Little Red Riding Hood Retelling

After Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will you say that I am mad? The malady had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all was my sense of dread acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily—how calmly I can tell you the whole tale.

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night—the necessity of visiting my grandmother who dwelt alone in that ancient house beyond the twisted pines. The old woman had sent word of an affliction, some peculiar malady that had rendered her bedridden, and my mother—oh, my well-meaning mother!—had prepared a basket of victuals and medicaments, insisting I bear them hence.

The hood—yes, the hood! It was that which sealed my fate. A gift from the old woman herself, crafted of fabric so deeply crimson that it seemed to pulse with its own vital fluid. I had worn it countless times before, but never had its weight seemed so oppressive, its color so ominous as on that accursed morning when I set forth along the forest path.

The woods! How can I describe the suffocating sensation of those ancient trees pressing ever closer, their branches like skeletal fingers reaching, grasping? The path beneath my feet seemed to writhe with each step, as though the very earth conspired to lead me astray. And yet I pressed on, for what choice had I? The basket grew heavier with each passing moment, though I knew—I knew!—that its contents remained unchanged.

It was then that I heard it—a sound that chilled the very marrow in my bones. A low chuckle, emanating from the shadows themselves, followed by a voice that seemed to caress the air with velvet malevolence. “What brings such tender youth to these forsaken woods?” The Wolf! Oh, that I might forget the sight of him! His form was massive, his fur black as midnight, but it was his eyes—those terrible, knowing eyes—that seized my very soul.

I answered him, though my voice trembled traitorously. He spoke of shortcuts, of paths less traveled, and though my mind screamed its protest, I found myself nodding, agreeing. Was it madness that compelled me? Or something far more sinister? The beast’s gaze seemed to bore into my very being, and I felt my will bending, breaking beneath its weight.

When at last I arrived at my grandmother’s door, I found it slightly ajar—that terrible door with its ancient brass knocker that seemed to grin at me with malicious intent. The interior was shadow-wreathed, save for a single shaft of wan light that fell across the bed where lay what appeared to be my grandmother.

But no! The shape beneath those covers—the proportions were all wrong! And those eyes—those same terrible eyes that had transfixed me in the forest now gleamed from beneath my grandmother’s nightcap! I heard again that chilling laugh, now stripped of all pretense at humanity.

What followed, I recall as through a fever dream. The beast’s terrible transformation, the flash of teeth in darkness, the glint of the woodsman’s axe through the window! The spray of vital fluid so like the color of my hood! The screams—were they mine? My grandmother’s? The Wolf’s? They seemed to blend together in one terrible chorus that still echoes in my dreams.

They tell me I was found wandering the forest path, my crimson hood now stained a deeper red. They speak of rescue, of salvation, but they cannot understand. For though the Wolf lies dead, his eyes—those terrible, knowing eyes—still follow me. I see them in every shadow, in every dark corner, in every mirror. And sometimes, in the depths of night, when the moon is full and the wind howls through the pines, I hear again that velvet voice, calling me back to those twisted woods.

But I am not mad—how could I be? For every word I tell you is true. The hood hangs even now upon my wall, its color unchanged, unchanging, eternal as the darkness that lurks in the hearts of ancient forests. And if sometimes, in certain lights, it seems to pulse with its own vital rhythm—well, that is surely nothing more than a trick of my admittedly nervous disposition.

Is it not?