This is another of my “prompt” writings, one that came from me asking my friends on Facebook to give me a prompt.  I got three responses:

twisted fairy tale

zombie snowmen

science fiction

  So, since it seems more fun to lump them together (as I did previously with the ”2 girls 1 cup” and “a prostitute walks into a barn” one, I decided to do that again.  This is the result of that brainstorm. 

Hansel and Gretel Piss Off the Wrong Person 

 Hansel stood outside the window waiting, another stone in hand.   He shifted on his feet and pulled his coat tighter around him, watching his breath puff out in the frigid air.  His boots crunched the snow below him as he stamped the ground, trying to force some heat into his body. 

“Dammit, Gretel.  Wake the fuck up.” He whispered to himself.  “You know we are hitting the road tonight.” 

 He had been outside waiting for ten minutes already, and he was getting impatient.  It was cold out here.  He bounced the stone in his gloved hand once or twice, then flung it up to the darkened window of the typical, suburban two-story house in front of him;  The one that looked just like every other house on the street.  It hit harder than he meant, a loud “pang” echoing through the still night.  He jumped behind the oak tree he stood next to, looking at their parent’s room to see if the light came on. 
Nothing.  However, he saw the curtains to Gretel’s room shift, saw the small face appear in the window, almost ghostly in the dark. 

He waved for her to come down.  He saw the irritated look that crossed over her face, then the finger she raised toward him.  At first he thought she was flipping him off, then realized that it was her index finger.  “Just a sec.” she was telling him.  The curtain fell back into place, and Hansel stood outside and waited, patting his gloved hands on his chest, jumping in place, trying to stay warm.  His energy was high, and he wanted to get moving.  This cold was killing his jive. 
Soon enough, the back door opened, slowly and silently.  His step sister slipped out and closed it softly behind her.   She was bundled in a heavy dark coat, which he knew was not black but actually a deep blue.  Her blond hair was woven into pigtails, and stuck out beneath the stocking cap that donned her head beneath her hood.  Her jeans were stuffed into her combat boots.  He was almost positive that the sound of her boots crunching the snow as she ran toward him was louder than that last rock he had thrown. 

“Damn, woman.” He said as she reached him.  “Make enough noise?  Took you long enough to hear me, by the way.” 
“Shut it, Hans.” She glared at him.  “I’m here, aren’t I?”  

They moved off down the street.  One of those picture perfect American suburbs, with the houses all nestled quietly together, the snow glinting peacefully off the rooftops and the car tops.  There would be plenty of people with their snow shovels in the morning, digging out their cars.  Probably many of them with their cars running while they finished up inside.  If he wasn’t so well known in this neighborhood, it might have tempted him.  There were other neighborhoods that were just as snowed in that didn’t know him, though.  He put that thought into the back of his mind for later.
“Where are we going, anyway?” she asked as they walked.

“Let’s go through the woods.” Hansel answered.  “I saw a house back in there the other day. Looked like a nice one, too, with good stuff.”

While their parents were too absorbed in each other to notice, Hansel and Gretel had found a new hobby that they bonded over.  They liked to sneak out at night, or skip school during the day, and break into houses and steal whatever they could find.  They didn’t necessarily go for the big electronics, since they couldn’t really carry them out anyway.  At 14 and 15- Hansel being the older one- they didn’t yet drive, though the thought of taking a car had always been on Hansel’s “to-do” list.  For now, though, they were content with petty stuff.  Mostly, they just liked the rush of being in someone else’s house.  They would eat their food, drink their drinks, and take whatever they fancied.   Hansel preferred the video games and music; Gretel the clothes and jewelry.  Typical gender preferences. 
“The woods?  Who the hell has a house in there?  They are haunted, you know.  Besides, if there is someone dumb enough to live there, they are probably home.  I’m not breaking into no house while people are there.”
“We aren’t going to bust into it tonight, dumbass.” He said, pushing her slightly to let her know he was teasing.  “We’re just scoping it out. You ain’t scared, are ya?”
She pushed him back.  “No. I ain’t scared.  Just don’t wanna bust in on someone who’s home.”
“We ain’t.  Just lookin’.     I was thinking maybe grabbing a car later, though, if someone gets up early to warm up before work or somethin’, ya know?”
Gretel rolled her eyes.  He was always talking about the cars. She figured one of these days he’d work himself into actually doing it, but she was pretty certain he didn’t even know how to drive.  She shrugged at him.  “Whatever dude.  I’m just along for the ride.”

As they entered the woods, the air grew a bit warmer.  The cover of the trees acted like a shield, and as they made their way through, they warmed up enough to stop shivering and relax a bit.  In here, no one could see them, so they didn’t constantly have to look over their shoulder.    Not that they would be able to see if anyone was there.  It was darker than a grave in the woods
“It’s a way back here.” Hansel said, climbing over a fallen tree trunk.  Gretel followed behind, still wondering who would build a house out here.  A hermit, no doubt.  And a hermit probably didn’t have shit that they would want.  Though, it would probably be funnier to go bust in on a hermit’s house.  They were all freaky about other people, so they would hate it more.   She liked making people uncomfortable.
They trudged most of the way in silence, both lost in their own personal thoughts.   Hansel thought that maybe he could steal a car in the morning and take off.  Not ever have to go home to his mom and Gretel’s stupid dad.  All they did was boss him around.  Hans, do this.  Hans, do that.  Hans, you need to do your homework and mow the lawn and do the dishes.  The dishes.  Damn, that was woman’s work. Gretel should have that chore.   He’d take Gretel if she wanted, though.    He kind of liked her, even if she could be all girly and annoying sometimes.  But she liked to kick it and mess stuff up like he did.   Gretel just thought about stuff she wanted.  She wanted to find an Ipad or something.  She had been super pissed when her dad said she couldn’t have one because she wasn’t “responsible” enough for something that cost that much.  Whatever.    One day she would be rich, and she’d have whatever she wanted – regardless of what anyone said.
Suddenly, Hansel stopped in front of her, causing her to run into him.  “Dude, what the hell?” she said. 

The trees had opened a bit, and they had come to a small clearing.   On the far side sat a small, run down building.  More an old shack than a house.  The wooden walls were slanting inward, as if the house was closing in on itself.  A crumbling brick chimney climbed up the side of the house, but no drift of smoke came from its top.  A window like a black, cancerous eye peered from the side of the door.  It was cracked and looked as though it was covered with a black trash bag.  Tape ran along the crack.   A  small, rickety fence that had mostly fallen apart circled the building, and a worn path overrun by moss wove its way from the spot where a gate had been up to the door.   There was a large garden plot that was covered in plastic and snow off to one side.  The place looked as though it had been long deserted and forgotten about. 

“Dude, you brought me all the way out here, freezing my ass off for this?” Gretel asked, obviously flabbergast at the site.  “What the fuck do you think we’ll find in there?  Old rat shit or something?” 
“Hey, I swear last time I was here, it looked like a real house.  Maybe I went the wrong way or somethin’… “ Hansel answered, a confused look on his face.  “I swear there is a house out here.  Dude, it was huge, too. “
“Uh huh.  Just what are you tryin’ to pull?”  Gretel eyed him suspiciously. 
“Nothin’!  Hey, let’s just go take a peek since we’re here.  You never know.. could be someone’s stash place… “  He started forward up to the path. 
“Seriously?” Gretel sighed, then went after him. 
The clearing was eerily bright after the dark of the woods.  Gretel looked up and saw the moon, full and bright, directly above.  It seemed to be peering at them, glaring.  Like the look her dad would give her when she began to “cross the line.”  She shivered, and ran to catch up to Hansel.  “Man,” she said, glancing around her, suddenly cold again.  “Maybe we should just go back.  Go find that car you were talking about.” 
Hansel didn’t look at her.  His attention seemed fixed on the house.  He stood at the gate opening, staring at it.  “Nah.  I’m going in.  There is something here.  Something amazing.  I just know it.”  He slowly advanced up the path.  He looked like he was under some spell, and suddenly Gretel knew what someone mesmerized looked like.  His demeanor had changed.  The whole “bad boy” act had vanished.  She followed him up the path and to the door.
  It wasn’t locked.  Hansel turned the knob slowly, and pushed the door softly in.  He had a brief vision of Gretel leaving the house-  the same care in being quiet.   Gretel expected to hear a loud squalling anyway.  How long since this door had even heard the mention of oil, let alone got it.  She half expected it to just fall off in his hands, really.  But it opened silently.   They entered into a large room, much larger than possible, from the size of the shack outside.  But here it was, aglow in firelight from the small fire that blazed in the fireplace in the wall across from them.  Gretel stood dazed. 
“But there was no smoke.” She whispered to no one in particular.
Above the fire was a cauldron looking pot, with some kind of concoction simmering inside.  The smell was intoxicating.  Meat and veggies and potatoes.  Some kind of stew, Gretel thought, and her mouth watered, even as she remembered she didn’t like stew.  To the left of the fireplace was a small bed.  It was neatly made with frugal linens, and the pillow seemed to be a bunch of straw wrapped in a blanket.  A bookcase held a bunch of old leather bound books that seemed to be falling apart.  Gretel feared if she touched them, they would disintegrate.
  In front and to the right of the fireplace sat a large table covered with a number of bottles and jars.  They were full of liquids and whatnots.  Various leaves and dried herbs surrounded the bottles.  They were not dusty at all, as Gretel would have expected.   It was to the table that Hansel was drawn.  He picked up bottle after bottle, opening and smelling them,  cringing at some and tasting others. 
“Hansel, don’t be stupid!  You don’t know what’s in those!” Gretel cried. 

 
He handed one toward her.  “Whoever lives here makes their own moonshine!” he exclaimed.  Here, try it.

 
The foreboding feeling that had been over her broke.  It was an almost audible clap in the air.  It shimmered and then fell away.  Suddenly, being in a house that was four times larger inside then it was on the outside didn’t matter.  The fact that there was a fire in a fireplace that gave off no smoke wasn’t an issue.  Windows on walls that didn’t exist on the outside wasn’t a problem.  She took the bottle from Hansel and took a swig.  It burned on the way down, as alcohol did, but it had a crisp flavor with it also.  Mint and peppers or something.  
The teens finally found themselves in their usual ruckus.  They picked up everything.  Tried everything.  Gretel went to the books and picked them up, flipping through them, seeing them written in different languages, notes penciled in along the edges.  She ripped the pages out and flung them around.  Together they toppled the bookcase all together.  Books and their pages went flying.  Some she threw into the fire.  They found a small stash of dishes, and decided to help themselves to the stew in the pot.  They spilled it everywhere, and gobbled down what they could.  The rest they threw out the door onto the snow.   They ran outside and played, building snowmen and having snowball fights.   Throughout, they polished off bottle after bottle of moonshine.
Eventually, they began to feel tired.  Their lids grew heavy.  Their thoughts grew sluggish.  They laughed and groped at each other, trying not to fall as they staggered around the place.  Together they landed on the bed.   Hansel made a comment about being in bed together.  They laughed, and tried to paw at each other.  Gretel made the remark that whoever made the moonshine made some good shit.  They should take some with them when they left.  They should probably leave. Then they passed out, half in half out of the bed. 

 
Hansel was the first to come to.  He came to slowly, heavily.  The first thing he noticed was the feel of Gretel’s breast against his arm.  It startled him, and he came awake enough to notice she was still dressed.  They both were.  A thick, deep ache spread throughout his skull.  His bones felt leaden.  He moaned, and tried to roll over and sit up.  That’s when he noticed the voices.  Small, shrill voices.  The kind of voice he associated with evil elves or something.  A thought of Golem from Lord of the Rings passed through his head.   He stopped and listened.  They were arguing.  Arguing over who got to eat what.  He couldn’t really understand, the fog in his head was too thick.

“It’s mine!” one said.   (‘My Precious….’ Hansel thought to himself.)
“No, it’s mine.  It was my kin.” Another said.
“It’s all of our kin, asshole. “ said yet another.
“But I’m so hungry… “ one whined. 
The voices started to jumble together as they began arguing again.  Gretel shifted beside him, and he heard a groan escape her lips. 
“The humans are waking.” He heard one say. 
“Can we just eat them now?” said another.
That caught Hansel’s attention.  Where they had been came back to him in a rush.  The small little shanty.  The moonshine.  Visions of Texas Chainsaw Massacre ran through his head.  Fear seized his body, the pain in his head amplified tenfold.  He tasted metal in his mouth and suddenly needed to vomit. 
“Jesus Fucking Christ.” Gretel moaned next to him, her arms going up to hold her head.  “What the fuck happened last night?” she asked, slowly sitting up.  Hansel realized she didn’t know where she was- didn’t remember- and hadn’t heard the voices.   He opened his eyes and watched as she sat up, and froze- her arms still at the sides of her head, her eyes wide.  “I’m hallucinating.” She said, her voice dead and full of dread. 
Hansel, his heart beating harder than after their mile long runs in P.E. class, sat up and looked at what Gretel saw.   He thought maybe he had died.  Or that the talk of moonshine making you go blind wasn’t accurate.  It made you go bat-shit-fucking-crazy.

They were inside a shack.  The walls were molded and rotting around them.  There was no fire in the fireplace.  The fireplace had all but fallen in on itself. Next to it was an old rusty pot with the smearings of decayed, moldy something or other on the sides.   A small table lie knocked over on the opposite wall, which was really no more than maybe 10 feet from the small roll of old, rotting blanket s they sat on.   But that wasn’t what shocked them.
The door to the shack stood fully open.  It looked like it had been pulled outwards and fallen off its hinges. Bright, eye stinging sunshine lit the outside, bouncing off the white snow like reflectors.   Beyond the door, they could see the snowmen they had made in their drunken stupor.   Well, they could see three of them.  But, they were moving.  They were talking.  They were the source of the voices Hansel had heard, and they had talked about eating them.   One stood outside looking at him, the rock lined mouth twisted into a hideous sneer.   It saw them watching and laughed, pointing at them. 

“We scare the stupid humans.”  It said, cackling madly. 
“I’m hungry!  Let’s eat!”  They heard one just outside their line of sight say. 

Gretel grabbed Hansel’s hand tightly, and Hansel felt sudden warmth spread through his thighs.  He didn’t have to look to know he had just pissed himself.  If Gretel noticed, she didn’t say anything, her attentions focused on the unbelievable sight before them. 

“It’s not real.  It’s not real.” She whispered to herself.  “It’s just a dream.”
Hansel hoped she was right.  Pleaded for her to be right.  But the ice in his veins, and the piss already starting to freeze to his thighs, told him she was not. 
“We have to get out of here.” He whispered to her.  “They are just freakin’ snowmen, right?”
She nodded mutely.   He tried to swim through the fog in his head.  Push past the deep ache and melt the lead in his bones.  He wanted to move, but couldn’t.  Neither could Gretel. 
The snowmen had begun arguing again.  Apparently they couldn’t decide who would eat whom.  Then, suddenly, the snowman who had been out of their sight yelled, “Feeeeed Meeeeeee!!!!!”  A stick arm flew out and grabbed the snowman who had seen them wake.  It tore the head clean off.  They watched in horror as the attacking snowman bent forward, his twisted face coming into view, and bit into the other’s head.  He slurped the snow from his victim into his mouth greedily.   One of the other snowmen fell upon the body of the murdered snowman.  The others began ripping into it, cannibalizing it until it was nothing but a puddle.  Then they tore into each other, tearing each other apart trying to consume each other. 
Hansel tore his eyes away from the horrible, impossible scene before him and focused on bringing himself together.  He fought his muscles and pulled himself into a standing position, pulling Gretel up with him.  As he did, her paralysis broke, and she bolted out the door.  He followed right behind her.  They skirted around the mad snowmen and started toward the fence.  They were stopped once again as a large shadow blocked the bright sunshine.   A low hum vibrated through their bodies, halting them in their place, their faces slack and their jaws hung open as they turned toward the sky.   Above was a large ship, something right out of Star Trek, hovering in the sky, skimming the tops of the trees.  They heard a commotion behind them, and turned in slow motion to see the snowmen rising back up from their puddles. 
“Zombie fucking talking snowmen?  You’ve got to be kidding me… “ Gretel breathed.  The severity of her shock was obvious in the way her eyes sunk in and seemed to hide inside. 
Hansel took her hand and held it.  He trembled, and looked back up to the spaceship above them.  A thin shaft lowered to the ground a few feet away.  It was cylindrical, and twisted to open a doorway within.  An old woman emerged, walking slowly, observing with dismay the chaos of the scene before her.  Her silver hair hung in slight waves around her frail body, falling past her waist.  Her skin was pale and only slightly marred by age spots.  Her tired brown eyes were moist with despair as she looked.  She pulled the matted brown wool shawl closer around herself as she stepped forward, stopping just in front of the brother and sister.   Though she looked frail and poor,  she had an air of power around her. 

“You fools, “ she said softly, sadly.  “What have you done?”
She walked past the teens, to the snowmen behind them.  They shuffled around aimlessly, occasionally reaching out to grab each other, but not having much success.  One had the arm of another in its mouth, as a dog would carry a bone.  She went to each one and touched them briefly on their heads, murmuring softly as she did.  One by one the snowmen slowly sank back into the earth, small puddles that iced over almost instantly.  They did not rise again.  The woman walked into the house.  They watched as a small tear ran down her cheek as she bent to pick up a bottle that was on the floor.

 
“Moonshine…” Hansel started to say, but faltered.
She turned to them and fixed them with a gaze full of dismay and disappointment.  It wrenched into the bones of the two teens as no gaze from their parents or teachers had done before.   “It’s not moonshine.” Her voice sounded offended.    “You have, in your utter disregard and disrespect for others and their belongings, effectively ruined my works here.   In my efforts to preserve, you have issued ruin.  You will be punished for what you have accomplished here. “   She stepped forward, sweeping her hand across them. Her voice dropped low, wavering only slightly, full of power and obedience.  “Hansel and Gretel, as the Witch of the Wood, I will grant you your desires to abandon those parents who love and treasure you.  You shall accompany me back to the outer realms from whence I just returned, and you will stay my slaves until you have rectified what you have destroyed. “
As she said it, the cylinder tube behind them rotated again, and two alien beings emerged.  They were extremely tall, perhaps 10 feet, and extremely skinny.  Their bodies were shaped much like a human, with long legs and long arms.  They were wrapped in  toga-like apparel.  Their heads were large, with large glinting eyes that peered out from overhanging brows.   Each one wrapped a long fingered hand around a teen, and steered them toward the ship’s entrance.   The witch took one last long look at the home she had had for the past twenty years, the home that had been safely hidden among the woods, and entered the tube.   Hansel and Gretel had time to remember their parents; to suddenly want the chores, and the schoolwork, and the lectures.  They cried for their mom and dad as the alien beings drug them into the tube.  As they were brought up into the spaceship, they pleaded for forgiveness.  And then their minds snapped, and they thought of nothing more.