kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"LittleRed.0"

words

Little Red Riding Hood was watching her brother's muscles ripple as he rhythmically pumped milk from their cow. Her eyes glazed a bit and suddenly he was Jimmy, the blacksmith's youngest. He'd just turned sixteen and all her friends were horribly giggly over him. She shook her head, rolled over onto her back on the hillock and stared at the clouds. Her humors had been running rampant lately -- it was her time with the moon. She had trouble keeping one thought from the other but that she wanted something, something she couldn't quite name. Her mother called out to her. She shook her head free of such thoughts and called back down the hill.

"Yes, Mama?"

"I made some soup and your sister fetched some wine from the faire. Won't you go make yourself useful and deliver it to your sick grandmother?"

"But Mama..."

"Red."

"Yes, Mama." Red stood up, brushed of her cloak, and skipped down to her house. Her mother was leaning out the door holding a packed basket.

"You can have some of the curd I've packed, but the rest is for your grandmother."

"Yes, Mama." She reached for the basket.

Her mother yanked it back, teasingly, and added with a glint in her eye, "Now you're not to stray! They say there's strange goings on in the forest."

"Yes, Mama." She reached for the basket again.

Her mother yanked it back behind her. "And don't dally. I want you back well before twilight to finish your chores."

"Yes, Mama." Red crossed her arms and started to scowl. Her mother dangled the basket out before her again and Red snatched at it. Her mother didn't let go. "Mama...!"

"And don't be short with your granny. She's not been the same since your father passed away, and now with this illness... she really shouldn't be alone but she just refuses to come stay with us and --"

Red pulled the basket away from her mother. "Yes, Mama, I know! With father gone, there's no one to spare to keep an eye on her. I know. I'll do what I can." With that, she put the basket over her arm, pulled her hood down over her face, and skipped away.

Soon she was to the forest, though not with the energy for skipping. The sun was hot and made her a little dizzy. Before long, she was off the path making daisy chains.

There was a growl from behind her. She turned around but could see nothing past the tree line of the clearing she was in. Red held her breath, trying to hear what might be moving around in the forest. She heard crickets and birds and nothing else, and those three things calmed her. She noticed the hard pounding of her chest and the sweat beading on her skin and she breathed again.

"Maybe I'm hungry. How long has it been since I broke my fast? I've certainly had a long one at this point. I'll have some of the curd and find a stream to cure my thirst." She set the basket down and pulled out the soup, the wine, the curd, and some bread. She nibbled on the curd and it made her extremely thirsty. "Maybe I'll just have a bit of the wine to wash the curd down. Surely Granny won't mind me that." She pulled the stopper on the wine and had a large swallow and another before she caught herself and put it away. Her chest flushed with the warmth of the wine while the pleasurable parts of her tingled.

There was another growl, almost a purr, and there was a world rubbing up against her back. She bit down a shriek of fear, afraid that startling it would draw its malice. It sniffed her crotch and laid its head down in her lap and continued its guttural rumbling. The heat in her body grew and she closed her eyes, gently scritching the wolf under its chin. A sense of urgency grew in her and she felt she should get up and run to her grandmother's and be done with her mission but she was frozen with pleasure. Suddenly a flock of waves of intense tingling wracked her body and she collapsed to the forest floor. The wolf rose and went over to her face and licked it as if trying to revive her. She smiled into its silly, sloppy kisses.

A shadow fell over her eyes and she opened them to a hideous sight. A distorted visage loomed over her. This time she couldn't hold the scream and it leapt out her throat only to be caught by a large warty hand. She struggled for breath but couldn't find any. Red bit the hand as hard as she could and managed to break the skin. Blood and pus spurted into her mouth and she gagged.

The ogre roared in pain and she jumped up to run, its grip momentarily weakened. The wolf, however, leapt at the same time and landed squarely on her back.

"Stop!" barked the ogre and suddenly the clearing was still. His voice was terrible, rough and powerful, but there was something familiar about it. Red struggled to clear her head. She wasn't going to outrun the wolf nor outmuscle the ogre. She figured she could probably outsmart them both if she could only just stop to think herself. She resigned herself to death if she couldn't. Things went easier for her than she expected.

"What are you doing so far out in the forest, Little Red?"

"You know my name!?"

"What are you doing so far out in the forest, Little Red?" The ogre added a scowl for emphasis, baring rows of chipped and rotten teeth.

"I was bringing some stuff to my granny."

He glared, blood moving through the sallowed whites of his eyes like flame. "What are you doing so far out in the forest, Little Red?" The edge of his voice was a bone saw shredding her spine.

"The forest distracted me!" she yelped. "But my granny's not well -- I must be bringing her these treats."

"How are you getting there?"

"I'm... I'm afraid I've lost my way. Could you perhaps direct me? I'll gift you a daisy chain for the proper direction."

The ogre grunted and pointed. She curtsied, swiftly tossed a daisy chain into his outstretched hand, gathered her basket of goodies and went briskly on her way, trying not to run. Noises followed her but she refused to turn around. Soon enough, they disappeared.

The forest was unfamiliar to her for some time and she came to the forest's edge without recognizing a trail or clearing. She was on the wrong end of the forest. She blasphemed under her breath and trotted back to the trail she knew, feeling more and more unsure of the wolf. She stuck doggedly to the trail and presently was at her grandmother's. It was already dusk.

"Granny?"

A cracked, rumbly voice answered, "Pull the cord, dear, and come on in."

She pulled at the cord and the door opened. "Eww! The pull's all slimy!"

"Oh, that. That's just a bit of intestine; I'm teaching my dog to let herself in."

"I didn't know you had a dog, Granny," called Red, setting the picnic basket down in the main room.

"She showed up recently and I haven't had the heart to get rid of her. I think she may belong to one of the foresters."

"I brought you some soup and bread and wine," called Red, pulling them out of the basket and laying them on the table. Sitting on the table was a vase of daisies.

"That sounds wonderful, granddaughter. What sort of soup is it?"

The question jerked Red from the flowers. "Why, I don't know!" She opened the jar and fished around through it. "It's a barley soup with bits of tomatoes and green beans." She dipped a finger into it and licked off the juices. "It's spiced quite well, too -- basil and pepper." She nibbled the end of her finger, resisting the urge to help herself to the soup.

"Does it have any meat in it?"

"I don't believe so."

"Well, then. A hunter dropped off some wild boar for me earlier and I haven't had a chance to do anything with it. Could you drop some cubes into the soup?"

"Certainly. I should really be heading home soon, though. I was supposed to be back by now to finish my chores but the forest waylaid me. I don't want Mother to worry after me..." Red reached up into the cupboard and found many bloody chunks of meat. "Oh, my! This meat is all bloody!"

"I'm sure she'll be fine if you spend the night. She wouldn't want you out in the forest after dark, would she? Some mother if she would! She'll understand me talking your ears off, I'm sure."

"Do you want me to cook this meat for you?"

"No dearie, but if you could chew it for me a little ... my teeth aren't what they used to be."

Little Red's stomach churned at the thought of masticating the uncooked meat but she'd been told to do what she could for her grandmother. She took a chunk and started chewing it. It was much sweeter than wild boar and she said such.

"Maybe it was a pig that had to be put down. Is it good?"

The juices soaked out of the meat suffusing her mouth, tingling with life. "It's wonderful!" she choked around a mouth full of fresh meat. She shook her head in confusion. She had thought you had to cook that much flavor into it.

"I like it that way. Could you chew enough for the stew and stir it in? And have some for yourself by all means!"

"Thank you!" Her stomach was settling and the meat really was very good. Her hunger returned in full force. She alternated chewing pieces for the soup and eating them raw herself and soon the soup was brimming with meat and she stirred it in. "The soup is ready, Grandmother."

"Excellent, dearie. Would you bring it in for me? My legs aren't what they used to be."

"Of course, Grandmother." She picked up the jar and brought it into the bedroom. It was dark in the bedroom and it took her some time to adjust. The first thing she saw was two large round eyes reflecting the light sneaking in behind her back at her. "What big eyes you have, Granny!"

"The better to see you with, my dear," and she blinked them coquettishly. Red's eyes adjusted a little better.

She saw two feet sticking out from under the covers of the bed and out over the frame. "What big feet you have, Granny!"

"From carrying all my children and grandchildren around," was the reply and she wiggled them playfully.

Red's eyes adjusted a little bit better and she brought the stew by her grandmother's side. Her grandmother reached out for the stew. "What big arms you have!"

Her grandmother set the stew beside the bed and wrapped her arms around her and squeezed. "The better to hug you with!"

"They're so strong! Why, you really must be feeling well to squeeze that hard! I'm afraid I'm close to breaking!" Suddenly she was flung to the floor and pinned. She could smell the wolf on top of her. It had its teeth viced about her neck, daring her to move.

"Ah, Little Red, you really shouldn't have strayed into the forest!" Before her was the ogre dressed in her grandmother's nightclothes. A squeak was strangled by retching which she had to stifle in turn due to the teeth that had just punctured her neck and threatened to be driven deeper. Suddenly she was dizzy and breathless.

"Granny?" she whimpered.

The ogre laughed. "You've seen parts of her. Now to see what you're made of!" He picked her up like a sack, knocking the wolf off, and tossed her onto the bed. "Little Red..." Lumpy drool dripped onto her back and she screeched and turned over, wiping it off on her grandmother's sheets. The ogre pinned her while the wolf roughly ripped off her clothes with its teeth. She felt void of will. "I think there may be some ogre inside of you." -- harsh laughter.

She felt a burning pain followed by a sharp ripping pain. The ogre's tongue wriggled through her, pulsing rhythmically and seeming to grow with each pulse. She felt an amazing urge to urinate or defecate and then the most unbelievably intense pain as her uterine wall shredded and her bladder was pierced, drained, and filled with the ogre's mottled, bulbous tongue. She screamed with every inch of her body, inadvertently impaling herself deeper onto the ogre. In an instant her entrails were voided and her innards imploded, her knees knocked together bruisingly and the ogre's mouth was no longer beneath her but vomiting into hers: her menstrual blood, her urine and excrement; she gagged and swallowed and gagged some more. His tongue lodged in her trachea and she fought a losing battle for air. As she passed out she felt herself penetrated simultaneously in multiple orifices, her skin literally boiling with the ogre's passion.

Little Red came to with the sun just rising. The room was empty. She was quite disoriented -- she was certain she had just died, or perhaps... perhaps that was just a dream. She was in her grandmother's bed -- something wasn't right. She felt a burning sensation in her womb and a vile taste in her mouth. Something definitely was not right. There was a noise outside, a male voice calling for her granny, calling for her. She shook her head and immediately regretted it. She tried to call out but her voice strangled and cracked. Her larynx burned. Red rolled out of the bed and hit the floor hard. She heard the door open and footsteps ran towards her.

Silhouetted in the entry to the bedroom stood a young man. For a moment she knew it was her brother but her vision swam and she shook her head to clear it. She saw that it wasn't her brother at all but the village heartthrob. He was screaming and she had the sudden urge to comfort him. She ran to him with her arms outstretched to hug him; he turned and ran from her.

Confused, she yelled, "Stop!" and he did. She enveloped him in a great bear hug of comfort, accidentally cracking several of his ribs. He took a sharp intake of breath and began to keen. Red tried to shush him but he wouldn't cease his keening. Not quite thinking clearly, she ripped his pants off and did her best to do what she could to ease his pain. She took hold of his penis and gently massaged it with both her hands. It quickly became red -- hard and lubricated with his blood as his flesh ripped from her ministrations. Horrified, she applied her own lubricant as best she could -- saliva to seal the wounds.

With the application of her mouth his keening became a guttural roar of fearful anger and the side of Red's head exploded in pain. She rolled with the blow as best she could and came away with his penis still in her mouth. She swallowed convulsively and lodged it in her esophagus. The rhythmic swallowing milked it of some drops of precum that dribbled down her throat.

The boy ran at her with his walking stick and thwacked her in the head as hard as he could. She didn't have a moment to respond, still struggling with the morsel in her throat, and took the blow fully. It snapped her neck in an odd way and the penis dropped straight down to the fires of her stomach. Powerful humors roared up into her brain and she backhanded the boy fiercely. His head crushed in midair and he was flung across the room, sliding gray matter across the floor the last few feet. Some final spark within his body curled him into a fetal position and he lay still.

Red stared in horror at the scene before her. Her eyes opened wide and she could see it was truly her brother she had just killed. Now it was her turn to keen as she ran out of the house, replaying the scene just passed over and over in her mind without the blinders of the strange lust that had overcome her. She ran into the forest.

Soon she came to a stream and she realized that that was what she had gone looking for. She reached down to toss her clothes to the wind to bathe only to realize that she had none on. Her skin was cracked leather, mottled, punctuated with hideous warts of a multitude of sizes. Her breasts were enlarged but sagged to her waist unevenly and her arms hung wrong -- lower than they should as well. Her hands were thick and gnarled, the nails curled into jaggedly chipped claws. She peered into the water and saw her face hideously transformed, beyond her fortitude to examine.

Her mind numbing, she slid herself into the water to wash. It burned her skin like a poorly mixed salve on bramble thorn pricks, but a thousand fold worse. She took it as penance, trying to rid herself of feeling... herself. Shedding blood, urine, and excrement uncontrollably into the stream, she hugged herself tight, trying to crush what she had become back into her former petite form, keening wildly. She stood there for some time, unceasing, while the sun cleared the trees and was well into its flight back down below the earth.

A voice broke her from her reverie. It was her own, singing nursery rhymes and babbling baby talk, talking to the birds and the trees, weeping for forgiveness. There was another voice, too. She raised herself from the constant pain of the river and looked around. The voice came closer but moved around as if uncertain as to where exactly it was going. It was her mother's voice, wracked with tears, calling for her or her brother.

Little Red hopped the stream and ran back towards the cottage, afraid to face her mother, afraid what she might do to her mother. She wanted to die but couldn't think how to do it. Her body seemed to be able to withstand any torture it underwent. Before she reached the cottage, though, she realized her mother would very likely head there if she hadn't yet. Red broke down onto her knees, crying. She felt helpless.

She decided to chance the cottage. She'd go to sleep in her grandmother's bed and everything would be better when she woke up. Her stomach gurgled angrily but she pointedly ignored it. She would not succumb again. Her new body could withstand the trial; and if it couldn't, perhaps she would have blessed death.

The cottage was empty, her brother's corpse absent, his mess tidied; even the bed was made. Perhaps life really was fixing itself -- she'd fallen prey to some wicked visions and they were fading now. She curled into the bed and fell asleep, fighting hard to retain a glimmer of hope.

When she next came to, she had a pounding headache. Her mouth was dry and her skin was on fire. She craved liquid. She stumbled blindly into the kitchen and pulled a pitcher of water out of the cupboards and turned around to see her mother trapped in a cage. She dropped the pitcher and it shattered. Her mother looked up at her and sobbed quietly.

"Mother?" she screeched. "Mother!? We have to get you out of here!"

"Little Red... not so little anymore. I'm so sorry!"

"Oh, Mother, I'm so sorry! I heard you in the forest and ran away -- I was afraid I might do something. Did the ogre get you or did... do I just not remember?"

"Your father caught me. I was --"

"Father!"

"He didn't tell you?"

"He... didn't talk with me. My God, my God..." She sat down on the floor, disregarding the ceramic shards slicing through her thickened hide, pulled her arms around her knees and began to rock back and forth. "Father..."

"He caught me in the forest. I'd come looking for you -- your sister wanted to mount a search party but I told her that I... I don't know what I was thinking... I just wasn't willing to believe anything had happened to you. I came to the cabin and saw your clothes mauled on the floor and your poor brother maimed so horribly. I was knocked straight out of my mind and went wandering in the forest, disbelieving. I don't think I'm in my right mind yet. You don't exist, really. I'm having a fever, you see -- I'm home right now and your sister is taking care of me while you and your brother do chores.... I'll be well soon, though, and this will all be gone. I even have some hope that your father is alive, now. Maybe he's just been lost in the forest... or I've... I've had this fever for longer than I'm thinking and he's never really been gone..."

"Mother..."

"No! Shut up! I tell you you don't exist! Go away!" Her mother threw herself into the corner of her cage and refused to utter another sound.

"Sister should be here soon and it will all be over. Then you can wake up from your fever, Mama."

The ogre took that moment to make his presence known. He stepped in from outside. Little Red jumped to her feet, slicing herself more on the broken crockery. "Father!" she cried condemningly.

He simply looked at her mother and at the floor before Little Red. Red looked down and saw the floor coated with blood, only some little of it hers. The pitcher had not been holding water. She felt anew the thirst that echoed through every pore of her body, pounding more and more slowly, more and more strongly. "Water..."

Her father shook his head. "Little Red..."

"I'm not your Little Red, I'm a monster! What in the name of creation have you done to us? How did we come to this?"

He looked at her mother, unmoving. "I was out in the forest looking for wood to carve. I wandered far, searching for the perfect specimen. Several days away I came upon a strange sort of tree and was drawn toward it. While I was contemplating where to make my cuts to bring a piece home an ogress came upon me. She... overpowered me and dragged me to her hut where she tortured me. Eventually she turned me into an ogre. When she freed me I determined to destroy her but I did not see her again. I wandered for some time and this wolf befriended me. I wandered farther and farther afield and eventually found this forest again and patrolled it for some time. When I saw Little Red... my senses left me. I've been getting worse." He continued to stare into space, a fortress that had been taken by the enemy too many times, no strength left for apologies, hardly resisting the beast when it came upon him. Her mother moved not at all as well. The wolf was growling.

Her father took the cue. "I think your sister has her mob and is approaching. I feel no need to kill more and I will not allow myself to die before finding the witch that crumbled my world." The wolf nipped at his heel and he kicked at it offhandedly sending it sprawling. "I'm going to leave. I... would have you two join me." The wolf growled and leapt at the cage, breaking it. In one swift and graceful motion it snapped her mother's neck and wrenched the head free.

Her father exploded into motion, grabbing the wolf's tail and swinging it against the wall. As it flew through the air its shape changed, fur shedding into nothingness, skin boiling and stretching, bones cracking as it gained an upright posture. It bounced off the wall onto its feet, unharmed, fully three feet taller than her father.

"You --" he started.

"You ungrateful wretch! You tried to steal from me and yet I spared you and gave you this power and you've done nothing but run away and whine about it. I'll destroy your last ties in this world and perhaps then you," the elder ogress roared.

He snarled gutturally and charged her, claws brandished outwards to slash at her face. Little Red ran out the door straight into the mob that had been gathering.

She shouted to her sister, "Stay! Your death is inside!" The mob saw only her monstrous visage. They fell back suspecting some trap. She hesitated, looking at each of them, hope catching hard and rough in her throat. In the mob were the blacksmith and his sons.

"Jimmy!" she cried, and ran towards him. "I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to kill you!" In a split moment she was impaled upon his pitchfork. She grabbed it reflexively, confused. In that confusion, the mob was upon her -- her arms and legs were hewn from her, her skin pierced and rent. After she was ripped to sufficient shreds, her corpse was burned. The mob then moved on to the house, finding her mother dead, a large ogre quartered and defiled, and a wolf jumping out the window.