There once lived two young citizens from a village not too far from Cochem; a soon-to-be bride and groom. When The Bride and The Groom met, they had very little to contribute to each other’s livelihoods in a material sense. The Bride was an amateur weaver apprenticed by a master who was average at best despite the praises they sung to themselves and anyone mystified by their confidence. The Groom, on the other hand, was in no better spot, and worked as a cobbler who sought very little coin for his honest work, both by his own choice and by how late of an upstart he was.

They married after much time of dawdling and worrying. The two had their eyes set on each other for some time, but never had the courage to speak to one another. Instead, they spoke through their work. The Cobbler cut, trimmed, and assembled all day to make a shoe worthy of her dusty, drab dress, and The Weaver prepared, measured, and threaded a fine suit worthy of his patchy, battered shoes. And when The Cobbler came to The Weaver on that fateful day, with the pearly white shoes in hand, and The Weaver came out with a lovely set of red and black cloth in her arms, the two of them were shocked, and then delighted.

“What is a dress as white as fleece and fair as snow without kind and supple slippers to fit the woman?” Asked The Cobbler.

“And what are shoes as tanned as an ox’s mane and as firm as his horn without a thoughtful and fit suit to fit the man?” Asked The Weaver.

And the answer that they gave was many days of walking under fair skies, talking under the taste of baked fish, and weaving and cobbling together under a single roof under a single enterprise. The wedding bells sounded as a reprise to this answer.

When The Weaver and The Cobbler became The Bride and The Groom, they bought a new home on the edge of the town. After the trouble of moving, they had begun repainting a room for a child, one that could help complete their lives more than they had for one another. The Groom had made tiny, modest shoes for the newborn, making them of every color so the child would always be proud of her footwear. And The Bride had wove dresses of many feathers and colors so that the child would never be bored of the dress she wore the next day.

And every night, in the most passionate of throes, they would try for that one day The Bride would feel a lump in her stomach that wasn’t there before, or the feeling of warmth below her heart that wasn’t there before. But unfortunately for The Bride, that day never came. And with each passing day, the couple grew more and more despairful and drained as they realized they weren’t able to have children of their own. Whether it be a curse from the heavens or a plague that was unbeknownst to either of them, no matter how hard they tried, the child never came. And after some time, after another morning of nothing, The Groom had let out a sigh of grief.

“If I am the problem, and I am not able to plant a seed in the ground and have it bloom, would you still love me?” asked The Groom.

“Only if you would love me if I am not able to provide the nutritious dirt and water for that seed to grow in the first place,” replied The Bride.

“Then I still love you.”

“As do I.”

And they laid together in this embrace, finding some solace that their bond was tethered in the completeness that gave one another rather than what heir that one could produce for another.

Then one day, as they were on their way to Cochem for a surprise visit to The Groom’s mum, which he had neglected to do for some odd months after the two had been married, they had seen two children walking alone along the forest trail that they had been traveling. The Bride had looked over and studied the two children.

The girl, who could not have been older than the hour by which the sun stood tallest, wore a beautiful black dress that shifted in its softness as she walked. And in her long braid that nearly draped across the floor with its length, therein lay mums and petals and dandelion flakes, scattered across the river of strands in harmonious straits.

And hand joined with hers, the boy was not even a hair taller than her, nor a wrinkle older. His hair was much darker than hers, cut in a way that framed his small face rather evenly. He wore a black vest to match his sister’s dress, with a white button-up underneath. His trousers were as dark as the boots he stomped across the muddy ground with. And when the two walked, the wind made his vest flutter in the same direction, velocity, and ripple as his sister’s dress. And like his sister, a faint smile crept upon his face with eyes unblinking, despite the faint indication of dirt rubbed against his skin.

When The Bride saw the children, she patted The Groom and pointed in their direction. While The Bride seemed instantly entranced by their sudden mystique, The Groom thought very little of them.

“They must be so tired, walking along the beaten path like this!” Said The Bride. “We should pick them up and bring them home so their feet do not tire from walking!”

“What of it? Their parents could still be around here with them?” Replied The Groom. “What look would it be for an odd couple to scoop up their kids and take them elsewhere?”

“What if their parents had left them on the side of the road, leaving to be fed to the wolves? Come now! They are but children. No children should be left stepping around with the woodland critters alone, no matter the reason!”

“I suppose you are correct, my dear.”

“Thank you, my dear.”

And so they stopped their carriage and let the small children on board. The two children seemed eager to climb aboard without hesitation. Even with their haste, they kept their kind smiles, and moved with the carefulness of a gentleman and a lady. They sat themselves behind the couple, the girl folding her hands atop her lap while the boy sat with a firm posture.

The two bowed one after the other.

“I am Gretel.”

“I am Hansel.”

“And we are grateful for your generosity.”

“Indeed, we are. If you could bring us to Melbrooke just north, we would be even more grateful.”

As the two spoke, there was a certainty to their words. They soon crept their hands atop one another’s in their ever-continued connection. While The Bride felt it charming and cute to see two siblings get along so well, The Groom could only mull over their names in his mind with a curiosity and the slight indication of unease. He could only remain silent as The Bride dawdled on the children, having leaned forward and spoke closely with the two mysterious children from the forest.

And so the group of four rode their way through the forest, which took with it a message through the wind that passed through the ears of The Groom, but flew directly over the head of The Bride. The Groom could feel its message over the goosebumps forming in his skin, which, much to appease his doting wife and the young kids behind them who were not guilty nor suspected of anything. There was simply this message that the forest had kept with him, and he kept it in the back of his mind for later; a handwritten note carved out by the branches that swayed over and sealed with sap.

They soon came upon a small village, which looked quaint upon initial inspection. As they rode in, the neighbors waved and smiled, and the atmosphere felt familiar in a sense. While The Bride waved back, her smile full of joy and revitalized life, The Groom stayed stern and gave a more half-hearted gesture. The Groom continued to watch those around him with an analytical eye. Something, to him, felt off about these people. Sure, they smiled and waved. But the light behind their eyes felt glassy, tired, perhaps lost in a way. And their smiles became more anxious as either of the couple looked away. And as they edged closer to the home of the twin children, everything around them appeared to become more lively. And as the sun shined brighter, the plants around them felt like they were springing to life quickly, being forced to look upon that which gave them their nutrients.

The two stopped at a small cottage, made of proudly-carved stone, whose doors were perfectly rounded, whose windows were perfectly squared, and smelled of the most precious of breads and cakes and cookies. Everything about it was created to draw the nose and the eyes, and once a hand touched the smooth stone, eventually draw the nerves of one’s very body.

The group stepped out of their carriage and the two twins appeared to go inside rather quickly, with The Bride right behind them. The Groom came to his wife’s side, taking her arm.

“We have done our due diligence, my love,” The Groom anxiously noted. “We must make haste back on our way. My mother’s weary heart will be most displeased if we keep her waiting.”

And just as The Groom was about to take his wife’s hand and lead her away from this oddity of a town, the two children stood in the doorway behind them to their kitchen.

“Mum has not come home for us yet,” Gretel said, eyes welled with tears.

“Yes,” Hansel reciprocated. “She said she would come back when she finished a trip to Cochem. But we didn’t wish to stay in that scary forest for so long….”

“What are we to do now?”

And the two children whined with their heads down in unison, weeping and cowering as if their whole world had been torn asunder due to such cruelty.

The Bride walked up and promptly dried the tears of the two children with her forefinger, brushing the top of their heads tenderly.

“You poor tots. How could a mother do that to such lovely twins?” She asked, a tear nearly coming to her eye. “You cannot be left alone. No mother would allow for that to happen! And for that reason, we will stay here until that wicked woman is taught precisely how to treat her innocent children!”

The declaration hit twofold, once to the children, who appeared to immediately cease their mewling and hugged the young woman with utmost grace. However, twice was to The Groom, who was left puzzled at such a declaration being made for him to stay in this situation that caught him so suspiciously. He opened his mouth to protest, before pausing and letting out a sigh of deep remorse. Of course this was not a situation he wished to be in, nor was he fully trusting anything that went within the limits of this village. His lucidity made him all the more suspect of what was going on. But as a man, he knew that it would be wrong of him to deny these children protection if everything they said was true, and he knew it would be wrong of him to turn on his lovely wife and pull her so roughly away from this situation that filled her with such joy. He could see the sparkle in her eye, the eye of a woman who had the chance to raise the children he could not provide, even if it was for a very brief time, and it pained him so dearly that he couldn’t give her the only thing she had ever expected of him; she never asked anything else of him, and he never asked anything of her at all. But at this moment… he could give her that very thing that he couldn’t after those several husky nights.

And so, begrudgingly, he nodded in agreement with his wife. And the four of them embraced for a short time.

And for that time, The Bride had taken the initiative to feed the children, clean them and their clothes that had been muddied from the forest, and play with the young children to keep them entertained. She played and played with the children for so much of the day that the sun would be down before she noticed that the light in the home had gone dim. She had become enthralled by the two quaint children, and they never seemed to tire out at all.

Meanwhile, The Groom had spent the day trying to talk to the neighbors and ask about the woman who took care of the two kids. And while they kept their grinning faces and polite gestures, often their responses would be short and sweet before the door was shut ferociously in front of him without any other thought that he could share. And so, he was left without proper answers, but a pit that continued to grow in his stomach as well.

And when he came home, he searched every bit of the home to look for any clue as to the whereabouts of their mother. The cottage on the inside was as spectacular as its inside, hinted by its sweet scents and lively atmosphere with the sunlight that perfectly shined and illuminated its interior. Its rooms and its treasures were plentiful, with a soft fireplace and two rocking chairs where The Bride would read the two twins stories regularly, though they never sat in the other chair together.

The twins’ slept in one room– a very peculiar one at that. There was a line that separated two sides of the room, one that appeared to be scratched on in white. Gretel would always sleep on one side, Hansel on the other. Each side of the room had a small bed in the corner, along with a chair and a mirror, with a stuffed toy that was sat in the seat aimed towards the doorway. To The Groom’s knowledge, those chairs had never moved apart from one another, nor had any of the furniture even changed even the slightest angle during that first day, even if he had seen one of the two children sit down for a while and play with their toy. Even the toys stayed at the exact angle at where they had last found them.

And when The Groom went to the yard, as the last place he would look, he would find nothing but the freshly laid grass, with a random assortment of flowers laid around them. He walked among the flowers until he came upon two twin crosses in the dirt, or at least what once was one. The crosses appeared to have fallen to the sides, one having fallen in each direction. And in front of those crosses laid a patch of dirt with a very small mound. When The Groom first saw it, he assumed it to be of a relative, or perhaps the children’s father.

Perhaps this was the clue he was looking for– in that moment, he could only think of a day where his bride was no longer with them, arms crossed against her chest within a coffin, wreathed with beautiful pansies and roses to take with her into the sky. He wondered, and hoped, The Bride also thought of a beautiful end to him like this. But how he knew it would destroy him… it didn’t shock him that perhaps the children’s mother had gone mad with grief and left them alone, not wanting a pungent reminder of the man she had once loved. But… on the other hand… he could not forgive someone who would let the last memory of their closest one starve in the woods, let alone relinquish their own flesh and blood that was created through such unrequited love.

He set the crosses upright before he had left the yard. He needed a lead this vile woman….

And soon the first day would go by. And then the next. And then the next. And The Bride would continue to dote on the children. And The Groom would continue his arduous task of asking and searching for any kind of clue to the whereabouts of the children’s mother. And with each passing day, she appeared to have more life flushed into her every single day, her skin starting to give off a new glow that it hadn’t before. The same happened to The Groom, which did not bring him as much happiness as The Bride, but instead made him more certain of the oddities of this place. And he searched more and more throughout the town, asking questions that he never was given answers to.

Then one day, after walking raggedly through town, The Groom would come upon a dirtied shack at the edge of the village. His stamina depleted, he knocked on the door of the dainty abode, hearing the wooden tap echo from within. Slowly, the door would open to reveal a short yet stout old man, looking to be well-beyond his years. Though his complexion betrayed him, his stature was nearing the height of a young child, measuring up barely above The Groom’s knees. His beard had grown to nearly touch the floor, and despite his age, he walked without a cane of any sort, with his arms folded behind his back, as if proud of the state he had made for himself at his old age.

“Ah, young man,” the old man said jovially. “What pleasure do I owe you today?”

“Hello, sir…” The Groom weakly said, his stamina clearly drained from his body. “Do you, perhaps, know anything about the children’s mother that lives in the cottage at the head of town…? No one has given me the time of day.”

The old man paused for a moment. “If you want specifics from me, you shall not get them.”

The Groom sighed, starting to turn rather defeated. However, the old man continued.

“But, know that the others will not. Not because they cannot, but because we all will not.”

The Groom turned. “What in the hell do you speak of?”

“I cannot tell you, for our tongues are sealed. But if you wish to know, you will find the answer below. There, it shall become clear.”

And as soon as he said that, the old man looked both ways and slinked further back inside his home as the door was shut. And even when The Groom pleaded for him, asked of what he was speaking of, he did not get an answer back.

So The Groom was left in silence, as silent as Death in his approach back to the home. And as he thought more and more about the old man’s words and what they meant, and as he turned the doorknob to the cottage and sat himself inside, staring out the window along the perfectly-green grass, staring intently at its glamour, he soon knew what he had to do.

After the children had been put to bed, and The Bride had fallen asleep on her side of the bed that night, The Groom rolled himself out of bed. He stood and looked to his wife on the bed, who had since looked more budding than she had the day before, with any beginning of crow’s feet or blemish in her face having eroded away completely. As he looked down, he noticed his hands, once full of callouses, had become notably more fair and smoothed. He knew by now, for whatever illusion this was, that he needed to act quickly.

He softly stepped through the house, going out the front door. And from their carriage that felt so rusted and bland compared to everything around them up to this point, he took out a shovel– something he had planned to use to help with his own mother’s gardening, but instead had been used for something of greater purpose– and walked to the back of the house. In the pale moonlight, almost like a curtain threaded by God had guided him to it, lay the two crosses on their sides yet again.

And without hesitation, only praying in his mind to those above that he be forgiven for desecrating a grave, dug his shovel into the grave. To his shock, as he dug for only a short time, the dirt appeared to fall through and further into the floor, as if it was a hollow shell that cracked into the center of the earth. And as he looked into the hole, he saw gray, but nothing of complete detail, as well as a drooping ladder into the great below. With great confusion, and quite a bit of anxiety, he swallowed deep as he moved to slide down the ladder below, unsure as to what he had put himself into.

And when he slid down, one of the planks of the ladder had unfortunately decided to give way to the jank entryway, leaving him tumbling down a few feet below. He let out a cough as he landed hard on not the floor, but something frailer.

And when he turned on his side, rolling to his hands and knees.

Bone.

Bone.

Bone.

He had fallen onto remains, which caused him to spring back in absolute terror. The skeleton had been fractured from his fall, but it was so old by this point that it practically folded in on itself. As The Groom, now The Victim, stood on his feet, he looked around himself. His eyes began to adjust in the dark catacomb, but now, he was seeing more splinters of bone that lined the room, more old bodies that were covered in different clothes, some closer to his day, but others sheathed in dated armor. Some in more Victorian-era garb. Some in fancier dresses and ascot-wearing vests.

However, all of the skeletons appeared small. All of them appeared to be a size smaller than he was, at the very least, with evidence of small fractures, bent necks, a shriveled arm and leg here and there, mismatched-sized teeth.

And when it was clear enough to him, the victim walked around for some time until he felt something squish under his foot, which caused him to flinch yet again before his nose was flooded with a horrid stench. When he looked beneath him, he saw them– two children, a boy and a girl, not much older than 12 years old, laying beneath his foot with skin that was gray and beginning to decay. Maggots had begun to find their ways between their teeth and squirm towards their open flesh. Beside the fall from the drop above and the blood that had been spilled from that, now dried in a putrid crystallization, there was no sign of injury on any of them. And most oddly, the two appeared to still be smiling from ear-to-ear, eyes rolled over in an almost drunken state, faces frozen in surreal joy. Their bodies would sometimes twitch and jolt from the many small creatures wiggling inside them, along with the continued process of rigor mortis taking fold.

After seeing this, needless to say, The Victim was now rushing back up the ladder, ignoring the searing pain in his back from the fall and doing everything he could to pull himself out of the catacombs.

And he soon returned to the bedroom, moving to shake his bride awake, his face written with the horror that he had just seen.

“We must leave this land at once!” Yelled The Victim. “We cannot stay here any longer!”

The Bride, now The Taken, woke up with a glassy look in her eye.

“What..? No… we can’t,” mumbled The Taken. “We must take care of the children, my love… we have to wait for their mother to return….”

Her gaze remained vacant, unable to see what was once her lovely-wedded Groom, now only seeing another tool that could be used to care for the children that had entranced her to such a degree.

“Please come with me, my love! Come with me so we may go back to Cochem, and be surrounded by people who will cherish us and help us forget about all of this!” He yelled tearfully. “Whatever spell they have put you under, I won’t let them take you!”

The Taken started to bring her hand to The Victim’s face, caressing it with a gentleness only she knew. “You’re so sweet… but… this is what we’ve always wanted… isn’t it…?

“All of that… was irrelevant to me. The only thing I wanted was you,” The Victim uttered, starting to break down into a tearful reply. “And I am so sorry I could not give you what you wanted… what good is a man like me if he can’t care for the person he loves most…?”

He was left sobbing ugly, taking her hand and pressing it against his forehead, ashamed that he had not been able to bring into this world proper children that they could have fed and played with and sung nursery rhymes to. Whether it really was his fault didn’t matter to him now.

And his wife took his hand and gave him a soft peck on the lips as she stared back at him, her eyes now changing to a palette nearly as pale as the moon. As they did, her lip began to quiver, as did the rest of her weakening body.

“Then… stay with me… I’m scared….”

The two heard a pair of footsteps rushing up the stairs, only to suddenly stop. The two looked to the dark doorway and saw the bright eyes of the two twins, their silhouettes as dark as the night. As The Victim, now The Groom again, had gazed into the darkness and his eyes adjusted, their faces didn’t appear quite right at all. Their jaws were slacked and their eyes looked to be more like chasms that bore into the deepest abyss, no soul in sight. Or rather, one that was splintered and had no direction to go. And they had this slight sway in the darkness, as if there was something to be excited for in the night of such terror. And in the darkness, something squirmed in those empty holes, like a worm on the road after having tasted the moist rain from yesterday, aching for another morsel of that moisture.

The Taken, now The Bride for even the slightest of moments, turned her husband’s head back to her. “Look at me,” she said. “So I won’t forget your face again.”

Even if he wanted to run, even if every fiber of his being was telling him to act on his survival instinct and fight back against whatever was in that doorway… something in his soul was telling him that there was no point in running. Something in his brain was echoing that same hopeless louder and louder as she could hear soft footsteps approach behind him. He kept his gaze on his wife’s eyes, and hers on his as that same echo of despair grew louder and louder. Though, in that despair, there was an attraction as well– an odd warmth that flooded his body that was more like the embrace of parents rather than the coldness grip of beasts.

And as they stepped closer, those steps behind them became heavier. And the warmth of their bodies became greater and greater.

“You love. And you are loved,” The Groom and the Bride heard in their ears. Even if the ones behind them were far away, it was as if it was a whisper in their ears, tender and soft so that they could hear every syllable.

The Groom looked down, tears continuing to stream down his face as the shadow grew in the room.

“I love you.”

“I love y-”

The words soon got caught in The Bride’s throat, as she had a view of what was now hunching over The Groom. Her whole body seized up, caught in a perplexing state of fear and amazement at the same time. Her back had arched as her mouth stayed wide, her eyes flushing with tears and blood as she was exposed to such a beautiful sight.

At that moment, The Groom felt his body fall forward, his skin beginning to shrink in its grown frame, as if someone was pulling it utterly taught around his skeleton. With a sickening jerk and crack, he felt his bones start to push in on themselves, roaring in pain as the marrow twist and turn into a position it had been in years prior. And he laid there, contorting as his limbs began to forcibly shorten themselves, his neck start to shrivel some as a dark ring form around it as he felt himself choking on his own flesh for a brief moment, and blood and flesh start to pull at his feet as it felt like it was being slacked off from all the skeletal melding that was invading his body.

And as The Bride began to also shorten and mold to the whim of a greater will, her pain laid subdued by the awe and seizure she felt at the sight of her new masters, her body numb with that powerful warmth. Warmth that could only be described as love.

And as the bed had flooded with their blood and flesh, and as that greater will had appeared to sink into the bodies of The Bride and The Groom, they laid with one another, gripping each others’ hands in tight unison as a loud thump rang throughout the house, two new bodies having dropped in front of the bed, smiling happily at the absence of their dying vessels.

The Groom held The Bride.

The Bride smiled at The Groom.

Their vision became fogged with the delight of their holy matrimony. Fogged with the mind and memories of many.

They were now Hansel and Gretel, the 99th.