The Robber Bridegroom

This is a submission for the Twisted Fairy Tale Couples contest .
A translation of the fairy tale The Robber Bridegroom can be found here [link]
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My take on this tale is that the miller's daughter who is to be wed the cannibal robber bridegroom exists but holds little significance. She is simply another victim of the robber. She never makes it out of the house in the woods alive. Also, the robber does not have any other bandit companions. He has been overtaken by a demon who he earlier made a contract with in order to save a certain girl's life. He agreed to assist the demon in any task after the girl was rescued, safe and alive. The demon asks if he can take over the man's body to once again be able to breathe, move, and feel as a living being would for one night. Reluctantly, the man consents. To his surprise, the demon immediately takes over his body, shutting him away in the edges of his consciousness. The demon is starved for human flesh. Therefore, in my interpretation, the man appears to feast on the flesh of girls because he is being controlled against his will by the demon. The true couple that I created is the man and the dove that the miller's daughter encounters before entering her bridegroom's house. The dove is the soul of the first girl he killed, who was also his first love he had the demon save. (Rather ironic that she was the first one to be killed ;-; ) The dove/girl understands that the man is being controlled by the demon, and she still loves him. However, she finds herself jealous as she sees him bring girl after girl to his house, enchanting and wooing them before killing them. She longs too be with him again. She warns the girls that they are entering a murderer's house when they arrive not because she cares for their lives but simply for the reason that she does not want them to get any closer to the man. She is locked in a cage hanging on the beams of the underside of the roof and cannot escape. One night, a bar from the cage breaks off and she escapes, temporarily taking the form of her former self. She is still in the dress that she wore the night she came to the man's house to marry him, but the original blue and green flowers and layers have been stained blood red, brown, and black, the color of decay. Her eyes are empty as the man's are. She finds the man in the house and rushes through him in her ghostly form. The last thing the demon sees before he becomes nothing more is a single white dove with the shining, lavender eyes the girl had before her death. Afterwards, the man reverts back to only a wispy remainder of his former radiant, jubilant self. He is faded and broken, and his eyes are empty, empty like glass. The girl regains her former form and tries to have a small marriage ceremony in the house in the woods, but the man simply stands beside her like a doll, saying nothing, expressing nothing as she manipulates his hands to slip a ring that he hacked off another girl onto her finger. At this point, the lack of response from the man she so loved drives the girl mad with desperation, and she stabs him with the broken bar from the cage her soul had resided in. As he bleeds out in the floor, she lies down beside him saying, Forever, we shall be together