And now a heart-warming message for the Baron of Bad Luck himself, Walter Wolf.

Let's see what he has to say, shall we?

Please enjoy.

I live in a dirty, rundown apartment in the bad section of town. My star has long been faded and I am not even remembered enough to be mocked. But I regret only one thing.

I didn't call her Slappy.

I still remember the very first words she said to me. We had run into each other backstage, before we had been introduced. It was my first major cartoon (April of 1941, if memory serves) and I was muttering my lines (few though they were) under my breath. I had heard of the violent squirrel I was to play the villian to, but I had not yet met her. I happened to pick my head up the moment we passed. I remember her crooked smirk and the sparkle in her eyes as she came right up close to me, said three simple words, and continued down the hall, leaving me stunned.

She said, "Fly's down, bud."

I was probably in love by the time we got on the soundstage. I took her our for dinner a week later and we were to be married the following January. She met my family and they hated her. She hated them right back and yet abstained from violence, which probably endeared her to me even more, if only because she was only interested in me and had no cares for any other member of the Wolf family.

Two hours before our wedding, news came in that she had disappeared.

The caterer was up in arms.

For a month and a half, I thought that the woman of my dreams was dead.

And then she returned. She came to me first. I answered my apartment door and there she stood, looking ashamed and scared. She never looks embarrassed or frightened. Something was wrong. And even though I wanted to reach out and hug her, pull her inside, shake her back and forth and ask her what I had done, why hadn't she wanted me, where she had been and why she didn't tell me...I didn't.

I just looked at her. And somewhere inside me, a little voice that I had never heard before told me to tear her throat out with my teeth, sink my canines into her squirrelly flesh and taste her hot blood.

Slappy whispered my name. "Walter. I'm so-" I closed the door very deliberately.

The next day, she tried again while we were in the studio.

And the next day, and the next, and on and on for two long weeks.

Finally, I turned around as we stood outside the studio. I was hunched over in my coat and she was standing behind me, holding her little green hat on her head to keep it from blowing away. I bought her that hat for her birthday.

"What do you want?" I fairly snarled, turning around to look at her.

"Walter, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, do you hear me?" Her words were painted in the hurt, angry tones of her distinct, yet untraceable accent.

"Why?" I must have sounded broken, because she took a step forward. "Why can't you let me be?"

"Because I need to tell you what happened, Walter!"

"There is nothing to you can say to me right now, Miss Squirrel." I had never before, never since, called her anything but Slappy. Not even when I was more angry with her than I was in that instant. She looked as if she had been struck. Her eyes widened for a moment and her mouth dropped open. I wanted to say that I didn't mean to call her that, to tell her to explain, but my blood was boiling and I felt like hurting her.

And suddenly she changed. Her body drew into itself to protect her front. She held her head up high, looking at me with fury in her eyes.

"Then..." she began, her voice cracking not with sadness, but the crisp crack like ice breaking, "I believe our business is concluded, Mr. Wolf." And she turned and walked around. And we did a cartoon the following day, and she was aloof. She has been ever since. Even days later, when I made to apologize. She slammed the door and I left. I broke her heart, I think. But that's fair. She broke mine.

As I get older, that part of my memory hurts even more. She drove me insane. I sometimes think that I actually would like to make her explode, eat her or spill her blood or just really make her hurt, show her what she did to my mind. Take her life away like she took my heart.

Then I realize that all I want to do is catch her and hold her tight and pull her against me and shake her back and forth and ask those dreaded questions that I should have in my apartment more that fifty years ago. And beg her to explain why she did what she did and make her understand that I'm still madly in love with her.

The pain she deals out is like a drug. I can't get enough of it, the way it spikes my hate even as it shoots pangs of love into my body. The two greatest feelings I can ever have, all for one woman.

Someday I'll get my courage up. Someday I'll go to her home and ask if I can hear her explanation. Someday I'll promise never to call her "Miss Squirrel" again and she'll promise not to run away again. And the bigger feeling will win out. If I have a woman to love or a body to bury...we'll find out.

Someday soon.

Got dark there for a minute, didn't it?

Please review. There's probably about one more chapter on the way, although I may just make another story for it. I'm enjoying this pairing.