Page 3 of How To Survive This Fairytale

“You don’t knowhow?”

The witch cannot see, yet she sees right through that lie.She snatches Gretel by the roots of her hair, opens the oven door, and shoves her inside.Like a bear trap, the oven door snaps shut.Your little sister screams, but there’s nothing you can do.

“Don’t worry, boy,” she says.“You’ll join her soon.”

THAT CAN’T BE THE WAY THIS STORY ENDS.

Try Again?

“Don’t just stand there,” the witch barks, “turn on the oven!”

“But Grandmother,” says Gretel, “I don’t know how.”

“You don’t knowhow?”

Remember: if you want to live, you have to be clever.

“It’s true,” you offer before the witch can scent the lie in the air.“Our mother died when we were young, so we never learned how.

“Useless children,” she hisses.“No wonder you were left in the woods.”

The witch opens the oven door, and then: chaos.

Gretel on the witch’s back.Gretel pulling the witch’s silver hair.The witch clawing open Gretel’s calves.The witch’s teeth sharpening into fangs.Both of them shouting—Gretel’s high-pitched scream, the witch’s lowing growl.The witch bucking like a wild horse, and Gretel’s hands in her mane of cobwebs, hanging on.

The bone that has saved you for a month saves you again as you use it to pick the lock of your cage.

The cage bursts open just as Gretel and the witch both tumble into the oven.

As soon as their bodies hit the metal rack within, the door slams shut.

Listen: some stories have endings before they begin.Your ending is already written in stone, and you won’t make it there if you cannot follow instructions.

Sometimes it will seem like you have choices; this moment is one such illusion.Years from now you will look back and wonder what you might have done differently.Rest assured, there was nothing.There is only one thing you can do, and that’s to do what you’re told.

3.

SOMETIMES, YOU HAVE TO MAKE THE OBVIOUS CHOICE.

Unfortunately,you are a child.

You aren’t thinking about the story you’re in (you should be), or how the choices you make today will impact what choices are available to you tomorrow (you should be).Watching your sister push a witch into an oven, watching the witch pull your sister in after her—how can you think about tomorrow?You can only think aboutright now.

And right now, it seems like there is only one choice:

Run.

Run from the kitchen.From the house with its cookie-dough door knob and caramel ceilings.Run into the woods—the woods, with dead trees rising like teeth from the jaws of a ravenous wolf—but where else is there for you to go?Run between the trees, run under their branches, run over their upturned roots.Run despite the leaves in your face, despite the thornbushes digging into your thighs, despite the high grass slowing your path.Run until your heart throbs in your teeth.Until your lungs burn like a furnace.Run farther than you’ve ever run before, and then keep running.There are monsters in this world that want to harm you, but they can’t harm you until they’ve caught you, and they can’t catch you if youjust.

Keep.

Running.

* * *

DO YOU WANT TO GO ON LIVING?

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