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Chapter One
     
    Little Red Hood
     
    Angela Black
     

     
    Silhouettes and Shades
     

     
    Red traveled through the forest under the cover of night. The trail she traversed was worn out and barely visible beyond the thick fog that shrouded her way. She cursed herself for her foolishness and hurried onward.
     
    She was headed home and had misjudged the time it would take her to get there. A careless decision it turned out as she was left alone in the darkened woods without a flame to light her path.
     
    She could hear things, awful things, ones best not revealed. Their nails clicked against the stones on the ground and their silhouettes skipped along behind the tree line.
     
    “Get a hold of yourself, Red,” she whispered under her breath. “It’s just some fauna, nothing more.”
     
    Regardless of what she’d told herself, Red quickened her pace and found she was beginning to believe in the ghost stories she’d heard at a child. Awful stories about monsters that roamed the woods at night and ate anyone imprudent enough to venture outside once the moon had risen to prominence.
     
    The elders of Korban would speak of ghouls, goblins and lizard men that would rise from their dank dungeons and hunt the living. She always thought of it was nothing more than silly superstition to scare the young children into servitude and keep them locked indoors at night. Those thoughts were a luxury she could no longer afford as the clicking of nails on stone and wood drove her to a darker place—a place where the unseen horrors of Hell walked on her plane.
     
    The creatures were no longer mere fairy tales for her to reflect on. They had entered her realm and threatened her existence.
     
    “Grandmother’s on her own next month,” Red said with a few expletives thrown over her shoulder in the direction of the town she’d just some from. She ran her fingers through her luscious red hair that cascaded down her back and to the small of her back and turned her attention back towards the path in front of her.
     
    She had been visiting her grandmother every month since she’d entered the age of maturity. Not once, in all that time, had she been careless enough to be caught outside after night had fallen.
     
    The sound of a branch snapping caused Red to hike up her charcoal gown and start a mad dash towards her home. It was still miles away, and not a distance she could run easily, but there was little else she could think of doing.
     
    Her heart was fluttering and her thighs quivering, but she pushed past the pain and hurried down the trail, kicking up dust and stone in her wake. The sounds of a beast snorting reassured Red that her fears had been well placed and she could begin to see its dark silhouette as it chased along beside her. The monster was much larger than her and it took the beast little effort to barrel on ahead of her and strafe around her.
     
    It was stalking her, waiting for her to make a mistake and devour her whole. She wasn’t about to give it the pleasure of an easy kill, however, and left her shoes behind to get better traction.
     
    Her added speed seemed to matter little as far as her stalker was concerned. She could hardly breathe through her exasperated lungs and quick flashes of the life she’d leave behind.
     
    There was her mother and young sister to think of, and a few young gentlemen she’d cavort around town with. She wasn’t a prude by any stretch of the imagination, and the thought of never again feeling a man’s touch was almost as heart wrenching as seeing her family again.
     
    As she passed through a glade in the middle of the forest, Red captured a glance of the creature that tailed her. While still mostly masked behind shadows, she could see it was a massive creature, thrice her size and tearing up the ground behind with its elongated claws. It snarled and snapped its jaws, with teeth glistening in the moonlight and spewing saliva in all directions. Blood was on its mind, of that