Disclaimer: I don't own Little Red Riding Hood
Teaser: no one knows what happened to Red Riding Hood
Rated: PG-13 for heavy innuendo
Something Wicked This Way Comes
"How do I leave?"
He smiles at her, trailing a long nail down her cheek, ignoring the flecks of dirt that crust and clot under his skin. She rests against his chest, hand hanging limply on his bare skin. She shivers, naked body vulnerable in the wind. He makes no move to warm her.
"You want to leave?" he asks, tugging her thick red cloak from her shoulders. She's bare completely now, naked and young and glorious. "Leave me?"
Again, she shivers. Her eyes—dark in her bright face—turn to look down the dark, dark path. It twists and turns into darkness under the canopy of trees that create the woods. Why had she come down this path? she wonders. Why can't she remember?
Where is her basket?
"You don't want to," he tells her and his kisses are hot, hot, hot on her skin. She moans, gasps—oh! oh!—and holds him as if she would never let go.
Dark boy she found in the forest, she thinks. He met her there, drowned her in his shady, wolf-eyes. Hunted her like a predator stalking his prey and when he kissed her she let him. She knows that she mustn't stray from the path, talk to strangers, but she did not care when she was being kissed. She threw herself upon him and they sank into the earth and tore at clothes.
"What's a grandmother to you anyway?" he asks. He devours her soul and eats her flesh. She revels in the dying, arching and screaming, and holds him to her chest, screaming one, long hissing scream as his tongue flicks across her skin.
Grandmother… her mind summons, unbidden. An old, haggard woman hunched in her bed waiting for her granddaughter to arrive. Coughing, gagging on old age as she bravely holds on thinking: my granddaughter will be here soon… my little Red will be here soon… oh why isn't she here?
"No," she pulls away, rolling away. Without thinking she stands and runs. Her legs are weakened and willowy. They give out beneath her and she falls. Mud cakes her naked, exposed flesh. She cries, sobs, at her uselessness.
He—dark, wolf-boy who captured her—picks her up and carries her back to the tree where they had been resting. She beats against him, useless fists, small, tiny, pale. The innocent child inside her recoils. The woman laughs.
She stops. She doesn't have the energy to fight anymore. Useless wails fill her head and she clamps them down. "How long have I been here?"
"Days," he answers contently. His hands are possessive on her stomach. She shivers.
"Days… grandmother…" Her thoughts are jumbled in her head, a mess, a slew, of broken fragments of her mind, sharp against her cranium. She cannot remember where to go and why she is going. He is so warm against her…
"You will not leave," he tells her and his hands moves up along her body, owning her earthly flesh even as her soul fades into black. "You will stay with me. These woods are mine and I own everything inside…"
"Yes… yes…" she pants, taking his hand and directing him where to go. Touch me, touch me, her mind screams. Her blood sings with it and she cannot pull away. Everything else fades to dark. The world, her duty, grandmother. There is nothing but the thought of being touched.
His hands mold her body and she shudders with the knowledge. Her back is pressed into the soft wool of her red cape. Who had given it to her? Distantly, she remembers a mother and father… but they don't matter as his hands glide along her skin.
"You're mine," he tells her. She nods jerkily. She will promise anything. "You will not leave. They banished me, your people, and now you will stay with me."
She shudders. Wicked… wicked, he is wicked. Her mind knows this. Her heart does not. Her body does not. She loves the feeling, the touch. The dark tinge of it. "Yes. Yes. No leaving."
As she whimpers against him, he picks up her red cloak to look at it. With a small frown he flicks it away. It settles into the darkness, a bright splash of blood against the dark, dark, dark. He laughs hollowly.
"You cannot leave," he then points out as he draws her lips to his. "You do not know the way."
Something inside her is fading. She is fading. Hollow and dead. Her fingers work into his dirty, grimy hair. She does not let go. Her head spins and darkness swarms her vision. Her eyes flutter close and she lets him have her. Lets him take her.
When she opens her eyes she remembers nothing. She rests against him, his back pressed against a tree. Her head is nuzzled in his neck. She blinks and looks up, looks at him in surprise.
"How do I leave?" she asks.
Notes: This is based on the idea my English teacher told me. She said that Little Red Riding Hood symbolized the innocent, virgin maiden and the wolf was the male sex-drive. The entire myth was basically a warning for young girls to stay away from unknown men.