AM
Strout (aka Anton Strout)
Lady in Red
(from the anthology by Martin H Greenberg –
Pandora’s Closet)
When I packed in August for freshman year at NYU, my friends in
To them I simply sang the old Sinatra line my Nana had used to
convince me to move out east in the first place. “If I can make it there,” I’d
sing, smiling sweetly and giving a few Rockette-style
high-kicks, “I can make it anywhere.”
I had laughed at their warnings at the time, but two months into my
first semester I was standing in a thrift store on
A gaudy looking woman in her early fifties had latched onto my red
hoodie. The Cinderella blonde dye job on her wild hair
was fading, and large clumps of gray were seeping through, giving her a manic
appearance that perfectly matched her actions. She tugged again, harder this
time.
“Excuse me,” I said, clamping my arm against my body to maintain my
hold. I almost laughed at the absurdity of her, but my amusement was quickly
shut out by my animalistic desire to keep the hoodie.
I viciously tore it away from her. “Mine!” she said, lunging for it, but missing
it completely. Instead, her nails raked dryly against my skin, causing something
primal and protective to snap inside of me.
“No,” I said politely but firmly, “it’s not.”
I held it at arm’s length away from her. The crone moved even closer,
and the earthy old-person stink of her choked me. Her eyes twitched back and
forth, following the hood that now dangled from my outstretched arm. She
practically foamed at the mouth.
I realized everything seemed a little scary and off kilter. This type
of surreal behavior didn’t happen in the middle of a store. I felt my heart
racing like a scared little girl, and I wondered if my friends had been right
about me coming to city after all.
“I want that for my daughter,” she screamed, spittle
flying.
I was startled as she raised her voice, but just then the balding man
behind the counter spoke up.
“Hey,” he shouted, breaking the strange spell that wove between us.
“Mrs. Punzelli, knock it off. You play nice or I’m
gonna have to call the cops on you. You got
that?”
The old woman’s body relaxed, but her eyes were still intent on the
hoodie. I backed toward the register, calming a little
with each step. I was thankful she made no effort to follow. She glowered at me
several moments longer and finally made an unpleasant (and not to mention
unsanitary) gesture flicking her thumb against her teeth. With that, she
wandered off to the back of the store and muttered into a filthy gothic mirror
hanging from the wall.
“What a pushy bitch,” I said as I put my purchase on the
counter.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “She’s usually not that
bad.”
“Why do you even let her in?” I took a crumpled wad of bills from my
backpack and pulled out three singles.
The old shopkeeper shrugged. “I feel bad for her. She’s got a
daughter up in
I suddenly felt a little bad about they way I’d duked it out with the old woman, but hey, what the hell was
I supposed to do? Besides, she’d already lost interest, and despite the sad
little tale I had just heard, the hoodie was mine now
and I needed it. College students couldn’t afford guilt in NYC. I paid the owner
and thanked him.
“You need a bag?”
“No. I’ll just wear it.”
I waved as I headed out the door, and he smiled, instantly restoring
my faith in the kindness of most people I had met during my short time in the
city. Sure, I had noticed pockets of rude and indifferent folks living in The
Big Apple, but I still held onto my optimism.
The sun was beginning its early descent, and I put down my backpack
and slipped on the hoodie as the chill began to set
in. It felt cozy, warm and familiar, and as I zippered it up, my cell phone went
off in my backpack. I fished it out and checked the display. My mother’s picture
came up—my favorite picture of her in the whole world. It was from the
governor’s ball where my mother, a lowly impoverished intern at the time, had
caught the eye of the young governor. Within a few months they were married,
just like a storybook romance. It had angered her wicked and more privileged
stepsisters to no end.
I flipped the cell phone open and put it to my
ear.
“Little Red Riding Hood,” I answered.
“What?” my mother said. “Excuse me?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I just bought myself the cutest little hoodie for three bucks, that’s all.”
“Oh,” she said stiffly. “I see. You have time to shop, but not enough
time to study.”
I had done little in the way of attending classes so far this
semester, and, still wowed by being in
“Enough about me,” I said cheerily, hoping to change the subject, “Is
everything okay?”
She sighed into the phone. “Just another charity fund-raising
luncheon for the victims of the latest Blunderbore
Corporation’s chemical dumping. You know your father.”
Jack the Giant Killer they called him, always taking on the corporate
big guns.
“But that’s not why I called,” she continued. “It’s about your
grandmother.”
“Which?” I asked.
“The one in
Nana was by far my favorite, although I didn’t get to see her as
often as I would like. She was the one who had convinced me I’d be fine in
“Is anything wrong with her?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “Well, that’s not entirely true. She’s a little
under the weather and, well, I was hoping you would be a dear and pick up some
things and run them out to her.”
I utilized my mental planner book and ran my mental finger down the
mental page to find today. I was pleasantly surprised that today was
blank.
“Not a problem,” I said. I fished a pen out of my backpack and a
piece of paper, the trusty weapons of any English major. “What does she
need?”
My mother rattled off a list of items. Bread, milk, something for her
stomach, a couple of cabbages, fresh beets, flour, eggs, and, last, red wine. I
was going to ask if Nana was hosting a cocktail party, but I held my tongue.
Would she be needing pigs-in-a-blanket
too?
“And remember,” my mother said in the infamous lecturing tone I had
grown up around, “I just want you to go straight there, okay? Your father and I
worry about you. Make sure you give yourself enough time to get out there and
stay for a visit this time. And be careful. Make sure you don’t poke around her
place. Make sure you spend some time with her.”
My mother had always been borderline neurotic when it came to
protecting me, but this seemed beyond and above the call. I said a quick goodbye
before she could cycle conversationally back to my grades. Then I immediately
set out north to the organic market at
Half an hour later, as I stepped to the curb with four plastic bags
full of Nana’s groceries, a
The driver was coughing, and I waited for him to stop. He looked
Eastern European, probably in his forties. He wore a short black goatee that on
a younger man would have been trendy five years ago, but on him, it was
befitting.
“Where to?” he said when he stopped coughing up his lungs long enough
to speak.
“
“You want me to take the Willamsburg or
“Uh, 59th is fine,” I said. I sat back and closed my eyes. I relished
the momentary silence of the cab ride, but sadly, it didn’t last long. The
driver was chatty behind his goatee.
“You live out there?” he asked, through the halfway-drawn partition
between us.
I wanted to enjoy a nice, quiet, uninterrupted ride to the outer
boroughs, so I decided to ignore the question. My body, however, had different
thoughts on the matter, and before I even realized what I was doing, I began
speaking.
“No, it’s my grandmother’s place,” I blurted out. “She’s not feeling
well and I’ve got a bunch of food and wine I’m bringing to cheer her up. I love
her, but she’s a billion years old, and I honestly wish she’d hire someone to
take care of her. It’s not like she doesn’t have the loot. Her place is
huge.”
As soon as the words were out, I clamped my hand down over my mouth
to stop myself from going further. What the hell was I doing? Being a young
woman in the city—not to mention how tiny I was—I rarely ran at the mouth around
strangers. Here I was divulging all kinds of personal-ad info and family dish. I
looked in the rear view mirror and saw that the driver was leering at me. His
goatee looked devilish as I noticed a shift in his
attitude.
“Its so sad when old people live alone, isn’t it?” I could hear the
clumsy craftiness in his voice as he spoke. “She does live alone, doesn’t
she?”
My hands were still over my mouth, but I still answered a muffled but
discernible “yes” through them. I was confused and beginning to panic as we sped
up
LUNA CANIDAE the name read. I committed it to memory. The driver
began another coughing fit, this one longer than the first, and as I listened,
the harsh staccato began to sound more and more like the bark of a dog. I
pressed myself forward against the glass for a better
look.
“Mister,” I started, “are you all
right?”
The driver was hunched over from hacking, and his once well-groomed
goatee had gone wild and had grown into a full beard that was rapidly taking
over the rest of his face. He was changing before my eyes, and as incredible as
it was, I think the hours of blowing off class to watch old movies somewhat
prepared me for coping with this. Everything about the driver was becoming more
and more wolf-like. His coughing had indeed become a bark, and his hands
elongated into the shape of sharp-clawed paws, making it nearly impossible for
him to grip the wheel.
The traffic lights were still turning green for us, but his inability
to control the vehicle sent us careening off the road and head-on into a
lamppost. I was lucky enough to slam into the cushiony back of the seat in front
of me, but the man-wolf yelped as his head hit the steering wheel and he fell
silent. I grabbed for my bags, threw open the door, and tumbled out of the cab
onto the sidewalk. A small group of passersby gathered, asking if I was okay.
But I ignored them and pushed through the crowd and ran the two blocks to Grand
Central Station. As I neared one of the main entrances, I was blocked by a
family apparently on an after-dinner stroll—a hulking papa, a medium sized mama,
and a tiny toddler.
“. . . was too hot, dear,” I heard the
father say as I bumped into him.
“Hey,” he growled, bearlike. “Watch it!”
“Sorry,” I said quickly, and dashed into Grand Central Station. As I
rushed down to the main concourse, enormous trees the size of redwoods came
shooting up through the station’s floor, bits of marble flying everywhere. All
around me the room was transforming into a forest. People ran back and forth to
avoid the debris and branches that shot past.
What the hell was going on?
Was I losing my mind?
Had living in
I fervently wished I had listened to my friends back home. They were
right. I was having a mental break from reality, and after only two months here.
I snapped my eyes shut, counted to ten, and opened them again, hoping for some
clarity.
Everything was still going crazy around me.
I made my peace with the fact that, crazy or not, I was going to have
to deal with it. I ran for the bookstore along the west side of the main
concourse. Things inside the store seemed normal compared to what was happening
out on the concourse, but I didn’t know how long that might last. The smocked
clerk only got out the “Can . . .” of “Can I help you?” before I
interrupted.
“Children’s books,” I said, somewhat breathless from my run. “Fairy tales.”
“Third aisle, last bay on the left,” he said,
pointing.
I hurried down the aisle and found the section. I dropped my grocery
bags. An ugly little girl sitting a few feet away jumped at the sound, and her
mother—far prettier than her—moved protectively close. I knew I must have looked
crazy to them, but I turned away and began searching through the books until I
found what I was looking for—a collection of Fairy Tales by the Brothers
Grimm.
I flipped open to the tale of Little Red Riding Hood. The tale itself
wasn’t long, and by the time I was done, I more or less had confirmed my
suspicions. I glanced over at the ugly little girl. She now was an
anthropomorphic duck, and she quacked at me.
I didn’t much care for the way the story ended. Sure, the grandmother
and Red ended up alive, but only after a huntsman had cut them free from the
wolf’s belly. Of course, the tale didn’t discuss the years of therapy Nana and I
would have had to endure after such a traumatic experience. My brain was slowly
accepting the insanity, but my heart was panicked. I had to stop
this.
I grabbed the zipper on the hoodie, but it
was stuck. I frantically tried tugging the whole top up and over my head, but
the cloth seemed fused to my body and it wouldn’t come free. I gave it a few
more panicked yanks, feeling trapped, and broke several
of my nails as I freaked out. The hood slipped onto my head as I tossed and
turned, and the world slipped into cartoon colors.
My surroundings swirled, the trees outside the store looking more
gnarled, the duck girl at my feet more threatening. I felt so tiny just then, so
absolutely helpless, so afraid I was going mad.
I somehow knew I had to get to Nana’s, and quick, but I wasn’t sure
if I wanted to chance another cab. I had never taken the train out there before,
but I gathered up my grocery bags and followed the signs to the subway. After
consulting the map, I decided that the train seemed the closest, and I dashed
down to the platform, catching the last car as the doors closed behind me with
perfect timing.
Two stops later, my empty car began to fill . . . and began to be
affected by whatever cruel magic was in my hoodie. Any
man who sat within ten feet of me began acting creepier than the usual guys I
ran into on the train. One of them started by itching his hand, then his chin,
and then started scratching at his whole face. Another snuffled and sniffed in
my general direction. When a third’s facial hair started growing out into a full
beard in less than a minute, I stood up and hurried to the next car, dragging my
bags with me and almost losing them between cars.
When the men on that car began behaving strangely, I moved to the
next, this time tripping over a kid with the biggest nose I had ever seen
arguing with an older man I presumed was his grandfather.
“Don’t lie to me!” I heard the old man shout as the boy turned into a
wooden doll with loose strings hanging from his legs and
wrists.
The door between cars thankfully closed behind
me.
The cars themselves were growing thick with vines that snaked after
me. The forest path of the story was following my lead, and I shuddered at the
audible cracks and slithers of it taking over the train. Underneath those
sounds, I could hear the normal passengers shouting in surprise as the parade of
man-wolves continued following me, several men jumping up from their seats to
join in. They seemed to be intent only on me and hadn’t made any attempt to harm
any of the other passengers. Right now, the big, bad wolves had achieved only
the level of “moderately annoying” as they slathered, drooled, and growled along
behind me.
We pulled into the
I had never heard a sweeter sound when the doors dinged, and I was
thrilled when they rolled open, but I stayed where I was, fighting my urge to
flee. I waited until the last possible second—the wolves were mere feet away,
and I could feel their hot breath on me—before I slid out through the closing
doors. The now-trapped wolf-men could only stare through the glass and howl as
their train pulled out of the station. Although scared, I waved goodbye to them
in defiance.
Queens was like a foreign kingdom to me, so different from the inner
city that I was used to and even more foreign in the strange cartoon Technicolor
I was seeing in now. I asked the hunchback manning the booth for directions to
Nana’s house and then set off at a run, the muscles in my arms straining under
the weight of my load. The plastic grocery bags had woven themselves into four
wicker baskets.
I headed down the station stairs and tore off along the first block.
A flurry of movement caught my attention, and I couldn’t help but turn to see a
large gray-brown tabby cat, standing on its hind legs, wearing hip-high boots,
an Elizabethan neck ruffle, and a purple plumed Musketeer’s hat. He was fighting
off a pack of dogs like a champion fencer. The claws on one hand were extended
like vicious looking knives, and although the cat was outnumbered, I had a
distinct feeling the advantage was his. I pressed on.
One block left.
I passed two little roly-poly kids speaking what sounded to me like
German. They were following a path of lollipops and candy bars up a walkway
toward a brownstone that appeared to be made entirely out of candy, from its
gingerbread paneling to its ribbon candy shutters.
“Hey, kids,” I shouted as I stopped. They seemed to shake out of
their fugue state and turned to look at me, their chubby little hands stuffed
with candy already. “I wouldn’t go in there if I were
you.”
They stood there, confused still.
“Unless you want the lady who owns that place going all Hannibal
Lechter on you.”
At this their eyes widened, and the boy turned to the girl, and said,
“C’mon. Let’s get out of here, Gretel.” The little girl hesitated, grabbed a
sticky bun that was part of the house’s gate, and followed her brother. For a
moment I actually felt good for helping them out. I felt the tiniest hint of
optimism.
The feeling died quickly, however, when I turned back toward my
Nana’s and found the crunched in nose of the cab I rode back in
While most of the other brownstones in the neighborhood had been
turned into three-family homes over the years, Nana’s remained all her own. I
walked timidly up the front steps, the fear pulsing thick in me. The door stood
slightly ajar, and I eased it open farther and set the baskets down as quietly
as possible.
The old house was silent. Even when it was busy with activity, I
found the place creepy, but now it was like walking through a mausoleum filled
with Russian antiques. Many of them were knocked over.
The trail of destruction led upstairs, and I followed it. Her bedroom
was at the back of the house, and I knew from the Brothers Grimm that the wolf
had headed there. I tiptoed the last few steps, hoping
the pounding in my chest wasn’t as loud as it sounded.
The door was cracked open, and I hesitantly pushed it wide. Sure
enough, there in the bed was a shadowy figure. As I stepped closer, I could see
the pronounced goatee of the cab driver beneath the furry snarl of the wolf’s
snout. The shirt he had been wearing was in tatters now. I checked the room for
blood and was relieved to see none. Was Nana somewhere hidden in here or had she
escaped? I stopped in the center of the room and looked around. She could have
been under the bed or even in the closet, but I couldn’t
tell.
The wolf snarled.
“Finish this!” he barked, remaining tucked beneath the sheet on the
bed. He seemed to be struggling, fighting the urge to leap up and devour me, but
was bound by some power from doing so.
The power of the tale was binding him somehow.
I tried the zipper again, but it still wouldn’t budge. I grabbed
bunches of the fabric and tore at it, but it wouldn’t give. I slipped my
backpack off my shoulders and began searching through it for something, anything
that might help.
“Why Nana,” I said slowly, fighting against my compulsion to speak
the words, “what big ears you have.”
“Better to hear youuuuu,” the wolf
howled.
I shuddered as the sound ripped through me. I had to think. What were
my advantages? I was much smaller than him, and I seemed to possess a greater
knowledge of the situation.
“And what big eyes you have,” I continued, as I kept rummaging
through the bag. I was coming across nothing of use. I doubted my iPod would
help, unless I could wedge my earphones into his ears and hope the old maxim
that music hath charms to soothe the savage beast held
true.
“Better to see you with, my dear,” he barked. His body tensed in
anticipation of the final lines of our roles being
fulfilled.
“And,” I said finally, fighting, dreading the words as they came
spilling out, “what a terrible big mouth you have.”
A clatter came from down the hall, and I craned my neck to see Nana.
How the hell had she eluded the wolf? I had never really thought about it
before, but Nana was in remarkably good shape for a woman in her seventies. She
was moving at a brisk pace.
“The better . . .” the wolf began with
finality.
I tensed with fear.
He threw off the covers and readied himself to pounce, “to eat you
with!”
I dove for the door at the same time he lunged. My hand had wrapped
around something small and cylindrical in my bag. The rest of the bag tore away
from me as the wolf’s claws caught the strap, the contents of my little life
leaking out onto the floor. I screamed as I tumbled through the doorway, and
slammed the door behind me. I held it shut as I felt the full weight of the wolf
charge into the door on the other side.
“Run!” I screamed at Nana.
Nana did just that, making it to the bottom of the stairs at record
speed and heading for the front door. I felt the doorknob twitching in my hand
as the wolf clawed at it clumsily. It was only a matter of time before he
smashed his way through.
A claw punched through the bottom of the door and snagged my leg. I
yelped in pain. I felt blood trickle down my leg. I heard a large snuffle from
the other side of the door and I imagined the wolf fully taking in the scent of
my O Positive.
I decided it was better not to wait around for him to break all the
way through. I bolted for the stairs, hurling myself down them without a thought
for my safety. Behind me, the door flung open and the wolf leaped out, landing
right where I had been standing a heartbeat ago. I swallowed hard and spun to
face the beast, almost losing my footing on the stairs. My mind was racing, and
I suddenly remembered one last component—one last character—to the
story.
“No reason I can’t be the huntsman too,” I said and ducked low as he
charged at me. In my hand, I gripped the lone weapon I had managed to retrieve
from my bag. I thrust it up, and only after I drove it into the beast’s chest,
did I disappointingly realize was it was. A pen. What
the hell good was a pen going to do?
The wolf cleared me and practically flew down the rest of the stairs,
hitting the wall, spinning, landing on its back at the bottom. It writhed
frantically, howling, clawing at its own chest, and smoke began to rise from the
small wound I’d inflicted. The smell of acrid burning hair filled the room, and
after what seemed like an eternity of screaming, the wolf stopped
moving.
I stood slack-jawed, both horrified and pleased by what I had
done.
Nana was crying, and my own breath was heaving in and out in great
bursts. Outside, sirens went screaming by, and the two of us simply stood over
the beast. Tears of relief started running down my face.
Nana stared. “How did you do that? How did you stop that
monster?”
I shrugged, stepped over the wolf, and hugged her. I could feel her
heart going a mile a minute.
“I have no idea,” I said. “All I did was stab it with a pen.”
I released her and leaned over the lifeless body. Holding back my own
personal squick factor, I pulled the pen free, and
lifted it up for examination. I began to laugh.
“What is it, dear?” Nana asked. I was sure I must have looked
unhinged. And maybe I was. My mind was still reeling from the events of the past
few hours.
“Well,” I said when I could finally speak, wiping the tears from my
face, “What else does every college freshman have from their Nana but a nice graduation writing set? A silver writing set, to be
exact.”
“And you said you’d get no use out of such a thing,” she tsk-tsked.
I hugged her even harder than before.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” I asked.
Nana nodded. “That was a pretty fancy move you did on the
stairs.”
“I guess watching reruns of Buffy must have paid
off.”
“From what I hear,” Nana said disapprovingly, “that’s all that’s
paying off. About those grades of yours ...”
“Nana, please,” I said, “I just saved your life. Maybe you could call
my mom and put in a good word for me?”
She thought for a minute, then smiled. “I
suppose I could put in a good word or two for my favorite little Red Riding
Hood.”
With the mention of that name, I tugged at the zipper on the hoodie once again. This time it came free. The brightness of
the Technicolor world faded and things around me turned to normal. The wolf
melted into the floor.
I held the hoodie at arm’s
length.
It was a bittersweet parting; I had loved the way it looked on me,
but what I had been through was definitely too high a price for fashion’s
sake.
The following day I returned to the thrift store, and asked for my
money back. Hey, three dollars was three dollars. That was like three meals off
the dollar menu or three midnight movies! Besides, I secretly held the wicked
desire that that old crone who frequented the place, Mrs. Punzelli, might come back for it.
As I left, I caught the latest breaking news on the thrift store’s
one working television. The story concerned a pack of wolves that had reportedly
leaped from the subway car at the end of the 7 line the previous night. No one
had been hurt, luckily, and after dispersing they were all later found
surrounding a brick high-rise, barely able to move, and exhausted—from prolonged
huffing and puffing, I had no doubt.