Even Grimmer Tales Read Online Free

staggered, bike forgotten where it fell –
    the rush of hot desire,
    felt once more
    the old familiar swelling need.
    That hair …
    But as I moved my hand to bring relief
    she saw me where I stood under the shadow
    of the trees. “Is anybody there?”
    I moved;
    I could have been sleep-walking.
    Stepped into the patch of moonlight.
    Heard again:
    â€œWho’s there? Please come and talk to me.”
    My voice was hoarse, I knew, rough with desire.
    â€œCome down,” was all that I could manage.
    â€œCan’t do it. I’m locked in at nights
    while Mum’s at work. But I’m bored silly.”
    She was right. The house was firmly locked.
    No window even that I could have broken.
    Shuttered up, the whole place was.
    Almost a prison.
    But when I looked again
    it drove me almost wild.
    She’d started to braid up
    that hair, those golden swinging sheets of hair.
    â€œLeave it,” I croaked. “I’ll climb the tree.”
    And so began our nights.
    I rode there, every night,
    to climb the tree to talk to her.
    Didn’t really have a lot to say. I’d watch
    her hair, imagine how I’d run it through my fingers,
    feel it swing across my body, move delicately down
    my flesh to tease and tantalise.
    She knew just how
    to madden me. One night
    she wore a scarf;
    that night I would have wound it
    round her throat if I had got to her.
    And then the hair could
    have been mine.
    But how to get to her?
    She wouldn’t say her name. “You could call me
    Rapunzel.”
    That was all she’d say.
    Back then I didn’t understand. But now
    I do. I’ve read the story that they tell.
    Idiotic notion,
    that a prince could climb her hair.
    And yet, I guess you could say that
    my body rose under the influence
    of all those golden braids.
    It climbed, indeed, a different sort of stairway.
    If not a tower, well at least it rose aloft!
    Perhaps that’s how the story started …
    They tell me now there is a name for how I feel.
    It’s trichophilia, they say. As if I give a damn,
    another bit of useless information.
    I’ve always known that long hair turns me on.
    That’s why
    collecting is the best thing in my life.
    I didn’t mind the risk I took
    in climbing from the tree into her window.
    She’d asked me many times
    to see if I could do it. What she didn’t know
    was that it wasn’t her,
    just her hair
    I wanted.
    I had to keep her quiet
    while I cut it off.
    Who would have thought
    that it would take so long?
    So when at last
    I turned her over, took the pillow off her face,
    I’d half expected that her eyes would open,
    that she’d look up at me.
    But she was just like all the others.
    Like them, she lay there, still.
    They never look the same, without their hair.

Hansel and Gretel
    In a time of terrible famine, a woodcutter and his wife decide they must abandon their children in a forest. The first time they try this disposal method, clever Hansel leaves a trail of white pebbles and he and Gretel find their way home. But the next time their parents attempt the cost-cutting exercise, Hansel can’t find any pebbles and birds eat the trail of crumbs he tries to leave instead. Lost and starving, the hungry children find a house of gingerbread and sweets, and begin to eat it. The owner, a witch with a taste for young flesh, captures them, and makes Gretel a household slave while fattening Hansel in an iron cage for the cooking pot. But the intrepid children manage to trick the witch into herself falling into the oven so that they can escape. One hopes this time they were rewarded when they reached home yet again …



Pre-prandial musings
    I always give them a good time.
    That seems to me important.
    I want it to be better
    than the life they had with parents.
    If things had not been bad at home
    they’d never have been here with me.
    Used to wonder …
    Now I understand so much
    that never made real sense