“Hawooo!”
A wolf. Wonder if he’s by himself too.
The sea of stardust glitters in the blue-black sky. The pines still tower overhead, as black as Death’s rotten cloak. But the golden berries on the purple and silver fir and larches still glow like fireflies.
“Hawooo!”
“Hawooo!”
No. I guess he’s not alone.
Just me, then.
Just me.
I shloop a little faster. I’ve no interest in the business of wolves. I’d like to keep them out of mine as well.
I finally accept it: I’m still stuck in space, aren’t I? From black hole to space forest. Owls to wolves. Regular David Livingstone.
After shlooping a few hundred yards along the trail, I notice it’s been quiet. All I hear’s my monstrous, heaving lungs pumping in fresh, cool air and kicking out all hot and nasty.
Really starting to wonder where I am. Not worried. How could things get worse? I’ve got all night to get my bearings.
I spare a few more dimes of attention to my surroundings.
Got a feeling the sun never rises on a place like this.
“Hawooo!”
Damned wolves don’t know what’s good for ‘em. Do I even know where I’m going? Course I do; I’m following my intuition. That’s right. My intuition’s always right … except when it’s not.
‘You’d better follow it faster, Jackie. Forward! Forward! Forward!’
“Hawooo!”
I swear, when I find you, I’m gonna wring your damn, scrawny little neck with my bare, slimy tendrils.
“Hawooo!”
The ‘northwestern’ jungle grows thicker. My trail, narrower.
“Hawooo!”
“Shut up, will ya? I’m trying to shloop here.”
‘They’re coming, Jackie! Run, Jackie!”
No.
I stop. I’ve run all my life. I stare at the forest’s shadows lying across the snapped branches, sulking shrubs, quiet rocks, and rotting logs. That familiar, almost forgotten scent of wet leaves wafts on the damp air welcomes me into the otherwise unknown jungle.
A part of me wants to see the eyes of the wolves chasing me, the glowing, hunting orbs looking for a place to sink their fangs in for a taste of blood to slake their dry tongues. Nothing but disappointment.
Now I see it. The forest. I see it for what it is.
I get moving again. Not for fear, but courage. I refuse to quit. I refuse to cower.
It’s a bed of chaos for a man to get lost in, just like when I was a boy, wandering the woods, and the summer days were long and warm, and I had nothing to do but enjoy them for what they were. The days when getting lost was how you found yourself. Perhaps that was Paradise.
Here in the space forest, though: there is no warm, summer sun or cool, gentle breeze.
There is the unknown posed as the familiar. There is danger, the threat of violence, and the real possibility of death.
Nature’s like a mirror to the mind. This here’s inside my head. This here’s the chaos nestled deep in the back of my brain, the chaos in which I have learned to live, desperately longing for order all the while.
From chaos comes order. The words of the 19th-century German philosopher echo in my mind.
From chaos comes order. The philosopher whose organization of words had caused, in part, so much chaos in my own century.
From order comes chaos.
“Hawooo!”
“Hawooo!”
“Hawooo!”
“I told you bastards already! Shut up!”
A cool wind sweeps through forest and across my hide.
Look what a mess you caused, Nietzsche. Caused or predicted? Not a fair accusation. And anyone could have predicted “killing God” would bring so much calamity.
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Order and chaos are as intertwined as snakes in the throes of passion, if serpents are even capable of emotions.
Is there even one without the other? Who knows? God knows. Which way, Jack Wolfgang? Are you going to throw the dice? Are you going to keep marching forward into the land only God knows?
I reach for a cigarette, forgetting once again that I don’t have any.
I settle for fresh air and a look around.
Have I left the celestial order only to enter into the chaos of the forest?
If so, I can’t say I hate the chaos. I’m comfortable in it. Comfortably uncomfortable. I suppose that’s what a man’s got to be. What else is to do? How else to get by?
“Hawooo!”
The howl is so loud that I swear it’s right next to me. Try and catch me then. I start shlooping. Faster. And faster. The purple and silver forest rushes past me. I’ll play your games. I’ll win.
The trail slants up. It gives up any sense of decency, turning to total wilderness. I don’t quit. I stay the course like a kamikaze master, mad with unrelenting resolve.
Keep going.
“Hawooo!”
Get by!
“Hawooo!”
Keep going!
Faster than ever, I’m racing, shlooping like a bat from the mouth of Hell.
“Ahh!”
Rocks. Sharp, biting pain as they break my skin.
I’ve fallen into a ditch that cuts through the trail. I’m wet. Blood? I hear the trickle of water and realize there’s a stream running through here. It’s cold.
No. I’m making all this up, I think as I start climbing out of the ditch to the trail on the other side. Imagining things. Thinking too hard. Quit thinking so hard, Jack. You’ve got to quit thinking so hard. The wolves aren’t real, Jack. You’re just in your head. Get out. Get out, get out, get out!
I try slapping myself, hoping to knock some sense around inside. It’s something. I rattle off the insanity like a dog shaking off the snow.
I’ll get out when I find something worth getting out for.
Taking a deep breath, I try to accept that this is what it means to be alive now: turning into a purple space squid and wondering about God, nations, and the nature of existence. Wandering through an alien forest that seems all too familiar to be made of anything less than your own ghostly memories.
It’s a large and cryptic world. Strangest life I’ve ever known.
[ GET BY. ]
God, You’ve outdone Yourself. I’m looking forward to the next life. Maybe we can forget the dark night that’s been ‘Jack Wolfgang.’
Maybe the sun can finally rise on this world.
Every man lives in a world of his own, its boundaries forged by his own perception. Maybe. Sounds right to me. Who knows? I’m no philosopher.
I’m just a hard-nosed guy with a knack for getting to the bottom of things … and I don’t even have a nose anymore.
Who nose? Not mine.
“Hawooo!”
I curl a few tendrils in rage at the wolf’s call like a madman trying to rip out his own hair so the voices in his head will finally shut up.
Sticks. Rocks. Needles. Grass. Their rough edges and points all scrape my purple skin. They’re as real as I am. Maybe those wolves are just as real, too. Real memories. Dreams made of skin and bones.
Get moving, Jack. I start shlooping again like Jesse Owens said he could outrun me. Those dogs aren’t eating squid for supper.
[ SEE YOU IN SPACE. ]
Slipping across the hard, cool, rocky ground feels a lot like running bare foot across algae covered creek stones, the kind that usually make you slip and fall into the rushing, cold, crystalline water when you are wild and free and the sun stares down boldly from its peak in the crisp, bright, blue sky. I’d been starved of such sensations, but honestly…
…Not the first time in my life I’ve missed something so simple. Just the first time I’ve missed the simple things so much. It’s nice being able to feel stuff. Stuff instead of just space. Cold, empty space.
There are little tufts of grass, weeds here and there. I let their tips scratch and tickle my tendrils along the way like a boy reaching out to feel the hedge he’s walking past.
How long has it been since I was a kid and the grass tickled my legs? Remember falling and scraping your knees, Jack? Don’t have to worry about that anymore. Being a tentacle monster’s not so bad, see?
As I keep shlooping, I reach for the sticks and fallen branches, then bushes and ferns, and the taller stalks of wild grass, just to know how they feel against my tendril tips.
I do miss my fingers. Kind of nice just to snap and twist little twigs with them. Damn… Why did I ever go to the city?
The evergreens still tower over me. They are black again. Gone are their purple scales, silver branches, and golden berries.
I look back. The forest is completely familiar to me, no more strange than it’s ever been at night. The tops of the trees sway in a cool breeze.
Not sure what to make of it, I just keep shlooping.
Go until you find something.
[ THAT’S HOW I GET BY. ]
Still going. Still shlooping.
How long has it been? An hour? Two?
“Hawooo!”
The wolves are still after me. I only wish I could kill them. .38 Special? It’d be easy.
Blam!
Right as they got close.
I keep going. Keep shlooping. The forest only gets darker. The trees only get thicker. My resolve only grows stronger.
I don’t care how damned I am. I’m not quitting.
Behind, one of my eyes catches a glimpse of something running across the trail, sliding through the black night like a knife slides through a man’s gut.
‘Better run faster! Better find another place to hide, Jackie! You can’t go forever. Forward! Forward! Forward! Find me, Jackie. I’m waiting.’
I told you to shut up. I will kill you. Who’s going to stop me?
