The Big Bad Wolf
by Scott Speck

	People taste awful!  It's not something they'd be proud to know,
I'm sure.  Or maybe it's just the older folks, the eighty year-old grannies
with their thick glasses, driving ever so slowly to the supermarket during
work hours, when most people are too busy at the office to poke at items
on shelves, wheel a squeaky-wheeled cart up and down the aisles, or stand in
a checkout line.
	In case you're wondering, no, I don't howl at full moons.  But my
teeth are big and sharp, except for that upper right canine.  I chipped it when
I was a pup, showing off to a girl I liked by chomping a car bumper (on a
Mercedes, no less!) while the car idled at a red light.
	Wolves like me get a bad rap, for stealing babies from their cribs,
or slaughtering stray, hapless sheep bleating for help at the edge of a forest
in which I've been hiding, watching, waiting.
	I'm a carnivore by nature, yes, so it follows that I require a diet
of meat.  And what creature, large or small, doesn't prefer as easy and safe
a dinner (for their own sake) as possible?  Look at people -- they shop at
supermarkets and heat their pre-packaged food in microwave ovens.  Chasing
down and killing a frozen tv dinner isn't much of a challenge.
	Life here in the forest has gotten difficult.  Massive urban
sprawl has squeezed out all the livestock farms.  Where tasty, meek
chunks of mutton once ambled across green pastures, now tall three-story
mansions with three car garages and no one in sight dominate the landscape.
	That's why I turned to life as a hitman, or rather, a hitwolf.  The
police, the FBI, and even the general public would never think that a wolf
could be employed by people, to off someone who needs offing.  I accept
payment by the pound, in meat, rather than in stacks of green and white bills.
I like it better that way.  It's easier to launder my earnings.
	My last job ended an hour ago, as I sped a frail old grandma on her
way, a few years before heart disease would've accomplished the job via more
natural means.  Of all people, her kids wanted her dead.  They were lusting,
much as I hunger for a big juicy steak, for her house, her furniture, and
the million or so she had stashed safely in the bank.
	Her kids handed me the keys to her house, a charming bungalow near
the forest where I live.  They told me what time of day to steal in and
gobble the old woman up, bones, flesh, and all.  That's when I found out how
terrible old people taste.  Their skin is far too elastic, hard to strip
off to bare the underlying meat.  With her age and frail health, there was
barely a firm muscle to be had.
	Then, wouldn't you know, the doorbell rang.  It seems the old bag's
granddaughter stopped by while I was cleaning up the blood and erasing my
tracks.  The little tyke's parents had forgotten that their daughter walked
by grandma's house every day on her way to school.  The kid stood at the
door for the longest time, wearing a bright red slicker with a sharply
peaked hood.  I observed her carefully, my muzzle poked between the drapes
of grandma's bedroom window, but she didn't see me.  She was too busy staring
up at the peephole, a bright yellow bunch of spring flowers in her tender,
pink hand.
	I refrained from answering, and then a key slid into the lock.
Damn -- kids these days!  Their parents give them too much freedom!  So I
tore through granny's closet and slipped into one of her old nightgowns,
then popped her spectacles atop my snout.
	After laying down in the old woman's bed with my paws, tail, and fur
(except for my face) hidden beneath a comfy heirloom quilt, I waited for her.
My canine hearing is quite acute -- I could hear the little girl's breathing
as she clomped around the kitchen in her scarlet galoshes.  Then her feet
creaked up the bare wooden stairs.  I was hoping to put on a good enough act
to speed her off to school.  I didn't want her parents getting more than
they bargained for.
	There was a knock at the door.  I held my breath.
	"Grandma?" she said,  in her sweet, innocent voice.
	"Come in, Dear.  But don't come near me, and stay only a minute or
two, since I'm feeling sick."
	The brass doorknob turned, and the toe of one of her boots, still
shiny wet with rain, poked into the room.
	"What happened to your voice?"
	"Grandma's got the flu, Dear.  Please come back later, and I'm sure
I'll be feeling much better."
	"I'll get the thermometer, to take your temperature."
	Before I could object, she spun around and headed straight for the
bathroom.  The toilet seat fell down loudly, and her boot soles began
squeaking annoyingly enough to put my teeth on edge.  She must have been
climbing toward the medicine cabinet, using the toilet as a stool.  Then
I remembered that I had cleaned the blood from my fur in the bathroom, only
twenty minutes ago!
	I scrambled up from under the covers and quietly closed the blinds
and drapes, to make the room as dark as possible.  She was back at the door
in another minute, just as I flopped back into bed and straightened grandma's
glasses on my nose.  She entered, shaking the thermometer, readying it for
my mouth.
	"Here you go," she said.  She raised her tiny arm toward me, and
that's when I smelled her.  So unlike dear old grandma!  This girl was fresh
and pink and plump with the sweet juices of youth.  As the the end of the
thermometer poked my gums, I opened my mouth and felt a rather large pool
of my own saliva dribbling under my chin.  I took the thermometer with
surprising agility and pulled my head back.  It wasn't the easiest thing to do,
mind you, what with her soft little hand an inch or two from my fangs.  In the
near-darkness, she was puzzling over my head, obviously much larger and much
darker than grandma's.  I wondered if the old lady's nightcap was covering
my ears.
	"You look terrible," she said.  I felt like asking her whether she
considered herself a nurse or something, and why the hell doesn't she just run
off to school like every other kid in her class and let poor old grandma be and
I'm sure I'll feel much better by suppertime.  Suppertime...  I smelled her
freshness again, as she sniffled and shuffled toward the window, to draw open
the drapes, no doubt.  I pulled the thermometer from my mouth.
	"No, no, don't open them.  The light really bothered me this morning.
Now please, run along, run along to school before you're late!  You know what
your parents told you, now..."
	I might have sped her on her way if I hadn't stumbled upon this rich
new treasure trove of stupidity.
	"What did they tell you?"  She had such a sweet look on her face, with
her rosy little girl cheeks and bright, big blue eyes whose whites were
unblemished by a single capillary.  She approached the bed and reached for the
thermometer.  Before I could pull back, her stubby fingers brushed across my fur.
	She jumped back and switched on the bedroom light.  I'll never forget
the look of complete shock and horror on her face.  The blue pools of her eyes
shrank within the expanding whites around them.  Her mouth hung half-open.  She
took note of my chipped canine, then the big, angry scar on my forehead.
	Her terror suddenly excited me, and I felt the rising tide of my own
hunger, my own lust for flesh, pouring through my body.  My limbs tensed,
my paws stiffened, my back bristled.  And the drool, yes the drool!  It was
pouring from my mouth like a waterfall!  All at once, her tender pinkness was too
delicious to resist.
	I lunged at her, spectacles flying, nightcap tumbling to the floor.  I
was upon her before she could scream.  Then followed my lupine bloodlust!  All I
remember now is the salty heme of blood in my mouth, the soft, tender flesh, the
look of peaceful repose on her face the moment I silenced her with one quick snap
of my mighty jaws.  I was bathed in blood again, but I was too nervous to do
anything about it.  What would her parents do when they found out what I had
done?  I had already blown the final payment for doing grandma.
	There was only one choice -- I had to skip town and hit the forest beat,
just like last time, before I moved to the burbs.  My name would soon be mud in
this town, and I had to find new and greener pastures.  Preferably those with
tall grass, lots of fluffy, meek sheep, and no fragile, pink children.  As you
might guess, I'm no longer a hit-wolf.  I look out now for only me, myself, and
I.  But I still wonder, to this day, between wolf and human, who's the predator
and who's the prey.