The Untold Story of the Witch

                        First off, you should know that evil is a huge generalization. Way too big to really judge a person by it. If you really want to get specific, you could go into driven evil by revenge, or even jealousy evil. Then there’s this whole deal with step-relatives and family feuds; don’t even get me started with those. I fancy myself as more of the creative evil, and I’m usually happy with it. But truth is, I wasn’t always like this. I used to be rather normal, nice even, living in a small village viewed by a large castle. I would wake every morning to the smell of fresh bread. Definitely not as nice as the candy house I live in now, but well, it was a start.

            I remember that one morning, waking up in a small, cozy cottage. My small feet padded softly on the hard wooden floor, and the smell of my mother baking in the wood-burning stove filled the house. As I gazed out the window, I realized that a soft blanket of snow had covered the ground, white and soft as icing sugar. You see, even at such a young age, I was fascinated by sweets and confections of every kind. There was just something about them that at sight seemed so innocent, and everybody loved them. And you should know that every time there is something so irresistible that everyone loves, there has to be someone to use it for manipulation.  That, of course, would soon be me. I pulled on my green cloak lying on the bedside table and headed outside.

The air outside was crisp and cold, and I shivered as I headed down a familiar path into the forest. The forest on the outskirts of the town was unbelievably green. Even the things that should be brown, like tree trunks, were covered in bright moss. The whole place seemed stuck in everlasting spring, and no snow reached the ground thanks to the thick canopy of trees. I had been walking a while when I noticed a trail leading off to the side. A battered signpost stood, creaking in the wind, the moist weather making the wood weak. Scratch marks made the letters on it barely audible, but as I peered closer I saw that it read “Drury Lane”. Nothing else to do, I headed down the path, young and naive. I had yet to learn that following creepy paths in the woods basically meant that you were dead meat. The farther I got on the path, the more I realized an eerie silence had fallen over the now dark woods. A small grey house appeared on my right, shutters hanging off their hinges. That was mistake number two: investigating creepy houses. Don’t ever do that. Not even if you see eyes peeking through the windows, watching you like a wild cat watches its prey. I saw those eyes, drawing me in, bringing me closer to the strange house on Drury Lane.

            As I opened the door, I was surprised to be hit with the smell of muffins. They lined the shelves, filled the counters, overwhelming anything else in the house. Curious, I walked further in. A small man emerged from the shadows, his warm smile greeting me, but his dark eyes suggesting something different. They looked almost… hungry. I mean who wouldn’t be with all these muffins, but I don’t mean like that. He was hungry for something else, for me. I asked him if I could have a muffin, and he agreed. I felt his cold eyes on my back as I turned to pick one up. Surprisingly, we struck up a conversation, and became good friends. I stayed overnight, and the next, and the next. The warning voice inside my heart started to fade. Thus began my training with the muffin man.

            He began to teach me things. At first he taught me how to make perfect muffins, and then we moved on to other sweets. He told me that Drury Lane was really Dreary Lane, but with years of talking through thick English accents it had eventually become Drury Lane. Eventually he began to teach me more, but these things were different. Darker. How to lure in children to your house using the single most tempting thing in the known world: candy. Over this time I found myself developing an unexplainable craving for children. I continued to train there, until one morning I woke up, looked in the mirror and saw myself for what I was really becoming: a witch. Scared, I grabbed my old green cloak and fled. I fled through the forest, farther and farther until I reached a small clearing. There I stopped and collapsed onto the ground. A single candy cane fell from my pocket and landed beside me. The sight of it reminded me of the day before I had left to go to the forest. Christmas was getting closer, so we had made gingerbread houses. Mine was the biggest and most intricate, but that was because candy was the only thing I was really good at working with, which didn’t exactly open up very many career choices. Then and there I decided to build myself a gingerbread house to live in. Picking up the candy cane and using it as a hammer, I began to work.

            Months later, after many trips back and forth to the village to get candy supplies, I was finished my house. The candy from the muffin man would’ve been far tastier if I went back and managed to get some of that, but I couldn’t bear to bring myself back to that place. The candy house was warm and welcoming, and I lived there happily for months. But thanks to the muffin man my acquired craving for children still hadn’t completely faded. In the house I hid from what I was, and could do it very successfully. I probably could’ve lived that way my entire life, and my cravings might even have eventually vanished. Fate though, had other plans.

            It all started when I heard noises from outside, so by instinct I went to investigate. I stopped in my tracks when I saw what it was. Children. Children breaking off candy. children shoving sweets into their faces !There were only two, a boy and a girl, but it could’ve been a thousand and it wouldn’t have made a difference. There was no escaping what I was now: I was a witch, and I wanted children. Silently cursing the muffin man I led the children inside, locking the door. I told them they were welcome to eat anything they pleased, while secretly planning to fatten them up for me to eat. If I was going to do this, I was going to do this right. I was done apologizing for what I was. It was too late for change, I was evil. Evil and proud of it. Though still somewhere deep down, the child from the village was inside me (and no I didn’t eat anyone yet, I meant me. You know, before my training on Drury Lane) and knew this was wrong.

            When the children were large enough, and I was preparing to eat them, the old me finally broke through. It’s funny how I had to wait this long for that to happen, right to the moment where I had looked at them with hungry eyes and took a step forward. This was a real epiphany, probably even greater then the Grinch. Unfortunately nobody would ever know of it. The children, whose names I had found out to be Hansel and Gretel, knew what I was doing. If I let them go, they would come back for me with an angry mob carrying pitchforks and torches. I somehow had to convince them I wouldn’t hurt anybody anymore. That was when I planned to do what I did: without turning the oven on, I pretended to be about to shove them in. Unknowingly following my plan exactly, they turned and pushed me in instead and ran away. I smiled, then waited a bit before crawling out.

            It’s now been a long time since that day, but I will never forget it. I still live in my candy house, but now I’m at ease with myself. It’s not my prison away from the rest of the world, now it’s more just a comfy cottage. It should trouble me that I am probably one of the greatest fairytale heroes of all time, but nobody knows it. Sometimes it actually does, but at the end of the day I’m content. Content knowing that every story needs its evil witch, and I was proud to have the chance to be one. Twisted? Maybe, but every story is more interesting with a twist.