A/N: Hello! I haven't posted anything for a long, long time (like, 2 months) due to the fact that I had no internet access for a while… this was sort of my way of re-entering the fanfiction world. Please review, tell me what you think! :)
Wicked Wolf
Red riding hood and her grandmother lived because the lumberjack butchered the wolf.
They called him wicked. But was it true? He didn't think so. Could he help the fact that he was a carnivore? Not really. Well, he could become vegetarian, but who the hell would want to?
Wicked. The Wicked Wolf. He didn't think he deserved that name. After all, he had been there, in the dark woods long before any humans had shown up to tear up those old trees and build their homes. In his mind, they were the wicked ones, the ones with the twisted sense of justice.
He had a right to purge them from his dwelling just as much as a human with cockroaches.
The path was their jurisdiction, the realm of those damnable humans with their glinting iron tools that split wolf flesh more easily than fangs pierced people. The path was off limits. He had felt the ice-sting of that steel and had seen what it could do. His mate, his litter….
He was the last wolf left.
He could have left for different territory, but these woods were his, the inviting darkness his friend.
Outside the path belonged to him. Outside the path was filled with the dark. The dark that blinded the humans to his presence until it was too late and all they saw were furious, vengeful yellow eyes and glinting white fangs, only felt the rush of hot breath and their own blood.
Outside the path was his domain.
That girl, the one with the red hood had strayed from the path. She had entered his domain. With that basket of strong-smelling wine and bread, there was no way he couldn't have found her.
After all, she had entered the darkness, and the darkness told him everything.
Stupidly, the little girl had told him everything…. Where she was going, what she was doing, who was at the end of the path…. No one with steel weapons he gathered. Only a foolish old woman who had chosen to make her home in a dying forest that housed a half-crazed wolf. He had given a doggish grin. He would wait to kill her, wait to kill the girl. Get her later. First he would find the hag, kill her, and then lie in wait for the red cloaked figure.
He had beaten the girl there, torn into the old lady as easily as if she were a crippled doe that had wandered too far from her herd.
She had wandered too far from her herd. Too far from civilization to be heard when she screamed. He had given another smile. He could fool the girl, and have her too. Purge his home of those human pests. Purge the world of them. The girl was dumb, she would fall for his tricks.
Wicked Wolf. Wicked, wicked Wolf.
As he had thought, the girl had fallen for his antics, and she was even easier to take care of then the old woman. More fun. She had tried to run and he had chased and won. The thrill of the hunt had thrummed violently in his veins before he overtook her. Ecstasy flooded him as fiercely as a river overflowing its banks.
He had been triumphant, and he wallowed in his victory. The woods were his again, all his…. And he deserved it. He had worked for his home just like any other creature.
But he had been wrong; there was one other there in the forest. One who wielded the steel instrument that the humans called an axe. It was the worst. It hacked through flesh and trees alike, killing both forest and forest dweller alike. He hated the axe. If only he hadn't miscalculated. Then perhaps….
Wicked Wolf.
The lumberjack had come then, he had caught the wolf unprepared. The wolf had been getting ready to leave the cottage. He was far too wary of fire to try and burn that blemish-like house out of his forest. Fire ate the darkness. He figured with time the trees would reclaim the ground they had first owned.
The lumberjack had heard the cries of the girl. In all unlikelyhood, against all the odds someone had heard the struggle. And the person who heard just happened to be the roe buck in the herd that even the wolf fears to attack. The buck with pointed, jagged horns that kill with the right blow.
Well, that's just what happened. Those metaphorical horns tore him wide open. And miraculously, those damn wenches had still been alive. Barely, but alive.
And he himself? Bleeding to death on a wooden planked floor, surrounded by humans who wanted nothing more than to kill and destroy, to take what they wanted, no, to take what they could, regardless of who or what they damaged in the process.
Wicked, wicked Wolf.
He tried to get up and run, but he collapsed, his insides spilling onto the ground, staining the unfinished wooden planks beneath his feet a foul red brown.
The lumberjack had killed him, skinned him, used his pelt as a rug. Then the three of them ate the food the red-hood girl had brought as if nothing unusual had happened. As if he, the wolf, were no more a disturbance than a cockroach.
And perhaps it was true. Perhaps the wolf had been the one who was a disturbance. The one with a twisted sense of justice. He had never thought of that until his mind cleared with his final breath.
He supposed it didn't matter now. He was dead.
And humans ruled the earth.
And they destroyed it following the same principle they had used on him.
Red riding hood and her grandmother lived because the lumberjack butchered the wolf.
Oh Wicked, wicked Wolf.
