It’s amazing how stories are told nowadays. As you know, everything ends with “Happily ever after” or “I’ve overcome my hardships and learned a little lesson along the way” but that is not how everything happens. You have probably heard of the Telephone game, right? If not, the game goes like this: Something is whispered into the ear of a person at the beginning of a line and then that person whispers the same thing to the next person and so on until, at the very end, the sentence isn’t the same as the one at the start. Same with stories. That’s how rumors are spread. A story comes out, it’s not interesting enough or sweet enough or romantic enough or juicy enough so it gets bent and twisted until it fits the standards of the audience. You’ve heard this a thousand times and you’ll probably hear it a thousand times more (except this time I actually am telling you the truth): This is how everything really happened with Goldilocks and the Three Bears…

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Goldilocks woke up at sunrise every morning. She put on her clothes, grabbed her bag and headed out the door. The village always seemed to be alive and awake by the time she arrived. Though it was early morning, the townspeople were already hard at work, attending to their duties. They were always so distracted by now that Goldie could slip into their bags or clothes and grab the contents of their pockets. She had this impulse for the first time at age 5, when her mother led her by the hand through this very street and she saw the baker’s stand and a fresh loaf of bread, sitting there at the edge of the table. She never went hungry. Her family wasn’t poor, and yet her hand had been taken over by an instinct she never knew she had. It started out with simple things: a pair of pants on a clothesline, a single boot, a pair of spectacles. Though, as she grew, her impulses became more and more difficult to ignore. It soon became necklaces and bangles, money bags and rings. It had gotten her into trouble on multiple occasions (one even resulted in a massive beanstalk rising into the sky, but that is a story for a later date). After such happenings, Goldilocks decided that if she couldn’t control the urge, she would have to become more skilled at handling it. So she did. Then, at sixteen, her hands were lighter and more graceful. She learned the art of creating a diversion. Since then, she had never been caught.

Goldie walked along the cobblestone street. She spotted a man attempting to get his horse to calm down, throwing his hands up and calling out soothing remarks. A couple others gathered around to help while others watched. Goldilocks smirked to herself, thinking of the convenience of the situation. She made her way through the crowd, slipping her hand in and out of purses and satchels. A tall man stood near a woman and a group of loud children and shouted remarks to the others. They listened to his comments and sent a woman to go grab a treat for the horse. Goldie made her way over to him subtly, drawing little attention to herself. She walked behind him and stuck her hand into his pocket, going in for the attack. Suddenly, she felt a strong hand grab her wrist. She looked up, eyes wide. The man stared down at her with eyes of fire, burning through hers. Goldilocks attempted to tug her hand free of his grip but it came to no avail, his grip was too tight.
The man shouted, “Thief!” The crowd turned their attention away from the horse, who seemed to sense the tension and was now more alarmed than before, and onto the new scene before them. The man looked up to the crowd and Goldie seized her moment. She pulled his arm up and bit down on it as hard as she could. The man jerked his hand away and let out a pained cry, releasing her. She ran through the bewildered crowd and jumped up on the horse. It bucked just a bit before listening to her commands.
She rode until she got to the edge of the Woods. She slowed the horse and turned to look back towards the village. She could see a group of men and horses charging after her, led by the man whom she had attacked. Goldie turned back around and headed down the path that led her into the deep Woods.
Childhood stories are usually exaggerated and teach you a great lesson about some aspect of life. The stories told to Goldilocks as a child about the Woods didn’t do it justice. They were not dark and gloomy. In fact, they were bright and sprinkled with flowers and creatures. But the look of it did not match the way Goldilocks felt when she entered. She felt watched and waited for. As though if she breathed too loud, something would shift. She looked around but remembered how closely followed she was and carried on.
Goldilocks headed down this path for what seemed like forever until she came upon a diverged path. She quickly looked behind her and went off down the right. Eventually, she came upon a house. On the front door was a homemade sign that read: The Bairs. After careful inspection, it appeared to be lacking its occupants. The house seemed to be lived in, just empty. She heard a distant neigh of a horse and began to act quickly. She released the horse that had taken her there, wishing it a better life being free than the dull life that the village promised. She applied pressure to a low window, opened it, threw her bag in, and made her way through. She stepped down upon the floor quietly and called out, “Hello?”
She stood in silence for minutes, waiting for someone to appear, but no one ever did. She was in what looked to be the kitchen of the house. It was cluttered, but not overwhelmingly so. The odd thing that Goldilocks noticed was that there was no food. No vegetables. No fruits. No bread or cheese. Her stomach churned when her eyes landed on a bloodied butcher’s knife on the table. Her blood drained from her face and she couldn’t breathe. She exhaled and turned around, walking into the living area. She reached for a candelabra on an end table near a chair and shoved it in her bag. Suddenly, a loud noise came from outside. She threw her bag on the table and walked lightly to the window, then moved the heavy drapes to peek through them.
The group of men and their horses stopped the group in front of the house. The group was half the size of the one in town. Goldilocks figured the other half had probably gone down the other path. The man she had attacked was shouting orders at the rest. The others shouted ideas as to where she could be. She held her breath so she could hear them.
“There are fresh prints here in the dirt,” one villager said. They all looked down and then up at the house. Her eyes widened in fear and her stomach twisted in a knot when it seemed as though they all were looking directly at her. Though her fear rushed through her, she could not move away from the window. The man she attacked got down from his horse and began to walk toward the house while others followed suit. Then she heard a neigh from a horse and another villager shouted, “There! Beyond those trees! I see the horse!”
Everyone turned to look besides the man walking toward the house. “Very well,” he said, “Let’s carry on.” He tore his eyes from the house with squinted eyes and a furrowed brow. They all hopped back their horses and rode off.
Goldilocks backed away from the window slowly, breathing heavily. She grabbed her bag from the end table she threw it on and made her way through the house, shoving things in. She went to the bathroom and opened the cabinet. The image of the bloodied knife in the kitchen flashed through her mind again, making her lose her balance and steady herself against the sink. Goldilocks opened the cabinet and pulled out a bright, aqua elixir from the shelf. She turned the bottle in her hands, uncapped the top. It smelled like cinnamon and basil. She exhaled and brought it to her mouth.
The liquid burned her throat with cool heat. Goldie could feel its path all the way down to her stomach. She walked out of the bathroom and up the worn wooden stairs. About a quarter of the way up, her eyes and feet grew heavy.
When she got to the top of the stairs, she turned into the first bedroom, hoping she hadn’t poisoned herself. She threw herself on the bed, but sat up as fast as she could when she felt something crawl on her hand. Goldie looked around and stood up as her eyes searched the sheets. A bug crawled over the pillow and Goldie gasped. Then another crawled over the comforter. Followed by another and another. Of course, it was possible that it was all in her head, which was now clouded by the elixir. Goldilocks left the room and continued on to the next. This bed was larger and, after examination, seemed to be unoccupied by pests. Goldie lay down on it, shut her eyes, and blacked out.
Goldilocks woke up to the sound of a door opening then closing again. At first, she was incapable of moving her arms and legs, then, after a second or two, she sat up, too relieved that she hadn’t been poisoned to worry about the noise from downstairs.
“Whose bag is this?” A deep voice shouted.
Goldie froze.
“Well, I don’t know! It isn’t mine,” replied a lighter voice, like a child’s.
“Let me see it, dear.” A woman’s voice replied.
Goldilocks stood and lightly pushed herself beneath the bed.
“Hey! Isn’t that my mother’s candelabra?” The woman said.
“Someone is in this house! Look around! No corner will remain unsearched,” the man yelled.
Goldilocks stopped breathing altogether. She followed the family’s footsteps around the house. The child was lighter on his feet, she presumed, and didn’t search thoroughly. She prayed silently to herself that he would be the one coming upstairs to search. The woman went to the bathroom first, announcing to everyone that her sleeping elixir had been taken down to the last drop. The man was the easiest to keep track of. He didn’t seem to be heavy, but he had heavy steps. They belonged to someone with an exaggerated sense of authority.
The man did not respond to the woman’s discovery. He simply stopped where he was in the kitchen and then walked through the living room and up the stairs.
He walked up the stairs slowly, one by one. Not like he was ascending, but counting down. Goldilocks was frozen with fear. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. Then, the other two sets of footsteps followed.
When the family reached the top, the boy immediately went to his room and after a minute called, “No one in here!” He then joined his parents in the hall. All three walked evenly, like a march. The man stepped into the room first. He searched in the wardrobe. The woman looked behind the drapes, and just as Goldie had wished, the boy looked around the bed.
At first, Goldilocks thought she was in the clear. The boy walked around it and even tore the blankets off. Then, she heard him lean in close to the bed, then…
“Father! There a curly, ugly, blonde hair on the pillow!” He shouted.
The family was silent for a minute. Then the father took a step, which Goldie presumed was him taking the hair from his son, and went silent again. The son got on his hands and knees and Goldie peered at him, completely still, through the transparent bedskirt. He took his hand and moved the skirt out of the way, exposing her. They just stared for a moment and Goldilocks waited for the boy to scream but he didn’t. He just muttered, “Father.”
Much was foggy about what happened next. She was removed by a familiar, strong hands and then met familiar eyes. The burned through her just as they had earlier that day.
The man whispered, “I knew it.”

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Now, this is the part of the story you should probably not tell your kids. Maybe change it up a bit? Like, say she fights her way out? Or, I don’t know. Be creative. I won’t go into a lot of detail for your sanity’s sake. Okay, back to the story…
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The man she had attacked earlier was looking at her now and smiling out of the corners of his mouth. The family dragged her downstairs and into the kitchen. The story morphed into the family being actually walking, talking bears. Though, in reality, they were people. But (spoiler alert) they were people who ate other people. So, Goldilocks couldn’t tell us exactly what followed due to complications with being eaten alive by other villagers. But we can kind of imagine. She isn’t alive to tell the tale, anyway.

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There are a lot of lessons to learn from this story. I mean like: Hey, guys, don’t steal from cannibals? Don’t literally walk into their house? Don’t steal at all? Don’t drink weird elixirs from medicine cabinets? Don’t be a cannibal?

I don’t know. Whatever you want to get from this fairytale, by all means, go ahead. I’m just here to tell you how it happened.