The bear with the biscuit face

A long, long time ago, before she was burnt and cooked and ate up by the siblings whom we came to know as Hansel and Gretel, the witch, like all witches, was once a little girl. Over the years, she came to be known by several names, of which one of the most recent to have reached us, is Frau. This is a story of how a witch might become a witch.

Frau was a little girl born to a street prostitute and one of her many passing clients. The conception was cursed upon by her mother ever since it was realised too late for abortion, as that meant the threatening of her livelihood - few would be keen to consort with a woman with a impregnated belly. It was said that by the time Frau was born in the streets, other ladies of the night had to tear her away from the screaming clutches of her mother who had grown so hungry and angry that she wanted to strangle and eat the new born child.

Frau was left at the orphanage, and was later adopted by an otherwise childless baker and his wife to help with the household chores. The baker was not a very honest man, and his wife was a mediocre gossipy woman. They did not make a very attractive couple and Frau did not make a very joyous addition to the family. Perhaps her temperament did not make her particularly endearing or perhaps she never knew any how to better behave. She spent her days working for her foster parents and her evenings running around in the streets. There is nothing despicable about the way she was brought up but that was how she grew up.

Some said it was when she was twelve years old, and others said that it was when she was fifteen, that Frau had to undergo an abortion. She had been reluctant, but she was young, and had no money to feed herself, let alone to bring up a baby. Perhaps it was not the common practice then, for the abortionist to offer to dispose of the twelve or fifteen weeks old foetus. It might have been Frau who had asked for or stole the carcass of the new born, but in the darkness of the night, she cradled the dead foetus in a blood stained rag and brought it to the woods to bury or burn.

Perhaps it is at moments of desperation when the vulnerable soul cracks open at the seams. Upon reaching the forest, Frau sat at the foot of a large tree and hugged the carcass of her dead baby and wailed and laughed and cried. This might have went on for days or nights, and only the dead baby knew how long it was that the woods and the spirits of the trees and the world tried its mother's resilience. A fire was set and a fire was burnt, the insanity and the magic swirled with the smoke and pried themselves into her injured womb, where they nestled and bloomed and grew. At the end of the ordeal, all that was left was a pile of bones scattered on top of a pile of ash. As she emerged from the frenzy with the little skull resting in the palm of her hands, she must have felt the magic descend.

A group of figures surrounded her. They could have been dark in their demeanour or it could also have been Frau's imagination, still being in her trance state or stupour. The figures were almost faceless and looked like they had something in common, but at the same time, one could be sure that they had nothing common. Nothing was exchanged, the night was still. Not even the the rustling of the trampled leaves on the ground could be heard. One by one, they approached and poked Frau as if in inspection, after which, they took their leave, one by one. Finally, a figure took a pause and revealed a pale porcelain ape-like face with green piercing eyes, and for lack of better alternate explanation, possessed Frau. Mechanically, Frau then slowly spread her legs and took the little skull remaining in her hand and pushed it back up her torn vagina. If there was any moment that it could be supposed, then it would have been at that moment when Frau became a witch. Her bosom swelled and her uterus stopped hurting and she was consumed by an overwhelming sense of confidence and insatiable hunger.

She went back to her foster parents and killed the baker's wife and ate her. She then had sex with the baker himself before killing him the next day for dinner. She baked for a while and slept with a few other men before killing them and eating them.

One day, Frau went back to the woods and menstruated blood over the ashen grave of her child. With some magic, the dead foetus was conjured back to life and it took the form of a large full grown black grizzly bear; however, it was by no measure an ordinary bear as instead of matching fearsome jaws, two eyes and a cute button nose typical of bears, Frau's child bore a face that was a big biscuit. It could not roar, it could not cry, and it could not be sure if it had eyes. With the big black built of a wild grizzly bear and a big light-brown biscuit for a face, it shocked and scared the mother to the realisation of fear.

The bear was about to attack the suddenly frail and catatonic witch, but suddenly turned and ran away into the night. It was never to be seen again.

How traumatising must have it all been for Frau? One can only hope to never feel nearly enough despair to even begin to imagine. The story of Frau is what we can sometimes be tempted to hastily conclude as a story of a victim, whereas others may choose to see her as a victor, of her circumstances. However, there are no chances of victim or victor here, what happened merely happened, but one conclusion may always have room for adjustments.

(sneak)