Not too far away and not too long ago, during a certain pandemic, there lived a brash, arrogant girl. She cohabited with her mother in a suburban residential area. People would always call the girl “Red Hoodie” from the distinctive red hoodie jacket that she never took off. Some had even started to think that she had an endless supply of those jackets or that she never washed it!

One day, Red Hoodie’s hard-working mother got a call from Hoodie’s grandmother saying that she had been feeling really ill after leaving the house without wearing a mask and would much appreciate it if someone could help take her to the hospital. Unfortunately, Red Hoodie’s mother worked a nine-to-five job and was in an incredible crunch at work so she called upon her daughter to take care of her grandmother.

“Darling, your grandmother is sick and needs help, I cannot go to her right now, can I trust that you can do this for me?” asked her mother.

Red Hoodie responded, “Mom, I thought I told you already! I’m going out with the girls today.”

Her mother kept reasoning with her until Red Hoodie accepted and thought to herself, “If only dad never left and could help us.”

Reluctantly, Red Hoodie obliged, took some cash with her, and left the house. However, Red Hoodie thought that it would be better for her to walk to her grandmother’s house rather than using public transport.

“It’s the middle of spring so I might as well walk, what’s the worst that can happen?” thought Red Hoodie to herself. After a couple of minutes into her walk, she got approached by a homeless black man asking if she could spare some change.

“Please don’t hurt me!” yelled Red Hoodie “Take whatever you want!”

The poor man tried to calm her down and to explain that he meant no harm, but Red Hoodie would not budge. Reluctantly, and due to his desperation, the man took Red Hoodie’s money leaving her penniless.

“This isn’t supposed to happen to me” murmured Red Hoodie under her breath as the man walked away.

But upon hearing that he turned around and said, “Life isn’t a fairy tale. It’s rough” before walking away.

Red Hoodie was shaking and afraid after her encounter with the homeless man and quickly continued her walk to her grandmother’s house. Upon her arrival, she rang the doorbell, but no one answered. Red Hoodie circled around the house to find another way in. She found the bedroom window on the side of the house. She peered into it to check if her grandmother was there, which she was, so she knocked and called on her through the window.

“Grandma, open up! It’s kinda hot out here. Grandma, wake up. Grandma!” But there was no answer and she looked pale.

Red Hoodie started to get scared and tried to think of a way to get in. She picked up a brick in the garden and threw it at the window to enter. The breaking window made a loud sound and attracted a nearby neighbor who was walking by and saw the incident happening. This neighbor, who coincidentally was one of Red Hoodie’s grandmother’s friends, got worried and called the police immediately, thinking it was a serial armed burglar in the area who also wore a red hoodie.

As soon as Red Hoodie got inside the house, she tried waking up her grandmother, but nothing seemed to work, and she started to panic. She knew that the only thing to do was to take her to the hospital immediately. Unfortunately for her, she still could not open the front door as she did not know where the keys that locked the door were. She had watched a video on the internet on how to open a door with a kitchen knife and proceeded to do so. While trying to open the door, she heard distant police sirens that kept getting closer and closer until they appeared to be on the opposite side of the door.

“Come out with your hands in the air” called a police officer over the microphone. “If you don’t come within 30 seconds, we have authorization to breach.”

Red Hoodie was in a dilemma. She knew that she did not commit a crime, yet she couldn’t just go out the window and tell the police what happened, she needed to get help for her grandmother, yet the only help available was a hostile force. She froze and all she could do was back away from the door, knife still in hand, towards her grandmother’s bedroom.

“Breaching! Breaching!” and with a loud bang, in came a police squad shouting at the occupants to drop any weapons and to lay on the ground with their hands on their heads. Red Hoodie was frozen stiff, even when approached by the armed police to which they had to bring her down by force. The fact that she had a knife in her hand did not help the situation the slightest.

“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you do or say can or will be used against you in the court of law,” warned the officer while cuffing her. Only then did she come to her senses.

“I’m Red Hoodie, that’s my grandmother. I was trying to help her to the hospital. Don’t you know who I am, this isn’t supposed to happen to me.”

To which the officer responded,“No I don’t, this isn’t a fairy tale.”

Red Hoodie was taken to a police car to which she was driven away from her grandmother’s home.

A police officer approached the grandmother,

“She isn’t breathing,” he called out, “she is gone.”

Red Hoodie’s mother tried to call her multiple times to check up on her, but she would not answer. After the fifteenth try or so, an officer picked up the phone and explained the situation. Her mother was in shock and did not believe what was happening. An investigation ensued where there was too much evidence to refute Red Hoodie’s claims, and some work from a few corrupt investigators who wanted to climb up the ladder, resulted in her having to go to court to get convicted of her crimes.

A few weeks later, and before her court date, a mysterious looking man wearing a red hoodie approached Red Hoodie’s house and knocked on the door, which her mother opened.

“Why are you here of all times?”

“It’s been ten years woman; don’t I get to see my daughter?” replied the man.

“She is going to jail. If only you were here to take care of the situation like a real man, but you’re too high out of mind to know where the nose on your face is.”

The man was taken aback and started a frenzy of questions.

“Why? For what? What did she do? Where is she now? How long has this been? What can we do?” Although he rarely saw his daughter, the man was very loving of her and would do anything for her.

“Go to the station and check with them.”

The man went to the station and asked about his daughter to which they gave the same response that his wife had told him.

He paced back and forth for about a minute and went up to one of the officers with both hands in a fist stretched out in front of him, “Cuff me and take me to jail. She is innocent. My daughter is innocent. I have been stealing from old people’s houses to satisfy my drug addiction. Take me in and let my daughter free.”

The officer obliged and documented the situation to his higher ups.

“Damn, I gotta tell my wife about this fairy tale we’re in,” said the officer while putting handcuffs on the man.

This story does not have a happy ending and the family did not live happily ever after.

Ahmed took his inspiration for this retelling of Little Red Riding Hood from Charles Perrault. He wanted to emulate the unhappy ending of Perrault’s original tale but also give the story a modern twist. It was important to Ahmed to highlight some of the problems we commonly see in today’s society: police corruption, racism, drug abuse, and disrespect to parents. He hopes that one day his story will be a relic of the past as we overcome this societal problems.