The Lone Wolf and the Hooknoses

Manhunters for Humanity

As I step out of my cabin for a breath of night air, I hear them howling in the periphery. Are these wolves or Carpathian Shepherd Dog bastards, the kind that have mixed their blood with wolves and returned to the wild? I can’t tell their nocturnal cries apart. Regardless, they don’t bother me, and I try not to bother them. This is their home, not mine. The mountain people tell me the wolves are the best night watch you can ask for. Their howl warns from miles away if an intruder enters the territory. You just have to learn to recognise that specific tone. Perhaps it is so. While I get along fine with my canine neighbours, I don’t speak their language, but there is primaeval beauty in their wolf song, and that is good enough for me.

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I cannot complain about my location, this blind spot on the map. I’m closer to heaven than ever before. The universe is blessed by clarity for us who dwell under the arching mountain sky. The night is enigmatic and crisp, the void is black and blue, while the Milky Way is all white light. The twinkling stars are calling out to my soul like sirens on a foggy sea. “Why don’t you come home?” Oh, I’d go there. I’d cross the galaxy in a millisecond if I had wings that would carry me.

But I am not lost even if it may seem so. Up here, I’m out of reach for the Mossad or whatever cadre of hooknoses are on my tail at the moment. Not that I fear them more than the circling wolf packs or the occasional brown bear roaming the hillside. I’d consider surrendering to them if it weren’t for my earthly duties, but I still have things to do. I have a purpose to fullfil or, if you so like, a deal to honour. Otherwise, I’d let them reel me in and have their mock trial, then hang me in public like they hanged my comrades in rows. I think I would enjoy the show and the ritual that precedes it.

The Die of Fate Has Been Cast

The hunter and the hunted are sometimes considered pieces in the same game, and maybe it is so. There may be things we have in common, these obsessed man hunters and I. Dare I guess we share the same cannibal gene?

We also have our differences. They are driven forward by nothing but the lust for revenge. I seek only oblivion. I float over the earth’s crust like an amoeba across the ocean floor, wherever the current takes me. God can spit in my face, and the Daughters of the Night trample me until they tire of their dance. I expect no favours from the Fates.

My persecutors cry wolf over any injustice they suffer in peace or war. Yet, when in power, they have no qualms about hunting down their enemies like animals and torturing them to death in front of a cheering crowd frenzied with blood lust. Their God tells them to graciously forgive their enemy, as one of the finest virtues imaginable, but do they listen?

The tide has turned, and they are now on the right side of history. I’m sure their petty revenge will be hailed as a heroic effort. Such is humanity that we cherish our cruelest urges and dress them up in righteous clichés while we lay the axe down on our enemies. They are the murderers, we say. We, on our side, honour Justitia by chopping off their heads.

The Legion of Archangel Michael, Underground

For now, I’m safe as far as this cliché ever describes the human condition. Some old acquaintances from the Iron Guard have been kind enough to let me use this mountainside cabin as a temporary retreat while my tracks cool down. It’s a desolate landscape, but I’m not alone up here. On nights like this, I can see the shepherd’s campfires light up like flares in the distance, and I hear them coughing and spitting or clattering with their cooking pots.

The good people of the Guard have organised a chain of helping hands from the village, and these gruff but under-the-surface kind-hearted farmers and shepherds make sure I get the supplies I need. They have been sold the story that I am a foreign doctor suffering from a mental breakdown. To them, I am a renowned scholar of botany who needs to be left in peace to study the flora and recuperate. No one must know where I am or what I am doing there. This story is not entirely untrue.

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Eat, Sleep, Dream, Wake, Under the Black Stars

I have become stateless, motherless, and fatherless. None of these can be reversed. I say I feel at home anywhere, but it is perhaps closer to the truth that I feel at home nowhere. Yet, I dream of my Motherland. I walk the earth as a restless shadow, but the North Star is always there, a homing beacon in the corner of my eye. My Motherland has beauty like this, mountains like these, and our wolves sing the same songs. They call me through the spirit realm, but it is in vain. I am outlawed, and as for home, I doubt that it exists anymore, other than in my fading memories. I can never go back unless, accidentally, I find a loophole in the fabric of spacetime.

The future is a minefield, and I do not have the map. It may sound melodramatic, but to tell the truth, I wish only for extinction and peace. I’ve said it a million times, but the universe isn’t listening. Apparently, it intends to keep me around until I have paid my debt. In the meantime, I must endure this existence as best I can, even if it is a sad spectacle. More than to stare at the night sky and to eat, to sleep, perhaps to dream, what is left for me?

On Top of the Old World

Oh well. Fortunately, thanks to the good Romanians, my circumstances are neither truly miserable nor demanding. These self-sufficient farmers are pure geniuses. They provide me with more than I can ask for, such as homegrown tobacco and pipes to smoke it in, robust wines, root vegetables and salted pork, sunflower oil for cooking, sheep’s cheese, wonderfully filling bread and roasted seeds to nibble on. I am sure my benefactors are greasing their palms, and I can only thank them for their generosity.

VIad, a villager with whom I have made a superficial connection, comes to visit me bearing a special gift. Resting on his shoulder is a hearty chunk of lamb, consisting of a leg with ribs attached, wrapped in waxed paper. He tells me in broken German that the meat is tender and ready for the grill.

I have become more comfortable in this little wolf’s lair than I thought possible, feeling my natural predisposition for a hermit’s lifestyle awakening. As long as the supply chain is kept intact, I would gladly stay here and wait for nothingness to reap me.

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Politics Is Poison

Things are getting worse, Vlad spurts out, when asked for news about the world below. The control over the land that was given to them not that long ago to farm it as they saw fit has been taken back by the state. The new regime is enforcing its ideas for agricultural collectives against the farmers’ advice. Vlad and his family have known for generations how to get the best possible outcome by dividing the land and the labour in a commonsensical way, but it means nothing to the party. With this party, the system is not for the people, but the people are for the system’s fulfillment.

It is a new Romania after the war. Communism has taken root under the boot of the Soviets as we warned that it would, and how it did it. Communism is a poisonous weed whose spread cannot be stopped. It is a Deadly Nightshade that will overgrow the old world. The same communists who yesterday tried to blow up the government, these criminals who were kicked out of the country for subversive activities but then came back to take control with a fraudulent election, are the new overlords. It doesn’t matter if you asked for it. You got it.

Vlad and his family in the village, meat farmers of the old stock, surely did not ask for it. Vlad is cunning, and I suspect he has figured out my actual background. We seem to have more in common than I first imagined. His family and friends were secret patrons of the Guard and watchmen of their nation, but now their lifestyle is being erased by what he calls ^“the skunks of socialism and communism”.

How the world changes, and how easily we forget yesterday’s shortcomings. You were all eager to get rid of fascism, but you left the door wide open for Satan, and he does not ask permission to enter. What awaits the Romanians now is yet to be seen. My prediction is that it will not be anything like what they were promised. These are new times for the people here. For my share, having VIad and his band of hardened pro-Romanians with one foot in the old world as neighbours is a relief. A hooknose sniffing around for dissidents up here can expect no sympathy.

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The Kiss Of Morpheus

It was the name of one of my famous concoctions, a sleeping potion with few equals, once described by a poet as a knock-out punch delivered by a butterfly. Not only did it send you straight into the realm of Morpheus, but it did so with grace and prudence. At least that’s what the label read.

I am not at liberty to reveal all its active ingredients. Some are well-kept secrets of the guild, but unexpectedly, opium was the lion’s share of the mix. If you try to imitate it, just remember to be careful what you mix with your opium.

Less secretly, it contained ground candied violets for a sweet and flowery character with a slightly bitter aftertaste. This is how I imagine that sleep tastes. The deep purple tint came from a potent elderberry concentrate. To uphold my trademark, I added a pinch of crumbled gold leaf, which gave the liquid an air of mystique and exclusivity.

Primarily, it was intended to bring rest to insomniacs, but it could also be used for other purposes. It became popular with rouges who wanted to make advances to a beloved but virtuous lady and could not muster up the patience to woo her conventionally. Five drops in her teacup, and she was yours for the night.

To my surprise, the most frequent buyers of this particular bottle were politicians. I honestly can’t figure out why. As with all my concoctions, be careful not to overdose, but follow my prescription strictly unless you want this sleep to be your last. Thinking of it, I guess I’ll have to add quite a few suicides to my list of customers.

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Lonely Is the Night

I wish I had the ingredients to mix it now. As I age, I find that natural sleep is hard to come by, and I have never gotten used to modern industrialism’s rhythm of sleeping regularly in eight-hour shifts. Besides, this mountain awakens instincts in me that I didn’t know I had. On a typical night, I sleep a couple of hours, and then I have to get up and walk around to make sure that all is well in my little camp.

When I am finally about to be granted some peace, the succubus arrives to haunt me. The wizened hag hides her face behind a chipped Venetian mask, but it is easy to recognise her, the sniveling whore with the blood-soaked shadow. She, too, has grown old and tired, and she hardly inspires fear anymore, nor lust. I tell her that I think of her as a grandmotherly figure. The succubus says, “Move over”. Then she wraps herself in the Hakencruz flag, snuggles up to me and cries herself to sleep.

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