The Dark Wolf

Ron Koppelberger

The Dark Wolf

The distance between yesterday and today was a decade of sacred hours and anesthetic. The anesthetic was a satisfaction that the urges were encased by cement and iron and the hours spent in quiet contemplation of the illness, the malady, the bother of need and sanguine aching force.
Astor Scow sat solid in his tethered moment of captivity. He was enveloped by the bond of prison existence. He drank in the thoughtfulness of half-starved desires. Nevertheless, he yielded to the asylum of metal bars, the dissension from the row, the hungry certain caress of time passed. He sighed, the blood fresh in his mind, the carnage, the cringing seizure of a later vagabond occurrence; in violence and equally measured themes of sin he had killed. Asphalt and barbed wire ran the length of the yard. The croaking roar of a siren descrying its irritation in songs of freedom to Astor.
He had chewed the fat with divisions of death, sated slaked in blood and rage. He had killed, for need and desires of testimony to the wont that coursed through his arteries. He had killed for mad passions of power and efficient evolutions of unbroken transfer, the transfer of fountains and the spirit of necessity. He had killed in guise of eternal secret and picket fence fantasy, in flourishes of love and ever alert reverence, in reverence of the drive toward expediency, torn, engaged, unwearied by the push of wont. The distracted wholes of feeding wolves and nihilistic men he thought in a certain contemplation. He had killed the length and breadth of homeward bound berths in wolf rule and in faithful prayer.
The siren continued and the cell door slid open with a clanging of gears and steal sliders. Tentatively, Astor explored the exterior of the cell. The resonant whoop of prison clamber filled the halls and maze of cells. Astor, undisturbed and full of purpose, moved through the open gate near the end of the cell block. Fundamental transformations began to overwhelm his senses as he traveled through another gate, closer to the outside world of freedom and chance, the chance of a lifetime.
Darkness filled the exit near the visitors booth . No guards and a myriad of screaming inmates. Astor moved through the exit at a lope then a trotting caution then a galloping run, his paws fresh furred and clenching reflexively. Sanguine wolf sashays of freedom tinctured his escape. He saw the silhouette of another wolf for a moment, unbidden, near fields of saffron and wheat, near god’s touch. The vision faded and scorched pathways of scared earth lay before him, his destiny.
In the grace of a winter reckoning Astor looked to the arid desert sands and agreements of dusty cactus bloom as he found his purpose.