In New York City, there lived a family of four : a mother, a father, a boy named Hansel, and a girl named Gretel.

One day, the mother, Nettle, decided to take her children for a walk and get them out of their dungeons for a bit. So she put on their personalized leashes, grabbed her vodka, and left their brownstone. She kept their leashes held loosely in her hand, letting the children trail after her and yanking them if they were moving too slowly. Hansel and Gretel, knowing how their mother behaved, stopped to buy two bagels while she was taking a particularly long swig of alcohol.

Hansel gave them both to Gretel, since their mother usually ignored her the most, and she began to leave a precise trail of bagel crumbs. Luckily, their mother was too drunk to notice what Gretel was doing.

Eventually, Hansel and Gretel could no longer recognize the neighborhood, and they knew they had been right to leave a trail. Suddenly, there was a loud siren, and the whine and the flashing light bounced off of the neighboring buildings.

"Run, kids! It's the cops!" Nettle shouted, throwing their leashes and kicking Gretel along when she tripped. They clambered into a pair of garbage cans right as the cop car pulled up onto the curb, and listened quietly as Nettle was read her Miranda rights. Again. The air was filled with the whooping whine of the siren and Nettle's curses as she was shoved into the back of the car.

Realizing they were now alone, Hansel and Gretel climbed back out of the cans, and looked to their bagel crumb trail to get home.

"Alas!" cried Hansel, "the rats with wings ate our trail!"

"I thought they were pigeons," Gretel said.

"But that's what Mommy calls them."

"Oh, okay."

Hopelessly, they walked through the streets in search of something familiar, but to no avail. Hansel said, "I think we should stop for the night on this park bench. It's so late, probably no one will bother us."

"Good idea," Gretel agreed, tapping her chin three times and clicking her tongue before sitting down. She sighed with relief, and Hansel joined her on the bench. They were soon asleep.

They awoke with the pigeons and the trash collectors sometime around dawn. Gretel, still asleep, was being hauled to her feet by Hansel when she suddenly realized what was happening and fully woke up.

"No!" she shrieked, throwing herself back down again. Frantically, she hit her knees over and over, tapped her chin once, and then stood calmly up.

"Sorry," Hansel said.

"It's okay."

They walked the city streets all day, but still could not find their way home. It was approaching noon, and they were getting hungry when they saw a brownstone made entirely of gingerbread and sugary frosting. Gretel drifted towards it, but Hansel held her back.

"Don't, Gretel. That's someone's house. We can busk in the park and buy something later. You can sing, and I'll play the sidewalk drums. People will pity us because we're small and adorable."

But Gretel had already broken free and started licking first the wall, then the window, then the wall on the other side, then the stair rail, then the other stair rail, then the next wall, the next window, but before she could get to the next wall, Hansel pulled her away, because he had seen the shade twitch in the window. With a cry, Gretel started her cycle again, this time finishing just as the candy cane door opened.

"Now the ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Tra'al won't eat us," Gretel announced.

"How lovely," the young woman who came out on the steps said. "Too bad I will."

She was very pretty, so the children, concluding that she was evil, wondered what kind of physical defect she had or if she had been abused as a child.

The woman paused on the stairs, staring into space, looking frightened. Then she suddenly came down and snatched up the children, throwing them into her house.

"Okay," she said, shutting the door behind her. "Fine." She picked Hansel up by the collar and threw him through another door, this one into a basement.

"Okay, little girl," the woman said. "We're going to fatten your brother up very nicely so the Pope will visit. You're going to help me, okay?" Gretel, afraid for her life, and that of her brother's, just nodded, so that she wouldn't be thrown through any more doors.

Not seeing any defect on the woman, like a wart, or wrinkles, or a hunchback, Gretel figured her evil nature must be in her name, and asked, very softly, "What's your name?"

"Hope. Now, into the fenchick" the woman replied, grabbing Gretel by her arm and hauling her into the kitchen.

"You're going to take these eggs down to your brother and make sure he eats them. If he doesn't, they I will be very upset with you."

Gretel turned and took a deep breath. If she made it to Hansel in an even number of steps, he would be safe. And so, with a shove from Hope, she walked carefully through the house and down into the basement.

This routine continued for several days. Occasionally, Gretel would hear Hope talking, as though she were on the phone with someone, and would want to run in and grab the phone and scream and plead for help. She was only being fed Hansel's scraps, although Hansel tried to share with her, and she was beginning to worry that she'd never get out of Hope's gingerbread brownstone.

At night, Hope kept Gretel chained to the radiator by her arms and legs because, Hope explained, she didn't want Gretel to get any funny ideas about killing Hope in her sleep, although by this point, Gretel was almost to emaciated to move.

One day, Gretel was taking her brother some falafel when a cat came out of nowhere, and tripped her up on step number 17. Hope, drawn by the noise, dragged Gretel to her feet, shouting that she was a worthless little girl and would have to be punished, because that falafel had taken ages, and the stupid brat was clearly trying to sabotage her cooking to save Hansel.

"Get in the Koolaid!" she shouted, pushing Gretel towards it. "For trying to save your brother, you get eaten!"

"Get in the what?"

"Don't talk back or I'll go to Little Italy, because Little Italy has pasta, and past boils, it boils in water, which boils at 100 degrees Celsius, and I'll put you in 100 degrees Celsius water."

"What are you talking about?" Gretel asked, starting to cry.

"The oven. Get in the oven, oven, oven." Gretel, not knowing what to do, just stood there, while Hope continued to yell at her. Finally, she deemed Hope so distracted, that she slipped out of the kitchen, stopping to tap out the first two measures of Chopin's Nocturne No. 9 before going into the hallway. She was sure to count her steps, and reached her brother in 42, taking him by the hand and running into the hallway. However, because she had to do a complicated routine to cross thresholds leading out of buildings or a flying taxi would kill an innocent pedestrian, Hope caught her and threw her into the oven.

That night, Hope had Gretel stew and Gretel cake, and she kept Hansel locked in a birdcage as a pet for the rest of his life. Nettle was released from jail a few days later, but when she assaulted someone in line at Magnolia's, she was sent back. When asked about her children, she invariably replied, "What frakking kids?"