Snow White Meets Little Red Riding Hood by Tony Dawson

Snow White had had a hard day. Her spirits needed a lift, so she decided to break a rule of a lifetime and sample some of her own product. Although her real name was Pearl, she had adopted the nickname her suppliers had given her, “Snow”, because she was the major distributor of cocaine on the west coast.

Apart from her thriving cocaine business, Snow also exploited a gang of seven vertically challenged men of varying ages and intelligence named Fred, Uriah, Chris, Ken, Eric, Rick, and Sam to carry out robberies on her behalf. The dwarfs used to work in pairs, each duo taking up their positions in the gardens of the mansions on Holyoake Boulevard at nightfall when the households didn’t notice them. The men working for the local security company simply thought that they were the ubiquitous garden gnomes stationed there by the clichéd property owners, who had probably installed cameras in them. The fact that the security guards couldn’t distinguish dwarfs from gnomes irritated Snow’s little helpers beyond measure. The one dwarf left over, usually Eric, would sit in a tree acting as the lookout. The police were being driven crazy because they couldn’t work out how it was possible for anyone to break into so many mansions despite access to them being so difficult.

Little Red Riding Hood was a cross-dressing hitman who had apparently seen too many episodes of “Have Gun. Will Travel”.  The “Little” was an irony as this particular gender-bender was seven feet tall. Prospective clients who wanted to hire the services of this assassin-cum-gumshoe were expected to contact Little Red Riding HoodPI.com and leave a message together with their email.

The owners of the mansions that had been regularly broken into had finally decided to get in touch with Little Red Riding Hood since neither the police nor the local security firm had managed to solve their problem. The mansion owner acting as the spokesperson for those living on Holyoake Boulevard initiated the exchange by sending the following email:

 “We have been plagued of late by a spate of burglaries. We wondered what your fee would be to take care of the problem.”

Little Red Riding Hood replied: “How many of you are victims of these burglaries?”

Mansions’ spokesperson: “Fifteen altogether and each of us has been robbed multiple times. We are anxious to have the person or persons responsible neutralized.”

Little Red Riding Hood: “In that case, my fee would be $75,000, in other words, $5,000 per household.”

The mansions’ spokesperson wrote back two days later: “It’s a deal.”

Little Red Riding Hood replied: “Bring the money in a bag on Wednesday at 2:00 am and hand it to me at the north end of the Boulevard. You’ll know it’s me even though I’ll be wearing a ski mask because I am seven feet tall and will be waiting under the tree on the corner.”

The mansions’ owners’ messenger duly turned up in the early hours of Wednesday morning clutching a leather bag full of money. It was impossible to miss the giant figure waiting at the end of the street, so the messenger hurried along to hand it over and immediately returned whence he came.

Twenty minutes later, Little Red Riding Hood walked into Snow’s house and hugged her tight. “Hi, little sister,” he smiled, kissing her on the cheek. Then he turned to the seven dwarfs and gave them each a low five. “Hi, fellas. We certainly hit the jackpot tonight!” and he laughed as he emptied the bag onto the table.

Tony Dawson

Image by Walti Göhner from Pixabay Snow white and seven small people ! on a window ledge – They are made of ceramic!