but he had chased Little Red Riding Hood, and chased her, and chased her, and he had to have her.

“Your eyes are so bright, Red Riding Hood,” he whined, taking a step towards the stump.

“They’re watching the last seconds of your life,” she replied.

“Your voice is so hoarse, Red Riding Hood,” he panted, taking another step.

“Your death means everything to me. There’s nothing I want more, now,” she replied.

“Your axe is so sharp, Red Riding Hood,” he whispered, taking the final step and laying his neck upon the stump.

“Sharp or dull, as long as it kills you,” she replied, and she swung, over and over and over, until he died.

The End.

Blood smeared the axe all the way up to my hands. Glistening red meat gaped through the hole I’d hacked in the Wolf’s neck, and bits of jagged white bone poked out. It was gross and ugly, but I didn’t care. His eyes didn’t move. Nothing moved. He had given in to temptation, and he had died.

“It’s over, Miss Mary. You’re free. You’ve told the story of Little Red Riding Hood, and now you can go home safely. You can even change back into regular clothes if you want,” Rat told me from my shoulder.

Change clothes? That hadn’t even occurred to me. I didn’t have to go around being Little Red Riding Hood anymore. My heart fluttered in my chest. I looked down at the Wolf’s glassy eyes. I should feel bad about killing, but I didn’t. Not at all.

“I’ve killed the wolf, but the story’s still alive. Some other girl will put on the hood. There are more wolves out there already, aren’t there?” I asked.

“Enough to tell the story for another thousand years,” Rat answered.

Those other Little Red Riding Hoods didn’t have an axe. I did. I had made this my story, and it could stay my story. My hands trembled. Slimed with the Wolf’s blood, they could still hold the handle of the axe like a vice.

No. I was trying to do everything but face the truth. Maybe I was or wasn’t Red Riding Hood anymore, but on one side of these woods was home, and my mother, and kids in school who hated me, and nothing. Nothing I’d honestly missed even for a moment.

On the other side of these woods were metal cities and roses who told the future and a new body for Scarecrow and an old man who wanted another daughter that wasn’t going to be me. Why had it taken me so long to admit this?

“Rat?” I asked, wondering if he still wanted boots. Maybe I could be the owner he deserved.

“Yes, Miss Mary?” he asked anxiously.

“I belong here.”

Richard Roberts
has fit into only one category in his entire life: ‘writer.’ But as a writer he’d throw himself out of his own books for being a cliche. He’s had the classic wandering employment history–degree in entomology, worked in health care, been an administrator and labored for years in the front lines of fast food. He’s had the appropriate really weird jobs, like breeding tarantulas and translating English to English for Japanese television. He wears all black, all the time, is manic-depressive, and has a creepy laugh.

As for what he writes, Richard loves children and the gothic aesthetic. Most everything he writes will involve one or the other, and occasionally both. His fantasy is heavily influenced by folk tales, fairy tales, and mythology, and he likes to make the old new again. In particular, he loves to pull his readers into strange characters with strange lives, and his heroes are rarely heroic.

n the last day before I got my super power, I was sulking because I didn’t have a super power.