Gingerbread

   Owen Tucker’s note:  If you wanna know what happened before this, go read the last post.  I laid it all out in great detail there so no one would be confused when they read this one.

   The kids grabbed both my hands and started dragging me over to the house.
   “Come on,” they said. “Let’s go.”
   I got a firm footing and stood strong, immune to their valiant efforts to pull me forward.
   “Now hang on just a second here,” I said. “Don’t you know that an evil witch lives in that house?  And that if you go in there, she’ll stick you,” I pointed to the boy. “In a pot for dinner, which will make you,” I pointed to the girl. “Commit a heinous crime that I’m sure you regretted for the entirety of your life, even though it did save your brother’s life?”
   The kids looked at each other, then back at me.
   “No,” they said. “That’s a gingerbread house.  So of course a gingerbread man lives there.  We can eat him and his house too!”
   “Okay, first of all, you have no idea how barbaric that sounded.  Second, a gingerbread man does not live there.  That’s just ridiculous.  There is no such thing as a living gingerbread man.  Just inanimate cookie ones.   Wilfred, help me out here.”
   “Na laddie an’ lassie, ya doon’t want ta go en ther, Ah’m thinkin’.  Better out here, aye?”
   “There are too gingerbread men because they’re living in that gingerbread house.  Let’s go!”
   Man, those children were rude.  They just kept going as if they couldn’t even hear Wilfred.  Oh wait.  That’s right.  They can’t.
   I sighed. “Okay fine.  We’ll go to the house.  But don’t say I didn’t warn you.  Because I did.”
   I stopped resisting and the kids pulled me to the house as fast as they could.  Once we were within grabbing distance the kids started pulling off pieces of candy and wolfing them down like, well, kids with candy.  After about two seconds of this (you would be amazed at how much candy kids can eat in two seconds) the door of the house opened and a gingerbread man walked out.
   Yes, I did just say a gingerbread man walked out.  But obviously he was like in another dimension or something that was bleeding over into ours at that moment.  Because we all know that there is no such thing as real live gingerbread men, as I explained to the kids earlier. 
   Ahem, anyway.  The gingerbread man came out, the kids stopped eating, stared at him, then started this little victory dance.
   “See?” they said. “Gingerbread men do—“
   They both flopped over onto their backs and started snoring before they could even finish their “told you so”. 
   I stared at the gingerbread man, just a bit apprehensive. “How’d you do that.”
   The gingerbread man smiled.  A really creepy smile, because he actually had teeth.  Nasty, yellow, jagged teeth.  Then his whole body did this weird, twisty, shape shifting thing that was actually pretty gross looking.  When it finished, he was now a her.  An old, grey haired, stooped over, wrinkled lady.  The teeth now fit perfectly into her whole stereotypical evil witch look. 
   “Sedatives in the candy,” she said, cackling with her witchy voice.  “Would you like some?”
   I grinned for about the duration of one nanosecond, then put on my serious face.
   “No way,” I said. “I’m not eating any of your candy, and you’re not eating any of these kids.”
   “But why not?” she asked, looking fondly down at the kids. “They look so cute and tasty lying there.”
   “The cute part is fine.  All well and good and normal.  It’s the tasty bit that is not normal at all.  Get rid of that part and you’re welcome to be these kids’ new grandma.”
   “Okay, they’re just cute.”
   “Oh good.  They’re all yours.”
   At that, there was this muffled buzzing, which almost sounded like Wilfred, but he never holds back, so it couldn’t have been him.
   The little old lady nodded with a cute chuckle and I started to walk away, satisfied with the fact that I had found the kids a good new home.

   To be continued…