Red Riding Hood - Part 1
By Molly Drummond / Spinebreakers Crew
Scarlett pulled on her red coat and snatched the wicker-effect Tupperware box from her mother.
“Off you go then, Red Riding Hood,” smiled her mother, who, for convenience’s sake, we’ll call Mother. “I told you not to call me that!” Scarlett snarled, “It’s not my fault I have to wear this mangy old hand-me-down, is it?”
“Isn’t it?”
“No. It’s not. It’s yours. If you’d only get a proper job…”
“Meals On Wheels™ is a proper job!”
“No it’s not,” she argued, marching down the path, “And I have to do half of it!”
“You agreed.”
“It was the only way I could get pocket money.”
“You still agreed.” Mother retorted, shutting the door.
Scarlett kicked a smiling gnome with a fishing rod by the garden pond. “Hey!” it yelled angrily as it sailed across the fence.
“That’s what you get for poaching!” she replied, storming off to The Wood.
She peeked into the Tupperware box and smelt pie. Why was it always pie? What was it with young people giving old people pie? She supposed it was their teeth. This one was apple, and as she entered the wood, she reflected on the lead-up to her current situation. Well, ofcourse it was Mother’s fault. If she hadn’t started this… this delivery thing… Scarlett always told her it wouldn’t catch on. “In about five hundred years time, Mother, everyone will be going to big buildings to eat...”
“That sounds unlikely.”
“Just listen. I’ve thought it all out. They’ll call them… well, I don’t know, something foreign,”
“Thought it all out, have you?”
“Will you be quiet? Everyone will get their food from there. No-one will have to order things.”
“They will. What about the elderly? The infirm? The lazy?”
“That’s right, insult your customers.”
“Aha!”
“I mean, not that you’ll have any. I give it six months.”
So here she was, six months and one day later, heading towards the wood. Sorry, The Wood. The Wood, so called because it was… well, it was a wood. It was a wood that was big. Huge, in fact, and dark as dusk during the day, and at dusk it was like night, and at night well… the darkness was so thick it would stick to your hair like syrup. Needless to say, Scarlett did not like delivering there. She hesitated before going in, and tried to go as quietly as possible, avoiding the trees who liked to pinch you when you go past, and then she speeded up so as to get out of the other side as soon as possible. You see, the wood, like as I said, was huge. It was so huge that it stretched on for miles, and was at least a quarter of a mile to get to the other side. It was more convenient, therefore, to go through it, as it was too expensive to go over it, and you’d have to be a mole, or very good at holding your breath, to get under it, and as for going round it? There were muggers and highwaymen enough along the border of The Wood to persuade you not to go round it.
To be continued...
Come back soon to read part 2.