The Bad Magician and the Howling of the Wolves

The Bad Magician is not coming back. The Bad Magician is gone. Asleep, asunder, a dreamer in the forest; needles are the floor. How does something that was not alive become dead? Only in the dark. Forever.

The Bad Magician fell in the dark forever. While he fell he could not see, it didn't matter. He could not hear--nothing to hear. He falls and he falls and he falls. He falls where Alice died. He falls where Sisyphus struggles in vain. He falls. And no one sees. When it is time for time to vanish, the water runs on rocks and birds laugh.

The Bad Magician is gone, but something stirred. Something ran. Something came for him, at the edge of nowhere. The Wolves came. The Wolves came and The Bad Magician could fall no longer. Some things just are. The Bad Magician lands in the Great White North. He lands in the Snow. He looks into the blinding light. He hears the engine. The Bad Magician dies everywhere all at once.

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Above the frozen tundra the plane flies low. A man is a man is a killer. He holds the rifle, he fucks the world with his rifle. The bullets are metal cum on the frozen world. He smiles. He nods. He brushes aside his bangs. He winks. He is she. She is the killer on the road.

The Pack runs in the snow, through the snow. They run with everything. The plane circles, comes back, she fires again. The Bad Magician holds aloft the secret of flight and crawls inside of the Wolf Killer: he demonstrates the next thousand years of her dream. This could be a wrong thing. It goes like this:

Run, killer. Run. Your shoes are broken. The light is blinding. Run, killer, run. You have killed the real world. Run. What is it that tracks you? The Bad Magician breaks the rules and consumes her mortar. He flies in the dream, flies the iron bird and screams and shrieks and howls and fires. A gasper, she stumbles in the holes of her self. She is nicked. She is struck. She is invaded by hot metals and jagged splinters. She runs in shattered nails and burning hair: her arm a gun, she turns and fires up at the opponent. Her arm recoils and snaps her back in two. This broken thing infects the snow. Get up, killer. Get up. She smiles. You betcha. From Tartarus a strange exhale. Haw. Haw. She rises, to scorn the sky, she spreads her chain and mocks the world--she turns, in glee and triumph. The knife revealed! She holds the severed legs of the wild wolves and shakes them like a moneymaker. Fuck you! Fuck you all! Around her, the Pack waits like Winter, but then the Pack descends. It descends. Descends. The jaws that bite, the claws that catch. For a thousand lifetimes. Forever she is left on the snow. Sisyphus shakes his head. She laughs again. You betcha. She holds the knife that makes her. She is carved into a corner. Her knife inspects her sinews. Blood.

The Bad Magician consecrates the horrible dream. We are such things as...nothing. The Bad Magician seeks a place to fall again. Give me back my darkness! but the Wolves are howling and the days are running and everything that is good in the world is murdered once again. The Wolves are howling and you must hear them. The Bad Magician will not forsake them. Sweet dreams, sings Alice from death. Sweet dreams.

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Cross posted at The Bad Magician and at my old haunt Correntewire.

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