The True Story of Hansel and Gretel

John Jones had married Lucille thinking she could get his little family off of the ground. Instead, Lucille abused the children, spent all of her money before John and she married, bringing the family down further. She refused to sell her jewelry or clothing to help the family, and she would beat the children if they didn’t sell enough cookies each day. She would take away their food and sometimes make them sleep outside at night, even in the winter. John tried to stop her at first, but she manipulated him well, and John ended up being just as cruel as she was. 

Lucille had met John three years after the war, he was in rough shape, and had hardly any money; so she decided to step in. She thought they’d care for her, thank her for all of her help. But the family did not, so she just harmed them all, three at a time.

Although Hansel and Gretel were constantly filled with fear, they comforted each other. Lucille had a habit of beating Gretel, tearing her down. Hansel would do his best to fight back, but he was always beat for standing up for his young sister. 

Hansel and Gretel were fed up with Lucille. Once, Lucille had made the two sleep outside of the small cottage for the night. Hansel was only eleven-years-old, but he was very brave nonetheless. He turned to Gretel and said

“You see the stream over there?”

Gretel nodded. She was six-years-old and the abuse affected her much more than it did Hansel. She still hadn’t fully accepted that it was real life that she was going through, she was stuck waiting for it to end. 

“Remember when we were younger and we would go the stream, dig to the very bottom and pull the colorful, sparkly stones out? We would go and explore around the village and the mountains, leaving the stones along, a guide to tell us how to get back home. We knew they were shiny enough for us to see on our way back. Remember that?” Hansel oftentimes tried to calm down Gretel by reminding her of the good moments the two had shared together.

“Yeah,” Gretel sniffled, her tears were finally beginning to come to a close.

“Well… I was thinking, I have some stones in my pocket, how about when it finally becomes just bright enough that the sky becomes orange, we go and run away. We can stay in the village for a while, then stay in the forest and pick berries. We can eventually get to the city and find people who will care for us like parents should.” 

Hansel and Gretel got up a few hours later dropping the brightly colored stones along their way once they got far enough away from home. As dawn was arising, the two came to a burnt-out campfire and lit it. They picked berries and ate them. They rested once dusk came upon them. Once they awoke, they realized that the stones had vanished.

“The stones, they’re gone!” Gretel was worried that Lucille was hiding behind the trees and bushes, about to pounce upon them. 

“Animals probably just stole them. Did you know that some birds take shiny little things?”

“No. Do you think they’ll hurt us?”

“No, no, they won’t. They’re nice little songbirds.”

Shortly after that conversation, Hansel and Gretel then decided to venture on. Their amount of stones became less and less. Their hunger grew and grew. As they journeyed throughout the forest, the two children began to smell the sweet scent of cookies, pie, and other delightful sweets. They ran as fast as they could towards the smell. Had they finally reached the village? 

As they got closer, they discovered that they had not reached the village, but rather a sweet little cottage. It was made of bricks painted in various shades of pink, green, purple, blue, orange, red, yellow, and many, many more colors. The roof seemed to sparkle and smell of cinnamon. A young woman spotted them from her kitchen window and went outside to greet them. Her hair was jet-black and her eyes were a wintery blue. She looked kind, she looked like she could be their mother now. 

“Oh my goodness, you two look starved! Please, please, come inside.”

So they did. The woman brought them to her dining room and asked,

“What are your names?”

“I’m Hansel, and this is my younger sister Gretel. We’re trying to run away from home. Don’t worry our parents aren’t worried, they never really cared for us anyways.”

“How dreadful! Would you like to stay here? I have an extra room upstairs that I can set up for you, I can make you both pies and cakes and delicious meals!”

“Yes!” Hansel and Gretel were both filled with glee.

Hansel and Gretel lived with the woman for a year, they loved her like a mother. Then one morning, the woman gave the two young children some hot tea, as she did every morning. But, it was different today, they began to feel very tired shortly after drinking their morning tea. After a while, they fell asleep. They awoke to find them in a room of the cottage they had never seen before. Hansel and Gretel were sitting across from each other. The woman walked into the room,

“I see you two have woken up. Now I suppose we had better get going; shouldn’t we now?”

 She walked up to Hansel and took two little gadgets out of her pockets. These gadgets forced Hansel’s eyes open. She then walked over to Gretel and cut out her tongue. Blood spurted everywhere. Gretel wanted to scream, but she was in too much pain to do so; so Hansel did instead. Someone he cared for dearly, had been trying so hard to comfort and keep safe, was being tortured. He tried to break out, but he couldn’t, all he could do was scream and cry. Gretel died ten minutes later, after constantly increasing torture. She bled to death.

The woman then did the same to Hansel. She ripped out his eyes and then slit his throat.

The next day, she cooked the children. She finished eating them within three months. After devouring Hansel and Gretel, the woman vanished. Twenty years later, a group of investigators recognized how many children in the area where Hansel and Gretel lived had gone missing. They eventually found the cottage. When the investigators walked into the basement, they found hundreds of skeletons, all belonging to small children. Besides two of the skeletons, were colorful, sparkling stones.