Red Riding Hood
She was on her way somewhere, had a bag stuffed with bread and cheese and these cliché elements of French/Italian life are enough to see you live through all kinds of atrocities; starvation, sudden snow, and when the moon comes out and you are barely clothed in the forest. The food of both world wars in your pack, the smell of the earth rising up between the curling ferns, the young ferns, growing now just months after the Great Fire, their soft furry brown tendrils barely unravelled, pornographic, easy to touch and she forces them to unravel, teases them out to fulfil their plan, ‘come on’ she teases, but they aren’t ready and curl back. Her fingers have the moist dew on them and some of the red-brown hairs. She brushes them off and runs deeper into the forest, letting the leaves touch her bare arms with their collected water. Fresh and cold but with a warm torso, she breathes out into the empty quiet space in a two metre by two metre clearing, her breath steam filling up the air. Sitting down there she takes the loaf of bread she stole from the middle of her family table and bites right into it, her favourite part, the hard crust on the end, no actual bread just the taste of vinegar and coal and then the crunch of the hard crust. She is smiling and she can feel it. She puts the bread back into her bag and takes out some cheese. It’s a hard block of parmesan, the wrong kind of cheese, her favourite. She takes a bite, half cheese half rind. Her father will be furious when he notices it’s gone. It costs him half a day’s wages to buy it. It tastes better than she remembers, sitting there on old firm pine needles and feeling the ants nosing under her skirt. She gets up and runs, blandly, into the bushes, leaping over rocks and trunks, falling at times, sometimes breaking her knees or hands open on the crisp bare naked elements, letting the dirt in, rubbing it into herself – the mix of blood and dew and earth – and running some more, feeling those open wounds sting but stinging properly, like she is alive and cold and warm all at once. It isn’t long until she sees the house over in the next clearing. Out of the woods now, running through plain soft grass to her grandmother’s house. She can see the delicious thick grey smoke pouring from the chimney, which means it will be warm and sweet inside, knowing there will be a cake or some pancakes ready when she gets though the door. The field is long and sloping, about twenty metres down and another thirteen metres back up again, she does it so swiftly that the animals barely notice her passing, the cows have their faces down and the old pony she used to ride is standing still, looking out across the field remembering what it was like to be young and playful and be ridden by little girls. She lets herself in with no announcement, and indeed the house is warm and fragrant, but it smells more of meat and potato stew and a harsh burnt wood she hasn’t smelt before. Her grandmother is under a pile of blankets in her bed, her body only moving with the in and out of her breath. ‘Grandmamma, I’ve brought you some bread and cheese’ she says, throwing her bag on the ground and opening the lid of the pot on the hearth ‘what is this you are cooking?’. She looks over and the heap still heaves in and out. ‘Grandmamma can I have some?’ Her grandma makes a sound like ‘eeee?…oohhrr’ and she thinks that the poor old lady is so exhausted today, like she can get, so she takes her bread from her bag and dips it in the stew. It is a dark red-brown gravy, and there are little vegetables in it, just large chucks of meat that haven’t really been cooked properly for a goulash ‘grandmamma is it ready yet?’ but no answer, so she tastes the gravy from the bread and finds it bitter and very much too salty. ‘Grandmamma this is terrible! What are you cooking?’. Again no answer from the breathing pile. ‘Grandmamma what is it? Are you ok? Are you happy to see me?’ ‘Yessssss’ she hears ‘oh grandmamma…’ says the girl, kicking of her dirty boots and climbing into bed, burying under the many covers until she reaches the warm centre. Her grandmother is covered in a soft fur, warm and beating with a strong heart, the girl cuddles in and begins talking about how she escaped from her house and took some delicious bread and parmesan cheese and wants to share it and as she is talking the furry mass turns over, pushing the girl over onto her back and envelopes her, now they are one warm mess and breathing together, her grandmother smelling unusually of meat and earth. ‘Grandmamma are you ok?” asks the girl, but she gets no answer, only a fur covered arm over the top that pulls her in closer. ‘Hurrmmmm’ says the furry pile and holds the girl tighter, moving all of its force closer and closer to the girl. Now she feels it rubbing between her legs, lifting her dress up slowly as it begins to caress her body with that warm moist fur, starting to drift off to sleep under the power of the soft slow movements, the fur caressing her legs and back and buttocks, the girl relaxing and pressing her body back into it, moving as one as the girl feels the pleasure roll over her, spreading her legs to let more fur touch her skin. Soon they are rocking together and she can hear a soft growl-like ‘huurrrmmmhurrrm’ from the pile, and with her eyes closed she forgets everything, why she is here, the bread, the goulash and lets her mind wander. Soon she feels a sharp pain in her vagina, something is trying to get inside and she tries to close her legs but it keeps pushing and pushing and she feels her arms pinned down and the fun surrounding her head and she is pressed down onto her face and the thing is pushing deeper into her and she tries to scream but she is covered in the furry rug and the thing pushes in and out in and out inside of her and after a while she feels a hot stream fill her inside and she is crying and the thing gets out of her and she struggles away, tangled in the fur and blankets and after she throws them all off sees a man standing near the fire, opening the lid and dipping some bread into the stew. ‘Wh-wh-who are you?” “No one. I hunt around here, that’s all. I came across this cabin this morning and I thought, I thought I’d stop in and say hello” “Where’s my grandma?” “Your grandma? Well, darling, your grandma is…” and he laughs and takes some of the bread and gravy into his mouth, the juice staying on most of his thick beard “your grandma is right here in this pot”.
