Along the path, we passed many small animals riddled with holes. They'd been dead for a long time. Little Red Riding Hood told me to step around them carefully, and she said sadly that they'd all been killed by hunters.
Sometimes she'd stop, turn around, and ask: Big-tailed wolf, where did you come from?
I seemed to remember a lot of things, but I couldn't hold on to them. My memory seemed to only stretch back to my last lunch. My head ached for a moment. I gave up thinking and chased a butterfly off into the distance. She sighed, pulled out a piece of cake, and called: Hey, want a bite or not?
I trotted right back.
She crouched down, stroked my head, and said: Do you really not remember?
I was blank.
She said: That's okay. Come with me.
I followed behind her, feeling, for some reason, perfectly at ease. Little Red Riding Hood looked a little worried—probably because she'd finally noticed I'd eaten all her cake.
That afternoon, we arrived at Grandmother's house. It was a low wooden cabin, with a kindly old grandmother lying in a rocking chair on the porch.
Grandmother said: My, if it isn't Little Red Riding Hood!
Little Red Riding Hood held up her basket and said: Grandmother, I brought you snacks... though not a single bite is left.
Grandmother picked me up happily and said: Little Red Riding Hood, you shouldn't have—bringing dog meat and all. Shall we make Buddhist monk jump-over-wall stew tonight?
I nearly wet myself. Little Red Riding Hood quickly explained. Grandmother just chuckled and went to the kitchen to cook for us.
That afternoon, Little Red Riding Hood and I stayed at Grandmother's house, listening to Grandmother's distant stories, eating Grandmother's rice.
Grandmother said Little Red Riding Hood was a lovely woman. Grandmother said Little Red Riding Hood was afraid of the dark when she slept. Grandmother said Little Red Riding Hood's mother had died young. Grandmother said it was probably because of those childhood shadows—Little Red Riding Hood's husband had died in a car accident, leaving her alone with a child. She didn't want anything else—she just wanted to raise her child well.
I listened to those stories about Little Red Riding Hood, lying on the floor, drifting slowly toward sleep.
The door was suddenly pushed open by two hunters.
One hunter said gruffly: Look what we have here. Two poor women, and a scary wolf.
The other hunter said: Skin the wolf, make a wolfskin coat.
What about the women?
Are you some kind of psycho? A people-skin coat is way too creepy.
Two sharp clicks—they'd chambered their rounds.
I jolted awake, stood up, and bared my fangs at them.
A gunshot. I lunged at the hunters and bit one of their arms. We tumbled out the door. The hunter drove an elbow into my chest.
An excruciating pain in my chest—like a surgical knife piercing my windpipe. I was thrown back, bleeding from my chest. The bullet had hit me, and the elbow strike had torn my entire chest open.
The shotgun pressed against my head.
I closed my eyes.
Then Little Red Riding Hood rushed out. She grabbed the hunter's arm and screamed at me: Leo.
I opened my eyes in confusion. Her voice was so familiar, as though I'd been hearing it for years.
Whose voice was that, calling my name so desperately?
I saw a familiar figure overlapping Little Red Riding Hood's, panting, standing her ground, mustering all her strength to shout.
Run, Leo, run!
I scrambled to my feet, staring at her in bewilderment.
Run, Leo, run!
I took a couple of hesitant steps, then finally turned and ran, limping forward. She kept repeating: Run, Leo, run. I ran faster and faster.
Old trees lashed at me, a hunter's gun named Cancer fired at me, a lost father from a car crash lunged at me, and all those red and green pills, all the mottled, stabbing pains etched into my body came hurtling at me.
I howled and smashed through them, drenched in blood, still charging forward with every ounce of strength in my legs.
The forest and the cabin vanished. The scenery kept rewinding, shrinking into a tiny dot behind me.
I ran with a force I'd never been able to summon in my entire life. A chattering magic mirror appeared before me, and in its surface I saw my own reflection. A little boy, stumbling as he ran, falling, scrambling up, too frantic to wipe the mud from his face.
Run, Leo, run!
That woman's voice, screaming itself hoarse, coming from behind.
The little boy lowered his head and charged headfirst into the mirror. I watched him shatter the glass, smash through layer after layer of dreamscape. In the broken shards, I saw the reflection of the woman bustling at his bedside. Late at night, that woman nodded off to sleep, and he struggled up from the bed, falling to the floor over and over, dripping with sweat, clenching his teeth, crawling again and again toward the direction where his will might walk free.
Twenty-five years of illness and the struggle between life and death—I could no longer read the expression on that boy's face.
...
Seven
It was an afternoon before sunset. A breeze on the balcony, rustling the curtains, brushing my face.
I opened my eyes. White clouds hung low outside the building. Birds were just returning to their nests, food clutched in their beaks.
That woman sat beside my bed, telling a distant story. About a distant mountain at the foot of which lived a grandmother, Little Red Riding Hood, and a big-tailed wolf wagging his head.
I turned to look at her.
I said: I just had a really long dream.
She said: What dream?
I said: I dreamt you took me to Grandmother's house. I dreamt you called my name.
She held my head gently and said: Leo, welcome back to the world of the living.
I looked at her face. Just like that afternoon twenty-five years ago, when we first met—she cradled me in her palms. I was no bigger than her hand then, tears still on my face, yet my heart was as serene as an angel's.
She said to me, wrapped in the receiving blanket: You are my son.
That voice that brought me into this world was so gentle.
Was that the voice of God?
I reached out and wiped a tear from her cheek.
I said: Mom, I'm so hungry.
Eight
Wait—who was the stepmother in the forest?
When I'd mostly recovered, I went back to report to work. On a drizzly day, my scary boss came to meet me.
I could barely walk, leaning on an extremely ugly cane.
She said: Leo, how the hell haven't you died yet?
I said: I'm more curious about why you haven't fired me yet. Honestly, is something wrong with your head?
She said: You're stuck now. No resigning. You're working here until you drop dead.
I said: Dream on, you idiot.
We traded insults as we walked out of the building. My boss didn't offer to help me walk—she just made a point of holding an umbrella over my head. My mom was waiting outside. She came over, took me off her hands, and thanked my boss.
Just then, my boss was almost likeable. She said sweetly: Nice to meet you, ma'am.
My mom nodded.
In the spring rain, my mom and I walked home slowly.
My mom said: She seems like a nice girl. But something about her rubs me the wrong way.
I said: Why?
My mom said: A woman's intuition when she meets her future daughter-in-law.
I said: She's nice, Mom. Don't get the wrong idea—she's just my boss.
My mom asked: What did you and she talk about?
I said, confused: Nothing much. That fat cow said...
I stopped, mid-sentence.