Once upon a time, in a far off kingdom, there was a little village at the edge of the woods. Many a tale has been told about these woods, and many a father and mother has warned their child not to go into them, for fear some danger might befall them. One such danger was a very big, very hungry wolf. One day, the wolf, on the search for food, had strayed off his path and found himself in a very strange part of the woods: the edge, closest to the tiny village. He was famished by this point, and sniffed high and low looking for something to fill his belly. Coming across the smell of something delicious, his big ears perked up at the sound of a coop of clucking chickens in a lush garden surrounded by high stone walls. He decided he would eat these chickens, and with one mighty gulp, he ate nearly all of them, sparing the very last.
What he did not know was that these were no ordinary chickens, and the woman who owned them was a witch. The old crone saw all of this, and quickly ran to her garden in a blind fury. She said to the wolf (for she could speak the language of wolves) "You have eaten all of my chickens! Those were my special, prize hens, for they laid golden eggs, and now you've killed all but the very last one! Those were to be a gift to appease the giants in the sky!"
The wolf simply cocked his head, for her words about gold and giants meant little to him. After all, what cares a wolf about such things as gold? He sighed contentedly, finally full, when the hag approached him: "Since you have so savagely and thoughtlessly stolen my chickens", she screeched, "I'll cast a curse upon you so that you will never be able to live again without feeling remorse for your deeds!"
With a wave of her staff and a strange incantation, she watched with merry mirth as the wolf stretched and contorted. His body lengthened and he lost some of his fur, his hind legs grew longer and he began to stand upright. His front paws turned to hands and his hind paws became gnarled feet. The enchantress smiled as she saw the now-transformed wolf, and she said, "Now you will feel nothing but shame. I have given you a human soul (do not ask where I got it), making you a creature that is neither man nor beast! You can talk, think and feel like a human, but still rip and tear and kill like the wolf you were!" she cackled, in evil glee.
The Wolf beseeched, speaking his first words in the tongue of men, "But why? I have done nothing to deserve such a punishment! And what did you mean when you said I would feel shame and remorse?"
The witch said, "You might very well have doomed us all by killing those hens. The giants are a very angry people, and if they are not kept happy, they will destroy the kingdom, and the forest, too! And you will also never be able to savagely kill another living thing without feeling a human's remorse! Find me a flock of golden egg-laying hens to replace the chickens you killed by the chime of midnight in five days' time, or you will stay this way forever! Now go!"
And so the wolf searched the forest high and low, occasionally passing humans who fled from his monstrous form, and the members of his pack whom he could no longer communicate with. In one village, he found three enchanted pigs who were said to have built their own pens out of straw, twigs and bricks, but no golden egg-laying hens.
The following day, in the next village he heard a foolish shepherd boy guarding his flock cry "There is a wolf in the fields!" when there was none. At least, not yet. The very next time the boy cried "Wolf!" he snuck up and remorsefully, but cruelly killed the sheep he was guarding so he could sneak into the village to look for the hens while the townspeople were distracted. There were hens indeed, but none that laid golden eggs.
The third day, he heard tell of seven goats raised by their mother. To see if these talking goats knew of any chickens (for one talking animal must know about others), he disguised himself as their mother, with her snowy white feet and honey sweet voice, but was soon chased out by the youngest kid of the seven. "We have no chickens!" cried the youngster, "And Mother says if we see you here again, we are to slice you up and fill you with stones so you cannot move a single step!"
On the fourth day, the wolf came across a young lad named Peter, who, after his grandfather had warned him of wolves in the wood, was arguing with a sparrow and a duck about who was the better of the two. "Ah! Maybe I can give the witch this duck! She is so old that maybe she will not notice the difference…and perhaps the giant will like a talking duck instead of a magic hen or enchanted pigs!" And the wolf crept up to Peter and the birds, and with one big gulp, swallowed the duck, but frightened off the bird and the lad. The wolf quickly had to leave, with the duck screaming and quacking madly from within his belly, for Peter called his grandfather and the villagers who, hearing of the Wolf's path of destruction, decided to humiliate the Wolf by putting him in a circus.
Fleeing the angry villagers till midnight on the final day, the Wolf burped up the duck, and presented her to the witch (wet, frightened and worse for wear, but alive), saying, "I have found no golden egg laying chickens, but I have with me a talking duck, and have come across enchanted pigs who built their own pens, and-"
But the witch cut him off with a furious cry, "Those pigs will not do! Neither will this sorry excuse for a duck! Nor anything else you might have come across!"
The duck, who was feeling quite mistreated to begin with, snorted with indignation at the witch's insults. She flew up towards the witch's face and gave her an angry peck on the nose for good measure, before disappearing into the woods.
"I'll just hope," the witch said, "That the giants will be satisfied with only one hen. And as for YOU," she turned to the wolf, "Your curse will never be reversed! You shall wander the woods the rest of your days, being too wolf-like to be kin among men, and too much of a human to be with your pack! The only way to break your curse is a kiss from your true love, but since you are part of neither world, you will NEVER find one! And I know a thing or two about being unloved, looking as ugly as I do! Who could love a big, bad wolf such as you? Who could ever love a Beast?"
The wolf howled in agony at his misfortune, realizing that what the witch told him was true. He was all alone in the woods.
"I wish I had never eaten those hens!" he wailed. "I wish, more than anything, more than life, that I had someone who loved me!"
He became something of a legend in the kingdom, eventually becoming a figure in a cautionary tale told before nightly prayers to keep children from straying the path. His solitude drove him to near madness, turning him into a true Beast, growing to delight in the carnality he grew infamous for. He made his home in a dark, drafty castle that nobody had lived in for many moons, surrounded by enchanted roses, ruling over it in shame. He only left to make a snack out of lost children who strayed off their paths in the Wolf's dark, twisted kingdom.
And so the Big Bad Wolf lived, miserably ever after, until one day, he met a little girl in a red riding cloak… I think we all know he never got his Happily Ever After.
The End.