Gingerbread

It was dangerous, we knew that, those paths through the dark woods have been in so many of the tales we'd heard as youngsters for us to be aware of the dangers.

We were older now, though, and we thought we were both brave and immune to danger.

Little did we know though, as we set off along the path, that things were changing.

We saw the girl ahead of us on the path. 'Hey, isn't that...?' Pete said, pointing to the girl.

'Don't be stupid – that's just a stor....' John peered up ahead at the girl.

I looked too, she was strolling along, carrying a basket and, yes, she did have a red cape with a red hood. She was – though – much older than we'd expect from the story; more of a young woman, more our age or a bit older, than a girl.

But she did look like the girl in the story, so I did the obvious thing and looked around for the cameras.

'What are you looking for?' John said. 'The big bad wolf?'

They all laughed.

'Git,' I said. 'Can't you see – it must be something they're filming. A film, TV or an advert or something like that.' I took a closer look at a suspicious-looking tree. 'Unless...?'

'Unless, what?' Pete sidled closer to see what I was looking at.

'Unless it is one of those prank TV shows... y'know they get this girl to piss about in the woods, pretend to attack her with a wolf or something. Then some unsuspecting twat comes along to rescue her and gets made to look like a tit on national TV... or YouTube... or something.'

Feeling smug, we watched the girl head off down the path. A few minutes later, we found a branch in the path and – on a whim – we turned to the left. Then a couple of minutes later we saw it.

'It's a fuckin' gingerbread house,' Pete said.

He was right it was and there was an old woman in the doorway, gesturing for us to step inside.