Little Red Riding Crop: New Endings to Everlasting Fairy Tales
Reading and writing alternative takes on fairy tales can expand our horizons and make us think about the many embedded meanings of a story.
I’ve been participating in
’s Story Challenges, and I have really enjoyed them! I shared my submission on dialogue a couple of weeks ago. Her latest—and, sadly, last—Story Challenge was about ending a story.Jeannine quotes Elissa Schappell describing the purpose of endings. In part:
The ending bears all the weight of the story, its task nothing less than imbuing the story with meaning and making it unforgettable. The ending must fulfill the reader’s expectations by answering the questions that have been raised in the reader’s mind (or at least some of them), and it has to make sense, but at the same time, it should be unexpected.
For me, I think a story should raise a question and expose the protagonist’s character weakness(es) at the beginning and then answer the question while allowing the character to grow during the course of a story. The ending should answer the question once and for all.
Endings are harder than beginnings because they must grow organically out of the rest. They must, as Anton Chekhov says, “artfully concentrate for the reader an impression of the entire work.”
Red Riding Hood Alternative Endings
“Little Red Riding Crop”—generated by DreamUp and partially edited by author.
Jeannine’s challenge was for us to write an alternative ending to Little Red Riding Hood. As she pointed out, the story has evolved over time and gone in all sorts of different directions. At first, the violence was first toned down from the bloody and brutal Brothers Grimm version for the appetites of modern-day families.
In the mass media era, there were (explicitly) adult versions like the sexually-charged gothic horror film The Company of Wolves (1984) in which the maturing girl meets a ravishing wearwolf and runs off with him to join his pack. There’s the ero guro (erotic-grotesque) manga Tokyo Red Hood (2003) in which 11-year-old Akazukin dreams of being eaten by Mr. Wolf.
The Wolf as a Serial Killer
I sought to frame the story in the context of a crime thriller with a touch of psychological horror. I was pleased with how it turned out, so I shall share it here. Because I was altering the setting and the plot, I had to include some scene-setting that would have probably occurred in the middle of the story were it a full story. I tried to weave it in naturally.
Officer Johnson had been investigating reports of illegal poaching when he discovered the map by a pile of wolf bones. Three mountains were circled: Wilson Peak, Bald Mountain, and Kings Peak. At Wilson and Bald, bodies had been discovered--found in cabins with "THE WOLF" cut into the walls.
But nothing had happened at Kings Peak.
Johnson rushed there. He followed a faint trail to an abandoned cabin. The door swung open. Johnson nearly jumped when he saw a wolf's eyes glaring at him and half its face.
"Who did you expect to find? Grandma?"
Johnson grabbed for his gun, but it was jammed. The man in the wolf pelt swung at him with a Bowie knife and grazed his arm before falling. A 16-year-old girl held a grip on the axe in the killer's head.
"You saved me!"
"He did with his poor rope tying."
What do you think? Would you like to see the shibari escape artist given a name? Would you like to read her full story? I have opened up the comments to all in this post.
If you would like to read my erotica, visit my Amazon link. If you would like to read my slow-burning erotic horror story The Film Student, start at Part I. I will continue to publish it in 100-word episodes.