But there never was a Big Bad Wolf, was there?
A Micro Fiction by Donna M Day
Oh, how dark the clouds are…
On the day she was supposed to visit Grandmother, the weather was far too bad to take a walk.
She enveloped her body, her head, in the voluminous red folds of the crocheted blanket, that Grandmother had intricately put together, and disappeared into worlds Mother had warned her away from.
Silly worlds where wasted time slipped away while real-world mothers worked two jobs and real-world grandmothers were wrapped in creased blue motheaten sheets and foxgloves wept on the woodland path.
Oh, how cold you are…
The day after she was supposed to visit Grandmother, the weather was far too hot for her riding hood.
She threw on a red dress and stayed on the path that Mother had warned her not to stray from.
She picked four bluebells and a single rose, to apologise.
Oh, what big eyes you have, open and staring at the ceiling.
Oh, what big ears you have, poking through your thin, unwashed hair.
Oh, what big teeth you have, discarded on your pillow.
The day after she was supposed to visit Grandmother, she ran from the cold cottage, trampled dry foxgloves, slammed into a woodcutter, and howled.
This story won 2nd Prize in the WestWord Micro Fiction Prize 2024.
Author: Donna M Day is a writer who lives in Liverpool, England. Her work appeared in The Forgotten and the Fantastical, Key Words: Poems from Lockdown and From the Body. Her newsletter Sea Invisible is about invisible disability and she is blogging through Seventy Years of Books and Creepy Houses. https://linktr.ee/donnamday