Two Wolves

Inside of you are two wolves. They both acknowledge the absurdity of your situation but are unwilling to do anything about it. Frankly, what can they do? You’re not helping yourself, so why should they. They’re too famished to help anyways, and you haven’t been feeding them. But then, which one do you feed? That’s always been a problem. Both are hungry. Both need to eat. Yet objectively, one wolf can look much like another, especially if they are inside of you. Yeah, I know. One good, one evil blah blah blah. That is not how the world works, sunshine. It would be nice if did, but often we are operating without all the necessary information. Working within shades of grey. Then there is context and nuance. And wolves don’t go in for nuance. And rarely do they care about context, especially when they are stuck inside of a piece of shit like you. They are both disgusted with you besides, as are we all. There’ll be no differentiation that way. Take the other day for example. Finished work. Heading home. You helped that kid. Bought him something to eat. Gave him some money. Felt pretty good about yourself, didn’t you. Then you necked eight beers and a quart of gin. Pretty scummy thing to do, driving like that. Could have killed someone. Neither of the wolves told you to do any of that. Not for good. Not for bad. It was all you. They were too busy trying to deal with their own predicament. Trying to work out whether they had found your ileum, and whether they could fit through it.

“Maybe you should kill yourself,” one of them says, trying to be helpful.

“That’s a good way out of this mess,” the other says, nodding in agreement. “I think you should consider it.”

You look at them, teary eyed. Bleary eyed too. But they are inside of you, so you can’t really see them, not that you would have been able to with your bleary teary eyes. “Why are you doing this?” You manage to say between snivels. “Shouldn’t one of you be at least a little bit supportive?”

The wolves look at you, then they look at each other. A knowing look. As if to say, would you look at this guy.

“Don’t blame us,” one of the wolves says, the other one muttering something under its breath, something unpleasant about you. “We’re not here to make you feel better about yourself. We’re not going to pat you on the back and tell you everything is going to be okay. You made all those decisions yourself. Every single one.”

You curl up into a ball and rock back and forth. Pathetic. No one’s buying this shit. Your self-pity hasn’t been selling for a while, if ever.

The wolves move on, swishing around in whatever it was you had for lunch. Alcohol, mostly.

You feel them, their claws scratching at your innards as you contemplate your life. You wonder how they got inside of you. Were they always there, from when you were born. Growing with you and emerging only now when you could least deal with them. Or was it an infection, like some form of lupine flu.

You clench your fist, punching yourself in the stomach where you reckon they currently reside, then you retch and feel to vomit.

“You’re only hurting yourself,” they both say in unison, chuckling. One of them begins nuzzling at some villi on the intestinal wall, the other cocks its leg to piss.

You don’t listen though. You’re done listening. Done listening to anyone, especially either of them. You punch yourself again, holding down the burning foul vomit that rises through your oesophagus. Your gut aches, but you do it again, punching yourself in the belly with all the strength you can muster. It hurts, sure, but the physical pain masks something else that hurts even more. As you writhe on the ground, clutching your bruised paunch, you eye the bottle you failed to finish the night before and it hits you. You see it clearly. What needs to be done. A moment of clarity, like the first day of spring in the Arctic. Booze. Strong booze. Enough to kill anything. Even pain. Even them. You grab the bottle and begin pouring it down your gullet, throwing in whatever other poison you can find. Pills, rotten food, dishwashing liquid, anything. Anything that might finish them off for good. You punch yourself again. In your ribs. In your belly. In your stupid, fat face. They’re laughing at you still. You can hear them. Feel them. Then you begin to feel woozy. Feel to pass out and your teary bleary eyes begin to close.

#

“What seems to be the problem?” the doctor says, nudging you awake with a cheap, plastic biro. She looks you up and down and checks her notes, ticking something off as you try to raise your head.

“Wolves,” you say, feeling your guts twist and grumble again as they move around inside of you.