The Three Little Pigs

One day the a poor lonely wolf came hobbling along. He had a terrible cold, so he was snuffling and coughing most piteously, longing for a hot cup of tea and some chicken noodle soup. He decided to stop at the first house he came to in order to ask for some nourishment.

The first house he saw happened to be one of the three little pigs' houses; the straw one, in fact. The wolf paused at the gate and admired the shiny thatch and the geraniums at the door. Then he walked up the little dirt path and rapped at the door.

The house's occupant peered through a window with beady black eyes. Being basically a paranoid little git, it didn't occur to him that perhaps the wolf really meant no harm, especially seeing as how he was carrying his medicine in one paw and was holding a blanket round him with the other. No, instead the little pig panicked and squealed like a—well, like a panicky little pig, and he believed that the wolf outside was intent on eating him. So he very quickly rushed out the back door to his neighbor in the house made of sticks.

"Help, help, help!" he cried, banging on his neighbor's back door.

"What is it?" called the other pig from indoors.

"Look! Out there, in front of my house! There's a huge ferocious wolf trying to break into my house!"

"Pull the other one!"

"No, I'm serious! Look!"

"Yeah, yeah, sure—oh my God!"

The little pig who lived in the house made of sticks then opened his back door to his annoyed-looking neighbor, who strolled in rather complacently, considering the circumstances. The stick house pig glared at him, and the pair walked over to the front window and peered anxiously out at the wolf, who stood forlornly at the door of the straw house, coughing and wheezing. Suddenly, he sneezed violently—so violently, in fact, that the straw house collapsed.

"Oh poop," said the wolf sadly as he eyed the wreckage. "Oh, well. I guess there's nothing for it but to try next door."

Meanwhile, next door, chaos reigned.

"Did you see that?" shrieked the former occupant of the straw house. "He just deliberately blew my house down in an attempt to get at me! —Oh! Oh, no! Here he comes; he's going to get us both now!"

And indeed, the ailing wolf was now approaching the house of sticks. He coughed feebly, sending both occupants into a panic. He blew his nose loudly into a hankie, creating a gale force wind that shook the stick house to its uneven foundation. It began to quake and quickly collapsed, whereupon the two pigs within raced next door to the brick house.

"Wait! Wait!" the wolf cried hoarsely after their retreating forms. "You don't underst—"

"Fuck off, wolf man!" cried the pigs as they disappeared around the corner. The wolf watched them go, jumping slightly at the sound of the brick house's back door slamming shut.

The wolf stood in silence for a moment, blinking to himself. 'Of course!' he thought. 'They think I'm a predator. They don't realize I only want some help. Hmm. I just need to explain this carefully and be patient; I'm sure they'll understand.'

"Oh no!" cried the pig who owned the brick house. "Look at him, plotting his next move! We're doomed!"

"Not necessarily," said the stick house pig.

"What do you mean?" asked the straw house pig.

"I mean we lay a trap for him. We lock all the doors and windows so he can't get in, and then—"

"But there are other ways of getting in," worried the straw house pig, "like down the chimney, remember, in Close Encounters of the Third—"

"Don't reference pop culture; this is a fairy tale!" furtively hissed the brick house pig.

"Not that it matters; we already referenced Monty Python and the Holy Grail," grumbled the stick house pig.

"Shut up!" whisper-shouted the brick house pig.

"When was that?" asked the straw house pig interestedly.

"Never mind," said the stick house pig, rolling his eyes.

There was a brief, awkward pause as the three little pigs shifted nervously, glanced around, avoided each other's eyes, and generally tried to ignore what had just happened.

"So," began the stick house pig. "You see that big pot of soup you have on the fire?"

"Yeah . . . "

"We'll talk the wolf into coming down the chimney, and he'll land in the hot soup, and then he won't be able to get at us!"

" . . . Uh . . . will he really come down the chimney, do you think?"

"Oh, he's desperate; of course he will."

"But, my brand-new cauldron—"

"Shut up."

"It wasn't even broken in yet—"

"Shut up."

"It was the first time I'd ever used it—"

"Shut up! Here he comes."

There came a feeble tap at the door. The three little pigs shuddered and clutched at each other nervously, and the owner of the brick house squealed,

"Who is it?"

The wolf, on the other side of the door, dabbed at his nose with his hankie, tugged his blanket a little more tightly around his shoulders, and rasped out,

"I'm only a poor lonely wolf with a terrible cold. I'm in desperate need of some nourishment. Please, could you spare me a nice hot cup of tea and maybe some chicken noodle soup?"

The three little pigs exchanged knowing glances and rolled their eyes in unison. Amid mutterings of "Sure, yeah" from his neighbors, the brick house pig called,

"Certainly. I'll be right there."

"What?!" hissed his companions. "Have you gone mad?"

"No, no, it's all part of the plan," replied the brick house pig.

"What plan?" demanded the straw house pig.

"Shut up. Oh," the brick house added more loudly to the wolf, "I'm terribly sorry; the door appears to be stuck."

"You didn't even try it— Ow!" said the straw house pig.

From outside, the wolf was audibly wheezing, evidently pressed up against the door in attempt to catch what was said.

"Er," continued the brick house pig, "perhaps you could try the back door?"

"Very well," coughed the wolf, and the three little pigs listened eagerly as the wolf hobbled around to the back of the house and rapped at the back door.

"Oh dear," called the brick house pig again. "The back door appears to be stuck too. I'm terribly sorry."

" . . . Could you perhaps pass me some soup through a window?" sniffled the wolf pathetically.

"I'm afraid the windows in my house don't open," lied the brick house pig. Outside, the wolf heaved a deep sigh and shuffled worriedly. Finally, he said,

"Well . . . never mind. Maybe I could come back tomorrow."

"No, no," cried the brick house pig with terribly convincing false enthusiasm. "Where there's a will, there's a way! We'll find a way to help you yet!"

"Oh, thank you!" sighed the wolf.

"Now then," the brick house pig continued. "Do you think you could possibly climb up the side of the house?"

"What?" the astonished wolf said.

"Well, it's a long shot, but you might be able to slip down the chimney," said the brick house pig. "It's a very large fireplace. Then, once you're inside, we could feed you, and maybe then you could help us unstick the door and you could leave that way."

There was a long pause as the wolf considered this bizarre proposition. The straw house pig and the stick house pig exchanged annoyed looks and then glared at the brick house pig, saying together,

"What the hell kind of idiotic plan is that?" The brick house only shrugged, answering,

"All I could think of. And hey, it looks like it's working."

The other little pigs looked out the window accordingly and watched as the sick wolf shuffled over to the side of house and began to climb. Luckily, it wasn't a very high climb for him, seeing as how little pigs are much smaller than wolves, and the house was proportioned appropriately. Even in his weakened state, it didn't take long at all for him to scale the chimney stack. Had his brain not been fever-addled, he might have wondered that the vines which he used to heave himself up the side of the chimney were quite warm. As it was, he barely noticed and chose to attribute the warm temperature of the vines to their being in the sun, not from the heat of the fire below.

Inside, the three little pigs looked triumphantly around at each other and gathered in a little semicircle before the fire, awaiting the imminent fiery spectacle.

They were not disappointed. A few brief moments later, there was a horrific clanging crash as the wolf landed in the boiling soup.

The wolf, howling in agony, realized he'd been set up. He tried desperately to escape the pot but found that he was stuck: Though the pot was quite large for a little pig, it was only just large enough for his backside to be wedged into it. The wolf succeeded only in jerking the pot out of the fire, himself still stuck inside it. The three little pigs watched, ducking out of his way, as the wolf reeled about the room, roaring and sloshing soup all over the floor. Many a thundering crash shook the little brick house as the pot and the wolf's paws struck various items and swept them onto the floor.

The owner of the brick house became distraught as he watched his furniture being overturned.

"Wait, guys," he addressed his friends. "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea . . . "

"Too late now," the others chorused.

"But, my furniture! Look, it's getting ruined! Come on, help me get him out of here before my house—the only place for all three of us to live—gets completely totaled!"

The threat of potential homelessness was motivation enough. The other two immediately started forward from their complacent spots against the wall and began righting the furniture and trying to shoo the wolf toward the door. Then disaster struck.

The soup-covered floor caused the straw house pig to slip and slide into the stick house pig. The two toppled together into the brick house pig, and all three crashed to the floor and skidded to a halt directly in the path of the wolf. The wolf, not noticing them due to his predicament, and not having been able to stop himself even if he had seen them, tripped over them. He performed a magnificent handspring into a supporting column of the brick house. The large pot came unstuck from his backside, somersaulted into the air, and hit the ceiling. The reverberation of the crashes caused a chain reaction of worrying creaks and groans from the house, and within seconds, the whole house collapsed around them.

There was a brief silence as the four creatures blinked in disbelief.

"No way that just happened," said the brick house pig.

"Euh . . . urgh . . . " groaned the wolf from beneath the splintered remains of the supporting beam he'd crashed into. "I am so going to fucking sue you for this."

"Er," gulped the brick house pig. "Well. That's as may be. Um. Who's uninjured enough to fetch a doctor?"

"I'll go," sighed the stick house pig, struggling to his feet and limping off toward the next village.

The others lay where they were in awkward, stony silence, avoiding eye contact, until the stick house pig returned with a doctor.

"Good Lord," said the doctor when he arrived. "How did this happen?"

"Well—" all three of the pigs began.

"They set me up!" howled the wolf angrily, clutching his bleeding left foreleg. "They told me they were going to take care of me, and they made me crawl down the chimney, and they laughed at me when I burned myself, and they didn't do anything to help me at all, and—"

"Wait, what?" asked the doctor. "You're telling me your injuries were the result of malicious intent?"

"They certainly were!" roared the wolf.

"Well. That's not really my domain," said the doctor. "If there's potential legal trouble involved, you'll have to get a lawyer."

"I told you I was going to fucking sue," griped the wolf at the pigs, who gulped nervously.

And sue he did. A few weeks later, when their various injuries were mostly healed, all four creatures appeared in court in The Big Bad Wolf vs. The Three Little Pigs. The wolf objected vehemently to being panned by the press as a vicious hooligan, but his lawyer informed him that it couldn't be helped and then reprimanded him for trying to eat one of the reporters. The wolf worried about the possible repercussions of his foul temper until the lawyer's suspiciously attractive young secretary managed to hush up the incident.

The lawsuit proceeded accordingly. The three little pigs' lawyer argued that the three little pigs had been justified in their actions.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, "You see before you three adorable creatures. Three small, defenseless animals—"

"They didn't look defenseless to me," a juror muttered and was promptly shushed by her neighbor. The lawyer frowned and continued,

"Three small, defenseless animals who, confronted with a large and ferocious beast, reacted only naturally as any terrified being would have done. Surely you cannot begrudge them the right to self-preservation. They merely defended themselves against a cruel predator." Here, amidst grumblings of dissent, he cast a stormy glare upon the heavily-bandaged and completely pathetic-looking wolf. "Members of the jury, surely you see that this beast, this thing is nothing more than a menace to society who ought to be locked away. I beg you, think of the safety of all of us."

He then stepped down, looking quite pleased with himself. He smugly watched the prosecuting attorney clear his throat and nervously gather a few notes together. The defense attorney rather had the wind taken out of his sails when his opponent began to speak.

"Are we so hopelessly blind and backward," the prosecuting attorney asked, "that we rely on nothing more than idiotic, inaccurate stereotypes to form the basis of all our social relationships? Are we such slaves to prejudice?" There were mumbles of disagreement from the courtroom, and one or two people cried "No!". "Surely not," the attorney continued. "Surely everyone in this room, with the exception of the defendants, is above that kind of malicious, immature—"

"Objection, Your Honor!"

"Overruled."

"—malicious, immature frame outlook. Surely everyone present knows better than that. I for one take pride in knowing that most of my fellow creatures have progressed beyond the crude Neanderthal—"

"Objection, Your Honor!"

"Overruled!"

"—crude Neanderthal ways. That kind of appalling cruelty, that callous ignorance, that false—"

"Objection, Your Honor!"

"I said, 'Overruled'!"

"—that false sense of entitlement that belongs in the Dark Ages was what led to the tragic events whose outcome we see before us. Look at him." Here the prosecuting attorney sympathetically patted the wolf on a bandaged shoulder. The wolf jumped slightly at the touch and winced. "What you see before you is clearly no vicious predator, no vicious monster who had justice coming to him. No, indeed. This is only a lonely, sick wolf. The true monsters are there, there before you, those three little pigs. Unassuming as they might seem, they clearly harbor the very worst, the very basest, the absolute meanest, the most cold-hearted, the most—"

"Objection, Your Honor!"

"Shut up!"

"—the most callous of all malicious intentions. They seek to purge society of anyone they deem fit, not based on any actual flaws, but only based on their own skewed misconceptions and childish perceptions. They are clearly a menace. Do not pity them. Remember, they might turn on you next. You might be deemed unworthy of existing in their little world. Members of the jury, I ask you to find these murderous swine—no pun intended—guilty."

The jury retired and at length returned with their verdict:

"We, the jury, find the defendants, the three little pigs, guilty as charged of attempted first-degree intentional homicide of the big bad wolf.”

"Aw, shit," muttered the defense attorney. His opponent only smirked.

And so the three little pigs were carted off to jail, and the big bad wolf lived happily ever after with his attorney's secretary.