WALKER
by Rycke Foreman
Devon walked. Silence was his partner. Loneliness, his companion. Both were his life. Because of this, emptiness dwelled within his body, inhabited his soul, ravaged his mind. His life was a solo flight, devoid of the simplest pleasures. Filled with melancholia, denial, isolation. Dissatisfaction.
The cool two-in-the-morning breeze ruffled his thick hair, as his desolate eyes penetrated the familiar timber that stood, sentient, along the roadside he traveled most nights after work. The loneliness crept farther into his essence, as if the mild wind pushed the emotion deeper, into yet-unknown wells of sadness.
But still, he walked on.
Devon was of average height and weight, a dishwater-blonde with hazel eyes. Neither ugly nor handsome, dull or intelligent. Just average. And unloved.
Unloved.
He was a tragic. He was not hated, or even disliked--yet he was unloved. The lone trekker had spent thirty-two years living as he walked now--companionless, alone. The hope of ever being loved had waned into the oblivion his psyche had become; even the emotion of hope had faded, vanished in years long past.
Devon’s footsteps echoed hollowly within his ears. Depression had stolen into him once again, a routine in his nightly journey home. It reached deep into him now, as he crested the hill which left a long, lonely mile until his dark and empty house.
He had never loved. Like everybody else, he had had crushes when he was younger, but he’d never experienced True Love. He’d never felt the satisfaction that all people long for, need, yet rarely find. After all, what is love anymore? A three or four year marriage, divorce, then finding another lover. Devon was, one might say, a rebel: He was a romantic. In the years that hope had flourished, he had wished for a lifelong commitment; he had waited for it. But his flight-of-fantasy had never landed. Devon had no one to share the joy found in love and caring, in compassion. He had no one. Nothing.
The trees danced in easy, casual arcs as the breeze gently rocked them. The slow wind running, singing through the trees was hypnotic. The brittle October leaves whispered secret lullabies in hushed tones. With that luminal rhythm Devon kept his pace.
For a while.
Slowly, Devon advanced down the unfrequented road, to where his house (for how could it ever be a home?) quietly awaited his arrival. The waning crescent moon lit the serene, wooded landscape. No moonbeam magically cast a spotlight on what Devon saw next, but an electric reverence twinged his deadened core just the same.
Devon stopped. A few yards ahead of him, and to his left, a she-wolf stepped from out of the timber. And, for the first time in his repressed, comatose life, Devon felt.
This emotion ran deep, swiftly within his veins, into his quickening heart, bathing his dejected soul. A feeling so alien to him that, for a moment, he knew not what it was.
Love?
The she-wolf’s soft, sleek, gray coat shone brilliantly in the half-moon’s blue-silver light. A haunting aura surrounded her; a study in the pastel glow of the night’s reflections. She was a gift of beauty, placed on Earth to shame all. He stared at her, gazing intensely, with awe...with love.
The man dropped to his knees, calling to her, patting his legs for further incentive. Obligingly, she stepped forward. As she moved to him, Devon could see the sadness in her eyes--the loneliness, despair. The same wicked emotional scars that he himself saw in countless mirrors of countless days. She knew what it was to be an outcast.
As she drew nearer, though, he could see her emptiness being replaced. Her yellow, lupine eyes lost their hardened edge. They now hinted trust, unity...and love.
The she-wolf went into his arms with a grace that equaled her beauty. Devon held her--felt her warmth--and their love displaced their pathos. Devon found his need and embraced it. A solitary, cleansing tear crept down his face.
“Take me away,” he whispered, as if to a lover. “Take me with you.”
The she-wolf licked his face; felt the roughness of his whiskers, the warmth of his touch. A rapture settled across both of them--something soothing, like nothing either had ever known before. Gingerly, she moved her head down, and tenderly took his throat into her mouth.
Devon felt no pain...just love.
The feeling was mutual.
Originally published in Crossroads...Where Evil Dwells, June 1993
