here to hear / spider hacksaw / ©2018

I heard howling last night, outside the asylum. Often I only hear it inside, because one of my fellow mental patients believes he is a werewolf. The howling outside comes from the woods because there are wolves in the woods. I’ve seen them. At least I’ve seen their eyes, glowing.
 
I don’t go into the woods at night, or at least I’m not supposed to, as we are not allowed out of the asylum after dark. We, all the patients that is, have a curfew, and the curfew at Noosehearse Asylum is prior to the dawn of darkness, also called nightfall.
 
As you know, I often go for walks in the woods. I walk to Goblin Cliff or Seven Hills Cemetery, which is the cemetery where they bury many of the patients who die at Noosehearse Asylum, sometimes by committing suicide by jumping to their deaths off of Goblin Cliffs.
 
When I see the wolves, it is in the woods, not on the cliffs. I am in the woods walking and they are in the woods, hiding. They are afraid of me, as I am afraid of them. They watch me from the shadows and darkness of the dense trees. If I were to get hurt somehow, say in a fall or some other fashion, some sort of accident, they would raise me up. They would raise me up from my fall by gobbling up my flesh and releasing my soul to the sky, and beyond. Because wolves are hungry. That’s why they howl. Because they are hungry. For flesh mostly, but also for love. Hunger and love are almost the same thing.
 
I sit sometimes, there in the cemetery. Just watching. Not thinking. Just sitting. Being. Listening to the silence that surrounds me. The deep endless silence that gives life to sound. For without silence, there would be no sound. I love the soft wind as it whispers to the woods, through the trees, using the leaves and the branches of the trees to speak so gently to the woods, and anyone, such as myself, who is there to hear.
 
There are wolves here. And there are ghosts here, in the cemetery, here in the woods by the sea, surrounding Noosehearse Asylum, and me. There are wolves, ghosts, trees, the breeze, and me. Sometimes the wolves howl, the wind howls, the ghosts howl. The mental patients of Noosehearse Asylum howl. And I listen. Because I am here to hear.
 
—spider hacksaw / January 2018
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