Chapter 1:
"Tonight's the night," I whisper to myself as I look to the sky. There are no clouds in the sky, so everyone can plainly see the full moon. All of the villagers have closed their windows and locked their doors, as if those precautions could keep a werewolf out. But if they could, there would be no reason to hire me.
I am Scarlet Fenner, AKA Red Riding Hood. I hunt werewolves for a living.
I hurriedly check to make sure everything is set. The traps are set, my weapons in my picnic basket are set, my red hood is set.
"As long as my hood is up, I'm perfect," I think to calm myself down.
Every kill is different, so you can never expect what is going to happen. Hence, you get a lot of nerves.
There is a howl in the woods surrounding the villages and I try to pinpoint where it came from. There, to the north. Another howl comes from that direction, but it sounds louder. The werewolf is closer now. I bend my knees, ready for anything.
The werewolf bursts from the forest and runs straight towards me. I jump to the side and the wolf barrels straight past me. But he uses the momentum from this run to swing himself around. He runs at me, faster than the first time. I duck to the side, missing his teeth but barely.
'Time to start to fight back!' I think. I rush towards him, taking my knife out of my basket as I run. When he is almost upon me, I jump over him and cut him down his back. He rolls on the back and writhes in pain. I walk up to him. He tries to take a swing at me with his claws, but he does not have the strength. I calmly cut his throat. He slowly falls limp on the ground, dead. I step back, leaving the corpse for the villagers.
I walk into the elder's house. He was the one to hire me and he would be the one to pay me. I knock on the door.
"It's dead sir," I say, knowing how villagers hate to hear the werewolf's gender.
"Who is it?"
"I have no idea,"
"Then let's go look," he says as he opens the door. I nod and lead him to the body. Since he is a werewolf, after he died he turned back into his human form. The elder shakes his head.
"I never would have thought that Michael was a werewolf," he muttered to himself. "Come back with me and I will pay you."
I follow him back to his house and he counts out 40 gold coins for me.
"Here you go," he says, holding the bag of the coins out to me. I take it and thank him.
"No thank you. We have been plagued by the werewolf for too long."
I nod and leave without saying another word.
Every full moon, people who have been bitten by werewolves turn into one themselves. Sometimes they do not even know that they turned! So every full moon, some town asks me to rid them of their werewolf problem, and I am happy to do it! I started hunting werewolves when I was twelve. That year, I was delivering a basket of goodies to my grandmother. As I was approaching her house, I saw that she was being eaten by a wolf! I ran in and, using the knife that I always keep in my basket, I cut the wolf's throat. He fell down dead, but first bit into my grandmother, causing a fatal wound. I was too late to save her. She died in my arms, happy to know that I saved her from being eaten. I buried her. As I was about to sew rocks into the wolf's stomach and throw his carcass into the river, I noticed that a dead man lay on the floor where the wolf's corpse was! I realized that it was a werewolf whom I killed. And so I pledged myself against all werewolves and have been hunting them down ever since.
I do not do much in the month between jobs. Sometimes when a village asks me before the full moon to stop their problem, I scout out the town and try to find potential werewolves. Werewolves usually isolate themselves, but the good ones are friends with almost the whole town. They love meat, so usually they are the town butcher, but not always. As I said, all kills are different. Some werewolves are extremely crafty and know what the telltale signs are for werewolves and hide them really well. Some are just stupid, so they are easy kills. I have never met a wolf that I cannot kill.