Look, I only agreed to this phone chat from the… who are you again? The Black Forest Mirror-Gazette? Right. Because I’m tired of the undeserved smear campaign you people keep victimizing me with. What happened to getting both sides of the story? For the record, I still don’t trust you. “Journalistic integrity,” my left hind leg.
Oh, hey, a semi-hostile question right off the bat. I see how this is going. I’m recording this, you know. First of all, “big bad wolf” is a misnomer. I can’t help how big I am—don’t ask me how the physics work on tripling in mass over the full moon, or why it’s even a thing; I’m afraid of the answer myself. Second of all, I behave no more badly than any other person, ninety percent of the time. I pay my bills. I mow my lawn. I go to the office and put in my eight-to-five. I am dead norm—
You want to talk about the other ten percent? Seriously? Is this one of those hit pieces?
Little Red Ri—
No, I am not growling. Okay, for the cheap seats. She wasn’t so little. She was armed with a crossbow and silver-tipped bolts hidden in her basket of goodies. Total entrapment. She and the woodsman were in cahoots, you know, and, oh, sure, he “just happened” to be passing by. This is me, rolling my eyes, can you see that over the phone? Also, in case you were wondering, old people are crammed full of stringy gristle and fragile bones that splinter horribly and wind up wedged between your molars. Chickens got nothing on grandma. Ugh. I hope you noticed I stuck to dining on animals after that incident. Not a meal I wish to repeat.
The Three Little Pigs? For the love of—
Actually, yes, that was a huff. They were boars. Which are not, for the record, little in any sense of the word, and it’s super cute how the “heroes” are always so tiny and helpless in these stories, when they are anything but in reality. A house made of straw begs to be blown down, and the wooden construction wasn’t much better, trust me—apparently swine have no idea what nails are for. If God didn’t want us to eat pigs, He wouldn’t have made them out of delicious bacon. You can’t blame me for trying. Did you have sausage for breakfast? Yeah, I thought so.
The Seven Kids? Getting a headache. Right here. I will reluctantly admit I may have gone overboard on that occasion. Shifting makes me ravenous, what with the tripling-in-mass thing, and when I’m confronted with that many tender baby goats, it’s hard to stop once I start. But for crying out loud, if they couldn’t tell the difference between my paws and their mother’s hooves, they were really too stupid to live. And I paid for my gluttony with a very uncomfortable surgical procedure, though the rumors of my demise (as always) were exaggerated.
I’ve got a question for you. How do they justify cutting me open all the time? Noticed that? Of course I heal, but they never, ever bother with anesthesia. Torturing someone like me is perfectly acceptable, apparently, even though you’ve got laws about doing it to regular humans. I’m just a monster, though, right?
You know what, fine. I know when I’m not wanted. I’ve heard about a lovely forest in Russia, with a picturesque meadow and a duck pond. I’ll retire there, and you won’t have me to kick around in your fairy tales anymore.
...Peter? Who’s ‘Peter’?
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Julie has been a regular contributor to Stupefying Stories since her story “Showing Faeries for Fun and Profit” appeared in our July 2013 issue. That issue is long since out of print, but if you enjoyed this story, be sure to check out her story “Woe to the Hand” in Stupefying Stories #23.
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