In a small teeny tiny town in the grand glorious gorgeous woods, lived a girl everyone knew as Little Red Riding Hood. She was called that way because of the red hood she never removed. Her mama had sown it for her, that’s why it was so precious.
Little Red Riding Hood had a grandmama she adored. Her grandmama lived in the big city where the trees died. That was the same city where people in the wood went to work and she went to school. Grandmama lived in a tall grey building that reminded Little Red Riding Hood of the day the bird that came to visit her died.
Little Red Riding Hood loved it when her mama asked her to bring butter and jam and strawberries to her grandmama. She loved it because when she was alone with her grandmama, she could ask all the questions in the world. Her grandmama would patiently listen and patiently answer. She was not as busy as her mama who, after having sown Little Red Riding Hood her hood, got so tired that she rarely left the bed. In between those two mamas lying in bed, Little Red Riding Hood was a beam of light and a messenger of hope.
This time, Little Red Riding Hood had plenty of questions. On her way to school, she had seen how wolves would lurk around rabbits in the woods. She saw those shivering rabbits waiting at the bottom of large pines, wolves giving them carrots and taking them to their lairs. She heard the rabbits squeak in there. When the rabbits came out, their eyes were red and swollen, like they experimented bad things. She heard the rabbits cry.
She saw the same thing in the streets on her way to her grandmama. In between two syringes and a few corpses, she had seen women standing in boots even when the weather was so hot her head would swell under her hood. She saw many many men lurking around those women like the crow eyeing the mice on the pavement. She would not hear the women scream but the men would yell all the time.
Little Red Riding Hood asked around and she learnt that what was happening was prostitution. She was told that was a job. Men offered money to women to do things to women. Little Red Riding Hood did not know what that meant so a boy at school showed her some videos. Little Red Riding Hood had swollen red eyes by the end of the video. The boy told her that men also did it in the woods and that the wolves learnt from them. I don’t believe you, Little Red Riding told the boy. He said it was true, that wolves offered carrots to rabbits to lick them.
Little Red Riding Hood read about this thing, ‘prostitution’. She read a lot. She got to know more than she would have liked, she got to see more than she could have known. She kept thinking about it.
On her way to her grandmama that Saturday, in the woods, she tried to count the rabbits. There were too many. She tried to count the wolves. There were even more. In the streets, she tried to count the women. There were too many. She tried to count the men. There were even more. She just couldn’t understand how the wolves learnt from men. She just couldn’t understand how what they learnt was a job. True, her mama had not had a job for a long time, but Little Red Riding Hood was pretty sure that the one she used to have was not like that.
So, she was so happy when she got home in the city to give the butter to her grandmama. While she was spreading it over warm sesame bread, she asked her so many questions about prostitution:
‘If prostitution is a job, is child prostitution child labour?
If prostitution is a job, why is there never unemployment during a recession but the opposite?
If prostitution is a job, what school do you have to attend to get the job? Mama says I should work hard at school. Will I be a prostitute if I do?
If prostitution is a job, at what age do you retire?
If prostitution is a job, why do you never get sacked?
If prostitution is a job, how do the ‘bring your kid to the office’ days look like?
If prostitution is a job, what is the minimum service requirement for strikes? Three blowjobs a day?’
Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmama did not answer. An adult is always surprised by a young girl’s intelligence: how often is inarticulation confused with ignorance! Little girls understand everything, they just don’t always show nor realise how intact their intellect is, how little corrupted by men, how pure and perfectly functioning it is.
Grandmama had now finished her sesame bread but still stood silent. Little Red Riding Hood became worried and wondered whether her grandmama knew what a blowjob meant. Perhaps she had spoken too formally! She should have just talked about wolves and rabbits, maybe she did not know what men do to women!
To nudge her, little Red Riding Hood asked her one final question.
‘Grandmama when did you become so hairy?’
Grandmama rose from the bed like the dead from the ground. She was monstrously huge. She was a he.
Little Red Riding Hood knew what this meant. She had seen it so many times on TV late on Sunday nights: a wolf eats a grandmama, dresses up as her and kills the grand girl.
As she realised this, she saw the wolf’s gaping mouth closing on her.
Written on the 18 May 2021. Edited on the 24 November 2022. Small edits on the 19 November 2025.
Borazan Sesli 