Young Writers Society

“It appears to be the remains of a glass slipper,” I said, squinting through my magnifying glass. The splintered pieces of the shoe were scattered in the leaves, jagged edges glinting. “Bag it up and send it to the lab, Doc. It might have fingerprints on it.”

Doc nodded, the three-foot tall cone hat that was perched on his head wobbling precariously. “You got it, Sheriff.”

Smiling, the dwarf bent over the shattered glass slipper, humming what sounded like a Jordin Sparks song. He was wearing two different colored socks today, one maroon and the other purple with little lightning bolts on it. A third sock was tied around his neck like a bizarre necklace.

Doc was weird, even for a dwarf, but after working with him and his six brothers for three years, I was used to his many… “quirks.” I personally thought that Doc looked like a fat little Santa Claus with his tangled white beard, absurd hat, and round little nose, but I’d never say that to his face.

I tucked the magnifying glass into the pocket of my cape as Doc began an enthusiastic rendition of “Thriller” and went to lean against the nearest tree. The overcast sky, just visible through the thick forest canopy, looked almost as chaotic as the crime scene that buzzed around me. The sun was almost fully hidden behind a jumble of storm clouds. The humid air was heavy with the scent of a disgusting mixture of rain, dirt and leaves.

“I reckon she’s dead,” a uniformed police officer with bushy eyebrows was saying a few feet away from me. The cop standing next to him nodded darkly as she blew on a steaming mug of coffee. Her blonde hair was so frizzy it looked as though she had been struck by lightning – not, I thought angrily, that my hair looks any better.

A dozen or so police cruisers in varying states of neglect were parked in a crooked row nearby. Someone had strung yellow caution tape from tree trunk to tree trunk to form a corral around the crime scene. A crowd of goggling hikers and picnic basket toting families were gathering behind the flimsy barrier, talking excitedly. No doubt they were all hoping to see a severed limb or two.

CRASH! Something hit the ground with a metal crunching smash, and I jumped. “Nice going, Fred,” a sullen voice said.

I turned, my idiot radar going crazy. Sure enough, a pair of fat men in lab coats were bending over the fragments of what had been a very expensive camera.

“What is wrong with you people?” I snapped. Seeing the expression on my face, the two men backed up. One of them had pink frosting smeared around his mouth. Sick. “I turn around for one minute, and you break something!”

“Fred’s the one who dropped it,” the one with frosting on his face muttered, glaring at his companion. He had huge ears that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Dumbo.

Fred’s beady eyes narrowed. “What makes you – ” he said hotly, face flushing a deep red.

“Shut up,” I interrupted, brushing a leaf out of my frizzy red hair. “Now pick this up, and if word of this gets back to the mayor, God so help me I’ll…”

They fell to their knees and began to gather up the broken pieces, still bickering. I stomped away, looking for another moron to yell at. Somehow, I didn’t think I was going to have to look far.

This whole place was getting on my nerves. I couldn’t stand working in forests, and it was starting to show. The sooner we cleaned up this crime scene, the better.

“Sheriff Hood!” A short figure no taller than my knee hurried up to me, pinecones crunching under his cowboy boots. The weak beam of sun filtering through the canopy made a dappled pattern on his sleek black and white fur. Oh, God. A talking cat. Just what I need at my crime scene.

“Yes?” I said warily, straightening my cape. The oppressive July heat was beginning to make me wish I hadn’t worn the bright red cloak. Strands of my hair were sticking to the back of my sweaty neck, and my deodorant had failed half an hour ago. So much for “Super Strength,” I thought, cringing.

The cat whipped a badge out of his right boot. I thought that that was a weird place to keep ID, until I realized he wasn’t wearing any clothes. Wonderful. “My name’s Boots,” he purred. “Investigator Boots. I’ve been investigating the recent string of crimes – ”

“You think this crime is connected to the others?” I interrupted, trying to ignore the fact that Investigator Boots smelled strongly of cat litter.

The cat swatted at a nearby pixie. The stupid things were everything, darting between the trees like deranged fireflies and sprinkling light blue dust all over the police cruisers. “It has to be,” Boots said. “Four disappearances in the Enchanted Forest in the past three months – what are the chances of that?”

I frowned, watching Sleepy doze under a nearby tree, totally oblivious to the pixies that were stuffing poison ivy leaves up his bulbous nose. “You might be on to something, Investigator,” I said. “These cases are all so bizarre. There’s no blood, no signs of struggle, no witnesses. It’s as if these people simply disappeared into thin air.”

The piercing sound of squealing tires and snapping foliage drowned out Boots’ reply. I stepped on the hem of my cape as I spun around, nearly falling flat on my face. Straightening, I saw a gleaming black limo careen through the forest, bouncing wildly over the roots that were sprawled across the ground. The car cut right through the yellow tape and rolled to a halt a few feet away from me, steam billowing out from under the hood.

“Oh, no,” Boots groaned, but my heart gave an ecstatic little leap. There was only one person in Airyf City who could afford a limo, and his name had been plastered all over my diary when I was twelve.

The crime scene had grown still. Even the pixies had fallen silent, except for the humming of their wings. The limo’s back door opened with an audible click, and a man with dazzling white teeth and flowing black hair flounced out. He was wearing a gray suit with the name “Charming” embroidered over his heart and sunglasses, despite the fact that the sun was barely shining.

“Ah, Ms. Red Hood,” the man drawled, seemingly oblivious to the people in the gathered crowd who were snapping pictures of him with their camera phones. I quickly forced my face back into its usual scowl. “Still skipping around the woods, I see. And Investigator Boobs.”

Ouch, I thought, as the investigator’s tail lashed. “Boots,” the cat snapped. “Investigator Boots.”

The man sneered at him. “Of course. And I see that you’re wearing some… unique… footwear. But, “ he pointed to a spot on one of the boots, “what’s that? A stain? Did you not make it to the litter box in time?”

Okay, I like this guy, I thought as we watched Boots stalk away. I suddenly realized that everyone was still staring at Charming. Some of the women deputies had even pulled out pen and paper, as though they were hoping for an autograph.

“What do you think this is, a freak show?” I yelled. A flock of ravens flew out of a nearby tree, cawing indignantly as my voice echoed through the forest.

Get back to work or I’ll…”

I didn’t bother to complete the threat – there was no need. Instantly the crime scene dissolved back into an efficient, if a bit reluctant, flurry of motion. I sighed. “What are you doing here, Charming?”

Charming raised an eyebrow. Dang, he looked sexy when he did that. “I’m here to see the place where my dear fifth wife vanished. And I must say, you’re conducting the investigation very professionally, Sheriff.” His haughty gaze lingered first on the dozing Sleepy and then on the two men who had dropped the camera earlier. They were now rolling around on the ground, fighting over what looked like a donut as two cops tried to pull them apart.

All right, now he was kind of ticking me off, good looks or not. I thought longingly of the Taser I had in my cruiser – one jolt wouldn’t mess up his hair too much, right? – before taking a steadying breath and slipping into sheriff mode. “Cinderella appears to have entered the Enchanted Forest early Friday morning, intending to take a hike. She never returned home. The tracking gargoyles followed her scent this far and then lost it. We found a shattered glass slipper on the ground over by that elm tree, but other than that there’s no sign of her.”

I led him away from the limo and pushed past a group of mud splattered police officers. “And then there’s this.”

Charming brushed his hair out of his eyes. “And what exactly is that supposed to be?”

A member of the forensics team handed us both latex gloves, and he gave his a disgusted look before reluctantly donning his. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, I noticed.

“This,” I said, kneeling in what was probably, with my luck, a patch of poison ivy, “ appears to be the entrance to some kind of burrow.”

He bent down for a closer look, and I shivered as his arm brushed against me. Darn it! This is a crime scene, not middle school, I lectured myself. Now is definitely not the time to act unprofessional.

“The burrow of what?” Charming asked, sounding bewildered.

We both stared at the gaping hole. It was at least three feet across and tunneled down into darkness. A dank, rotting smell drifted up from it, reminding me of my dad’s toenails.

“My detectives found some strands of hair clinging to the rim of this hole,” I said, smacking away a pixie that had flown too close to my face. “They were a hideous shade of pink, just like Cinderella’s hair. It’s possible that she fell down the hole, or was dragged down it by whatever creature lives down here.” And whatever it was, it wasn’t a gopher.

“Do you think she’s dead?” Charming asked, looking excited at the thought.

I laughed. “You owed her alimony, didn’t you?” I said. It was a rhetorical question. I had been one of the millions of people who had followed Charming and Cinderella’s delightfully messy divorce.

Charming smirked, just as the sound of snapping twigs and crackling leaves echoed through the forest for the second time in ten minutes. I groaned. “What now?”

A white van was weaving through the trees, killing plants more effectively than an angry dragon. I winced as the right side mirror caught on a tree trunk and snapped off.

“It’s a news crew!” one of the deputies called. Sure enough, the words “Gryphon News Inc” was written on the side of the van in elaborate blue letters.

I swore before rounding on the nearest police officer. “Great. Just great. Why can’t you idiots ever listen to me? I said I wanted the media kept out of here!”

Charming whipped off his latex gloves and straightened his tie. “The media’s here?” he asked, suddenly flashing the dazzling smile that had been gracing magazine covers for years. His hands went to his head. “Does my hair look okay?”

It looked amazing, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.

A squat little woman with a hideous haircut that made her brown hair look like a bird’s nest had climbed out of the van, brandishing a ridiculously large microphone. A fat man with a face like a pug’s scrambled out after her, nearly dropping the camera he was balancing on his shoulder.

Doc approached the pair, looking nervous. “I’m sorry, but this is a crime – ”

The woman decked him with the microphone, knocking off his hat, and pushed him out of the way. “This is Betty Springs, reporting to you live from the Enchanted Forest,” she said, facing the camera. “Behind me is the very clearing where celebrity chef Cinderella is believed to have disappeared.”

Charming, trying to play the anxious ex husband, was now strutting in front of the burrow like a peacock, attempting to look distressed and squeeze into the camera frame at the same time. Boots glared at him as he sidled over to me. “Should I – ”

Everyone froze as the ground trembled beneath our feet, shaking leaves from the nearby trees. The sound of something sliding over rocks drifted up from the burrow, and the dank smell suddenly swelled to a nearly suffocating level.

“Sheriff – ” Charming said nervously, no longer smiling.

“Stand very still,” I whispered, my mouth suddenly dry. Silence had fallen over the forest, and I could clearly hear a wet, sucking sound coming from the ground at my feet.

Something was crawling up the burrow, I realized with horror. Something big.

Charming backed up, nearly tripping over his own feet in his haste to get back to his limo. Coward.

“Get away from the hole!” one of the deputies called. Boots was only happy to oblige. Yowling, he dropped on to all fours and darted away, fur bristling.

Whatever was climbing out of the burrow kept coming up, seeming oblivious to the dirt that was raining down on it. Leaning over the hole, I could see a diseased white creature crawling towards me. A huge, diseased white creature.

“Run, Sheriff!” Doc yelled. Behind me, the entire crime scene had erupted into chaos. The yellow caution tape had been trampled as almost everyone bolted. Even the pixies were gone.

“Are you getting this?” Betty Springs shouted at her cameraman. She must have fallen when the ground had rocked, because there was mud smeared down her expensive dress and leaves were tangled in her bird’s nest hair.

I stumbled back as the creature hissed, a low metallic noise that hurt my ears, and then it reared up out of the ground with a terrible scraping sound. Charming screamed as the animal flailed wildly, pearly skin contrasting sharply with the green and brown forest. It was some kind of giant worm, twenty feet long. It had a perfectly round mouth bristling with indigo colored teeth that would’ve put a wolf to shame.

A smarter person would have run screaming, or at least been afraid. But I wasn’t scared. I was ticked. This was so not how I had wanted my day to go. First the broken camera, then the media, and now a freaking worm was invading my crime scene.

“Give me that,” I snapped, and seized a nearby officer’s gun. The weapon felt reassuring in my hand, and I leveled it at the worm. Before I could shoot, though, the creature lunged at me, knocking me off my feet. The gun skittered away and disappeared beneath a pile of leaves.

“Zoom in! Zoom in!” Betty Springs shouted, on the verge of hysteria. “It’s going to eat her!”

Oh yes, let’s all videotape the sheriff being devoured by a giant parasite. I turned my head, intending to yell something insulting at Betty Springs, but just then the worm locked its dagger like teeth on my leg. Pain shot through me, and I screamed, all professionalism forgotten. The worm hissed around my leg and slid back a few feet into the hole. It was going to drag me back into its den! The realization terrified me, and I struck out blindly at the monster, but it was like trying to punch jello.

Some of the braver officers were running towards me, no doubt about to attempt a rescue, but it was too late. With one final hiss, the worm slid back into the burrow, teeth still clamped on my leg. My treasured red cape snagged on a tree root and ripped, and then I was pulled into the burrow. A terrible smell rose up around me, gagging me, and then everything went black.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Something cold was dropping onto my forehead, and I snapped my eyes open. I was lying flat on my back, staring up at what appeared to be the ceiling of a vast cave. Jagged stalactites pointed down at me like icicles, covered with some kind of furry green moss that was emanating a faint glow. I could feel gritty sand between my fingers and on my face.

Groaning, I sat up. My leg was throbbing, sending bolts of pain through my body, and my pant leg was stained with my own blood.

I tore my gaze away from the sight of my blood, feeling nauseated, and looked around. I was sitting on a narrow strip of sand. To my right stretched an expanse of glassy green water. The water was perfectly, eerily still, almost as though it had been frozen.

Where the heck am I? I thought, shivering in the frigid air. I pulled my tattered cape around my shoulders, taking comfort in the familiar object. I wondered where the worm had gone. Was it going to come back to finish me off?

The thought terrified me, and I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the searing pain in my leg. I had to get out of here. I stared at the lake, trying to decide if I should try to swim across it. But what if the worm was lurking below the surface of the water, waiting to snatch me up in its jaws again?

I slowly turned to look to my left, hoping to see a tunnel that would lead me out of here, or a conveniently placed door.

I found neither.

Instead, I was looking at a long, high wall of gray stone. A neon green sign was placed high on the wall, boldly displaying the words “Disney Zoo.”

Zoo?

I moved closer to the wall, despite the fact that my heart was thudding erratically and a voice inside of my head was screaming at me to run. Huge holes the size of a truck had been cut into the rock every few feet. At first I thought that they were the entrances to tunnels that would lead out of the cave, paths I could escape on, and I hurried forward.

Suddenly, I stumbled to a halt as my eyes fixed on something else. Bars. There were metal bars across each of the holes, crisscrossing in a mesh of iron. These weren’t paths… they were cages.

Fear smashed into me like a rampaging elephant, and I swayed, my breath coming in short little gasps. Unwillingly, my eyes went to the sign again. Who the heck would have a zoo in the middle of an underground cave? And what is in these cages?

My nerves were stretched as tight as the strings on a harp as I inched forward, the pain in my leg completely forgotten now.

And then I saw her.

Cinderella was lying on the floor of the nearest cage, her hideous pink hair contrasting with the drab cave like a bubble gum colored beacon. Her eyes were shut and she was curled in a ball, her chest rising in quick gasps.

Horrified, I backed away, then stumbled to the next cage. A great tawny lion was stretched across the stone floor, mane tangled. Simba?

The next cage held a scrawny little boy I recognized as the son of a local shop owner. Pinocchio. I felt a scream building in my throat as I hurried along the wall, seeing familiar faces in every cell. Sleeping Beauty. Snow White. Shrek. All unconscious, all trapped. Even Lady and Tramp were here, lying side by side.

I approached the last cage with a sense of growing foreboding. It was empty. I leaned against the bars of it, shaking. I had to get out of here, I had to get out right now and call my men, get these people out of -

My eyes caught a flash of white between the bars just above my head. It was a piece of paper, tucked between the strips of iron. I tugged it out with trembling hands, the crackle of paper sounding unnaturally loud as I unfolded it. Slowly, I read it.

“Coming Soon: Little Red Riding Hood,” it declared in bold, black letters.

The cage was for me.

The paper slipped from my fingers as the scream that had been building in my throat finally escaped.