This is a continuation of my former Fairy Tales From the Inside series. Discombobulated is funnier.
Frau Rosina Leckermaul
Baker of fine cakes and pastries
To: Herr Peter Besenmacher and Frau Gertrude Besenmacher
I am sending this note to you along with your two kids, with a map so they can find their way home. I assume that you know how to read. If not, find someone who can. It’s not that hard.
Stop losing your kids in the woods! If you don’t want them anymore, give them to an orphanage, send them to reform school or put them on the stage. Just don’t let them come around to my place. I have enough problems.
Let’s clear something up right now. I am not a witch. I’m old, some of my teeth are missing, my hair is stringy, I have a big nose, my chin sticks out and I wear black. Does that make me a witch? No. It makes me an ugly old woman who wears black, that’s all. So stop telling everyone that I’m a witch, because I am not a witch.
I don’t eat children, either. That crazy rumor got started twenty years ago when I threatened to eat a couple of bratty kids who were trampling my rutabagas. It was a stupid thing to say and I can’t live it down. But I DON’T EAT CHILDREN! I never have eaten children, and I never will eat children.
Do you understand that I am not a witch and I don’t eat children? Good. I’m glad we settled that.
I am a baker. My gingerbread is famous and I sell it all over the place. A courier comes once a week for my latest batch to ship it to Frankfurt. I constructed my house to look like gingerbread, and I put real gingerbread figures around my fence. Those are for display only. Sometimes salesmen come around, and I like to show them my wares in a creative, professional way.
I came out of my house yesterday to find your two darling brats eating my display. They were ignoring a very prominent sign I have posted up that says, “Please don’t eat the fence.”
Naturally, I was royally pissed. I tried to chase them off with a broomstick, but they just kept on pulling gingerbread off the fence. I finally managed to grab hold of that boy of yours, but he kept squirming and kicking and biting and I finally had to lock him up in a parrot’s cage. I was yelling really loud, and I might have said something about frying them both for breakfast. I don’t know, because I was mad as all fucking hell get-out. I kept both little demons overnight, figuring they’d cool down by morning and I could send them home. Then I made your girl help me prepare another batch of gingerbread men to replace the ones she and her brother had exploded all over my lawn.
The final straw was when your precious little she-devil tried to shove me into my own oven! I hope you at least give her a good licking for that little trick.
Don’t let these two pint-sized con artists tell you any lies about what happened. I just told you what happened, and I will swear to it in court if I have to. If you want any more details from me, feel free to come around and discuss them – without the kids. Let’s keep it civilized.
I don’t want to see those two imps around here ever again. And while we’re at it, I also don’t want to see that bunch of delinquents who have been coming around to my house as part of some gang initiation.
Oh, forget it. That’s a whole other tale.
Rosina Leckermaul
I still think she’s a witch!
Once a rumor like that gets started, you just can’t kill it!