The Infamous Keatan Tales

He hadn’t meant for it to happen. It was just one of those things. They had just started popping up all over the place. Of course at first everybody thought it was some great media stunt, until things started to get bloody.

You see, Rowan Fabio Keatan became the most famous fairy tale re-teller for all the wrong reasons.  At the start of it all he really did just liked fairy tales. He liked to put twists on them, he liked to adapt and explore possibilities. And he was a good writer. Once you started reading one of his stories you just couldn’t put it down. But there was a problem. They were just too real.

This unfortunate reality didn’t manifest itself until his book of fairy tales was out on the market. And by then, it was too late.

The first sighting happened outside a little bookshop in a small town. One customer was reading through one of the fairy tales before he bought the book and suddenly, standing outside the shop was none other than Little Red Riding Hood. She was small and cute, with a little bob cut and bright red hood. Nobody saw the axe concealed in her little basket. Then in a larger town, some distance away, a dashing Prince popped up in a young woman’s apartment. She was quite enjoying the experience until her boyfriend turned up soon afterwards and chased the dashing man out the door.

More and more outlandish characters from Keatan’s stories started appearing everywhere: From the middle of busy roads, which caused a considerable number of accidents, to classrooms, with one classroom suddenly finding itself greeted by none other than Hansel and Gretel while bread crumbs filled the room. Characters were suddenly turning up next to people on everything from park benches to the roller coaster. One old gentleman got quite a fright when an amazingly beautiful woman appeared next to him at the bus stop, her head lolling on his shoulder as she snored loudly and couldn’t be woken up. These appearances quickly found their way onto social media, with videos of the characters going viral. It was all over the news. Everyone thought it was one of the most elaborate media stunts there had ever been. And it worked. People were flocking to book shops all over the country to buy Keatan’s book. E-book websites were jammed, some were crashing with the amount of people trying to get online to purchase a digital copy.

It was about two weeks into the release of Keatan’s stories. He had sold record numbers. He was projected to be a millionaire within a month.

And then the carnage happened.

The first recorded incident according to police reports happened when one little girl was listening to her mother read Keatan’s fairy tales to her as a bedtime story, when suddenly they heard a wolf cry out in pain in the garden. Rushing to the window, the little girl stood with wide eyes as she saw Little Red Riding Hood hacking away at the wolf right outside her window. When she was finished Little Red Riding Hood went skipping merrily on her way into the dark night, her axe held aloft. The police were called several times that night as people reported a little girl in a red hood going round attacking their dogs with an axe.

Now Keatan’s fairy tales certainly weren’t your run of the mill retellings of the classics. For instance, Cinderella was actually after the same prince that Snow White was in love with. Cinderella, in her cunning and witchcraft, appeared before Snow White as a ragged servant girl and gave her the poison apple. This ragged, vindictive woman was now roaming the streets, handing out poison apples to anyone she thought might be a threat to her. She was very jealous you see, and she was worried that any woman with beauty might take her prince away. Clearly she had trust issues.

Then all the many princes started turning on each other and anything. There were princes fighting princes, princes fighting dragons, princes fighting anything they didn’t like or didn’t understand, including maths teachers, buses and cars. There were ogres and bears and trolls and giants all wreaking havoc on people and buildings alike. The fire brigade, the police and plenty of ambulances were called in. The emergency rooms all across the country were completely inundated, having to set up triage tents in the carparks. Eventually they had to call in the military and the Special Forces.

Eventually, in order to save the country, and possibly the world, the government decided that the best course of action was to destroy all copies of the book that was creating widespread havoc and panic. Keatan’s books were banned. They were deemed illegal to sell, hold or read, harbour or promote. Any forms of fanfic were strictly forbidden, under penalty of imprisonment. Police and military were instigating areas for book burning. There was also a number of spontaneous book burning parties started by locals popping up in every location.

Eventually the carnage slowed as beasts were either killed or captured, and the likes of Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella were safely behind bars. The Prime Minister issued an amnesty for 24 hours for people to bring their Keatan books to be burned without any repercussions. After that, the military went through every library, every school and every home, searching for any more copies of the dangerous book. If anyone was found in possession of the book after the amnesty, they were heavily fined, some were even jailed, especially if they had hidden a few copies in a secret compartment, draw or safe.

As far as the raids could determine, every single copy of Keatan’s popular books were now destroyed. Keatan himself was arrested. He served time before being eventually released on good behaviour. Even after his parole, his has a lifetime ban from ever picking up a pen or typing on a computer or dictating a story of any kind. Large fines or worse will be given to anyone who so much as passes him a pen to sign a document. All his paper work must now be done through solicitors, and his signature is now required to only be his thumb print. His fortune lost, due to compensation payouts for damage sustained during the carnage, Keatan had to find work. Without a pen or computer, Keatan took up road working. It is certainly not as glamourous, but even Keatan feels safer away from fiction. These days he barely picks up a book. And he also fells working on roads is a lot less bloody.