Hansel and Gretel’s Father

Once upon a time a family lived in a cottage at the edge of the forest. There was the father and his children, a boy named Hansel and a girl named Gretel, and they lived with the father’s wife. The father’s wife was not the children’s mother, who had died from illness years before. The father had thought children should have a mother and married again.

But this was not the sort of woman who should have been a mother, or even wanted to be a mother. She was cold with the children, sometimes cruel. But the father believed eventually she would come to love them as her own.

One year, a famine spread over the whole of the land. The springs rains were too thin, the summer sun too hot, and a blight spread over what managed to grow, leaving crops good for pigs and no one else. The family, like everyone else, slowly began to starve.

After weeks of rationing what food they had, the father’s wife took the father aside while the children were sleeping and told him her solution.

“You must send the children into the woods. They will learn to fend for themselves.”

And the father said, “Excuse me?”

“Take the children into the woods and leave them there.”

And the father said, “Yeah, I thought that’s what you said. What the fuck is the matter with you?”

The second wife took a step back, shocked at the father’s language. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that!” she practically shrieked.

“If you’re actually suggesting I abandon my children in the woods I think I fucking will!”

The father’s wife tried to salvage the situation, gently putting her hands on his arm.

“The four of us will not make it through the harsh winter. At least out there they have a chance-”

“A chance to what? Die of exposure? Get eaten by a bear? Snatched by a witch?”

The father’s wife furrowed her brow, trying to keep control. “You have raised very clever children, I am sure they will be able to take care of themselves.”

Father stared at the woman whom he had loved until roughly thirty seconds ago in a disbelief that seemed to be aging him a year for every second.

“Jesus Christ, Denise, they’re children. They’re seven and nine! They’re smart for their age, sure, but they don’t know shit about surviving on their own in the woods! Why the fuck would they?”

The father’s wife put her hands to her ears and turned away, crying. “Stop cursing at me!”

Before, when they had fought, this had been enough to make the father stop fighting. It was how the father’s second wife had gotten her way over and over again. And just like all those times before, the father gently put an arm around her shoulder.

“Hey, it’s okay. It’s alright. I’m not mad, okay? Let’s come over here.”

While the father’s wife sniffled into her hands, she hid a sly smile. She believed she could always get whatever she wanted from her simple, giving husband. Now, not only would they have more food to get them through the famine, she would finally be rid of those awful ankle biting oxygen thieves.

“Out you go!”

“What?”

The father had not taken them to the bedroom, as the wife thought he would, but instead to the front door. With a not-gently shove he had pushed her out onto the dirt. The door slammed behind her, and she heard the lock latch.

“Wait! What are you doing? You can’t leave me out here!”

“Sure can.”

“I’m your wife!”

“Not anymore! No wife of mine would look me in my face and tell me we should abandon my children.”

The wife hemmed and hawed, unwilling to believe she was losing everything. “It…I…it was a joke    ! A joke for heaven’s sake!”

“Then you have a shit sense of humor. Go away.”

“Let me back in! This is my house!”

A booming laugh that shook the door. “This is my house, that I invited you into! And then you repay me by expecting me to kick out my children! Holy shit, Kevin down at the bar was right, you are fucked in the head.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?”

The wife was sobbing now, truly sobbing, no more crocodile tears. She still stood in front of the door, unable to believe that her simpering husband and finally grown a spine. Surely, he would see her plight and let her back in. Fine, the children would still be there, she thought, but she could live with them. She could. It was actually easier than she had thought.

“Why don’t you go off into the woods and live off the land? I hear it’s so easy a child could do it.”

And so, after many hours of standing in front of her ex-husband’s door and wailing as though possessed by a banshee, the second wife finally realized she would not be allowed back inside. Alone and afraid, she wandered into the woods, where she was almost immediately taken in by a witch and roasted alive.

The end.

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