(Fractured Fairy Tale)

“Once upon a time there lived a little girl with her mother on the edge of a beetle forest. She always wore a red hat and a cape, and everyone who knew her called her Red Riding Hood.

One day, the mother gave Little Red Riding Hood a basket with cakes and told her to go through the woods to the side where her sick grandmother was lying in bed. “Remember, you can’t talk to strangers!” said Little Red Riding Hood’s mother.

On the way to her grandmother’s house, Little Red Riding Hood met the Big Bad Wolf.

“Where are you going a little girl?” he asked with his a slasher smile.

“To my grandmother’s house on the other side of the forest,” said Little Red Riding Hood forgetting the words of her mother.

The wolf took a short cut and ran to the grandmother’s house. When he went inside, he saw the good-hearted grandmother in a vyshyvanka, an elegant embroidered shirt, and immediately gulped her down! Then he put on her hat and nightgown and crawled into the bed.

When Little Red Riding Hood got there, she walked right up to the bed.

“Grandmother! What big ears you have,” she said.

“All to hear you better, my dear,” said the wolf.

“And what big eyes you have,” she said.

“All to see you better, my dear,” said the wolf.

“And what big teeth you have,” said Little Red Riding Hood.

“All to swallow you better, my sweetie,” said the wolf and he jumped out of the bed to chase Little Red Riding Hood.

Suddenly, a Ukrainian Vuiko who was chopping wood in the nearby forest heard Little Red Riding Hood shrieking. He rushed inside and hit the wolf over the head with his Galician axe. The wolf fell to the ground, and Grandmother popped out of his mouth.

Then the valorous Vuiko, Little Red Riding Hood, and the Grandmother sat at an oval oak table, said, “Slava to Ukraine,” and started eating appetizing apple cakes and drinking tasty tea.