by Andy-Lee Fry

IT BEGINS LIKE THIS...


I don't know exactly how long it's been....they've never told me....but in what is clearly longer than centuries I have been the only adult survivor. They keep me alive to document their actions, their myth, in illustrated form....of course, in what other manner would they have their pestilence documented than in illustration? They're still children after all - old, old children, but children nonetheless.....

I follow them from village to hamlet to town, observing them viciously, playfully, mischievously tear apart the adult population, leaving the children there to either join the tribe, starve to death, or somehow manage to survive on their own....

Unlike so many of the other folklore creatures of the Black Forest, telling their tale has no moral or preparatory value - this isn't a night time tale with which to make children eat their vegetables or respect their elders....its very, very simple: if the tribe choose your village, or hamlet, or town, anybody of an adult age WILL be torn to pieces...

Torn to pieces by long, pale, playful fingers...by shark-like teeth inside of hexed smiles....

And so I keep drawing and painting, fully aware that I only live because they like the way I draw them....they like the way I help them to sustain the horror of them...

In the beginning I asked them what they wished to be called....one of the elder members, the one called Janosz, whispered to me in the hoarse, barely audible tones in which they all speak, a single word:

'Wretchid'