Prequel To Hansel and Gretel

*Disclaimer: I do not own Hansel and Gretel nor do I make any claim to do so. This work is pure fan created fiction*

Diary entry of 536 AD

Dear diary, it’s been about a week since Aminah passed and if I’m calculating the time right, then about 2 fortnights have begotten the disposal of the sun, the moon, and life itself. I feel strange, desolated I dare say, as though my angst has reached a new level of pain, but this pain I feel isn’t because of my beloved wife’s death, I’m not particularly upset about that, which is what scares me — I'm more ravenous about what’s happening across the yards of my homeland, it’s something that’s killing us all. I wish I could say it was a plague of some kind or perhaps a war waged by the Kings in power but this is so much deeper than a Scottish feud, a 13th-century plague, or Mesopotamian conquest. This, what we’re experiencing is purely the most ruthless form of evil and what terrifies me is that it feels like this is just the beginning of a never-ending cycle. I fear that this is a warning of some kind, as it’s trying to tell us to mend our ways before we see the end of the world. I feel trapped as I’m unable to work, talk, cry or even giggle. I’m caged in the flesh, as my only wish is to die, but even that now seems like more of retribution than clemency.

My entire mind is now closed with the recurring question that seems to knock at my door after every passing moment, and because there’s so much time to be idle, I can’t help but ponder over and over the question mark, making it into me, consume me, until that’s all I can think about, “What devilish deed did one agree to, to make such an unthinkable torture rain down upon humankind?”

“What sin did man commit that ensued not just him but for us all to a never-ending purgatory?”

“What key did the devil himself manage to sneak into our pockets, that caused us to unlock the gates of hell?”

“What was it that made us so hopelessly traumatized as this wave of damnation engulfed us all?”

You see everything changed over the past few weeks and it was such a rapid change that I barely even got around to how it happened. It was as though we woke up one day and everything was gone — just like that — it was almost like it had turned to dust. But we still kept our cool, we still tried to stay sane, however, things quickly fastened their pace and got utterly out of control as I began to wonder whether man even has a future anymore? Or is this, “The end that people talked about in stories and tragedies. The end of the world? Is this our final tribulation?”

This doubt hadn’t occurred to me until one of our memorial practices changed. I think that was the point that I realized that it was over for us. It was over for me, for my brothers who I could barely recognize anymore, it was over for my children, who I began to see as food carriers and nothing more, and it was over for us as a nation as we began to dwell over the sufferings of others, It was just over.

You see, until a few fleeting days ago (although I’m not entirely sure what days even mean anymore, given that we barely see the sunrise or the moonshine), we would bury the dead like we normally would. It is blatantly obvious that it was a bit tedious to do, given that we had to see through torchlights and burning flames of candle wax, but we managed. Our dead were, after all, respected, despite the recent occurrences.

However, something took a turn in the atmosphere; there was already physical darkness present like a fog in the air, but all of a sudden, an aura of wretchedness had consumed our land and the individuals residing in it — it was like a drop of hell had slithered its way into people’s minds as it corrupted every single soul of ours — leaving us with no choice but to do the unimaginable, and that was to feed on the dead.

To feed on human flesh, to relish and begin to crave the meat our mothers, fathers, sisters, daughters, and even infants carried. Little by little, we celebrated when someone passed, as that meant a feast was to arrive. There was still no laughter nor conversation in the air. It was more of a silent feast, but it was still something. Something that started as a cry for hunger, because all the cattle had died, and soon became a practice that people deep down enjoyed. The practice of submitting to a total lifestyle of cannibalism and celebratory memorials.

If you had asked me a month or two ago, if I could even fathom such a ritual taking place, I would’ve mocked you. Hell! I would’ve sent you to be hung for even conjuring such a thought, the eating of human flesh. It sounded almost profane. But now, as I’m writing this under the candlelight, with the last piece of charcoal that I could find, I can’t help but covet the taste of my wife raw cooked ribs, the red juice that dripped half-frozen- like from her corpse as it was cut, the brain that my family and I chewed on as a cereal and the thew bones that I’m now storing as a writing device for my future entries because if I’m being frank, I’ve gone insane- if sane ever was such a thing- and the only element that’s keeping me from absolutely losing the last sense I have, is penning my fret down as the agony continues to dwell over me, and take over what I- what we- once called our motherland.

“Marc, honey, dinners ready.” A familiar face, with homogenous freckles on both sides of her cheek, ginger hair that was lengthened to a bob cut, closely situated eyes, and a scrunched nose - that I along with my baby brother had inherited- walked in.

“I’ll be down in a sec, mom.”

“Alright, but what is that?” She stepped into my dimly lit room as her bony fingers pointed to the leather-wrapped memoir I was reading.

“Something I found at grandpa’s. Apparently, it belonged to his ancestors and he wanted to get rid of most of it, so I bought one of the items home, and thankfully it’s as entertaining as a fictitious novel.”

“Oh! What’s it about?” She seemed more interested than I would’ve liked, but instead of giving her the specifics of the brutally unorthodox entry that I had read, I gave her a more vague description.

“Something bizarre. It’s ancient history stuff.”

“Okay don’t tell me if you don’t want to but just come down in 5 alright?” I was grateful that she didn’t push it. It’s not like I didn’t want to tell her. There was nothing wrong with what I had stumbled upon. But I didn’t want her to think I was reading too much into dark stuff. As a teenager, you’re aware that your mom worries about the level of horror that their kid is exposed to, and that’s particularly why I wasn’t keen on showing her the deluded rerun sentences that I scanned. I obviously didn’t believe any of what I read, they were merely fictitious, and I knew that, but that did not stop the writing from being insanely interesting and as badly as I wanted to complete the rest of the story, I knew I needed to be down and so with a sulking spirit, I put a pencil as a bookmark on where I left off and headed down the stairs to the fresh scent of ricotta cheese-laden fettuccine pasta, served with my mother’s usual side salad and mint lemonade.

………

“This is too weird.” I set aside the journal that I was so eagerly invested in a couple of hours ago, but now seemed disgusted by.

From what I gathered, it was a story about a man who went utterly insane as the pages continued to write themselves. From his imagination or so-called historical revelation; the world had stopped turning, the sun no longer set nor rose, there was no light for miles, people had forgotten what their closest friends looked like and what was worse was that they grew immune to even recalling what their own reflection was. It was basically like living in a bottomless abyss, with nothing but one's thoughts and daze as they struggled to get through one moment to the next.

To say that the writer had not even a breath of peace during his scribbles was an understatement. The truth was, or at least what I perceived as the truth, was that this individual was mad — completely and utterly insane. Either that, or he had a flair for coming up with the most disturbing stories, and as much as I appreciated a writer with the talent of being able to convey outlandish behavior through their words- I had to say that this fellow's world was a little too far fetched to be true. But it wasn’t just the fictitious part that was agitating me, it was the way that he so deeply described every emotion that the character was feeling- and that in itself was scary because it no longer felt like he was describing someone else- it seemed as though he was dictating his own thoughts and emotions- it was like he was narrating his life story, his raw, craze filled time in torture and the more I read on, the more it impacted me to question what this strange man was going through?

Yet, regardless of the way it had affected my cerebrum and instigated my brain waves to think, I ignored the book and decided to sleep it off. It was enough abnormal activity for me to scrutinize myself over for one night and I told myself that if the information continued to bother me, I could Google search an entry tomorrow morning. And so, with the unnamed man's gazette on my bedside, I allowed my eyes to desensitize me to sleep.

My dream, unfortunately, came to an abrupt end as I was awoken by the whisper of an old weary voice; what was peculiar about this sound though was the calmness it held when the carrier was grappling around an unfriendly predicament. It sounded as if someone was in trouble, but unless I was completely demented- a cry for help was usually a cry- a squeal or at least a loud shriek of some kind. This however was minute bits of whispers stating gibberish and the only reason I was able to even decipher that this was in fact the voice of someone in need of assistance was because his whispers sounded like a dulled down pitch of someone that had lost their voice and was using the little of what their esophagus was left with to signal for aid.

Because of this unfamiliar form of asking for succor, I was skeptical about whether or not I was hearing things. The fact that I had just woken up and it was past midnight didn’t help my confusion one bit as I rubbed my dreary almond-shaped eyes together and tried to focus on exactly where the murmur was coming from. I couldn’t however make sense of the source as I dragged myself out of bed and flicked on the bedside lamp that wasn’t turning on for some reason- it was strange because my light never had problems with the battery unless it was plugged out, which I was sure it wasn’t- and so, with reluctance, I had to take myself towards the end of the door where the main rooms light switch lay stuck to the concrete wall, but just as I tapped that, it coincidently failed me too as I stood there- now shaking in the unknown occurrence of my bedroom.

I was definitely anxious around this time, firstly because I could still hear piercing voices slicing through my eardrums, secondly the room was pitch dark, and I couldn’t see a thing apart from the dairy that was somehow showing a gleam of the moonlight emitting through the pages- which I found more scary than weird, and lastly, I was paralyzed from my mind as I forgot the idea of rationalization. I didn’t have time to ponder on whether I was fully awake or this was all a stretched-out nightmare, but I had felt the softness of my quilt as I left my bed and so didn’t spend too much time analyzing this aspect of being conscious. Instead, I curled up against my fears and made my heavy legs walk towards the consumingly eerie book, since I had a hunch that this was the origin birthing the needy whispers.

As I reached toward the literature piece, its light began to fade with each moving step. It turned from moonlight to crimson and then all of a sudden to mist as my curious fingers couldn’t help but want to touch what was causing this conventional object to act so mystical.

Making physical contact with it, however, was a mistake I should’ve avoided because as the tip of my index rubbed against the parchment page something unexplainable happened; it was like the evil described in the man’s words came alive and within a zilch of a moment, it sucked me into a world that I had no familiarity with apart from having read about earlier, a world with a sky that was blanketed by the deepest forms of darkness, a world that a few fleeting moments ago sounded like a calamitous tale and nothing more, a world that I would’ve liked to have never come in contact with; it was the world of the shunned, hurt and incapacitated writer that had been left with the effects of ruinous clouds.

‘Where am I? What is this?’ I worded those sentences with my mouth, but couldn’t get them to reach my ear. It was as though the element of sound had been erased from reality, and so I struggled to use my next dependent sense which was my eyes, but even those didn’t cause me any help as I could barely see. My sense of smell too was something that was now a burden on me instead of a blessing because all I could sniff was the odor of crumbling corpses as they rotted on heaps of fire like garbage being disposed of, or eaten if this was the writer’s world. Regardless of that memory recollection, I kept my fingers crossed and hoped for the best as I utilized my final two senses of touch and hearing to find the right trail that would lead me out of this deranged mess that I had, by an incomprehensible way, stepped into.

Right now, it seemed like the only thing I could potentially follow. That wasn’t going to leave me in a linger was the croaking whisper of the man and so that’s exactly what I did, as my feet stumbled upon the camouflaged pebbles, sticks and what felt like fragile pieces of bones — as I unconsciously crushed them and felt the remains of flesh on their outer layer, with that action, my stomach had incorporated a nauseous feeling as I prayed that what I squashed were animal remains and not human ones, although I knew deep down that the reality was otherwise...

My shoulders shrugged at the connotation and just moved forward, wherever forward was. Saying that the atmosphere was strange would be a euphemism because it was so wickedly distorted that there really was no word for what was emitting through the air. If I were to think about this scientifically, I’d conclude that this was a fog of some kind, filled with ash content and dark vapor. But even logic in this situation would’ve left me with an incomplete verdict. It was a fog-like environment, but that’s not all there was to it. There was evil present so evidently that one could feel it in their gut that something was immoral where they were, there was also a scent so strong that it became hard to breathe, and the darkness itself was so heightened that staying in it for a few moments became maddening as I began to lose my senses because of my lack of sight. Where was the light? I screamed internally as I couldn’t speak- why couldn’t I utter my words out loud, you ask?

My only hypothetically biblical answer was the devil's presence. His ghost lurking is what zipped my mouth as I felt depression take over my body. It was like being alive and trapped in a coffin, but even that couldn’t compare to this, because when one is enclosed in a box, he’s at least aware of where he is and can mentally see how he will end once the oxygen runs out. Of course, even suffocating to death is not pleasant, but man has his senses heightened when he’s put in such a situation. The accident that I was in now, wasn’t like that — my senses weren’t active, they were just dead, yet I was physically alive. I could only feel what was happening, yet comprehending it was near impossible because I couldn’t yell for help, I couldn’t see where I was as I began to question whether I was blind? And the worst of all was that my mind was now on the peak of blowing up with the balderdash of sounds that still made no sense.

“Hello?” I heard myself talk in a frog-like tone as I reached the source of the whisper carrier. I still couldn’t speak loud enough because my voice had lulled down, but I managed to gulp down that one word as the paradox soul stopped his murmurs, making me blink. I wish I had the power to see him, but I couldn’t make out a thing in the blackness, all I was doubtlessly sure of was that whatever was in front of me had a strongly unappealing odor- close to rotting flesh but because I couldn’t make out what was there, I merely stood like a statue with my legs now shaking and my teeth clattering in trepidation of what the sibylline human’s appearance as, if he even was a human.

“It’s time.” The parallel voice awoke in the same whisper that now sounded slightly clearer, and within a flash, I was able to see again, and to be honest I wished I hadn’t.

The moving figure lit what seemed like a candle as there was a pinch of light that filled the room, making my eyes blink as they felt like they hadn’t had the power to see in ages — it was almost straining to open them up and visualize what was around me. I was standing on what felt like soil but looked like an archaic waste as my face grew disgusted with what my feet were coerced to stomp over. But that wasn’t the only disturbing thing; the sight of the man as I looked up was even more frightening than the environment he was in. The male had an overgrown beard that was drenched in dried up blood, uncut nails that if one examined with closeness could see the dirt it had frozen in it, and a buff figure from the shoulders but as your gaze went down it was evident that the man was starving to the point of malnourishment, his teeth as well were stained with the worst form of a cavity as a 21st-century dentist would faint had he come in contact with such a patient and to top it all off, his clothes were ragged like they hadn’t been changed in days, no weeks- making his overall appearance horrifyingly disturbing.

I swallowed the feeling of being uncomfortable as I took a step back. The man had his head engrossed in a paper of some kind, as I wondered whether he could see me or not? Could he sense my movement? Could he see me? Hear me? I knew I could definitely hear and see him now, but was that the case reciprocated, or was I invisible to him?

I was startled by all these questions but made sure to act on my safety as I continued my steps back, one foot back, second, third — my back flew in through a ghost-like figure as I fell behind and immediately flinched at what I had just permeated through. Was that a human? I grew even more confused, stressed, and afraid than ever as I wanted to scream. What was happening? I fearfully trembled as another creature stood in front of me.

This figure was human-like too, but the only real human thing in both, it and the person seated, was the fact that they had two legs. Everything else about them was just animalistic and with my body on the ground, I subconsciously crawled forward to get a better view of the vertical anatomy. By now, my hypothesis of being invisible was proven right. I was a phantom to them, they couldn’t feel my presence nor see my daunted figure and on one hand that was a positive because I was safe from whatever danger they were planning but on the other hand, I was stuck because the only real hope I had of getting out of this place was communicating with the whisperer but he, along with his fellow chap couldn’t sense me, and so I was all alone in this hell-bound world.

“He’s gone.” The voice that was standing upright uttered as I moved close to the two identical sounding whispers, “They need fire to cook his body before it freezes.”

“Tell them to get the body here, this fire won’t last a minute in the cold.” The man answered as I finally got a glimpse of the opposing physique-

“Mom?” My eyes balled open as the two humans stayed unaffected by my revelation. There was no way that this was my mother. She barely even resembled a female, with her ginger hair that usually was straightened and short, now burnt and reaching her knees, her face that once held beauty was now deteriorated with coal marks, her eyebrows that were usually trimmed, had now overgrown themselves as they formed a bushy unibrow and her clothing that was always prim and proper now looked repelling as her dress was torn from the bottom, revealing her unshaven legs and bruised skin. The only thing that convinced me that this even was my mother is her eyes that stayed at the same discipline as they were before, and her nose that was still as scrunched up as what I remembered. Everything else, however, was undeniably revolting.

I had barely begun to process this identification, as another horror blemish added itself to this equation. My so-called mother left the proximity and entered a few minutes later with a dragging corpse in her hands. The smell of dead flesh no longer surprised me as my nose had already adapted to this sickening scent, it was the rapport I held with the deceased that terrorized my insides, caused a ripple of goosebumps down my skin, froze my mind of the ability to concentrate and sent a horrifying freeze down my spine as I completely became immobile from the neck down.

The corpse was none other than my baby brother- the same baby brother that had accompanied me to dinner- he was the same 11-year-old that my mother had kissed goodnight as we narrowed our way to our designated rooms. Yet here he was; being dragged like an injured deer by none other than his birth giver.

“How long has it been?” The male, behind me, questioned as I felt his nonevent stir. I didn’t bother turning my head as I was still too fazed by what was in front of me but even without tilting back, I could make out that he had gotten out of his seat.

“I don’t know but his flesh is chilly enough to be sliced decently.” My mother that was trapped in the body of a monster answered with eyes that had now dilated and turned hungry.

The letters that I had read now entered my mind. There was a passage about craving human flesh- enjoying the bites of cooked breasts as though it was roasted chicken- but could this be the same? Could my mother really be so vile as to want to eat her own son? No, that wasn’t possible. The diary entry was one of a mad man and my mother wasn’t a mad man. Yes, this world that we had stepped into was vexatious to say the least but she wasn’t bestial. She was sane, she wasn’t a slave to the ideology of thyestean. Right?

“The villagers are hungry. We have to feed them as well.” She dropped the body as though it was disposable trash and with that, signaled the man to get the light closer.

“Give me the ax.” She demanded as he rested the overused candle on the floor and within an instant handed her a blood-stained mallet. I couldn’t get my eyes off my mother and so had no idea where he picked up that tool from, but being oblivious of my surroundings was never a bigger mistake than what I had just experienced. The punishment I got for neglecting my environment was more tempestuous than anything I could fathom as I began to wish I had been paying attention to the scruffy-looking male instead of my disheveled mother.

With a sense of callousness, she smashed the ax onto my brother's foot as it sliced open, making my throat scream out. My voice was back and it was more powerful than ever, yet they didn’t hear me. I would’ve leaped and pulled him away but my legs couldn’t move. It was as if a trade had taken place- my ability to speak for my ability to move- still, I was helpless as the act of anthropophagous- ness began and it began with such ease that it felt almost normal to the pair- like it was a practice, a tradition of some kind- just as the writer described in his entry. Was I living in the writer's mind? I tried to finally make sense of what I was experiencing? Had the diary taken my soul into the book and rewritten my life story? Was I now going through exactly what I had mocked as a “fantasy''?” Was my punishment for neglecting what the writer was convening, imprisonment in eternal hell? Or had I perhaps died in my sleep and entered hell itself?

I couldn’t answer myself as my situation grew worse and worse. Before I could process the chopping of my brother, they had already begun to fry him like cold fish as the fire grew larger and larger and my wails grew donkey-like. I howled like a mad wolf on a full moon's night as I repeated and begged for these monsters to stop.

“He’s your son.” I hallowed to the lady, but she merely guffawed in pleasure as the body burned and reached a perfect temperature to now chew on.

“No.” I shut my eyes as the ritual continued. I could feel my blood rising as my brother’s gore heated. Whilst I struggled to break free, he endured the pain of being sliced, burnt, and now eaten like another meal.

“Stop this. Stop this now.” I burst as I finally broke free and was able to rotate my hands in a cry, only to be held down by another person's touch. This touch was soft- but had force- it was familiar, lighter, and felt like home, but then why was it stopping me? What was it stopping me from?

“Marc.” A voice shattered into my ear making my horror-filled eyes open to my bedroom with my mother - now dressed in her pajamas - holding my hand in a concerned grip.

“M-om? Mom the fire. M-o-” My lips screeched as she huddled my cold, trembling body in her warming arms.

“Shush you were having a bad dream.”

“No….” I breathed out, unable to open my eyes. I had never been more grateful, more at peace to find my mother hugging me, to find myself in my room, to find me back into my world. But what I couldn’t understand was the fact that it was all a dream? It couldn’t be. It felt too real to just be a nightmare. It wasn’t a dream, I was sucked into a world, wasn’t I? I was sucked into the world of the writer… the writer.. the dairy…. My mind clocked as I broke away from my mother and rushed myself to the bedside.

“Where is it?” I practically yelled as my mother got up to follow me.

“Where’s what?”

“The diary mom.” I blinked at her. “The thing I was reading earlier. The journal that I got ba-ck from grandpas.” I stated the obvious as she gave me the most befuddled look as though I had gone insane.

“Mom, the damm diary that you saw me reading,” I repeated when she didn’t answer.

“Sweetheart, I never saw you reading anything.” She gave out as my mind received its final blow making me stop dead in the air. There was no way I had imagined all of it, even if the teleportation to another world was a dream, the reading part wasn’t. I had found a diary, I had stumbled across something, I had been fascinated by an entry of a horrifying year… the year of 536 AD. I had… and I wasn’t going to pretend that I hadn’t.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So what inspired you to write this?” The interviewer held out the book labeled “Hansel and Gretel” in his right hand as I gently pondered before giving him an answer.

“Just a wild imagination, I guess,” I replied as he smirked. As much as I wanted to smile back, I couldn’t. I hadn’t smiled since the night of 2002…the night that I read the diary…

It had been about 15 years since that unexplainable incident and after my mother had sent me to therapist after therapist to try and cure me of whatever I had developed, I silenced myself and realized that no one would ever understand what I went through, no one would be able to see what I saw and so there was no real point in telling people and gaining a title of “mad man” out of them. Therefore, after months of screaming about what happened, I zipped my lips shut and never once spoke about it again.

The diary was something that I couldn’t find, so I never did have the justification to prove that what happened actually did happen and for a while, I convinced myself that maybe it was all a nightmare. However, there was something that agitated me to believe that it wasn’t. I wasn’t sure what that thing was but it was there- it was a feeling of fright and horror that never left me. And after reading many historical books and Google searching the date “536 AD” over and over again, I concluded that I had in fact visited the worst year to be alive.

The mother performing cannibalism signified the people that had turned to madness during that time, the fire symbolized the thing that grew most in value in that year since there was no sunlight and the diary acted as a transport device of course as it not only transported me into its world but also carried the tale forward. The only thing that didn’t make sense was why it chose me to explore this demented space in history, why didn’t it choose someone else? Why did it have to scrutinize me to a lifetime of agony as the picture of my brother's feast stayed stuck in my mind, constantly replaying itself like a black and white film.

After a long time of self-loathe and insomnia, however, I embraced what I endured that night and decided that if people weren’t going to believe me, weren’t going to pay attention to what sufferings the community of that year went through- I was going to force them to listen to it and the only way I could do that was by writing- that was after all, how I first came in contact with it.

Writing an article or an informative book on it, however, wouldn’t have helped. Numerous historical channels spoke up about this year, yet so many individuals paid no heed to it. I, therefore, knew that I needed something to trick people into studying it- subconsciously of course, and the possible route to that was to turn it into a sugar-coated fairy tale where the practice of cannibalism seemed normal. I still couldn’t make it that deadly because then again, no one would want to read about it, thus defeating the purpose of my goal. Therefore, I provided the world with a sense of humor, magic, and most importantly a happy ending as I transformed this horror film into a nursery rhyme for kids - a children’s storybook you could say- that today went by the name, “Hansel and Gretel.” I knew no one would know the background behind it nor would this make them empathize with me or my ancestors, but that was okay, because at least they would submit to what people went through. At Least their mind would unconsciously be aware of what had taken place- even if they took it as humor- it was enough for me to know that they read it- they read something related to what I had been forced to adhere to.

“You know every kid loves this story.” The interviewer brought me back to reality as I nodded my head. “There has to be some kind of inspiration behind this.”

“Like I said… wild imagination,” I repeated with a sense of self-accomplishment.

Written by Hafsah Khalid.