Mother read that story with the crumbs and the kids. So when she sent me into the forest, she gave me some bread.

I’d have crumbled it if there were witches, or bartered with wolves. But because my monster was the one sending me out, I ate it up instead.

Chelsea Utecht is an American abroad in Tbilisi, Georgia where she teaches literature and writing. A recent participant in the renowned Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she has been previously published in Fifty-Word Stories and her work is forthcoming in Shooter Literary Magazine.