“There are two wolves inside you,” said the old man. “They are fighting to the death. One is anger, one is love.”
“Which one will win?” said the boy.
“Whichever one you feed,” said the old man.
“There are two wolves inside you,” said the old man. “They are fighting to the death.”
“That’s a pretty used-up meme format,” said the boy without looking up from his phone.
“You and that damn phone,” said the old man.
“There are two wolves inside you,” said the old man. “They are fighting to the death.”
The boy chose the “interact” option.
“There are two wolves inside you,” said the old man. “They are fighting to the death.”
The boy completed several additional quests, then returned to the old man and chose the “interact” option.
“There are two wolves inside you,” said the old man.
The boy threw his controller across the room, turned off his Xbox, and wrote an angry post on r/gaming.
There is one wolf inside you.
“Was it truly a victory if my opponent was undernourished?” asks the wolf.
“Do you consider it a victory?” replies the therapist.
“I guess? I mean, law of the jungle and all. Still, something about it seems wrong,” says the wolf.
“That’s all we have time for this week,” says the therapist.
The wolf, overcome with rage at the unceasing flow of time, throws its head back and howls at the single, unblinking eye of the moon.
“There are two wolves inside you,” said the Facebook post by the guy you maybe had high-school Chemistry with or something.
There are two wolves inside you. The first now has a restraining order against the second, as well as full custody of their three cubs.
“There are two wolves inside you,” said the old man. “They are fighting to the death. One is anger, one is love.”
“Which one will win?” said the boy.
“Whichever one you feed,” said the old man.
The boy thought about this.
“Whichever one you feed,” said the old man.
The boy looked at him quizzically. “Mister, are you all—”
“Whichever one you… whiCHE—” The old man’s eyelids began to twitch uncontrollably.
“Get down, Billy!” shouted the first officer, drawing his blaster. He fired a single shot and the android slumped over, a curl of ozone-scented smoke rising from the hole in its chest.
“Are you all right?” said the first officer.
“I… I think so,” said Billy.
In the silence that followed, the only sound was the quiet hum of the ship’s ventilation system. Though the porthole windows, Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, floated in the blackness of space like a single, unblinking eye.
“There are two wolves inside you,” said the low-effort shitpost in multicolored script font over a picture of Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels from Dumb and Dumber 2: Dumb and Dumberer.
“There are two humans inside you,” said the wolf to the cub. “They are fumbling through the trees in the dark, their hands outstretched before them.”
“Can I smell their fear?” asked the cub.
“You can,” said the wolf. “It awakens something within you.”
The cub began to growl softly, beads of saliva forming in the soft fur of its muzzle.
“Tonight, you are a cub no longer,” said the wolf. “Tonight, you join the pack.”
The wolf raised its head skyward, toward the single, unblinking eye of the moon, and howled. Soon the cub joined in, and their cries echoed through the primeval darkness of the forest.
There are five people with six wolves each inside them. Each of these wolves has seven people inside it. If half of the wolves are fed and subsequently defeat and kill the other half, and the people within the defeated wolves cease to exist, how many people will be left in total?
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” said the doctor, “but there are two wolves inside you. I’m not sure how this is possible, but they appear to be gestating normally. According to a veterinarian colleague I consulted, they are on track to reach full development within four to eight weeks.”
Lianne’s thoughts drifted back to that night, a mere three moon cycles (and yet so many countless lifetimes) ago, when she had first known the mystery of the Becoming. With Sebastian at her side, she had learned the ways of the hunt; together they had raced and sported under the full moon, baying at its opaline roundness. They had come upon a flock of sheep, and had torn through them in primal bloodlust before bounding back into the shadow-dark forest, their muzzles dripping with blood.
Later, on a mountaintop watched over by the single, unblinking eye of the moon, they had joined in passionate and all-consuming congress that drew from the desires of both man and beast while exceeding either in intensity. She remembered gripping the thick, coarse hair of his mane in her claws as she gave herself over to wave after wave of animalistic ecstasy.
Somehow she had known, that night, looking up at the moon, that it would be twins.
“What’s the copay on something like this?” asked Lianne.
“I have to check, but I think it might be outside your network,” said the doctor.
“There are two wolves inside you,” said the old man.
“You cannot withstand the storm,” said the devil.
“Try to avoid mixing metaphors,” said the English teacher.
“I am the storm,” said the wolf, before throwing its head back and howling at the single, unblinking eye of the moon.