Big... But Not So Bad

Those three little pigs are jerks! And that Little Red Riding Hood… not so little.

I guess I first got my “bad” reputation while living in the forest, down on my luck. I was a beggar, mangy and emaciated. I depended on the kindness of those who passed along the forest road for food. However, in the Land of Fairytales, there’s not much kindness going around. Oh, I know how the stories make it sound. But history is told through the mouths of the victors. Victors always tell tales of their heroics and their triumphs. They never mention their sins and trespasses. I would go days, a lot of times weeks, sometimes months without a bite to eat. I had no home, no roof over my head. I was a filthy beast sleeping alongside the road. I waited for a passerby to beg for a morsal of food. Rarely I was met with kindness.

On one such occasion where weeks had passed since my last meal, a spoiled little girl with a snotty attitude from the village came wandering up the road. She wore a little red riding hood. That, of course, was not her name. Her name was Beatrice Brownstones. She is the most intolerable person in all the Land of Fairytales. She’s known for backtalking to her mother with a foul tongue, bullying the younger children, stealing from the shops in the square, and tormenting animals. I cringed when I saw her coming. But the essence of the freshly baked bread that wafted through the air from that basket she was carrying was like a siren’s song to a lonely sailor. My desire steered me towards the rocks, literally. When she saw me coming towards her, she pelted me on the head with small stones.

From a distance I inquired about the basket’s contents and if I might have some. She spat at me and said, “No, these are for grandma.”

I knew who she spoke of. Grandma wasn’t necessarily her grandmother. She could have been her great grandmother or great-great grandmother. Maybe they were of no relation at all. Everyone called the little old lady who lived in a shoe grandma. More than half the village descended from her. What I knew that Beatrice didn’t was that Grandma wasn’t home. It was Wednesday. On Wednesdays she played canasta at the Fairytale Rec Center in the village. So, I devised a plan.

I summoned all my strength and raced through the forest unseen to Grandma’s house. There, I put on Grandmas clothes and climbed into bed. I played sick when Beatrice got there, hoping she would leave the basket on the table and go. The little brat wouldn’t shut up. She didn’t buy my rouse. She just hassled me with comment after comment. She pulled my tail and ran. The basket spilled its contents as she skipped away, laughing. I followed behind her picking up the food.

She had a different story to tell when she got back to the village. The men of the village came looking for me armed with shovels and pitchforks. I fled to the other side of the mountain. There, I was found by seven dwarfs. They took me in. Doc nursed me back to health. It wasn’t an ideal living situation. It was crowded. I had to sleep on the floor. Grumpy complained. Sleepy snored. And for some reason Doc couldn’t do a thing for Sneezy’s sneezing. They gave me a job working in the mine. It was hard labor, but I was proud to be working. They taught me how to whistle. We would whistle while we worked to help pass the time.

With the money I made working in the mine, I was able to buy myself a house. It was a nice two-bedroom brick house on a beautiful grass plain dotted with robust shade trees. I was proud of how far I had come. I went from dirt poor and homeless to being a hardworking, financially secure, middle-class citizen. But in the Land of Fairytales. There is prejudice against the wolf.

The Three Little Pig’s Revenue Service came knocking on my door. They demanded payment for back taxes that I had no idea I owed. They took my grass, they took the limbs from my trees, they even took the bricks from my house. They left me with nothing but the frame and a shingled roof. A week later three houses were built down the road from mine. One was made from grass. The other was made from sticks. And the last was made from bricks. This infuriated me. They took my possessions and made them their own. Yet, I did not retaliate. The law was on their side. I was an upstanding citizen whose past was behind him.

With my walls gone, it was almost like living on the side of the road again, except I had a bed. That wasn’t much protection when the storm blew in though. The wind whipped and howled. Water poured in. I was wet and cold. I went to my closest neighbor’s house to get out of the rain. That happened to be the little pig with the grass house. I knocked. I asked him to come in. He taunted me in a sing-song voice. A gust of wind blew so hard his house flew away. He looked at me in shock. He ran to the little pig’s house that was made out of sticks. I followed, hoping that the other little pig would let me in. They slammed the door in my face and taunted me some more. Another gust of wind blew. This one was stronger than the first. The stick house crumbled under the force of the wind. The two little pigs ran for the third little pig’s house. I followed. I knew they weren’t going to let me in, but I had to try. I knocked on the door. I begged and pleaded. They taunted and teased me. The cold rain soaked my fur. The wind chilled my bones. That brick house withstood the storm. I caught pneumonia.

The little pigs told everyone that I destroyed their houses that night and tried to eat them. Word spread across the mountain. It was determined that I was the same wolf that tried to eat Beatrice. Since that day, I’ve been known as the Big Bad Wolf, one of the most notorious villains in Fairytale history, although I have never done anything to earn such a monicker.