Episode 15

Jack watched her enter, hesitated another few seconds before making a run to the door. Eleven seconds later, he was standing beside Red Ridinghood in a small foyer. There were two doors and a stairway going up and a stairway going down. He backed up a few steps as Red carefully opened the door.

Red looked out over a huge room. A marble fireplace dominated one end of the room, a white grand piano sat under a spiral staircase leading to a balcony and water fell into a round aquarium in the center of the room. Goldfish and other tropical fish were at the glass staring at Red Ridinghood. She eased the door shut and opened the second door. Aromas from pies, cakes, gingerbread and other baked good flooded her nose. She followed her nose and walked into the large kitchen.

She was cutting a very thin slice from three quarters of a coconut cake when Jack caught up with her. “What are you doing?” Jack kept his voice low and checked the doors. “The ogre will miss the cake. Then we will be in deep doo-doo.”

Red Ridinghood shook her head. “It’ll never happen. He’s too busy searching for his goose to miss a small slice of cake.”

A distant rumbling sound entered the kitchen. The lamps hanging from the ceiling swayed gently in the still air. A dog was barking from the direction of the beanstalk.

“He’s back.” Jack ran to a window. “There he is standing beside the plant petting a dog.” He moved his head to see better. “Not just any dog but a gigantic two-headed monster. What are we going to do?”

Red ran to the window. “Oh, oh, he’s coming this way.” She ran to an opened door, dashed across the huge room and took four steps at a time going up the spiral staircase. She opened the second door and entered a library. Book shelves went up twenty feet and still didn’t come close to the ceiling. For a change, Jack was right on her heels. She knelt beside a grate in the floor that allowed heat from the kitchen to enter the room. More rumbling and barking occurred, this time closer, much closer.

Jack knelt on the opposite side of the grate. “What are we going to do if he finds us? My mother says the ogre bites the heads off people he doesn’t like. I’m too young to die. Let’s make a break for it and climb down the beanstalk.”

Red shook her head. “We’d never make it. That two-headed dog looks awful mean. Just be quiet. Maybe he found his golden goose and is in high spirits like Snow White is with her prince charming.”