Twisted Tales

A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing

"For no reason?" Erik laughed, a little wildly. "You're a wolf! A vicious, murderous, ravening wolf! You leapt out of the bushes and tried to attack us!"

The wolf spluttered, and his chest swelled with indigence. "I most certainly did not! I was being harassed by a terrible girl, and she chased me off the road! I was trying to make my way back when I stumbled over the roots of those bushes and tripped into the road, where you promptly attacked me!"

"A girl?" Erik snorted. "You were being chased by a little girl? That's real likely!"

"I didn't say it was a little girl, and she was armed!"

"A girl? What girl?" I asked.

The wolf threw his arms—legs? Front legs? Whatever—into the air in exasperation. "I don't know who she was! She just came round the bend in the road, saw me coming the other way, and rushed at me while waving about this enormous kitchen knife, shouting something about a cloak!"

I blinked. "A what now?"

"You said something about a cause?" Jack asked, frowning at the writing on the wolf's sign, clearly trying to read them with is limited ability. "What cause it that?"

"Stop talking to it!" Erik wailed.

The wolf drew itself up importantly and lifted the sign into the air for us to read. In slightly clumsy hand-lettering were the words: DON'T BLOW DOWN OUR RIGHTS. Underneath that, it said...

"The... Big Bad Wolf Liberation Front?" I read aloud.

It nodded. "Indeed! The B.B.W.L.F. for short. You see, us wolves have suffered no end of oppression and Speciesism for centuries, simply because of what we are. Because of a few bad eggs in the bunch—the occasional granny eating here, of the terrorizing of a family of pigs there—the entire wolf image has been damaged beyond repair. Nowadays, every time someone sees a wolf, they say to each other, 'Oh no! Watch out, it's going to eat the children!' Or some other silly poppycock like that, without even bothering to get to know the wolf in question first. You would find that if people would just sit down and talk their differences out, a lot of this stereotypical nonsense could be completely avoided. Not all wolves are Big or Bad, you know."

"I... oh, really?" I managed after a moment, not sure what else to say.

"Really," the wolf insisted vehemently. "Many of us don't even like eating people. Too stringy. So I, along with a few others of my kind, decided to petition for us Wolves's rights to be recognized. Now I'm not being unreasonable here," he added hastily, pressing his ears flat against his head almost apologetically. "I know that there are plenty of nasty, bad tempered wolves out there. But I believe that with thorough background checks and a three-strike system, that—"

"I can't take this anymore," Erik broke in, his face an expressionless mask. He spun on his heel and marched to the far end of the road, and sank to the ground with his back against a tree, his face buried in his hands.

The wolf blinked. "What's his problem?" it huffed.

"Erm, his family was eaten by... wolves." I explained, glancing worriedly at Erik.

The wolf made a sympathetic noise in the back of its throat. "Pity. You see, this is exactly why a panel of jurors composed of ordinary citizens to determine guilt and hold accountability over law-breaking wolves would be so beneficial to—"

I left the Wolf to rant to Jack, who actually seemed rather interested in what the creature had to say, and hastened across the road to Erik's side. He was sitting motionless on the ground, his face hidden. "Erik?" I asked softly.