Wednesday

Flash Fiction


Hoodies

I've had a grizzly bad press. Taking little girls and killing off old grannies. As if. Yeah, I'm no good, but that don't make me bad.

We're not liked, our family, it's the smell mostly and 'cos there's a whole pack of us. But I'm a bit of a loner. If I'd stuck with the others I wouldn't be in the trouble I'm in. Being on my own, that's how I witnessed it. Saw and heard, nothing more. That's on my mother's grave if she had one, which she doesn't; we found her stripped skeleton after the snows cleared.

Along comes Ms Red in her long bright cape, that bit, at least, they've got right. She wasn't skipping, though, are you kidding me? Too many Kentucky Frieds meant Ms Red was apt to saunter, under protest, to her Grandmother's house every Sunday. And who could blame her? Granny Red wasn't what you might call sweet, whatever they said in her obit.

So I heard it. Granny Red screeching, "You're ugly. No-one loves you." Then the silence, which I would later call "awful". Though it was what happened next which was awful. Granny Red got the iron poker embedded in the back of her skull, her scrawny grey hair lathered with blood and brain.

Then I saw her. Ms Red running. And she must have seen me.

Luckily most people get another bit of the tale wrong as well: my punishment. Though drowning might have been preferable to being eternally condemned to representing the archetypal evil doer. Like that? Yeah, I've had some education since coming in here. And I've had a lot of time to think. And what I think is that not all hoodies are wolves and we have plenty enough of a wolf inside each of us.