Little Red Redemption

Once upon a time ,

A charmed little girl

In a charmed little life

In a charmed little cloak,

Skipped down the path through a charmed little wood.

.

Along the way, was a wolf.

A wolf charmed

by the cloak

and the child.

.

Hungry.

Rude.

Unscrupulous.

Ready to bathe in charming child blood.

.

There’s a wolf,

and a child,

and a cloak with a hood,

and a charmed life.

.

This part you mostly know.

Except, maybe, that the wolf didn’t swallow her in one swift gulp.

.

He

tore

bits

and

pieces

over

hours,

days,

weeks,

months,

years.

.

Ripped apart and eaten raw.

.

And there was blood.

So much blood.

.

The girl in the cloak went from pawn to prey to pieces.

.

The wolf reveled in the carnage.

Rolled in the blood.

.

He watched her watching him destroy her.

And he was pleased.

He liked the taste of fear

Very much indeed.

.

No noble woodsman cut her loose.

Rather, just as she was chewed up,

So, too, was she spat out.

.

The little left of her said the wolf was not to blame.

She was.

.

Perhaps she misunderstood.

He had used the word “love”

He said “love” so she shouldn’t say

“Big”

“Bad”

“Wolf”

.

“Rape”

.

To say that would be *mean*.

Might hurt his feelings.

.

And, after all,

that might not really be what happened.

.

Almost certainly, she was mistaken.

.

Surely, no wolf

would rip apart a girl

and bathe in blood

and feast on fear.

.

No.

No wolf could be so wily.

So crafty.

So cruel.

.

It could not have been like that.

.

If it *was*,

It was only because the wolf was wounded.

What wolf not wounded deeply would call such carnage “love”?

.

If it *was*,

It was only because it was her fault.

She could have spared herself.

.

She should not have let him notice her.

A foolish girl in far too red a cloak

So happy in her specialness.

.

What, after all, can such a stupid girl expect?

Red cloaks are how wolves find you in the forest.

.

In shame,

in scars,

she sat.

.

The wolf sauntered off intact.

No belly scar or stitches needed.

He lived to prowl another day.

Another decade.

And another.

.

What had started as

A charmed girl

In a charmed life

In a chamed cloak

On a charmed path

Tried to finish what the wolf had left undone .

She tried to shrink out shame

And carve off pain.

Raw, ruined, wrecked, splattered, so very nearly slaughtered.

.

Then, a miracle.

.

From that wreckage, she re-formed.

Slowly.

Patched ripped things.

Through years and stitches,

scars and scares, she knit herself together.

.

She made herself a new thing.

A new life born of her own spilt blood.

Not a thing of skin.

Not a child in a crimson cloak.

Not a woman clinging to the rags of who she might have been.

.

She emerged as something more.

.

A flame brighter than any cloak could be.

A still-beating heart pumping something not unlike a potion.

Magic.

.

See?

I told you that you did not know the ending.

.

And of the wolf?

.

After so many years,

the time had come

For those in scarlet cloaks

To say which wolves were “Big” and “Bad”.

Which wolves were living happily in sheep’s clothing.

With not a spot upon their conscience.

Or stain upon their name.

.

Once upon a time,

those wolves, that wolf,

roamed freely.

And then that "Once Upon a Time" was over.

A reckoning for wolves had come.

.

The child who was not a child any longer was there.

Ready for the reckoning .

.

She said the words:

“Big”

“Bad”

“Wolf”

.

“Rape”

.

The wolf did not care to see himself as “Big” or “Bad”.

In his words he is no wolf.

But he lies.

He is a wolf.

And wicked.

And cunning.

And cruel.

.

When the reckoning came for the wolf, he rewrote the carnage.

Scrubbed the blood and the filth and his long feast on fear.

He never mentioned love.

.

She sat one final time in a room with the wolf.

Revolted.

Terrified.

Shaking.

Ready for the reckoning.

.

This story doesn’t end with wolf in chains.

Or beaten and bloody in the shards of his own life.

.

The whole wide world does not know that he is “Big” and “Bad”.

.

Some people know.

The right people know.

And, perhaps most important,

The wolf knows that where there was once a child in a cape, some smeared bloody bits, there is now a flame that is not for him to fuck with.

Not.

Ever.

Again.

.

And that, my friends, is the story of how a girl in a hood went through the woods

was gobbled up,

spat out,

kept silent,

.

And then cried “WOLF!” with damn good reason.

.