THE CHRONICLES OF GIN
A Serialized Gingerbread Man Retelling for Adults
Part 11: Into a Really Bad Place
Sometimes when I run, it feels like my feet aren’t even touching the ground anymore, I’m that fast. But when I trudged my way to that river, it was at the speed of molasses dripping from a spoon. Shoulders slumped, head hung low, I dragged my broken heart to the riverbank and wept.
I had nothing. No home, no future, and my one taste of romance had almost ended in literal torture. Maybe it was just a bad day, but it was the only day I ever had. Life so far had been 100% sh*tty.
I spared a thought for all the cookies before me who’d been dipped into an unforgiving glass of milk, forgotten and doomed to a soggy end. I was not the first and would not be the last to melt. Just then, the colors of sunrise reflected on the river so beautifully I actually stopped crying and stared for a while. It felt like a good omen.
This was a good place to die.
I took a deep breath, mentally said goodbye to everything I’d gotten to know in my less than 12 hours of life, and started to take those last three steps to the water.
“Oh, sweet Jesus, no!!” came a blood-curdling screech from behind me.
I turned and saw a fox a few feet away, looking at me with a stricken expression on his face.
“Do I know you?” I sputtered, outraged that this obvious stranger was intruding on my final moments.
“No, I’m sorry, we’ve never met. I don’t know who or what you are. I didn’t mean to spook you, it’s just… you can't just go for a swim. You're obviously not a frog or a turtle or anything that should get wet. It would kill you!”
Those last four words were delivered in a horrified whisper.
“And why do you care? You want to eat me too, don’t you?” I sneered. “I hate to break it to you, but you’ll never catch me.”
And I ran around him at top speed before returning to my original spot in less than a second, just to prove my point. When everything else was gone, apparently pettiness was all I had left.
“Wow. That was… very impressive,” he said, nodding sagely. “But you don’t have to worry about me. I don’t eat processed foods. That’s a perversion that goes hand in hand with domestication.” He shuddered and made a disgusted face.
“I’m all about clean living, like nature intended.”
He sat with a peaceful, close-lipped smile and looked out at the water with me for a minute or two before breaking the silence.
“Look, friend. You seem like you’ve had a really tough day, and you probably haven’t had a lot of other days to compare it to. But talking helps. I’ll make you a deal: hop on my back and let me take you to the other side of this river, where you can have a fresh start somewhere new. I’ll listen to your story along the way, no judgment. And if you still want to die when you get to the other side, I won’t stop you. Fair enough?”
No matter what I chose to do next, I had a hunch I’d feel better with a body of water between me and that madhouse of a farm. Plus, I’d already made peace with death, so really, I had nothing to lose.
“Call me Gin.”
“Alright. Nice to meet you, Gin. I’m Harvey. Hop on.”
So I hopped onto his back and gripped tight to his musky fur as he walked into the water and started to swim.
Harvey seems nice. You guys haven't read the original story, right 😆? Anyhoo, we'll see what he's up to in the next installment. Definitely eventually 😉.
