Red Riding Hood: Another View

As usual, the story is after the break.

This was for a school assignment, where we had to take a well known fairy tale and rewrite it in a unique way from the perspective of another character. This became a gritty crime story because it was the only way that I personally could turn the lumberjack from a walking deus ex machina into an actual character. Also, I love film noir in general, which probably is where the massive amount of metaphors and similes came from. This will probably be updated with new drafts, but I'm actually pretty happy with how it turned out.

The tape flickers to life, and a gravelly voice begins to speak:

      This city is a wonder. It’s cesspool of corruption and crime, a bastion for the nation’s criminal elements. The sun is near constantly blotted out by the pollution, leaving the city with only two times: twilight and the pitch blackness of night. And yet, people live their lives, acting as if they lived in a shiny utopia. To many people, there was no place they would rather live. The aura of griminess, the bustle of the crowds, all combining to create a pulse of life that can’t be found anywhere else in the world.

      Of course, you didn’t come to me with questions about the city. No, you came here to interview me about the Red Riding Hood incident, didn’t you? My name is Edwin Holtzmann, better known as The Lumberjack, because of the chief’s obsession with the forest and forest metaphors. I was the only officer who responded to what we thought was a routine 406, better known as breaking and entering. In hindsight, sending only one officer to a breaking and entering was a stupid idea, but you have to understand, we got this call from one of the cleanest and richest neighborhoods around. Our police force was taxed with the usual amounts of crime from the other neighborhoods, and I was the only cop within a ten minute drive of her house.

      I knew something was wrong the second I got within sight of the house. I could see that the front door was chained shut, and all of the blinds were down, despite how the sun was actually shining for once. There was no obvious entry point that the perpetrator had used, and our forensics team is still trying to figure out the method of entry. The only sources of life inside of the building were two flickering lights on the second floor, splashing color on the otherwise snow white house.

      A piercing scream put a quick end to any speculation I had, so I just ran to the house, without any thoughts for calling for backup. Looking back, I should have taken an extra three seconds to call for backup, as per standard procedure. But there was no guarantee that the victim would still be alive, and thinking straight is a lot easier when you don’t have someone else’s life on the line. As I always say, no one ever does the right thing when we look back. Every officer does something that they wish they could change, but it’s our responsibility as policemen to deal with the consequences of our actions.

      I reached the door, only to find out that the door was barricaded from the other side, along with the chain that was over the door. The perp seemed to be very determined to keep the police outside, but he had one critical oversight. The windows had the blinds down, but they had nothing blocking them.

      This may seem like a very stupid thing for any criminal to do, but remember glass in real life is very dangerous to break. Punching through the glass would result in significant injuries, most notably massive lacerations along your arm. It’s often much sharper than it looks, and it turns unprotected feet into scarlet paint buckets at the slightest provocation. The windows were also high above the ground, so the only obvious way for a person to go through the window would have involved a very dangerous landing into a sparkling glass covered grave. The only man who would risk that would have to be more desperate than a cornered badger, or crazier than a wolf in the moonlight. Lucky for me, I happen to be both.

      Smashing through the glass was the easy part, especially after a short burst from Ditko, the .45 negotiator. The fall inside was only a little bit longer than I was tall, but with the only illumination being the stream of vanilla from outside it felt like it was much higher.

The crunch of glass under my steel plated boots is the only sound in the house, which is what scares me the most. There should have been screaming, a sound hitting octaves that are not supposed to be hit by human vocal cords. Even the sound of a struggle upstairs would have been comforting; it means that I was definitely not too late to save her. To me, silence only means either that she was dead, or that I was expected. Needless to say, neither of those options were too appealing to me, so I dragged Ditko out from his hiding place, and readied him in case of aggressive negotiations.

The perp’s trail through the house looked like the aftermath of an F-5 tornado. Lucky for me, because the last thing I wanted to do was play a game of cat and mouse with a potentially psychopathic criminal. It looked like there had been only one criminal inside, and he had done a very long drawn out struggle with at least one person. It was hard to figure out anything else but that without wasting time in a forensics lab. I just rushed to where the debris ended like a bull, the back of my head wondering if I should have been more careful, so as to not destroy evidence. I ignored it, knowing that if I caught the criminal in the act, I didn’t need much evidence to convict him.

The trail abruptly ended in front of a nondescript door on the second floor of the house. I pressed my ear up against it, and I swear I could hear the criminal not speaking, but growling, almost like an animal. I could just barely make out the sound of another person breathing, but who knows how close to death or worse they had been before I got there. There was no time to think, just like with the rest of the operation, I just had to act and hope that I did the right thing.

The door shattered into Infinitesimal pieces as I charged through the door frame. The criminal was caught off guard by my unorthodox entry, and he delayed in acting for just an instant. That was all the time that Ditko needed to make 6 well intentioned critiques of his crime. Amazingly, I later learned that he survived through Ditko’s arguments, but at the time he might as well have been dead.

I only lingered there long enough to make sure that the victim was alright. She was very young, and what stuck out to me the most was her bright red hooded cloak. It was a massive contrast to the chaos around her, seeing as it was still clean and unripped. She herself was physically fine, but I couldn’t get a word out of her, and she seemed to be in shock. I don’t know what the criminal was going to do to her, but I have a feeling that even I would be sickened by his plan.

She was lighter than a feather, her weight barely registering as I carried her to the cruiser. From there, the story is just like you read in the newspaper, I call for backup and we book what was left of the criminal.

The audio suddenly ends, leaving nothing but a long burst of static.