Facade

The girl walked up to the small stone cottage. It was small and pretty, picturesque. Yet, as she approached it there was a buzzing in the back of her mind like a swarm of angry flies. She had walked through this wood one hundred times and never had she seen such a place. On her walks, she had seen neither a sunny clearing nor a small house. There was something that felt not right. She ignored this feeling and approached the house. After all, what little girl wouldn’t want to explore a strange cottage? With its rust-red roof and its grey stones, tinged green with moss, it looked like it could have been built by fairies.

She approached the cottage.

She paused as she approached, noticing something on the ground. “Oh, a garden,” she said to herself. Indeed, there was a garden of flowers. They looked so soft and the colors were so bright and so pure. It almost looked like they were painted by tiny brushes held in tiny hands. And they smelled so sweet like – the girl paused and sniffed the air. The flowers smelled a bit like her mother when she put on too much of that disgusting perfume.

“Strange.” she thought.

Still, the flowers were beautiful. She could pick some and take them to her mother as a present. So, she touched the flower petals (They felt unnaturally soft, like kitten cheeks.) Yet as she did, she ruined the flowers. The places she touched melted away, like damaged butterfly wings. Under, she felt a growth that felt hard like bone. She felt uneasy

Still, no matter. She turned back to the house. It was still majestic in its small sort of way, with its stone walls tinted blue and orange roof. She stopped, had the cottage looked different a second ago? She shook her head to clear her thoughts and that strange buzzing from the back of her head. Maybe going inside would help her avoid what she assumed were insects. Besides, she was tired. The inside would probably have a nice chair to sit on.

The wooden door was sturdy, but the hinges were rusty. The girl was surprised when the door opened without a squeak. As she stepped through the door, the air shimmered. The flowers and the colors on the house dissolved, melting away. Where the flowers once grew lay chunks of teeth and bone protruding from the earth. And the cottage, the cottage vanished. Though puddles of color remained, the cottage was gone. Taken.

That, dear children, is why you never enter strange huts found in the woods. For that is where the bone fairies lurk, waiting to lure small children into their trap, into their dread maw.