Dick Winchester in... The Fairy Tale

Book 1, Chapter 6

Little Red Riding Hood skips gaily through the forest, reveling in the sunshine.

Unbeknownst to this innocent child, another figure shadows her in the undergrowth. As he slinks through the brush, a thorn bush catches on the edge of his cloak, momentarily exposing a rounded green square with the tops of the letters “Ub” showing.

As Riding Hood approaches a cabin nestled within a copse of pine trees, a dark shadow darts through the foreground toward the back of the house. Removing the hood covering her auburn hair, she calls out, “Grandma, I’m here to visit!”

A few moments of silence pass, then the sounds of a muted scuffle come through the door. Another beat passes before the door slides open, revealing a wolf shrouded in women’s clothes.

“Hello, dearie,” the Wolf croons, still perfecting his imitation.

Riding Hood appears to take no notice of these discrepancies. “I’ve come to visit you,” she says, stepping into the cabin.

“Why, you shouldn’t have!” the Wolf exclaims, shuffling to close the door and plant himself between her and the exit. He then glances down to the basket in Riding Hood’s hands. “Say, what do you have there?”

“Oh, this? It’s a basket full of disposable income.”

The Wolf’s green eyes gleam. “I had thought it might have been food.”

Riding Hood taps her chin. “You know, I am a bit hungry after that trek through the forest.”

“Not to worry, dearie, I have just the thing.” The Wolf reaches back and reveals an iPhone in his massive paw. “A new app I’ve just launched.”

Riding Hood takes the phone. “Why, Grandma, what a sleek app you have!”

“Yes, child, a true marvel of modern convenience and user friendliness.”

“Why, Grandma, what options there are to choose from!”

“Indeed, and full of delectable local restaurants and all the popular big chains, so you can shop local to your heart’s content or indulge in all your mass-produced favorites.” His eyes bore into Riding Hood as he says the next sentence. “All delivered right to your front door.”

Riding Hood’s brow furrows. “Why, Grandma... what high services fees you have.”

Jagged canines reveal themselves as the Wolf’s lips slide back. “All the better to drain away your hard-earned dollars!” he roars, shedding his clothes to reveal a massive Uber Eats logo across his chest.

Riding Hood screams and scrambles backward as the Wolf stalks toward her on his hind legs.

“Come on, dearie,” he calls to her. “It’s the price of doing business in this modern economy. Union contracts, health insurance, occupational safety: all putting the squeeze on multi-billion-dollar small businesses like myself. Shouldn’t you have to contribute for the convenience of using my app?” He licks his fangs. “And we haven’t even discussed gratuity yet.”

“No,” Riding Hood gasps, placing herself between the predator and herself as she realizes she’s now cornered. “You can’t have it, you monster!”

The Wolf advances, his massive paws widening with anticipation as the coveted prize is finally within reach.

Then a knock, confident and just, from the front door.

The Wolf freezes in his tracks and turns his head. “Who is it?” he growls, not bothering to disguise his wolfen dialect.

“Winchester Delivery Services,” the voice booms from behind the door.

“We didn’t order any,” the Wolf shouts back, turning back to his latest victim.

But he’s interrupted as the door flies off its hinges. The Deliveryman lowers his boot and draws a Beretta 92FS.

“Not to worry.” He smiles beneath his standard-issue Winchester Delivery Services cap. “This one’s on the house.”

He proceeds to shoot the Wolf twice in the leg.

The wolf cries out as his leg buckles, struggling to keep upright with his uninjured limb. Riding Hood runs past him and throws her arms around the Deliveryman.

“Thank you,” she gasps. “You don’t know what he was about to—”

“Just doing my job, Miss,” the Deliveryman cuts in, gently extricating himself from her embrace. He gestures to the Wolf, who is now crawling across the floor toward them. “Don’t want to leave it unfinished.”

Riding Hood tilts her head. “Then why don’t you shoot him?”

The Deliveryman chuckles. “Not I, Miss.” He holds the Beretta out to her. “We’re all about empowerment at Winchester Delivery Services.”

Riding Hood stares at the handgun for a moment before taking it and holding the weapon up to her eye to get a proper sight picture.

The Wolf glances up and finds himself looking down the barrel of the gun. “Wait, wait—”

Riding Hood puts two more rounds in the Wolf’s center mass.

“Excellent grouping, Miss,” the Deliveryman says, beaming as he reclaims the Beretta. “If you ever feel like switching occupations, we always have openings.”

“I’m only twelve years old.”

“Never too young to get a strong start in the fast-growing food delivery industry!”

Riding Hood opens her mouth to respond, then pauses. “Do you hear that?”

The Deliveryman turns just as the armoire in the background bursts open and an old woman stumbles out, spouting curses and invectives.

“Where is he? Where is that furry bastard? I don’t care what kind of oversized rat he is, he’s dead after I get through with ‘im!”

Riding Hood runs to the woman. “Grandma!”

“I’m so glad to see you’re okay, sweetheart.” She then catches sight of the Wolf on the floor and the Deliveryman standing beside him. “Looks like your new boyfriend took care of the problem, all right.”

The Deliveryman holds his hand up. “No, ma’am. Just a food delivery driver.”

“Whoa, wait a minute,” Riding Hood says, pointing. “He’s still moving!”

The Wolf is now dragging himself toward the front door. “Let me die... in the light...” he gasps.

“That’s one tough sonuvabitch.” Grandma nods with a glimmer of respect before looking at the Deliveryman’s Beretta. “Got any more rounds in there, sonny?”

“Of course,” the Deliveryman smiles with pride. “All Winchester Delivery Services personnel carry the finest high-capacity magazines in our firearms.”

Riding Hood blinks. “Wait, all your delivery drivers are armed?”

The knowing smile remains. “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun, Miss.”

Grandma has finished her inspection of the handgun. “Nine millimeter. Very nice.” She disengages the pistol’s safety and chambers a round. “These hollow point?”

The Deliveryman nods. “Yes, Ma’am. Made right here in the good old US of A.”

Riding Hood’s brow furrows. “Wait, I thought hollow point bullets were illegal.”

“Only under the Geneva convention, which applies to warfare and military use, not domestic uses like we have here, Miss.”

The Wolf has nearly reached the front door, where he finds Grandma’s legs blocking his view. He looks up as she cocks the Beretta. “Going somewhere, doggy?”

“No, please...”

She delivers a final bullet between his eyes.

“Well, now that that excitement is all over with,” Grandma says, engaging the safety and handing the Beretta back to the Deliveryman, “what’s in that basket, Red? I hope it’s food, because I’m starving. Nothing builds up an appetite like fighting off a home invasion.”

Riding Hood shakes her head. “All I have is this basket full of U.S. dollars.”

“What coincidence,” the Deliveryman says as he holsters his legally carried and permitted handgun. “I just happened to have an order in my car for a delivery that got canceled. Customer ate a poison apple, apparently. Bet she wished she had bitten into some delicious locally made tacos delivered by Winchester Delivery Services instead.”

Riding Hood looks up. “But will the app let us take someone else’s order?”

The Deliveryman chuckles. “No app! We believe in simpler forms of communication at Winchester Delivery Services. Every time you call our number, a smiling delivery coordinator is waiting to take your request and dispatch one of our bright young professionals to your door.”

Riding Hood stares at her basket. “Is cash okay?”

“More than okay, it’s the only payment we take! Our motto at Winchester Delivery Services is ‘why create unnecessary paper trails?’”

Riding Hood smiles. “Then I guess I know what we’re doing for dinner.”

The Deliveryman puts his arms around Grandma and Riding Hood. “Tell you what, how about 50% off for our new customers? You can grab your order out of the Toytoa Corrolla out front. I have one thing to take care of first.”

Grandma and Riding Hood walk out the front door while the Deliveryman turns to face the camera, stepping over the Wolf’s limp body as he closes the gap. “Don’t let the flashy apps fool you. Online delivery services are sucking America’s hard-working families dry with their service fees and added gratuity.”

He points to the camera and smiles. “But at Winchester Delivery Services, we say: ‘this is our country, and as God is our witness, the free market is what makes this nation strong.’ So give us a call, and start reclaiming your hard-earned dollars. Start reclaiming your country.”

***

I paused the playback as our delivery phone number slid across the bottom of the screen and a massive American flag unfurled behind the Deliveryman.

“So,” I said, spinning in my chair to face the rest of the board room, “what do you think?”

Several moments passed as their eyes met mine.

Norm was the first to break the silence. “I don’t know... I feel like I need to watch it again.”

I put both elbows on the table. “Interesting. We could certainly stand to have people rewatch our ad. So why do you feel that way?”

“Feels a bit broad.”

I felt my lips pursing involuntarily. “Broad?”

“You know, open to interpretation.”

Murmurs of “a bit abstract” and “a lot of layers” came from other board members.

“Abstract? Layers?” I replied, pointing to the frozen image of the Deliveryman standing in front of Old Glory. “I think he made it very clear what was going on.”

“Well, what about the wolf?” Norm ventured. “I really wasn’t sure what he was supposed to represent.”

“Repr— there’s a goddamn Uber Eats logo tattooed across his chest!”

Keisha broke in. “I did like the part where they shot him.”

“Of course you did, you’re former DoorDash. Y’all hate each other almost as much as you hate us,” Lenny replied, a 7.62 NATO round permanently clenched between his teeth.

Lenny creeped out just about everyone, and it wasn’t just his unorthodox choice of toothpicks. The man had come back from Iraq and found himself in a world that no longer made sense. I felt a certain kinship with him given my own background. He needed a war to fight, didn’t know how to live his life without one. And here was a war coming on the horizon.

Plus, he was the one driver we could send into the heart of a rival delivery company’s territory and have total confidence he’d return unscathed. If that usually meant he also left a couple burning DoorDash sedans in his wake, so much the better.

Keisha snorted at Lenny’s comment, ready to fire back when Norm spoke again.

“Still, I’m just not sure I get the wolf.”

“What is there to get? He’s the ‘big bad wolf.’ He’s the villain.”

“But how did he get there? What made him turn bad, you know?”

“This ad is already six minutes long, and you want a backstory for the stereotypical bad guy? He’s just bad. Period.”

Keisha broke in. “It’s 2023, Dick. The whole black and white, good versus evil gimmick doesn’t play anymore.”

“No, it’s a fairy tale. There’s no nuance here. It’s supposed to be cut and dry. Tell a simplified story, beat the kid over the head with the lesson, and everyone lives happily ever after. The villain doesn’t get an origin story.”

“Maleficent got one,” Lenny muttered.

“Yeah,” Norm said, picking up the torch. “Maleficent got one!”

“Great, good for her. We are not fucking Disney, people. The point of this ad is not to give you character development. It’s to steal customers from Uber Eats and every other online delivery service. I’m using Red Riding Hood as a plot device to help drive the metaphor home. Nothing else.”

Keisha broke into a grin. “Ah, now I get it. That’s why you’re being so defensive.”

“What?”

“You wrote this ad!”

“Well, yes, but that doesn’t have—”

“Oh, I think it has everything to do with it. You can’t accept that someone might not grasp your literary genius.”

“Hey, I’ll have you know I took—”

“—four years of literature studies,” everyone else finished. “We know.”

Unbidden, I felt my arms crossing. “Well, if it’s so easy, why don’t you go out and write your own treatment, huh?”

Keisha shook her head. “Nah, I actually like what you’ve done here.”

I sat up a bit. “You do?”

“Yeah, I do.” Keisha leaned back in her chair. “I just think it needs a few tweaks.”

“Okay,” I unfolded my arms and placed my hands on the table. “Go on. Please.”

“First off, that whole empowerment bit where he hands her the gun. What’s that doing in there?”

“Yeah,” Lenny spoke up, “I’d never trust anyone else with my piece. Matter of fact, I woulda emptied the clip into that fucker.”

“Noted,” I said, turning back to Keisha, “what do you see wrong with it?”

“It feels a bit forced.”

“If the Deliveryman came in and resolved the whole issue himself, it could be seen as a Prince Charming complex.”

Keisha cocked an eyebrow. “Prince Charming complex?”

“You know, cisgender heterosexual white male rides in to save the day?”

Keisha tapped the table. “I suppose I see where you’re coming from on that. Still, wouldn’t the best message then have been if Riding Hood was carrying the whole time and put that furry freak down right at the start?”

“Probably, but then how does the Deliveryman arrive to pitch the service?”

“He hears the gunshots?”

“He hears the gunshots, rushes through the door, sees that Red has everything handled, and says ‘Have a nice day?’ Oh, yes, great ad.”

Keisha shrugged. “We could workshop it, I suppose.”

I bit back another sigh. “What’s the second issue?”

“Does it have to be animated?”

“I figured animation jived well with the picture books folks would remember the original story from. Besides, I already paid this chick twenty-five grand to animate the sequence.”

“Twenty-five grand,” the table exclaimed in unison.

“She said it was going to cost a lot extra to animate the mechanics of a Beretta 92FS from scratch.”

Keisha narrows her eyes. “So... why did you go for that?”

“Accuracy matters! Our customers would notice the discrepancy.”

I saw a hand go up, and this time the sigh couldn’t be helped. “Yes, Barry?”

“So, uh, you spend 25K on an advertisement, but we can’t get overtime?”

“Well, it would be hard to pay you overtime when I don’t pay you to begin with, Barry.”

“Oh, true. Can we start with that, then?”

“You need an internship for your major, right?”

“I do.”

“And I spoke personally with your dean to ensure that Winchester Delivery Services counted, didn’t I? It’s a tough economy. You’re lucky we had an opening.”

“Yeah...”

“So let’s just leave it at then, yes?”

Barry slumped back in his chair, and I saw sour looks on many of the other faces as well.

“Listen, everyone, this is an investment in the business. In all of us. The more deliveries we make, the more money we make. It’s a legitimate expense.”

Despite my rock-solid logic, I could feel their dissent simmering in the air.

I breathed in and exhaled. “Tell you what. We’ve all been working very hard. Once this ad is finalized, we’ll increase profit sharing to thirty percent for each delivery. That means the more jobs you pick up, the more money we all make. How’s that sound?”

As everyone else voiced their approval, Barry raised his hand.

“Except unpaid interns. Your payment is in valuable industry experience.”

Barry lowered his hand with a stifled groan.

“All right, with that sorted, any last thoughts on the ad?”

Norm opened his mouth to speak, and I braced myself.

“What about Snow White?”

“What about her? She’s not in this.”

“Yeah, but you referenced her, didn’t you? That got me thinking: we could do a follow up in the same style, but this time it’s DoorDash offering Snow White the poison apple.”

Damn, why didn’t I think of that? Screw Red Riding Hood.

I pointed to him, picking up the idea. “Then the apple explodes as the Deliveryman shoots it out of her hand and saves her from DoorDash’s poison.”

Keisha grinned. “Let me guess, he then gives the gun to Snow White to finish the Evil Queen?”

“Hey, he can’t ride in and solve all her problems. He’s just a friendly neighbor, a concerned citizen exercising his 2nd Amendment rights. Certainly won’t be kissing her while she’s in a drugged out state, I can tell you that much.”

I reached out my hand to Norm. “In the meantime, welcome to the advertising team.”

I could have sworn Norm blushed. “Whoa, you mean it?”

“Absolutely. That was a great idea. Keep ‘em coming.”

“I won’t let you down, Dad!”

“Dick,” I grunted.

“Dick!”

I turned to the assembled board members. “All right, let’s get back to work. I know the phones are going to be ringing off the hook once the final cut of this ad goes live.”

Keisha stuck around as the others dispersed. “So, where is this ad going, exactly?”

“Oh, I’m still figuring that piece out.” I swiveled my chair in a lazy arc. Looking through the window in the warehouse loft, I could just make out the southwest wall of the Pentagon. I pressed my hands together under my chin, allowing myself a slight smirk. “But I have a few ideas.”

I could hear the knowing grin in Keisha’s voice despite having my back to her. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with that three-thousand-dollar projector you bought, would it?”

I spun back around. “What, who told you about that?”

Keisha shrugged. “Norm’s been using it for months now. He and the other drivers watch adult movies in the break room together.”

“Norm, I’m referring you to HR,” I shouted, then added, “And next time send me an invite!”

###

Dick Winchester will return in... The Mystery of the Masked IP Address

More Dick Winchester in...

The Opening Salvo (Book 1)

1. The Box with No Name
2. The Last Word
3. The Hat Trick
4. Dick Winchester Episode 1: Gratuity Not Included
5. The Terminus — print exclusive*
6. The Fairy Tale — you are here
7. The Cop Out — print exclusive*
8. The Enlistment
9. The Cliffhanger
10. The Cliffhanger, The Prequel
11. The Cliffhanger, The Finale

*When the book is released in September 2024

The Counterattack (Book 2)

• Opening chapter: The Deflation