To Kill a Big Bad Wolf — A Dark Red Riding Hood Retelling | TaleTreasury

Rose adjusted her crimson hood, still wet with blood and rain, her heart thudding like a war drum. The Big Bad Wolf was dead—she had killed it herself. She could still feel the grip of the knife in her hand, the heat of her rage as she drove the blade into its chest over and over. Her parents had said it was impossible, but she had done it.

And yet, sprinting toward her grandmother’s cottage, she couldn’t shake the creeping dread coiling in her gut. The sky was a menacing grey, rain spitting lightly as if the clouds themselves were holding their breath.

“Grandma!” she called, pounding on the wooden door. No answer. Again she knocked, more urgently. “Grandma, I killed it! I killed the Big Bad Wolf!”

Still, silence.

She nudged the door open. A musty stench wafted out, damp and deathly. The house was cloaked in shadow, the storm outside dimming even the daylight.

“Grandma?” she called softly.

A rasping voice answered. “Yes, my dear Rose. Is that you?”

Rose rushed toward the bed, where her grandmother lay bundled under thick dusty blankets. The air was heavy, still. She reached out, only for a flash of lightning to momentarily illuminate the room—and in that crackling glare, she saw them.

Eyes too big. Ears unnaturally long. And teeth—sharp, jagged, and grinning.

“Grandma, what big eyes you have…”

“The better to see you, my dear.”

Rose’s breath caught.

“And what big ears you have…”

“The better to hear you…”

“Your teeth!” Rose cried, stumbling back. But the creature under the blankets only chuckled, deep and rumbling, its form shifting—fur, limbs, claws emerging where human skin had been.

Rose had not killed the wolf.

She had killed something else—or nothing at all.

The Monster’s Origins

Years ago, a fire had ravaged a house at the village’s edge during a brutal attack blamed on the Big Bad Wolf. The villagers erected tombstones on the charred land, a grim reminder. But what they never understood was that the wolf wasn’t merely a beast of flesh and fang—it was a hunger. A curse.

Dan, Rose’s father, had known. He’d seen it before—the night the Jones family burned alive, a hulking figure emerging from the blaze, shifting from wolf to human and back again. It was no ordinary wolf, but an ancient, malevolent being that could change its skin, live as human or animal.

Years later, the village struck a grim bargain to survive: send a child each year, and the monster would sleep, sated, in human form. When Florence and Dan realized Rose had unknowingly killed the false wolf—the decoy, the ruse—they feared the truth: the real wolf never died. It only waited.

Rose’s Last Stand

Back in the cottage, lightning cracked again, illuminating the ghastly form before her. Rose was unarmed, her knife long discarded. She felt her heart pounding, but she stood her ground.

“Grandma?” she whispered one last time.

“Closer than you think,” the creature crooned, its breath foul with rot. “I’ve waited for you.”

But Rose was her father’s daughter. She may not have had her knife, but she remembered her training, the grip of the blade, the way to strike.

As the wolf lunged, Rose grabbed a poker from the hearth and drove it upward into the creature’s open maw, piercing through. It howled, snapping jaws clamping on iron—but it wasn’t enough. Claws raked her side, warmth pouring down her waist, her blood joining the wolf’s.

The world blurred. She struck again—once, twice—until her strength gave out.

The Village’s Secret

The villagers found the cottage days later, drenched in blood, the body of the wolf nowhere to be found. Rose was gone.

Florence wailed before the fresh grave where a simple inscription was carved:
“For she blossomed bright crimson, so those she cared could be spared.”

But they all knew the truth. The wolf still lived—somewhere, wearing a human face again, waiting. And when it hungered once more, it would return.

And the village would send another.

Moral of the Story

True monsters often wear familiar faces, and courage sometimes comes at the highest cost. Sacrifice alone cannot break a curse born from fear and deceit.