Based on: The Werewolf, by Angela Carter, Pg. 153
The Werewolf
Characters:
Blanchette: Italian 7-year-old female known as, ‘The good child’
Cesaire: Werewolf
Setting: In the woods inside the book of the fable The Werewolf
Time: mid-morning
Blanchette:
(The child wiped the blade of her knife clean on her apron, wrapped up the wolf’s paw in the cloth in which her mother had packed the oatcakes and went towards her grandmother’s house.) (Carter 153)
Cesaire: Gulping and whimpering, BlanchEEEEETTE! That was uncalled for. Do you see that boulder over there? I happen to know there is a hole underneath it. It used to be an old well, a deep, deep hole; I’m going to throw YOU in it and cover it up!
Blanchette: Idle threats don’t work. Cesaire come out from where you are, and let’s discuss this over oatcakes?
Cesaire: (lies down under the old oak tree licking his stump). I am tired of this; how long must we keep this up before the story gets too dull for children and they stop liking it?
Blanchette: Well, perhaps you should have thought of that before you came into the forest to kill me? The rule is you were supposed to run past me and get grandmother first, FIRST, not go for my jugular. You are so unwise sometimes. I get to be ‘The good child’, and you get to be the bad werewolf. That’s the story. Why did you change it?
Cesaire: I am so bored with the same story. I wanted to kill you off in hopes we would both get transformed into a rabbit, you know, like that movie people are watching on Netflix, ‘Watership Down,’ it’s so much more sophisticated and exciting than this.
Blanchette: The story will end when parents stop reading the story. That’s that stop being so overdramatic.
Cesaire: I flashed my red eyes on the mother while she read the story right before I attacked you.
Cesaire laughing
Blanchette: How many times have I told you that when you screw with the plot AND the reader, it screws everything else up?
Cesaire: She blinked and saw me! Well, what’s the worst that can happen, Blanchette, the reader throwing the book away? OOOO I’m scared.
Blanchette: Nothing, I guess, I don’t know. The reader never caught you before like this one.
Cesaire: Do you see that? The mother just lit a match?
Blanchette: Oh, dear, she’s burning the book. My goodness, this is a first. Why did you have to freak the mother out? SHEESH.
Cesaire: Well, can you share those oatcakes now that they are steaming hot before we die?
Blanchette: Yeah, just for the record, this is ALL your fault; if it wasn’t for you, we could have at least got to the grandmother’s house and eat a decent meal, but noooooooooooo you had to freak the mother out!
(The Werewolf and The good child sit and eat oatcakes together as the forest burns).
December 2020
Okanagan Valley View 