Little Red Riding Hood

In the writer's group I'm in, we do these drabbles where someone chooses a topic or idea that we can write something short about and share it the next week. I think I'll start posting them whenever I do them. When we did this we all took an object out of a bag. Mine was a Little Red Riding Hood Happy Meal toy. :)


She found her in one of the upstairs rooms stroking the dark hair of a doll. The young babysitter knelt down beside her on the floor.

“Who’s this?” She asked.

“This is Red Riding Hood.” The girl said, admiring the doll some more before looking up at her. “You want to play with her?”

The sitter smiled and reached for it but a hand on her shoulder stopped her. She jumped then laughed when she saw it was the girl’s mother. She smiled back at her and took the doll from the little girl’s hands.

“I’m sorry I startled you. It’s just that this doll was handed down through generations and I don’t like for it to be played with. This little girl knows this.” She said sternly yet playful and ruffled her daughter’s hair before placing the doll back on the shelf, too high for the girl to reach but right at eye level for the babysitter.

Soon her parents left on their night out and she put the little girl to bed. She just left the bathroom tying her blond hair in a ponytail and was going to watch TV when she passed the doll room again. It was a very beautiful doll. All she wanted to do was look again, but when she found herself in front of it the temptation was too great and it wasn’t long before she had the doll in her hands and was stroking the hair like the girl did.

She lifted the dolls hand with her finger and when she let it go a good amount of the wax came with it. She quickly put it back on the shelf and examined it with her other hand. The doll looked fine but more wax came off the other hand. She tried hard to wipe it off but it seemed that the more she wiped at it the more it spread. She was just going to rush to the bathroom to try and save her babysitting career when she saw that the little girl was in the doorway.

She shook her head with a disapproving yet amused look on her face. “Mommy told you we shouldn’t play with the doll.”

The babysitter would’ve screamed had she felt something was wrong. What she should’ve noticed was that she didn’t feel anything at all. Soon the little girl picked up her new friend off the floor and played with her light haired ponytail while she walked to the back closet that no one seemed to notice, opened it up and placed her gently among the others before shutting it tight and sending herself back to bed.