Hansel and Gretel: The Witch's Tale

Alright, now that I got that out, it's time to get to the real reason you happened to be reading this…. The real story of what happened between me and those children. And believe me it was all their fault.

It was a Friday, I remember because I was baking cookies for a book club meeting I was going to be hosting the next day. I had just placed the unbaked dough in my smaller oven (for I had two, the bigger one was just for baking replacement gingerbread in) when I started hearing some very odd noises coming from outside my front door. The sounds of eating and chewing were muffled slightly, but still distinguishable. I ignored them at first thinking that they were nothing, just some animal that would go away eventually. But, the more I listened the more I realized that whatever was out there had no intentions of leaving anytime soon. Though, I was still confused about whether my little visitors were human or animal when there was a loud crunch that sounded an awful lot like hands ripping a chunk off my roof. Once I heard that, I was pretty sure that they were humans, not animals, since; no animal I know of could reach the roof, at least not enough to break a decent sized chunk off it. I thought it was strange, I lived relatively far into the forest with no direct path, so I had never come across another human being before. Well, at least not one that didn't knock before they started eating parts of my house. That thought alone pissed me off… I mean really, the nerve of some people! Just because it doesn't look like a normal house doesn't mean no one lives there.

That was my thought as I made my way to the front door. By the time I reached it, I was even angrier. Any person should know better than to start eating someone else's house. That's just rude. Though, normal houses aren't built out of food, but that's really not the point.

So, I opened the door ready to yell at the person who decided that it was a good idea to make a meal out of my house without knocking first. But, the words of anger died in my throat when I saw the two people who were munching on my edible house. They were children, a boy and a girl; I could tell they were siblings since they looked so much alike. The same shade of blonde hair and bright green eyes. They were most likely twins and no older than the age of twelve I would guess. The little girl had broken off half of the gumdrop off the door while the little boy was eating a piece of gingerbread he had managed to break off from the roof. I scrunched my nose up as I realized that they hadn't wiped the pieces off before they shoved them in their mouths. They were far too hungry to care that they were currently ingesting more than just a part of my house; they were also eating the dirt, leaves and pine straw that had managed to accumulate over the weeks between my monthly cleaning.

Most of my anger had died when I saw them, but a little part remained when I realized what they happened to be eating, mostly the boy, since, because of him, I was going to have to spend several hours replacing the roof. But, they both looked so hungry and pathetic that my anger was replaced by sympathy for the poor things.

"Oh… you poor dears. Are you lost?" I asked, "Poor things… come in, and I'll cook you a real meal."

They glanced quickly at one another, I'm sure they were a little nervous because they had probably been taught not to go inside a stranger's house. Though, I think the hunger overrode anything that they had been taught by their parents because a few seconds later they were nodding and dropping the pieces of my house on the ground (something that I wasn't really pleased to see, but I let it go) as they followed me inside the house. I led them down the small little hallway that opened up to my little kitchen. I sat them down at the small table before going about fixing them a proper dinner, which ended up not being that much, just a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, since I knew that those were a good bet to get them to eat. Most kids loved peanut butter and jelly sandwiches; well at least that's how it was when I was growing up. My assumption was right because the minute I placed the plate in between them, they practically attacked it and began eating as fast as they could. I poured them both glasses of milk and then stepped back and let them eat.