Freedom of the Wild

It rained like mad. The world outside was bleak and dreary, and I was bored. I caressed my crucifix, anxiously awaiting my roommate's arrival. But he would be a while yet, I reasoned, I only got the letter this morning. My parents rented this swanky apartment building next to the college for me on one condition: I’m to have a roommate. Social isolation is a beastly thing. And I’ve been living my whole life behind a wall, dark and lonely on my side; and on the other side, full of laughter and chatter. Back then I thought my parent’s were doing me a huge favour by forcing me to interact with other people; but hindsight reveals the hideous reality through a less biased, more experienced lense: and I now realize that my parents wouldn’t have had to force me to do this if they proved themselves successful as parents. But I was brainwashed into worshiping the ground they walk on, conditioned to believe every fault was my fault; made to believe what my parents wanted me to believe -- or else God will start preparing a special place for me in hell.

I smiled amd felt at ease, possibly even happy, watching the rainwashed city streets outside. I was raised in a suburban neighbourhood, upper class, and seldom allowed to leave the house. My parents were afraid of me interacting with “delinquents” on the streets who would tempt me off the righteous path; then they displayed an utter exhibition of shock and astonishment when they found I wasn’t exactly a social butterfly. Being tired of the endless white-picked fences I was excited. Y the huge, bustling city. Of course my parent’s enforced strict regulation -- although technically they had no sway over me anymore -- so I was not to go into certain sectors of the city, especially by night, and I only should interact with god-loving citizens; in fact, they thought the roommate lodging in the fancy quarters with me would be of that type.

I loved how rain distorted, and the night accentuated, the lights of the city; the whole world seemed like a neon-light show. Suddenly, the lock clicked and the door burst open. My hear somersaulted into my throat; he was here! I summoned up all of my courage and marched to the door, adjusting my suit and fixing my collar.

He stood there, with a cockeyed grin, his shirt open to show the top of his hairy chest, his bright brown eyes radiating energy.

“Hello,” he said and winked at me. He was chewing gum, but I thought I could smell something stronger off him… alcohol, I thought? No, impossible. The mere thought of booze set off blaring air raid sirens in my head.

“Hi,” I said, “My name’s Paul Hagerty, and, um," I tried to think of something to say.

He walked up to me, grinning warmly. “Hello Paul,” he said and laughed, then grabbed the limp hand dangling by my side and shook it. I smiled a little, and shrunk back. I never saw a man like this. He walked with his shoulders high, head high; and he had a confident, agile, panther-like stroll.

“My name is Tyler,” he said; “Tyler Fitzgerald. And -- oh mama! -- this place is sweet.” He went into the bathroom and out of my sight but within hearing range:

“Holy cow, man, this bath is huge! And there are no bodies here?” He howled in laughter. I wasn’t sure I liked this man. He was strange, wild, and unChristian. But he stirred up some feeling deep within my subconscious, some strange, alien feeling which would later serve to open whole new vistas of reality for me. He stalked out of the bathroom and I noticed something about him which was there before, but which I didn’t notice: there was some melancholy quality to him, his eyes, although sparkling with good humour, seemed distant, and centripetal. He held out a carton of cigarettes and offered me one.

“N-no, t-t-thanks,” I swallowed.

“Not a smoking man, huh? You really think that cigarettes are what kills? And even if they are, what does it matter? We die anyway, and there is always misery somewhere down the road, so might as well end it, am I right? Besides, why worry about the future? Live in the moment. We came to be as some dust particles, and it’s gonna go full circle: we will end up as some dust particles. The universe will wipe us out eventually; be it by a cigarette, car accident, cancer, or frenzied serial killer. So what’s the point about worrying what’s gonna kill you; what does it matter which of the hundreds of things will kill you? None of it means a damn. Be yourself, have fun and don’t think about it. Because the future is made out of false hope and misery, so live in the present where there is mercifully nothing.”

With that, he lit one up and continued his tour of the apartment. Needless to say, we didn’t get along too well. I actually wrote and sent a letter to my parents, complaining about the lodger.

The next day Tyler announced that he will host a party here. By party, I assumed three-piece suits sipping on martinis and laughing in groups of three to the soft tune of jazz; I found that he actually meant people in ripped jeans and jumpers snorting coke and drinking beer and yelling hysterically like hyenas while Rage Against the Machine boomed from the speakers. I excused myself from the rave pretty quickly and set off for a midnight walk. Something my parents would have undoubtedly disapproved off. I was lost in thought wandering those icy, nightly streets. I pondered Tyler, and I pondered my parents, and I pondered God. The streets became less brightly-lit and became more narrow, more claustrophobic, and became choked with exhaust fumes and even fouler, unnamable miasmas. The houses were derelict and deteriorated to dingy mockeries of their former selves. I heard harsh laughter from some dark, unknown corners, and I became overwhelmed with a dread feeling. The streets suddenly swelled with an oblique blanket of mist, and the muted, distant sounds lend a dreamy cast over the world. Nothing felt real.

I was warned against these kind of places and started beating myself up over wandering through the streets without direction. Finally, I saw a beacon of hope: a bleak yellow light shining from the corner. When I arrived I found the locale to be a chipper. I would have went in but I looked in through the windows first. I saw a clientele of a degenerate, deranged types: ragged clothes, general depravity, all of them wolfing down greasy, beastly food because that’s all they could afford. It looked disgusting. But then I saw the people making the food. An old lady who, by her manner of strangled, choked speech and her frantic attempts at hearing the customer, I deduced did not know much English; obviously poor and pitiful, labouring a hard, chaotic job just to support herself, and an old, obese Indian man: with a dirty apron and a detached, forlorn, face as he lumbered about, trying to do his job, and not get fired. This sorry sight wrenched my heart, I never experienced real misery until then.

Seeing this, I backed off quickly and tried to retrace my steps back down the alley. I passed a bar pulsing with a heavy bass. And when I walked beyond that and rounded a corner, a frenzied hobo jumped out and seized me. He brandished a knife. Shiny and sharp. Grabbing my mouth, he dragged me behind the corner, as I flailed around in his his tight grip like a fish on land; he threw me to the ground and mounted me, driving his fist into my face until I was left stupefied.

“That’s a nice set of clothes you got there, chief,” he said, slipping off my tie; “You know, I don’ wanna hurt ya. So just stay still, okay, a well adorned lad like you, ya gotta have plenty o’ money for new shoes and jackets, so just stay still; okay?” And I did. I was frightened and my pulse beat so hard I felt it reverberate off my collar. Eventually my breathing slowed and became more of a sombre sob rather than frantic hyperventilation, and the hobo encouraged this change in breathing,

“That’s it, chief, hold it together. Now be a good boy and slip that jacket and shirt off.” I complied.

“Say, chief, that’s a nice cross you got there,” he said, “My little girl is into crosses. Looks fancy, too. Lemme have it.” I would have let it go, but my parents conditioned me into thinking that that goddamn piece of fucking wood is more important than my life.

I started flailing around again and swung my scrawny arms at the hobo, but he parried and slashed the knife across my cheek. He ripped the crucifix off my neck and pocketed it.

“Now, chief, what’d I tell you ‘bout lashing out?” He said “Imma take ‘em boots, and if you try to kick or punch, I’ll hurt ya, ya hear?”

I kicked and punched, and got kicked harder and punched harder in return. I got beaten till my face was a bloody pulp and my whole chest became a black and brown with bruises. My breathing became raspy and laboured. I heard a car drive down the street, and when it saw us, it stopped. A gang of five jumped out. One of them was Tyler.

“I don’t want no trouble, fellas, just forget you ever saw this,” my attacker said to the party standing there, looking like predators gazing down the prey, which was the hobo.

“Or what?” Tyler said and stepped up to us, while the rest made a rough circle. “You wanna one on one me, you fucking bum?”

The hobo swore and launched himself at Tyler, slamming his fist into Tyler’s face. The first hit Tyler and his face just kind of twitched sideways and promptly relocated.

“Bah,” Tyler said, “pussy hit. Try harder.”

In my sorry state, I couldn’t help laughing. The hobo stood there punching Tyler for about five minutes, until he collapsed to his knees gasping and panting. Tyler’s skin split all over his face and it was all bloody and gory, but he just stood there, towering over the kneeling hobo, laughing and shaking his head in pity. When the bum looked up, he got slapped. The hobo fell over, unconscious. Tyler stood over him and brought his foot down onto the hobo’s leg, I heard a snap and the hobo shot out of his doze in a screaming fit of agony. Tyler strolled over to the other leg and stomped on it too. The hobo screeched again, tears trailing down his cheeks.

“That’ll teach you to steal from people,” Tyler said. The hobo tore a vocal cord screaming and resorted to frantic sobs which eventually turned into a hoarse gasping as he bit his tongue so hard it bled, and then the choking commenced. The whole company merely stood there howling in laughter at the hobo as he choked on his own blood.

“Lucky we came along, heh, kid? We were going to the bar just down the street. You guys go on ahead. I’ll get the kid back home.” Tyler picked me up and loaded me in the car. The rest helped me dress. Among them there was this girl. She took my breath away. In a fancy skirt and shirt, she had such silky, stocking-clad legs… But, remembering my parents red with rage when they found I experienced sexual thoughts, and remembering how at length they had lectured me, I quickly shut my mind off.

Back home, Tyler cleaned me, bandaged me, and packed me off to bed.

“Sweet dreams, kiddo, hope we won’t have to get you to the hospital tomorrow.”

This was one of the last nights I ever slept well before Tyler showed me the truth. That night I was too shocked and surprised to comprehend the fact that Tyler took a huge beating and a some slashing with a knife and didn’t even budge or grunt or anything, just laughed at the hobo like you laugh at baby learning to walk but constantly falling over. The next morning I forgot all about it, but remembered I lost the crucifix. But, oddly, only minor worries surrounded that fact, and they all pertained to my parents.

Tyler met me in the kitchen, he was wolfing down his breakfast in his robe, and he had some waiting for me too. His wounds already healed; and after a careful examinations, we concluded mine were merely superficial.

“You know,” Tyler said, “I pity you. You’re a slave: a slave to your parents, a slave to society, a slave to religion. Yeah, I saw that letter you sent to your parents, you shouldn’t leave your mail out in the open. Have you ever pondered death, Paul, and what happens after? I mean, fuck the bullshit religion tries to peddle you: invisible men in the sky?

“Religion exists to imprison you. It dopes you up with hope. With bullshit hope, and makes you go chasing fairy tales, devalues the lifr here-and-now, distracts you from it, and diverts your attention from reality. That and TV, dont get me started on TV. Cheap bullshit to dumb you down, subdue you; dope you up with all its grandeur and allure, so you dont know how badly capitalist are fucking you. You should see the fucking surplus value on a regular job, man, your just getting enough to live off of and keep labouring for crooks and gangsters, while they drug, distort reality. Thats why I say -- fuck consumerism, fuck authority -- live life howerver you wanna, be trurly free.

“We’re all addicts. Some addicted to coke or heroin, but the masses, they’re drugged up on dopamine. The synthetic stuff. Oh yeah, that's right, they manufacturer happiness nowadays and sell it to the dumb masses.

“Kids are shaped into slaves in schools: taught to bow down to authority; their individuality is destroyed, they all end up the same. Cogs in the capitalist machine. After school is done with a kid, there aint nothing left but the wires and the screws. Nothing organic.

“I guess I don’t know anymore, man. All my life I’ve been searching for something. For some meaning; for some rhyme or reason. But then I realized there was nothing. I guess I couldn’t accept it at first, but eventually… Well, drugs and alcohol solved the problem. Now I have fun whenever and however I want.”

I didn’t say anything, I just got up and left. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I turned and tossed in bed but to no avail. I eventually took some valium and managed sleep. But the pills stopped working eventually, and I was forced to stay up nights contemplating what Tyler said. It chilled me to the bone, because I felt the truth in it penetrating my skin. I cried night after night. Tyler, meanwhile, hosted huge raves and snorted coke and popped pills to no end, but his health seemed not to be affected.

“You’ve been thinking about what I said,” Tyler told me one morning;

“How do you know?”

“I noticed all the Nietzsche books you bought. Listen, do you truly wanna be free? Free from corporations, free from society, free from your parents, free to the point where you’ll be able to do as you see fit, with no limitations? I can provide you with that opportunity; I can make it so that we both can party and fuck around and do whatever the fuck we want till the break of dawn. Free from fear, free from hope, free from everything.”

I did, but I didn’t attribute any validity to the mad rambling of my roommate then and there; but out of sheer curiosity, just to humour him, I said yes.

“Great,” he said, and next morning I found him smiling and generally enthusiastic. That night, being awoken around eleven, I was asked to quickly dress and follow Tyler to his car.

We drove endlessly. The tall and frequent buildings of the city flattened out into occasional sad huts squatting on the horizon; and the strobing lights and music melted into the sparkling glimmer of distant lanterns and a a chilly chirping of crickets. As we wound down the lonely country lanes, we eventually took a sharp turn deep into a dense forest. The car halted, and we exited.

I begun suspecting something as Tyler lead me deeper into the forest. We came upon an opening in the ground: a dark mouth gaping into some unknown and unseen chasm. I decided this is taking it too far when Tyler asked me to step down. With a sigh at my resistance, he seized me and threw me in, and I rolled in a whirl of mud and rocks down into the depths of that foul place.

Before I even recovered, I heard fire crackling and saw, on the ground I was facing, shadows dancing, and behind me there were people laughing, and laughing amiably, as if I were in the company of friends, cracking jokes and telling funny stories. I turned around and saw I was in some kind of underground room, and in front of me there this bowl of fire on a short stone pillar. Around it, four people -- people I recognized as the ones who rescued me from the hobo -- were in a circle around this whole scene, laughing and smiling. Tyler slid down the sloping entrance and introduced me to -- Selena(the woman I recognized instantly) and Michael, and Carl, and Robert.

The people present acquainted themselves with me in a friendly manor, and then silence fell. I felt the air around me shrivel up and I held my breath in anticipation. Then slowly, Selana and the man named Michael started convulsing, and their limbs started twisting and contorting, their bones started to poke out against their flesh as it got darker and rougher, coarser and thicker. They were sent into a violent spasm, gargling and howling, morphing into hideous beasts before my eyes. When they were writhing on the ground, squirming and flailing, in a fetal position, I recoiled back against the wall. When they fully transformed, and stood to their full height, they towered well over me. Tall and stout and broad-shoulders, they were canine beasts, bulging with muscle, and adorned with fur: mighty and majestic. Their mouths, or snouts, displayed a vast array of sharp, glinting teeth, and they were salivating profusely. Their legs were horse-like, and bony: the bones there protruded sharply, at acute angles and pushed against the flesh, and were tightly bound in thick muscle. Their chests were huge, and their arms hung at their sides, adorned with blade-like claws.

“This, my dear friend,” Tyler, still human, told me: “is power. When the blood of the wolf runs through your veins, drugs affect you normally, except they cannot kill you, when you’re a wolf, you cannot die unless by the hand of silver; my dear friend, welcome to a free life.”

Immediately, one of the werewolves leapt at me and sank it’s fangs into my chest. I can’t remember if I felt pain or not, but I know I screamed and screeched. After I blacked out, I awoke days later to find Tyler sitting at my bedsides, smiling. “You’re one of us now,” he said, and I saw he was holding a knife. I was about to ask him about it when he stabbed me in the gut and pulled the thing out. The wound stopped bleeding and healed within two minutes, and I was convinced. Mostly because I’ve never felt more awake before, I saw everything in fine detail: each shaft of light, each edge, each shape and size as it’s own unique self, it’s like I was seeing in another dimension.

My Christian values were still ingrained in my brain, but step by step, they convinced me otherwise. The women I saw and took a liking to when in the hobo situation and in the cave, made me comfortable with sex(especially with her), Tyler convinced me drugs weren’t so bad, and the man named Carl showed me how fun breaking things and setting things on fire was. The next few decades were the best things that happened to me. It was a whirl of fun.

We went to bars, we got drunk, we fought; I accidently killed a guy once. With a pool cue, just to see what it would do. Well, I swung too hard and opened up a gory gash in his head. It was a big deal at the time but now I do at least once a month, if not twice; Robert, with his briefcase and phone calls, would make the matter dissolve into thin air and no questions were asked. We moved state to state; country to country, searching for the wild and exotic, getting drunk and high, and fucking around, and fighting and living life as a blur of excitement, hardly ever sober enough to contemplate or evaluate anything.

This was all in the 1950’s. I’m about eighty now, still young and good-looking, and quite bored actually. There’s only so many things you can do, and so many times you can do them: and worse of all is: you have an infinity to do them. Life was boring back then, when I lived as a mindless consumer, suppressing my desires and doing what people told me to because they told me to; and life became boring now that I started rebelling ultimately and living life like I always wanted to.

There are only so many buildings you can burn down, so many highs you can lose yourself in, so many ways to kill a man, that it all becomes the same game to you: just old routine. Once, in a bar at daybreak, a hangover still lingering in my brain, I came across Tyler, and explained my apathy to him, he said,

“Well, what did you think? Lifetime of pleasure and glory and no pain? Did you think this was heaven or something? Kid, misery will be everywhere, no matter who you are or where you are -- as long as you’re not too weak, too stupid, or too scared to open your eyes to the truth -- you’ll be miserable. But, I, personally, prefer to be miserable and free than miserable and enslaved. Life is a bullshit song-and-dance of people screaming and dancing and ultimately going nowhere; just a bunch of sound and fury before the inevitable and unending silence of death.

“See, people aren’t miserable because they’re sex-maniacs or alcoholics or drug addicts; no, they are addicts and alcoholics because they’re miserable. It’s ironic, the most sober of us are the junkies and boozehounds. Look, kid, eternity is boring. There were thousands of werewolves and vampires in history, most got bored and killed themselves after a hundred years.”