UNDER LITTLE RED’S HOOD
-by Maggie Cassidy-Brinn
Farming is the horniest profession. The people of the land? Are people of the hand job. Farmers pinch cow nipples, fondle eggs still warm from chicken coochie, press seeds into the moistness of soil and water them with spectacular, ejaculatory sprays. Tractors and power tools are stand-ins for dicks and every handmade loaf of bread is a cunt, rough on the outside, soft within, its scent a desperately blatant seduction.
Red cuts off two slices and slathers them with butter. They call her Red for her hair, a frizzy, red bun. Her eyes are as brown as her crust and her skin glistens wet like milk. The oven has warmed the kitchen. Sweat pearls on Red’s upper lip and darkens the underarms of her blouse.
“Eat up,” she says. “It’s fresh.”
Her guest takes a bite. The warmth of the kitchen, of Red, fills her mouth. The melted butter catches on her upper lip.
“Delicious,” she groans, licking it off. “Wow.”
Red’s lips curl into a smile. “Oh, it’s nothing,” she murmurs, enjoying the flattery. It feels like a feat to please this strange guest, who is clearly the citiest of city bitches. This stranger’s platform boots weren’t designed for trudging through dung. The angles of her jacket and pants are not borrowed from nature; they’re the fantasy of rich gay men in Paris. Her face too looks supernaturally designed. Her lips are large and peaked, her eyes wide, her hair shaved down to the skull.
“It’s something,” the stranger says. She doesn’t smoke; she was born with that throaty, bluesy voice. “You’re going to ruin me.”
The door swings open.
“Well, you have to go again, she’s too far gone, ugh, you know how she gets, can’t tell her fuck-all when she – oh!” The woman who has burst in with the wind catches sight of the stranger. She tries to perk her face into politeness, but anger and exhaustion are too deeply grooved around her eyes and mouth. Even the bone of her nose seems unhappy. She is a little out of breath and smells like a wet dog.
“Mama.” Red jumps up from the table. “This is Dionne. She was walking around the area and got lost.”
The stranger flashes a honey-soaked smile.
“I was heading towards Grimperot Hood,” the stranger says. “And then, these hills, these meadows, my God, the wildflowers... I suppose I got so carried away, I missed the turnoff.”
“Those are funny shoes for a walk,” the mother says. “And you won’t reach the Hood now before it gets dark.”
“I can show you,” Red volunteers. “There’s a shortcut through the forest.”
The mother frowns. Red bows her head, asks who wants coffee, and retreats into the kitchen.
The mother slams the door shut, shrugs off her denim, sequined jacket, and interrogates the stranger until Red comes back with the coffee. She stirs in three spoons of sugar and turns to her daughter. “You have to go visit your grandmother.”
“Nana?” Red sits down beside her mother, across from the stranger, without removing her apron. Her apron is a rag, a faded primrose pattern that obscures her curves. “I was just there.”
“That’s what I was trying to say,” the mother scolds. “She won’t stop asking for you; she’s convinced you haven’t been round in months. You know how she gets. Just too far gone.” The mother shakes her head, staring into her coffee cup, her face stiff and grim. Her eyes have the dullness of one who’s always seen behind the curtain, been the practical one, never been swept into a moment of absurd frivolity. The stranger can imagine how she would taste, the muscle and gristle and bone.
“Does your grandmother live nearby?” the stranger asks. “I could go with you. You can point me towards the Hood.”
The logic is flawless. The mother has no choice but to set about preparing Red a basket for her grandmother: cake, butter, wine. “So you don’t arrive empty-handed. You know how she gets.”
It is late afternoon in late October. The sun squats on the hills like a distant queen, pink scepter balanced on her knees, orange cloak pooling from her feet. The forest responds in a blaze of yellows and reds, glorious feathers, a sacrifice. Animals are sacrificed and burned so that their smoke can feed the Gods. The stranger feeds on the smoke of the autumn leaves. For yes, she is a God.
“Did you know that I am Bacchus incarnate?” she asks Red. Fallen branches crack under her feet. The wind is strong today.
Red has traded her apron for a red woolen hooded coat. It is bulky and falls mid-calf, revealing white ribbed socks above her sneakers. The stranger watches her ankles as she flinches away. Not, she realizes, because the girl is afraid of standing next to a God, but because she didn’t understand the reference and feels embarrassed by mouthfuls of Greek and Latin syllables.
“Let me explain.” The stranger pauses in the path.
Red turns back, her smile indulgent but with a trace of farmgirl exasperation.
“We should pick some flowers,” the stranger says. “For your Nana. What is wine without flowers?”
“It’s getting late,” Red demurs, glancing at the dissolving sun.
“How long does it take to pick a flower?” the stranger teases. She begins walking up the hillside above the dirt path. The grass is tall and dying; she crushes it beneath her boots. “Come on.”
She doesn’t look back. Soon enough, she hears footsteps rushing behind her.
“You’re going to get lost again!” Red reproaches.
The stranger spins around with a fistful of wild peonies. She holds the flowers up to Red’s chin. A wild peony has three green, pink-tipped tongues in the middle, surrounded by fuzzy yellow fingers and a bloody shell of petals. “Smell.”
Red sinks her nose into the blossoms. “Beautiful,” she breathes.
The stranger presses the peonies more deeply into the girl’s face and reaches for her hip to pull her closer, making her breath hitch.
“What...”
“Shhh,” the stranger hushes her, whispering into her ear. “You’re right, they are beautiful.” Her voice is gravel soaked in bourbon. “Dripping beauty. It’s an embarrassment, it’s an abundance. It’s proof that God exists. Who made these beautiful changeable things, if not one who is beautiful and unchangeable?” Her voice braids into the scent of the wild peonies, clouding Red’s mind, sinking her forehead to rest in the crook of the stranger’s swanlike neck.
Red’s torso beneath her red coat is both muscular and soft. She is trembling, slightly.
“You’re a romantic,” she sighs, making the stranger laugh.
“False.” The stranger wraps an arm around her waist, clawing her fingers over her hip bone. “I’m a mythomaniac debauchee. But I respect my elders.” She drops the bouquet into Red’s basket. “Tell me more about your grandmother,” she urges, leading her farther from the path.
The sun sinks behind the hills and the forest cools into shadow as Red talks. She lives alone with her mother, managing the farm. Since she gave up going to the farce of a village school, there’s never much company around except for her grandmother, her most trusted confidante, but now Nana’s mind is slipping. The stranger can hear loneliness shivering in the girl’s words like a monster under the bed, filing its teeth. She sniffs for undercurrents in Red’s scent, trying to find out how the girl tends her loneliness. Does she tuck it out of sight, under her red wool coat? Or does she feed it with scraps of longing? Does she plan, soon, to break free?
“This is Nana’s house,” Red says, pausing before a wood cabin. “The main road is just a little farther, straight ahead. Then you turn left and walk up and you’ll see the signs for the Hood.”
No other houses are in eyesight. The cabin stands alone in a small clearing, a one-story box, trimmed in yellow. An iron rooster weathervane on its roof points South. A few old sheds and stalls languish around the clearing, empty, their walls rotting, roofs bowing.
“Straight ahead?” the stranger asks, squinting at the path that leads to the road. It disappears into the darkness.
Red bites the side of her thumb. “I didn’t think it would be so late. You can call a taxi once you get to the road, it’s better reception there. You have a phone, right?”
The stranger presses closer, resting her fingertips on the girl’s red sleeve. Her nails are long, gunmetal silver and filed to points. “It’s so dark,” she whispers.
Red catches her breath. The stranger’s eyes glow strangely, the color of greenstone. Red shrugs, as if shaking off some unwelcome thought, and invites her to come in for a strengthening snack before heading into the night. “So, Nana - she gets nervous around new people, is all,” Red says, her hand on the doorknob. “You have to take her as she is.” She is riling herself up in preemptive defense. A line has been drawn, and Red is pledging her grandmother’s side. The stranger is intrigued, wants to meet this famous grandmother, is salivating at the prospect.
“Nana,” Red calls, switching on a light to illuminate a room full of faces: portraits of white men, statuettes of black servants, a grinning Mickey Mouse clock. They all have round, empty eyes. “Nana, it’s me.”
It smells like old cooking oil. Then a woman shuffles in who looks like burnt bacon – tall and bent and brittle. Her words crunch between her teeth. “Where have you been! Too busy chasing boys to visit your old Nana? Terrible! You tricky, terrible sweetmeat.” She grabs Red’s shoulders and kisses her on either cheek, back and forth, three, four, five times. “I expected you hours ago! Little red lollipops like you shouldn’t be running around the woods so late.”
“Look, Nana. I brought you some treats.”
The grandmother grunts and smacks her lips as Red unpacks the basket and slices some ham to eat with the buttered cake. She sits at the table to take a greedy bite, then notices the stranger. There is a flash in her eyes. It is a spark of joy. Here is something new to destroy.
“What is that?” she asks, chewing, contempt dripping off her syllables like grease.
“She got lost,” Red says softly, as if to be discreet. Her hands are on her grandmother’s shoulders, and she leans forward so that her lips nearly brush her grandmother’s ear. “She’s trying to get into town.”
“Town.” The grandmother’s lips pull back and she shivers, enjoying her own disgust. “Town? Where is she going? The circus?”
“Why yes,” the stranger answers, not missing a beat. “I’m a dancing bear. And you? Lion tamer, I suppose. Or do you see yourself as the Ringmaster? But where’s your whip, Nana? Lost?” There is a moment of silence, drummed by the indefatigable Mickey Mouse clock. “Red – or should I say, lollipop,” the stranger laughs, sitting down beside the grandmother. “How about some of that wine?”
The conversation revolves in a dreamy whirlpool around the women, as the stranger explains that she lost her path and fears the walk through the dark wood, and the grandmother sneers at the stranger’s incompetence, then forgets who she is, and the stranger explains it all again. The bottle of wine is on the table. The stranger tops off Red’s glass as quickly as she can drink it while Nana nurses a pine brandy. It is cold in the cabin. Red doesn’t remove that bulky red coat.
Finally, Red cuts through the corkscrew of words by dropping their dishes into the sink with a clatter. “You should stay the night here.” She sounds resigned. Perhaps it masks excitement. Or else she wants to keep this curious specimen around for her and Nana to gawk at. After all, she has been raised to be hospitable, to demonstrate at every opportunity the virtue of the countryside, her and Nana’s innate superiority to anything urban or new.
The stranger is shown into the guest room, but after the door clicks shut, she does not sit. She paces. She waits. She is waiting for night to fall and the birds to sleep. Through her window the rotting foliage sways, windblown, under the swollen moon. She watches clouds drift past until they swallow the moon entirely, deepening the shadow over the cabin. She tiptoes into the hall. There is Nana’s door. The stranger slides it open.
“Oh, granny,” she calls in a whispering singsong, poking her nose around the door. “Are you awake?”
She isn’t but wakes quickly enough when the stranger pounces on her. Her squawk is muffled by a pillow. She suffocates as the stranger licks inside her ear, tasting the salty jam deep in her eardrum. Once she stops thrashing, the stranger turns to the rest of her. Nana is salty and crunchy, soaked in schnapps and sizzled in lard. Comfort food.
The stranger undresses and licks the last drops from her fingers and wrists. Nana’s bones are already sucked clean. She tosses them under the bed.
It is the final hour before dawn breaks, when stillness and darkness blanket the woods. The stranger finds the grandmother’s nightgown flung in the corner and slips it on. The old beige silk feels cool against her naked skin. On the blood-stained pillow lies a silken nightcap, fastened around the brim with a wide lavender ribbon. She puts that on too and chews on the nightgown’s lace collar, whetting her appetite. Where Nana was crunchy, Red will be soft and firm. Where Nana was oily, Red will be freely flowing cream, churned fresh from the cow. Desire bubbles up within her. She wails.
“Nana?” Red’s feet pat down the hall. “Are you alright?”
The stranger slips under the covers, pulling them over her chin, and the cap down over her eyebrows. She moans and sniffs.
“Nana?” The door bursts open and Red tumbles in, squinting in the dark, disoriented. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m cold,” the stranger coughs. “Why is it so cold?”
“Nana, are you alright?”
“No! Come here, lie next to me and warm me up.”
Red takes a step back towards the door. The stranger cannot see her expression in the darkness. “I’ll get you another blanket.”
She explodes into a coughing fit. “I don’t want a blanket!” she gasps. “Get into this bed!”
But Red backs into the hallway, out of sight. The stranger stops the coughing and moaning and coils back into herself, waiting. After a minute, Red returns, holding her red wool coat.
“Your blankets are too flimsy,” she chides. “Here, my coat will warm you up.”
“No,” the stranger whispers. “Lie next to me.”
Red sighs and tosses her coat aside. “Fine.” She sits down on the bed, her back to the stranger, taking off her slippers. “You sound awful.” As she lifts her feet and slides under the blankets, the stranger turns away, hiding her face. “Are you sick?” The girl lays a finger on her Nana’s shoulder and – a sudden blow – it is the stranger, the God, the Swan, the Bull, the Burning Bush, who whips back towards her, grabbing her neck and digging nails into her flesh.
The stranger presses a hand across Red’s mouth and inspects her catch. At last, the girl’s curves are freed from their red veil. She has a farmer’s body, strong from rural labor and thick from rural food. Her nipples stand like stems on fruit; her hips are a basket of treats. The stranger can see all of her, unhidden under a nightie that is nearly sheer, a conspicuously non-utilitarian slip. This is a fabric for one who yearns for unknown heights. She is stiff, every muscle tensed, shaking.
“You...” she whimpers through the stranger’s fingers. The stranger tightens her grip; the girl’s breath is hot on her palm. “Ai, Nana, you have big arms.”
The stranger laughs, delighted at the unexpected game. She lowers her face close enough to smell the wetness of the girl’s eyes.
“All the better to hug you with.”
Red’s breath is heavy. She doesn’t blink.
“Ai, Nana, you have big eyes.”
The stranger flutters the tips of her eyelashes down Red’s neck.
“All the better to see you with.”
The girl does not need to be restrained. She isn’t going to scream.
“Ai, Nana, you have big hands.” Her eyes close. Her back arches.
The stranger nibbles Red’s ear and purrs, “All the better to grab you with.”
“Ai, Nana, you have big teeth.”
The stranger leaps on top of Red, kneeling on her thighs and pressing her arms against the bed. She presses her nose against the girl’s temple, inhaling shampoo and sweat. Baring her teeth, she nips the tip of the girl’s chin, the crook and clavicle of her neck. Her teeth leave marks, tattooing a line down Red’s breast, her waist, her hip, her inner thigh.
“All the better to eat you with,” she growls, and she dives under Red’s hood, and bites, and slurps, and swallows her whole.
It is just before sunrise. The stranger’s mouth is full of firm, wet flesh. Red is howling at the moon.
After ravishing the girl, the stranger falls into a heavy, satiated sleep. Her snores rattle through the clearing. The morning’s half over by the time she wakes up. Red is gone. She is alone in the bed and her stomach aches.
She hoists herself to her feet and finds her way to the grandmother’s bathroom. The tiles on the floor and walls are a poisonous shade of pink. She splashes water on her face, but the cramps in her stomach intensify. That greasy grandmother is churning her gut, sending acid up her throat. She lifts the old nightgown and sees her stomach bulging in odd shapes.
The walls begin to spin as voices become audible outside the cabin. That’s Red, crying. Wasn’t she eaten? No. Someone is with her. Some man. Some man with a booming baritone voice is chuckling, humming, consoling the girl.
She hears the click of a gun being loaded.
So that’s how it ends. Red isn’t a dreamer. She does not pine for breathless adventures in distant lands. Red is satisfied with her mother’s wine and her hunter’s gun.
She holds onto the edge of the sink and looks into the mirror, trying to steady her vision. A drained, pale face stares back. She whines. That is not the face of a glittering God. There is no God, as everyone already knows. The face staring back at her from the mirror is that of a human girl. A scared-looking girl. A girl with frizzy, red hair sticking out every which way from her head.
She feels weighted, as if her stomach has been filled with rocks. Nana gets heavier and heavier in her stomach, making her retch over the sink, making the walls whirl, a hellish merry-go-round. She slides to the floor, clutching at her red hair. All her skin feels hairy, dirty, coated with fuzz. Her skin is getting tighter and thinner, stretching around the half-digested carcass expanding in her belly.
Footsteps approach the bathroom door, and she tries to rise to her hands and knees, but the weight of her stomach drags her down and she collapses.
They find the big bad wolf curled on the bathroom floor, emaciated and bloated, its fur patchy, its eyes glazed over with death.
Red squeals and jumps into the hunter’s arms. He holds her, patting her back with reassuring strength. Red takes a shower and feeds the hunter some buttered cake and makes herself a pledge to shave her legs every day, even in the winter. She kept her promise, and never ever strayed from the path again.
END
Maggie Cassidy-Brinn writes slipstream and literary fiction with a queer, feminist slant. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and got a PhD in philosophy at the University of Vienna. Born in Los Angeles, she went on to play house in Seattle, New York City, northern Ghana, and Papua New Guinea, and currently lives in Vienna with her partner and two small children.