Ladle Rat Rotten Hut

by Cameron Jace

  Copyright © 2012 Akmal Eldin Farouk Ali Shebl

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All facts concerning fairy tales publication dates, scripts, and historical events mentioned in this book are true. The interpretations and fantasy elements aren’t. They are the author’s imagination.

  Ladle Rat Rotten Hut

  as told by Little Red Riding Hood

  Dear Diary,

  Once upon a time, there were wolves outside my bedroom’s window. It was midnight. They were Knock-knock-knocking, and sniff-sniff-sniffing while I cringed under my white blanket, my teeth chat-chat-chattering.

  Alone in bed in the ramshackle and vulnerable house, cocooning myself under my blanket, I didn't know how to escape them. I kept trying to push my head against the bed sheets, wanting to bury it into the mattress like an Ostrich buries its head in the sand.

  The clock kept tick-tick-ticking.

  Hiding in the fog outside, the wolves howled in the still of the night, sending shivers through my spine. I wet my bed with my drool, listening to them scratching the glass on my window.

  Scratch, scrrrratch, scratching.

  What an awful noise. It sounded like a slow, long ‘crrrreeeeee’ that would end with the letter P.

  The wolves came every night, and they never left.

  Not until they heard my mother’s footsteps by the door. Sometimes, she came back too late from working in the forest.

  By then, I didn’t know what my mother did for living. And if I only knew.

  I was only ten. I remember how she woke up every morning, taking care of the house. Then, she went out to the garden to water the trees: the Lone Cypress tree, the Oak tree, and above all her favorite Fortune Cookie tree.

  The Fortune Cookie tree was high enough to disappear into the clouds. I believed it could reach for the heavens, but I wasn’t allowed to climb up or even touch it. The tree was wide at the base, and it demanded an incredible amount of watering. However, it wasn’t water that quenched its thirst. Our tree drank wine. Red wine.

  It was a special kind of wine. My mom brought it with her when she came back every day.

  The thing I didn’t know by then was that no such Fortune Cookie existed elsewhere but in our garden.

  Whether it was autumn, winter, spring or summer, our tree was always thirsty. It didn’t matter if it were a rainy day or a sunny one, if the wind almost puffed away our house, or if it settled to a lovely summer breeze allowing the butterflies to flutter around.

  It just didn’t matter.

  The tree needed wine, and my mother couldn’t live without the Fortune Cookies. I used to call it the Secret Mysterious Matter of my Mother and the Tree with the Fortune Cookies Outside the house. I couldn't think of a shorter name.

  Only one fortune cookie fell from the tree everyday.

  Smiling, my mother picked it up, and crashed it open with our kitchen ladle.

  My mother read the piece of paper and sighed. Sometimes, she smiled afterward. Other times, she made irritable faces. Whatever her expression was, she ended up preparing herself to go out to the forest, doing what she was meant to do.

  She wore her yellow hood, picked up one of her wicker baskets, warned me of opening the door for strangers while she was out, and then left. She just walked out in the coldest of winters under the thickest snow to deliver a basket.

  On her way to the forest, she bought wine and cakes, promising a payment to the seller on her way back from the forest. A promise she always fulfilled.

  Then, she started her dangerous journey into the Black Forest; a place that elders and children avoided for the horrible stories they heard about it. They said that there were gigantic ants, spiders, and frogs in the forest. I heard rumors about three-headed dogs, two-trunk elephants, and an evil, evil, evil witch that ate little children for breakfast.

  But I knew better. Even though I was naive, I wasn’t that naïve. Everybody was afraid of the wolves. Not the one-eyed wolves, not three-legged wolves, but the hairy and hungry wolves.

  When my mother returned home from her journey, the tree rewarded her with fruits and vegetables, enough for a day or two. The tree blessed my mother’s successful journey and helped us from starving.

  One day, the garden rewarded us with meat: a three-legged goat that my mother cooked for us in our big oven - one of the few things my granma left behind before she left many years ago. The meat was delicious, and it satisfied my hunger for weeks. I loved meat. I preferred it raw, but my mother insisted that it had to be cooked.

  Sometimes, my mother’s journey took longer than expected, and she ended up coming home after sunset, or almost midnight.

  That was when the wolves rose out of the night and surrounded the house, trying to enter my room while I was all alone.

  Whenever I told my mother about them, she told me that I should be stronger, that soon I will be sixteen, and the wolves would be scared of me, not the other way around. Until then, I was safe, as long as I stayed locked in the house.

  I laughed. My poor, hard-working mother was so naïve. There was no way I could scare these wolves away. I was just a lonely girl without friends who hid under a blanket.

  One day, when the sun was up, and I was alone, playing with my squirrel friends, someone knocked on my door.

  Knock-Knock-knock.

  My mother had warned me of strangers knocking on my door. She said it could be the wolves, disguised in the form of humans.

  I wasn’t going to open, but when I asked who it was, a girl responded on the other side. I asked her to bow down and step away so I can see her through the keyhole.

  She did.

  I asked her to show me her paws – I meant her hands.

  She did.

  She was a real girl, and she had human hands. Her voice was sweet, and I had no friends. I couldn’t imagine when another girl would come knocking on my door again. What if we could play together?

  I opened the door.

  She asked me if she could rest for a while.

  “I can’t,” I said, standing by the door. “My mother told me not to talk or let strangers inside.”

  “Oh,” The pale girl panted. She looked worried, as if running away from something. She didn’t need to just rest. She wanted to hide from something. “I am not the Big Bad Wolf, you know.” She said, and her eyes gleamed with a tinge of gold suddenly.

  My eyes widened with horror. It wasn’t just the color of her eyes that worried me. How did she know about the wolves? I was speechless.

  “Look,” She peeked over my shoulder, noticing my mother’s wine on the kitchen’s table. “Use the wine,” She leaned forward, and whispered to me. “The red, red, red wine.”

  “What?”

  “The wine your mother brings home to feed the tree,” The girl said. “Use it."

  “I don’t understand. Who are you?” How did she know about that?

  “My mother calls me Shew,” She said, smiling. She had a fabulous smile. If only she wasn’t that pale. “I have to go.” She said, and disappeared behind the bushes. She moved rather quickly. I thought I didn’t actually see her walk away. She just disappeared as I listened to the sounds of horses and carriages in the distance, probably going after her. I closed the door, friendless and lonely like always.

  Waiting for my mother that night, I tucked the bottle of wine under the blanket with me.

  “Use the red, red, red wine,” I whispered to myself, tapping the bottle thoughtfully. “What the tick-tack-tock did she mean?” I furrowed my eyebrows, hearing the wolves outside my window.

  Tick. Tick. Tinnnnnn.

&
nbsp; The clock on the wall stroke midnight, and my mother wasn’t home yet. What took her so long? What did my mother have to do in the forest?

  Fear crawled on my skin. I felt as if trapped inside that skin, as if I just wanted to rip myself apart and become what I really was.

  I peeked from under the blanket, and saw one of the wolves, scrrraching at the window.

  Crrrinnnnge.

  Its yellow, slitted eyes were staring at me. I could see a smirk on its face as if it were human. It broke the stare, howling under at the full moon above.

  No!

  I tucked myself back under the covers, and plucked the bottle open.

  Pong!

  I never drank wine before. I was too young for that. I remember hearing stories about how wine made the mind go whiz and whack, how it turned people into sleepwalking demons until its effect wore off.

  Maybe that was what I needed until my mother came back. I hoped that she’d register my fear and use one of our many tree-chopping tools in the garden, chopping their heads off, one by one.

  Chop. Chop. Chop. I liked the sound of that.

  I gulped down the wine, and the red liquid spread through my chest. Drinking under the blanket was awkward, but I managed to position my mouth to the bottle.

  I drank and drank, wishing the howling would stop.

  Glock. Glock. Glock.

  I started feeling dizzy, wondering if I were counting sheep.

  Suddenly, the bed moved. It swirled around the room like an angry flying carpet. The howling didn’t stop, but it sounded muffled and slow as if the wolves went under water.

  Awooooooooo. Awooooooo.

  What was happening to me?

  My vision blurred, my tongue slurred, and I found myself smiling with crossed eyes like a fool. Was this the part when the wolves broke the glass, got into my room, and ate me?

  Yum. Yum. Yum.

  Then I felt hot, as if the sun woke up at midnight and broke into my room. The heat bothered me. I couldn’t hide under the blanket on the flying bed no more.

  I straightened up on my knees, spreading my arms while holding the blanket with the tips of my fingers, roaring nonsense words. I looked crazy and scary while I was just drunk and bothered.

  To my surprise, the bed wasn’t flying. Nothing was moving in my room. The wine caused me to imagine things.

  But something else happened. The howling stopped.

  I saw the wolves with their paws against the window, and their dimmed yellow eyes staring at me in horror.

  What?

  Even the clock stopped ticking.

  Brrrokkk.

  The wolves looked like chickens in a barn, afraid it was their turn for the slaughter. It was as if they turned into chicken, and I turned into a wolf.

  Looking in mirror on the wall, I saw myself with the white blanket wrapped around my head, looking like a freaking ghost. I winced at my reflection and gasped. The wolves gasped with me, placing their worried paws on their mouths.

  My eyes were reddened from the wine I drank, and I looked creepy as if the one in the mirror wasn’t me. I started feeling dizzy and sleepy. The blanket I wrapped around me was soaked in the red wine that I had spilled from the bottle. I looked like wearing a red hood, and it scared the rotten apples out of them. I wondered why they were so afraid of the red hood.

  But it didn’t matter. The pale girl was right. The wine worked. Feeling tired, I fell asleep, unafraid of the wolves for the first time in my life

  That day, when my mother came home, she punished me for drinking. She must have thought I was some kind of an addict or something. But I wasn’t sad about it because I didn’t need her to shush the wolves away anymore. I had my own brilliant method. Thanks to the pale girl.

  Still, I didn’t know what was in store for me.

  When I turned sixteen, my mother told me that I was now old enough to help her bring bread to the table. She said that she would tell me why she was going to the forest every day, and that it was time for me to take over. I was so excited. It meant that I would go out to the forest myself – since I wasn’t afraid of wolves anymore.

  It was Christmas Eve, the night that changed my life – well, not just mine.

  “You know why today is a special day?” My mother asked over the kitchen table. I was playing with a butterfly I kept in a jar.

  “It’s Christmas, mother,” I hoorayed, spreading my arms in the air. “Will you let me chop a Christmas tree this year? I want to chop trees,” I pulled out one of our strange tree cutting tools, which was made of wood and an arched blade. “Chop. Chop. Chop.” I waved the tool, swooshing in the air. It was a dangerous thing to do, but somehow my mother didn’t mind.

  “Put that down,” She said. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

  “But you never hurt yourself, mother,” I said, making a sad face. “and you have a lot of these weapons.”

  My mother laughed, “They are not weapons. They are tree-cutting tools. I use them to take care of our garden.”

  “So will you let me? Please. Please. Pleath?”

  “I will,” She smiled, not looking one day older than me. My mother looked like she was sixteen years old. Always did. Always will. How did a funny, perky, and fun-loving woman like her still look so young? I surely wished I’d still looked that young when I grew older. When my mother went out to the forest, she tried her best to look older, sometimes not combing her hair and not taking care of her face. Her best trick was hiding under the shades of her yellow hood. “But first, I have to tell you how special today is.” She said.

  “I already know,” I put the tool away. “It’s Christmas, the 24th day in December.”

  “Smart girl. And what else?”

  “We get to chop a Christmas tree, and light it up with candles inside the house,” I scratched my head. “We should invite relatives and celebrate…” I raised my hands in the air, ready to jump, but then stopped, “something?” My eyes crossed without me wanting to. It happened momentarily. I was used to it. The squirrels laughed at me when this happened, but my mother said that it was part of my charm, being perky and lovable – and occasionally cross-eyed? Maybe. “But what is it that we’re celebrating on the 24th, mother?”

  “A lot of things,” She said. “But there is one thing that you should know about, because it concerns you.”

  “What? You’re celebrating me?” I said happily. No one celebrated me before.

  “I’d celebrate you every day of my life, darling. You’re just irresistible,” She chewed on the last words. My mother loved me, but sometimes I felt that I annoyed her, as if she wanted to choke me, crumble me, and crash me like the fortune cookies on the table. Crash. Crash. Crash. Thankfully, it didn’t happen often. “December the 24th is the also the 358th day of the year.” She explained.

  “So?”

  “If you add 3 plus 5 plus 8, you get the number sixteen. Your age.”

  “I just turned sixteen in October.”

  “That’s why it’s important. In our family, each year when one of us turns sixteen, they inherit the family’s most cherished job.”

  When she said our family, I had to look around because it was always only her and me, unless the squirrel in the garden and the butterflies were my cousins. “You mean your job?” I wondered.

  My mother nodded.

  “You mean I finally get to go out to the forest?” I was speechless, my eyes wide open. I’ve been trapped in this house for years. I wasn’t allowed to go beyond the garden. Only few days a year, I was permitted to go buy bread from the market in exchange of our crops from the garden. My mother claimed I was too young to go out to the scary world. She said I was young and inexperienced, and that strangers were bad people. Of course, I had never entered the forest, which wasn’t only full of strangers, but wolves.

  The reason I never told her about the wolves at my window was that I was afraid she’d worry more about me, and I would end up living my life locked in a closet, or in a jar like my butterfly. She was
too protective of me.

  “Yes,” My mother confirmed. “Today, on the 358th day of the year, you will go into the forest.” She said, sounding a little worried though.

  “So will I get a basket full of cakes and wine like you do?” I was so excited to go out and follow my mother’s footsteps. I became older now, and it was time to be responsible and help the family.

  “There are things I have to teach you first,” My mother said. “Let’s start with the tree outside, shall we?” My mother held my hand and led me to the garden, which was usually full of squirrels waiting for the falling fortune cookie. Somehow, if they touched one, they screamed as if it shocked them, so they just danced and squeaked around it. “Pick this one up.” My mother pointed at today’s fallen cookie, sounding tense.

  I did, looking at it as if it were a golden egg.

  “Can I crack it open?” I asked. My palms were sweaty. Finally, I was about to know what was written inside, and understand why my mother went to the forest.

  “Better do it on the kitchen table,” She said. “Walk back carefully so you don’t trip on any of those tree-cutting tools.”

  I did, wondering when she’d permit me to cut a Christmas tree myself. But right now, the cookie was of more importance. I placed it on the table and cracked it open with a ladle.

  I hated ladles because my mom liked to call me Ladle, instead of my real name. What was wrong with my real name? Well, it was spooky, but it was she who had given it to me.

  Crack. Crack. Crack. Awesome. The fortune cookie split open.

  As I picked up the crumbled paper, my mother wrapped her fingers around it, looking into my eyes, “Before you read the paper, I will tell you what you should expect.”

  “Hmm…” I nodded, wondering why my mother’s grip was tight.

  “Everyday when I read the paper from the cookie, I read a name.”

  “A name?” I wondered. “So it’s not like, ‘today is your lucky day’ or, ‘you’ll meet a tall, dark, and handsome prince’?”

  “No. It’s someone’s name that is written on the paper.” My mother lowered her head, looking serious.