Gretel

Panic. Pressure. Squeezing, gripping and biting. She sat in the desolate room and wept, tears streaming from her eyes, dripping onto her feet and dampening her socks. Her parents were shouting in the other room, she couldn't help but cry when they started shouting. Her brother lay beside her, a quivering mess of a boy curled up. He looked so innocent, so pathetic.

The shouting calmed slightly and Gretel peered into the room, a thick goo dribbled down the door and stuck to her hands, red, like strawberry jam. She couldn't get it off, she couldn't get it off. It stuck on her hands, on her dress, in her mind. The thought was unbearable, intolerable, the word, unspeakable.

Blood.

A green and white tunnel, followed by a red splattered wall, patterned oddly and burning something fierce. She pushed her hands harder into her eyes, a deeper green formed shapes burnt onto her eyelids.
A gaping black maw formed in the now emerald tunnel, she could see flashes and grey swirls and spinning arcs. Violet velvet skulked past and around her, warm, invisible colour. Then black. The harder she pushed the deeper the black, pointillist shapes of the brightest light and blackest dark. When she took away her hands the colour faded a little, but the dots and squiggles remained, leering, squirming.

She realised quickly that she was freezing cold. The strong wind that whistled through the forest was icy and bitter, bringing with it a faint smell of baked bread and a meaty stew. The smell was exquisite, and the children; Gretel, and her brother Hansel, could not prevent saliva pooling in their cheeks. They arrived home late and sat at the crooked, broken table, awaiting a pitiful meal of bread and watery potato broth. The mother swung at them and cursed loudly, she reminded them angrily of money, a term Gretel never really understood. The father sat in the corner, he looked asleep and was dribbling, a white and stained crimson hat placed oddly on his crown.

The mother grabbed the children's hands and led them out into the dark area of the forest. Hansel, with his insatiable childishness decided to stamp on the berries in the bush. They led back to the house, Gretel realised, and was cured of her painful knot of unease and discomfort. Dark disquieted birds sat in watch and swooped; the berries would be their food tonight, and once the mother had left the children to their fate amongst the trees, the berries were almost gone.
The children followed what they could, forging a path that roughly interconnected the dark red stains left of the berries' juice.
Black shapes momentarily crossed Gretel's eyes, a green flash and her vision became blurred, Hansel stood and watched, concern etched into his face. Gretel hadn't eaten properly for days, it was taking it's toll.

At a crossroad, the children became utterly lost, wondering aimlessly in the dark. They found a route that looked like their way home, and set-off with a renewed vigour. A noise, a crack, and suddenly the ground beneath them fell, an ersatz chute of cracked wood. Hansel dropped sharply to the left and then Gretel had lost him, she had lost him and she then had lost hope. She continued falling, then without notice dropped into a chair, a strong sturdy cradle made from the stump of a teak. She moved to stand, but long vines and thorned branches from the tree roots above grabbed and bound her to her chair.

Gretel panicked. Pressure. Squeezing gripping and biting. She tugged and shook with unrestricted fear while the vines squeezed harder and harder, cutting deep into her chest. She tried to scream, she fought, but the horror before her fell into her vision, the scene too grotesque to be ignored for long. Three other children sat with her at the table, she should say four, but the last girl on her right was dead. Branches stemmed from her flesh and clothes, with a larger two that appear to have penetrated and eviscerated the flesh from her skull, culminating in her eyes; empty sockets, bloody, horrowingly realistic. On the table sat a tray of berries, deep red, just within reach of her constricted arms. The other children there blinked at her with sympathetic, terrified eyes. They looked at the berries, then back at her.
She sat forever, tied to the chair, she could not move. A skeletal and pale boy stared at the berries, he felt the deep, churning pain of his body digesting itself after days of starvation, he reached for his own plate of berries and grasped a handful. Unable to speak, the others just stared and watched in horror as he swallowed them whole. The boy on Gretel's left shook violently and screamed silent tears beneath the vines across his face. Gretel was confused, but it became clear as the skeletal boy squirmed in pain and writhed like a snake. Sharp, bony thorns grew from his skin, discoloured and excrescent with coils of poisonous leaves. Gretel tried to scream again, nothing, branches reached across her mouth and throat. The branches kept growing from him, endless stems of green and brown, ripping through as the boy twisted in agony. Then they stopped. The boy slumped a little and stared at the bloodied branches protruding from his chest and arms. The pain was unbearable and so he wasted no time in grabbing a few more off the chipped plate before him. Gretel saw his face, his eyes, sorrowful determination like he just wanted it to end. The others again shook and fought, trying to stop him, to shout no, but Gretel knew it was no use. The boy swallowed his mouthful and sat back into the chair, welcoming a release from the torture his body was inflicting. His head rolled back and he screamed in silence, things could be seen moving beneath his skin, none of the children could look away, shock overruling disgust and anguish. Blood dribbled, it dripped out of the boys mouth and oozed down his chin, onto his baggy clothes and pooled in his lap, one last convulsion leapt through him, an ecstasy of death, and then three large branches smashed though his face, tearing out his eyes. He collapsed back into the chair with a grim bloodied smile and a broken body. Gretel finally regained the ability to turn away from the scene before her and tears rolled down her cheeks; under the vine, she sobbed and wailed.

Footsteps in the dark. Gretel had not noticed in her terror that a passage lay in the shadows to her right, an echo resounded, loud and paralysing. She and the others squirmed in fear.

A dim dark violet glow swept searchingly across the room. The glow was eyes, eyes sunken into a black, wooden face, a witch made from blackened wood, like a burnt tree with a woman's features and branches jutting from her rotting carcass. The bark was her skin, the dew was her blood, the leaves were her hair. She smiled without a mouth and leaned over the skeletal boy. Her hand, an axe, she viciously cut into him and revealed a wooden body, red wood, a tree in a boy, the boy as a tree. The witch ate the wood, still dripping with blood and continued cutting more. Gretel watched as his destroyed face lopped to one side to meet her gaze, the crooked mouth still smiling with blooded wooden teeth. Adrenaline pumped so fast her heart felt like it would explode and she ripped outwards with unimaginable power; A hatred so strong she cut her hands on the vines, a branch across her wrist snapped.
The witch was busy taunting the other children, cutting bits off the dead and offering them as food to the living, a decline only meant she would sing a silent cackle and eat it herself, wiping the drying blood on the table.

Gretel kicked the table leg, she was free, fighting off new vines seeking to constrict her. The table fell, and the witch rolled to the floor. Angry and surprised, she spat blood into Gretel's face and grasped her neck. Gretel could not breath. Her vision became blurry. She could smell the bread and stew from back home. An illusion. Death. A light, fire, a torch flickered above and Gretel swung with everything she had at the witch's chest, a sickening choke escaped and the torch was in her hand. Thrown. Miss. The witch screamed and chased her. Gretel jumped as hard as she could but the witch was faster by far and gripped her by the throat again. Squeezing, cackling and coughing as black goo dripped from her wounded chest, her burnt black face smelled like a thick copper. The torch wasn't far, a sudden screaming stretch and the witch's face erupted into flame.

An unworldly, terrible screech shook the room. The bookcase slammed to the floor, the chairs broke, vines retreated. The witch's burnt wooden skin crisped and peeled, sap bubbled and oozed from her and leaves shrivelled until she became ash and dust. Rubies made from crusted blood fell from the core of the tree above, the riches of the dead, killed by that monster. Gretel filled her pockets to bursting. The ground cracked and broke, a crevice that opened to claim the hellish remains of the witch. “Hell returns to reclaim it's subservient children”, a voice with no mouth said, reverberating heavily in Gretel's ears and her mind, she fell to the floor and drifted unconscious.

A icy tingle engulfed her face, the two surviving children had awoken her with water from a nearby well. They still could not speak, branches pierced their lips and tongues, a fact she had before not realised.
They wrote something in the mud with sticks, barring Gretel from a glimpse until completion. They backed away to reveal the words.

“est tibi colluctatio super veritas et dolor immensa est tua salutare”

Gretel turned, confused, but they had gone. She turned back to the well, and thought about the witch, Hansel, hell. She watched the inky black water swirl and shimmer, a dizziness similar to before swept over her, stronger than before. Suddenly it hit her like a wave, she faltered, and collapsed into the dust.

A tunnel, followed by a red wall, burning like fire. Violet velvet, warm, invisible colour. Then black. Light and dark. She removed her hands from her eyes to see Hansel, smiling and tilting his head in curiosity.
They arrived home late and sat at the table awaiting a pitiful meal of bread and watery soup. Hansel stared at her confused before stamping berries into the grass during the walk out into the forest, Gretel had told him to meet her at the well, this time she was dropping stones.