Hansel and Gretel

Kids were going missing all over town and no-one had any clue to what the reason could possibly be. It was a pleasant middle England country village, and no obvious weirdo perverts that existed in the minds of the Daily Mail reading population seemed to live around the town. It was a dark mystery and one that had a possible evil twist to it.

John lived in a flat above Anna, a Spanish immigrant who worked in the local Country Park Golf course and restaurant on the high road maintaining their lush big gardens. She loved gardening and spent all her free time and money on the garden she had at the side of the house that she had gained at John’s expense.

The house where John and Annas flats were in, were at the side of the woods on the estate, and it was a little way out of the normal beat a postman would have to walk in the mornings.

The thing was Anna couldn’t see the massive garden from her flat when she was inside, so John always wondered why she wasted so much money on the thing when it only came alive at night.

Anna had set up solar panel lights, to gain the Suns energy from the daytime all to light up the magical secret garden she had created at nighttime. The blue and green lights the solar panels fed lit up the garden once dusk fell, and panes of glass and spinning mirrors hanging from tree branches span in the cool nights breeze and flashing glints of light bouncing from glass to glass made the garden into something special and it was something that only John and Anna could really see.

John could easily view it from his window at the top of the stairs, but Anna would have to be outside her flat within her garden at night for her to appreciate the work she had done which is what perplexed him about the work she put into it. It truly was a secret magical garden that someone could walk past without even knowing of its existence.

Then one summers day as John looked out of his window at the top of his stairs, he noticed a big dolls house structure in the garden. It certainly didn’t look like a shed and it was covered in big round chocolate buttons and marzipan structs, which made the pretty little dolls house into the grand centre piece of the garden.

Then one day when John was leaving his flat, he saw Anna in her garden and thought to wind her up with some jokey compliments about her Dolls house.

“Oh, I do like your new shed”, he said to Anna as she was just entering her garden’s new exhibit, dragging a big bag of what looked like wriggling snakes within it. Anna looked up from her hunched down position with a horrible gruff old Mediterranean woman’s demeanour.

“Can I have a lick of your lollipop door frame?” he asked with a smile only to be rebuffed in the nastiest way.

“No, stay away from ‘my’ house”, Anna yelled, her curled up back and hooked nose looking at him like some evil Witch from the 14^th century.

What a bitch he thought as she hissed at him and dragged the big bulging bag still wriggling madly into her garden house.

From that point on, John started to watch the Doll’s house from his flat window more and more, wondering what it looked like inside and why Anna had been so horrible that day.

He spent hours pondering what was going on inside and then night fell and the magical garden lit up, taking all bad thoughts away as spinning glass, mirrors and reflective star shapes all lit the garden up.

Then one day two school kids Hansel and Gretel were on their way back to school when they wandered off the main street and found Annas magical garden. To them it looked so special and wonderous with beaded strings of mirror shaped reflective stars and other objects hanging from the trees.

They were a naughty pair of twins and decided to sneak into the garden, the big dolls house in the corner enticing them further, and they quickly entered the big chocolate and marzipan shed in the corner of the garden.

John had noticed the children walk into the Doll’s house from his window and ran down his stairs to follow them, he wanted to not only warn them to stay away in case Anna was in one of her Spanish hot-tempered moods but he also wanted to see inside the structure he had pondered about for so long.

As he opened the door, he was shocked, a big net bag of small children swung around in the corner hanging close to a big boiler of hot spitting bubbling water.

John was just about to call out to Hansel and Gretel to get out of the house quick when he turned and saw the evil witch, his neighbour, all dressed in black standing there with a big scythe. “I told you to stay away” were the last words he heard as the side of Scythe hit him hard over the head.

He woke to find himself hung in the bag on top of Hansel and Gretel and saw Anna hunched over her cauldron muttering away to herself, “Toil n trouble, boil boys to bubble, girls are trouble, they need broth by double”.

John thought Anna was going through some sort of psychotic break and tried to plead to her through the netting. “Anna what are you doing?”, but his pleas were to no avail as Anna the staunch butch Spanish neighbour had taken full form as a witch and stared up at the net with a newly formed hooked nose and blackened charcoaled covered teeth, hissing like a snake.

“Ye be hassling me, on my own property, what deed grant ye the privilege of an unaccompanied visit?” she cackled, “Aye?”. She was obviously annoyed at all the visiting children she had been receiving lately into her magical garden and had gone pure bonkers.

“Anna, come on, the kids were only messing, and I was just trying to get them to leave.” John pleaded from his position in the net.

“Ye been a hassling and a messing with me from day one ye irritant a big itch to one’s anal passage”, she muttered and spat incoherently as she poured what looked like herbs and spices into the red bubbling liquid that they now seemed to be lowered inch by inch towards.

“Nay fear my darling neighbour”, Anna spluttered as she wiped John’s face with a weird dusty brown powder.

“What is this?” John asked, repelled by the disgusting smell and taste of the flecks he could taste near his mouth,

“Oh, ye be quiet now my darling, for that ensures you get to enjoy dinner time as much as I will”, she cackled and kissed him on the cheek, with a leaving flick of her forked tongue across Johns cheek and then walked to the rope cackling away.

Oh fuck John thought to himself, as he realised the rope led to the dropping of the bag he was in into the boiling broth of slurry and blood beneath. He screamed to Anna to stop but she let loose of the rope that was holding them tightly above the cauldron and then they were dropped right in.

John woke in a stoned slumber, the pecky dust flecks of a dirty room flickered by his eye. He tried to look around to see where he was when he was met with a huge blinking eyeball glaring right in front of him.

“Where am I?” he asked, only to be met with a huge vision of a crooked nose and wide gob of blackened teeth. They laughed at him.

“Oh my dear, you are having lunch with me”, Anna replied from her position of dominance above, “only you are the lunch”, she cackled, and John winced as he felt a sharp pang in his back as Anna stuck a fork into him.

“What the fuck!”, he exclaimed in pain only to realise a fork had been stuck straight through the middle of whatever he was. As the fork was raised, he became aware of the dining room, table and big bowl of Spanish paella beneath him.

It was no normal Spanish dish though; this was Witches broth and Anna had used that special spice to keep all parts of the paella alive through cooking. The bowl was a mix of slurry and floating eyeballs that were looking around as if still attached in someone’s face.

It was a horrific picture to be met with a bowl of living human body parts still moving as if they were attached to a body. A pair of girl’s lips floated to the top of the bowl and started to speak, it was Gretel.

“Where am I, where’s Mummy?” she cried in vain as Anna cackled in laughter.

“They be no Mummy here my dear, ye be my luncheon, that’ll teach ye kids to go a snooping n a looking where they shouldn’t”

Anna’s dirty black teeth were getting larger and larger as the fork John was on got nearer to her mouth, yabbing about, talking to her special witch’s broth.

“Anna, you can’t!”, John cried out, only to see her huge dirty black indented mud flickered garden face in full beauty as it turned to him.

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ye be shhh now neighbour, it’s time for me to get some peace and quiet for once and all” and as she lifted her fork towards her garden peppered blackened gob John noticed he was just an eyeball on a fork with his optic nerve hanging below him.

“Don’t ye worry neighbour I am sure there is another eye ball for you to see what’s going on somewhere in my broth”, she cackled one more time and then John watched as the fork was lifted close to her hairy fuzzy lips plastered with red Spanish lipstick and into her cavernous mouth.

This was no normal mouth though. Where a normal set of gnashers should be, were a collection of sharp teeth, all with their own faces of doom etched onto them, eyes a wide, and mouths screaming in pain as they dropped tightly and sharply into Johns eyeball causing his pupil to explode into blood and gloop, he was pierced by a screaming incisor, and then darkness.

That was until he reawakened and floated to the top of the Spanish Witches Paella broth once more. How many pieces did she cut him up into he wondered as a hairy ear floated past him, and then a pair of lips bobbed about just moaning and crying.

“Ye keep on crying”, Anna cackled, “no ones coming to rescue you now!”, she carried on before spiking a finger onto her fork, bringing it to her mouth and snapping it within her disgusting mouth.

This is why I hate gardening John thought as he floated past another winking eyeball. There’s just no end to it.

 

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