09/11/2022 - Hansel and Gretel
Reading time: 2 min
Hansel and Gretel had always been good with computers, since they could barely talk, and now, at twelve, they ruled some of the dirtiest chambers of the dark web.
Their parents were simple people, good with their hands and knowledgeable about the slow pace of nature, and when police began showing up at their door, they could barely understand what their kids had done.
In the beginning, it was just breaches of data, but then the policemen’s words turned scarier and scarier.
Hansel and Gretel had bought and sold plutonium to a bunch of shady guys. They had divulged a series of pictures that led to the kidnapping of twenty school girls, and apparently made customers pay a fee to either stream or watch torture on innocent people. The police searched and searched, but there was never any evidence.
Their mum had enough.
She forced her husband to strip the twins down of any electrical device and leave them in the forest for twenty-four hours.
Without the minimum survival skills required for a night under the stars, the time ahead ought to be dreadful, if not for a strong gingerbread scent coming from the darkest part of the forest.
On the threshold of a house made of chocolate, an old witch called for them, promising all the candies they could ever eat.
Hansel and Gretel laughed at the witch with their usual air of superiority.
“See this?” Hansel pointed at the inside of his ear. “This is not a simple Bluetooth headphone. This is a transmitter, and for the entire journey I’ve been leaving a trail of 5G signals.”
Gretel touched the frame of her glasses, and a bank account appeared on her lenses.
“And now that we’ve been paid,” she said, “we can make this location public. Bye-bye.”
In less than a minute, helicopters appeared above the trees, while all sorts of dodgy individuals rushed to get a piece of the witch, screaming things like: “Drink her blood, it’s better than Viagra.”
Hansel and Gretel went back using the simplest of the tools in their arsenal; Google Maps, and when they got home, they chuckled as they watched their parents being arrested for storing sensitive details about a prolific serial killer. Details Gretel had wisely connected to her father’s magazine subscription.
“What do you want to do with the house?” she asked her brother.
“I don’t know. Can we afford to make it bigger, and out of chocolate?”
Gretel patted him on the back. “We can afford to do whatever we want.”
About this story
Prompt:
ELEMENT ONE: The Fairy Tale
Or you might call them folk tales, or fables, or even Disney movies. Whatever you call it, pick one of those good old stories that you’ve heard a million times, maybe before bedtime. Make sure to pick one that you’re really familiar with, but we don’t want you getting too comfortable, it’s FFM after all
ELEMENT TWO: Flip it!
Maybe the Princess doesn’t need saving. Maybe that Grimm story actually gets a happy ending! Maybe Ye Olde Village is actually Boston. Maybe the magic beans are really just pintos. There’s a million ways that story could’ve gone, right? Your job is to spin it from overused straw into Flash Fiction gold! Any genre, any tone, any format is fine. Stretch those old tales as far as they can go!
From the official page of FFM 2022.
Notes on the challenge
Each and every story published here has been written, reviewed, polished and published in less than 90 minutes. Which means you’re going to find spelling mistakes, ugly sentences and weird structures. I still hope you’ll enjoy them!
