Comes, The Wolf.

Photo by Matt Nelson on Unsplash

The wind, gentle and cool, tumbled through the window. The fire, warm and tame, bathed the room. His breath, slow and steady, filled his body, and against all reason, felt real.

“Come now, where are you going?” it said with a voice of tumbling rocks.

“ What is this place to which you try to escape ?”

How does he see my thoughts? How does he know where I go in my mind? Why here, why in the place that was promised to be mine, and mine alone?

“Your thoughts? Yours? How mightily presumptuous of you.” replied the voice coming from all directions.

He is inside me. How.

“ No. Not inside you. I am you. Where you go, I follow.” it said, almost lovingly, almost.

The man sat alone in a circle of light. Naked and cold. To his chest, he clutched a tablet on which was carved, in haste, a set of rules. On the back of his neck, breathed the wolf.

“It’s only a matter of time. That stone to which you cling will crumble. It will crumble away into a dust that will stain your face which will make better visible the lines of your tears. Then, the light will fade. It will abandon you.

And in your grief and loneliness, you will beg me to save you. Beg me to drain you of the memories of all that you’ve lost. You will beg. And I, your merciful lord, will sink my teeth into the soft skin of your neck and drink of your blood. Oh your blood, it will flow, down my mouth and onto your world. Down the streams and across the valleys. Then, you will finally know peace.”

The wolf circled the ring of light around him, unable to enter it. The man looked up into the star above him and pressed the tablet ever closer to his heart.

That day may come, he thought, but for now, the light remains and it falls on me. If it fails, I will fail with it. Someday, but not today. Today, I live.