A sweet young girl named Little Red Riding Hood had made friends with a tiny boy named Tom Thumb, who was one of Sylvie and Bruno’s goblin people. One day Little Red Riding Hood invited Tom to go with her on a visit to her Grandmother’s house. Tom enjoyed meeting the kind late middle aged lady, and made such a favourable impression on Grandma Hood, that she invited him to visit her on his own as well the following week, while Little Red was at school.

Tom Thumb accepted, and turned up on the specified day. Grandma Hood was wearing her glasses as usual, but she looked a little different, as though she had put on weight. Tom didn’t want to say anything tactless. So he just looked at her.

“Is something the matter?” asked Grandma Hood.

“Not really, Grandma Hood. It’s just that I was thinking what big hands you have.”

“All the better to hold you with,” said Grandma Hood, picking him up.

She held him close to her face and talked with him. He looked into her mouth and thought that her tongue looked different. He had remembered that her tongue had looked thin and pointy. Now, since she had apparently gained so much weight in a week, her tongue seemed to look thicker and rounder.

“Why Grandma Hood, what a big tongue you have!” said Tom Thumb.

“All the better to lick you with,” said Grandma Hood and ran her tongue slowly over his face.

Somehow her own face looked younger too. Maybe it was a side effect of rapid weight gain. When she had finished licking him, he looked at her neck. It looked as though it too had widened in the last week.

“Why Grandma Hood, what a big throat you have!” he said.

“All the better to swallow you with!” said the woman, removing her glasses with her free hand.

Then she took off a grey wig to reveal younger hair. She wiped off some make-up, that she had used to age her facial appearance, and smiled at Tom Thumb.

“You’re not Grandma Hood,” he said.

“No. She’s fast asleep after I snuck in here and slipped her a Mickey,” said the woman, “I saw Little Red Riding Hood on her way here last week, when she passed my timber-wood cottage with you. I followed you both here and listened in at the window, as she invited you to come back today. My name is Dinella Lawson. I have a radiation oven which shrinks boys down to your size, so that I can gobble them down in one mouthful. But I’ve never eaten a real goblin boy before. I shall do so this evening, but first, I had better be gone before Grandma Hood wakes up.”

Dinella Lawson took Tom Thumb back home, and found that her sister Cuisinella had come to call on her.

“You caught a goblin, sister!” said Cuisinella, “You lucky girl!”

“It was more a case of luring him,” said Dinella, “Come on in.”

Dinella put Tom Thumb in a pot of warm water on the stove to simmer. She knew that goblins were actually burn proof and could be left to simmer indefinitely, without feeling the pain that would surely have hurt a shrunken boy. The two sisters sat on stools by the stove and talked.