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Lightening flashes and thunder rumbles, the heavens pouring water endlessly, endlessly down.
I wake on the path again, soaked to my skin and sick to my stomach, the pleasant illusion breaking as it always does as your last daughter dies.
I'm so tired of this. So, so tired.
But i pick myself up, shake the water from my eyes. No matter what i want, no matter how much i would like this to end, it won't. It can't.
Some promises should never be made.
Time is short. I tear through the trees, taking the shortcut i took when we were children. In no time i'm at your elderly mother's - or at least the creature that replaced her's - home, unlatching the door and striding forward with the confidence of one who has done this a hundred times or more.
Inside are your children's deaths, laid out for my viewing as i journey to take them back. One last door and i'm at its bed, the wolf no longer pretending to make the woman's dead skin seem alive. No more pretense, no more deceiving. It seems we're all tired of this charade.
I crouch at the bedside but it doesn't blink, doesn't turn those dead eyes to me. A slash and they're free, covering me once again in blood. The knife is dropped carelessly on the floor. It'll be back in the forest where it belongs when i leave.
I begin the long trek back to your apartment, knowing that your daughters will follow, and i can't help thinking, not for the first time, why you did what you did.
And why i accepted it, thirty years too late and nowhere near enough to satisfy either of us.
Your family is a curse in these woods.
I suppose that's why you moved away, or at least tried to. But the wonders of the forest run in your blood, drawing each and every descendant back to the place they once lived. Drawing them back into a world filled with the restless spirits of those they've ruined, desperate for revenge.
Your family's first victim was the werewolf, a creature that haunts the cemetery and hungers for little Robin's blood. He ate Grandmother Red out of maddening hunger, leaving behind just enough morsels to make little Red - The first and youngest Riding hood - a nice meal, and she feasted. Gorged herself on her blood and her meat before becoming a meal herself. A hearty meal indeed, a rare treat for a child knee deep in the worst famine the area had seen for an age.
But Grandmother was ill, her meat tainted by disease. The village had been ravaged by it, a great plague that spread and infected the population after the crops had failed. Man and wolf alike died in the hundreds or thousands that year, weakened by illness or lack of food, unable to hunt even if there was anything left. Soon enough the werewolf collapsed too, just shy of the cemetery. Forever it lingers, unable to leave the place Grandmother's remains should have been buried. Only the blood of your youngest child curbs its hunger.
Next came the Fey wolf, master of disguise. A beast that learned to linger in the shadows, learn the routes your ancestor's hunting party took through the forest, lest it become another victim of their cruelty. It was not long after the plague and famine, a time of superstition, where absolute faith and paranoia ruled side by side, people turning to religion to save them, all while being unwilling to unlock their doors even to trusted friends. Enter the Fey wolf, a creature that lurked in the woods, observed the behaviours of the villagers and mimicked them, tricking them into opening their doors. It earned many easy meals this way, until meeting the next Red girl. An adult woman, she had several children of her own, just like you. One day she left to pick berries and the Fey wolf donned a long black cloak identical to her own, adopted her sweet way of speaking. In doing so it ate six of her seven children, falling into a long slumber afterwards. Returning home, Red was shocked, horrified, and cut open the wolf with her knife. It didn't save her children but the wolf died of its wounds, later haunting the ruined stage.
It's a farce, of course. A convincing fake created to entice your oldest, most sensible child. Any mask will do for a girl whose only dream is an escape from the monotony of life, and the Fey wolf has many. All it needs is patience.
And it has more than enough of that.
Ruby's wolf - the so called charming wolf - followed after. Buoyed by the Werewolf and Fey wolf's mostly successful hunting, driven by extreme hunger caused by your family's love of hunting the wolf's main food source to scarcity, it tried to charm another little Red off the path. But she knew better, never leaving it and running straight to Grandmother's house. The door was locked and the charming wolf grew famished with the waiting, lured eventually into burning hot water with the promise of cooked sausages.
It was badly scalded but survived for a time until hunger overtook it, dying alone in a rusted children's play park on the wood's outskirts. In death the charming wolf doesn't need to rely on its charm, content to wait for its death-seeking victim to seek it out instead. And she always does, walking with purpose to his door, desperate to finish what her car crash started, although death isn't what she wants, rather acceptance. She never realizes it until it's too late.
Then Carmen's wolf, the lumberjack wolf. A simple wolf for a girl whose only desire is to receive love, no matter who it's from. The wolf was killed by a lumberjack - the father of another little Red girl - before it could strike. In death it takes his form, a shape that should evoke safety but doesn't. After all, a lumberjack is just a man with an axe, alone in the woods and chopping down trees.
Not all woodcutters are heroes, and this wolf certainly isn't.
Rose's wolf comes after, a wolf that Red filled with heavy rocks and stitched up, the poor beast going to the lake for a drink and sinking to the bottom. It drowned there, but in death it floats high above the water, the rocks no longer holding it down. Rose likes to float too, like a bird or a balloon caught in the wind. No one told Rose that everything that flies has to fall eventually though.
She never learns.
After that came my sister, my twin. She approached you as a friend, asked you where you were heading and you - naive, gullible, far too honest - told her. You even took her advice when she suggested you pick flowers - deep in the wood, in a sunlit field where the prettiest ones bloomed, giving her more than enough time to walk to your Grandmother's house, trick her into a closet and take her place. You were cunning though, more than her match. You deceived your way from the house, alerting the adults in the village, who took her practical jokes very badly indeed. She got tangled in barbed wire as she ran from the angry mob, dying of her wounds right there in the flower field.
Now she resides where she died, a spirit who always approaches from behind, far more tricky now then she ever was in life. The perfect predator to catch your most reckless and overly confident child, a false friend that ensnares her in her trap.
Then there's... me. But you know my story, don't you? We used to play together, there in the woods, the child of a hunter and a wolf pup. Unlikely but close friends, we would run together hand in hand, pick flowers together, play hide and seek...
Then my sister died, a cruel death that i didn't understand, but wanted answers to. I met you both, there in the house, no bad intentions but my sister's trickery made you cautious, fearful.
I suppose the hunter who 'saved' you from me thought he was kind, taking me deep, deep in the woods and leaving me there instead of ending my life.
It wasn't kindness.
His intentions didn't matter. I wandered, lost and alone until i collapsed, too young to know the woods inside and out like the older ones did. In death i have that knowledge, have become the guide that shepherds your children to one wolf or another.
And that's the thing, something we both know all too well, the cause of my confusion:
There are only wolves here.
In the forest, in your elderly mother's house, it makes no difference. I can play with them, comfort them, take them through the forest to things they haven't seen before. But ultimately there are no happy endings for your girls. The woods' curiosities eventually lose their charm and i have to lead them on, deep into the forest or out of it, to one downfall or another.
The wolves in the forest who end their lives, or the wolf in your mother's skin who drains their will, one visit at a time. An uncanny and upsetting mimicry of someone they love that makes the woods seem far more appealing in comparison. And that's the goal, the entire point. The path they choose is just a fork in a road that ultimately meets in the middle, a choice that isn't really a choice. You can take the shortcut or the scenic route, but there's no in between.
Why then, did you do what you did? Why did you bargain with me: your life for your children's, when you know they can't be saved? No matter how many times i cut them free they always try again, you always lead them back along the path, back into the forest. And now you're gone too, our bargain reducing you to nothing more than a memory, a whisper in the girls' ears that remind them to always, always walk the path.
And i wonder: is that cruelty really necessary? Are you really so terrible, so twisted as to send your children to their deaths again and again? Isn't it better to just let them go, let them make their choice and mourn their premature deaths?
What do you gain from this?
Collect useless flowers. Unearth old memories only to forget them again. Compel them to fail with sweet dreams of their wolves and the unattainable things they hold.
I stand in your empty, womb-red apartment, pondering this. Feeling your eyes on me, the slash of red across my front burning like a brand. Your girls slowly filter in behind me as they always do, one by one, each closing the door behind themselves like good little children.
They're more subdued, though, strangely so. Even Ginger, sitting across from me with a heavy sigh instead of her usual tomboyish exuberance.
I don't know, though. It's been so long that i can't be sure of anything. Things aren't always the same, so it might mean nothing at all...
I look around confused, trying to decide if the difference is just in my mind. Robin, sitting by my feet, looks up as i shift, her eyes meeting mine and smiling.
My heart stutters, a gasp escaping me - they shouldn't be able to see me here! This hasn't happened before-
Six sets of eyes settle on me, the room filled with a heavy silence that isn't shock, isn't disbelief. It's more like dull acceptance.
After a long moment Ruby's book snaps shut, the sound echoing through the mostly unfurnished room. Hand on chin, she smiles sardonically, her black lipstick glossy in the light.
"Mother isn't here anymore, is she?" She trails off, her face looking like she already knows the answer.
They know, then...they've felt it. After so long, are they finally understanding and acknowledging this loop they're in...?
With a great, gusty sigh she stands, holds a hand towards me. With tired eyes and a dark laugh she reaches for the basket.
"Well, shall we go again?"