Crimson the Cannibal: A Dark Fairy Tale

In a fog-wrapped land far from hope, there lay a withering town that people only whispered about, a place renamed Grim after it drowned in shadows and screams. No dawn seemed bright enough to cleanse its crooked lanes, and no prayer could protect its people from the whispers of the one who haunted them: Crimson.

They called her that for the blood-red mask she wore, for the way the color clung to her like a curse. She was the shape of wrath walking. Yet for all her tormenting, for all the screams she wrung from trembling lips and the terror she sowed like salt in the earth, Crimson had never taken a single life.

Not until the night she met the Big Bad Wolf.

Wendall Olly Frances—Wendall Fran, for those who survived him at the gambling tables—was a predator of a different sort. He devoured the foolish with cards and dice, never losing, never forgiving debts. But even a wolf can become prey when it crosses paths with a huntress who craves the taste of fear.

That night, Crimson ran through the forest, her feet smashing the damp leaves into dust, heart pounding as she felt the wolf behind her. She could sense him in the crack of branches, the cold laughter that floated through the pines, the stink of smoke and stale sweat that marked his presence.

“Bloody, bloody, Crimson,” Wendall’s voice came from the dark, a mocking hymn, “ever wonder what it’s like to be hunted?”

She almost smiled beneath her mask, blood in her veins singing with the thrill. She lived to terrify, but this—being the quarry—was a new flavor. She spun in the moonlight, her battleaxe gleaming as she hissed, “Ever watch your skin peel from your bones while you’re still alive, Wendall Fran?”

The game changed when Wendall lunged. They crashed into the mud, leaves clinging to their skin, and for a breathless moment, they studied each other. Her crimson mask reflected in his amber eyes, his cruel grin revealing teeth sharpened by a lifetime of devouring the weak.

But instead of clawing at her mask, Wendall extended a hand.

“Help me,” he rasped, eyes glinting. “I need you.”

Suspicion warred with curiosity, but Crimson’s hunger for chaos was stronger than caution. She took his hand, pulling herself from the mud. Wendall told her of a debt, a gamble lost to a hag he called Granny, who held a power over him that he could not break.

Crimson’s laugh was a blade. “You want me to torment her, don’t you?”

“Ruin her,” Wendall said. “Make her regret crossing me.”

And so, under a moon pale as bone, they planned Granny’s ruin. They met in a willow grove near her crooked cottage, shadows weaving around them as they whispered of blood and betrayal.

But Crimson was never one to share her fun.

As Wendall crept to the back of the cottage, Crimson signaled her hidden ally—the axeman she had bribed with promises of slaughter. Before Wendall could realize the trap, the axeman struck, forcing Wendall to his knees in the mud, iron chains biting into his wrists.

“The Big Bad Wolf is bound,” Crimson sang, her eyes glinting behind her mask. “And now, it’s time to feed.”

They dragged Wendall in a crate meant for hounds, slipping through tunnels and shadows until they reached Crimson’s hidden chamber, the air heavy with copper and damp stone.

Crimson’s fingers twitched over her knives as she watched Wendall squirm, savoring the panic in his golden eyes as realization replaced arrogance. She had planned every moment, every cut, every scream that would tear from his throat before the end.

But first, there was Granny.

Crimson slipped into the cottage, moonlight illuminating the wrinkles on the old woman’s face as she lay in bed, unaware of death crawling closer. With a hiss of steel, Crimson’s throwing star slashed across Granny’s tendons, blood blooming in a dark flower across the sheets, down her throat, onto the wooden floor. Crimson licked the blood from her lips, the taste sparking a hunger she had never allowed herself to embrace.

The scent, the warmth, the way the body convulsed before going still—it was intoxicating.

She carved, she seared, she tasted. Human flesh was bitter, but the power it offered her was sweeter than any fear she had ever caused.

When Granny’s body was nothing but ribbons of flesh, Crimson returned to Wendall, dragging her blood-soaked blade across the floor.

“It’s your turn now, Wolf.”

And so Crimson’s promise was kept. She flayed Wendall, piece by piece, keeping him alive just long enough to watch himself fall apart, blood pooling in jars she would later drink. She turned the axeman into the next course, savoring the fear in his eyes as he realized betrayal was always the plan.

Crimson, the tormentor who had never killed, was gone.

Now, there was Crimson the Cannibal.

She devoured those she hunted, relishing the taste of blood and the rapture of violence. She became a legend whispered by trembling voices in Grim and beyond, a warning to any who thought they could outrun the hunger that stalks in a crimson mask.

And she lived hungrily ever after.