I Let the Wolves In - Illustrated

Some monsters never force the door. They simply wait until you open it yourself.

Chapter One: They Were Always There

They had been there for years,

scratching beneath the floorboards,

breathing through the cracks in the walls,

circling the house at night

with yellow eyes and patient teeth.

At first I fought them.

I wedged chairs beneath the door,

slept with every light burning,

pressed shaking hands against the locks

and told myself I was stronger

than whatever waited outside.

Chapter Two: Patient Wolves

But wolves are patient things.

They do not need to break the door down.

They only wait

for the nights when your hands are too tired

to hold the lock shut anymore.

They waited through the panic,

through the sleepless hours,

through the days where I carried my own body

like something already half dead.

They learned the sound of my footsteps,

learned which boards in the hallway creaked,

learned how long I could go

without hearing another human voice

before the silence itself

became a wound.

Chapter Three: Every Road Leads Home

At first they stayed outside.

I could hear them pacing on the porch,

their claws tapping softly against the wood,

their breathing heavy beneath the windows.

Some nights they whined like lost things.

Other nights they sounded hungry.

I tried everything to keep them out.

Music loud enough to drown them.

Television until morning.

Crowded rooms.

Long drives.

Conversations that meant nothing.

Work until exhaustion.

Anything to avoid sitting alone

in the same room as myself.

But every road led home eventually.

Every distraction wore thin.

Every laugh faded too quickly.

And there they were again,

waiting outside the door

like they knew

they would outlive my resistance.

Chapter Four: I Opened the Door

And one night,

after too many battles with nothing,

after too many mornings of pretending

I was still alive

in all the ways that mattered,

I stopped fighting.

I opened the door

just to see

what would happen.

Chapter Five: They Belonged There

They entered quietly.

No growling.

No violence.

Just slow paws across the floorboards,

slow breathing in the dark,

as if they had always belonged there.

One laid beside my bed

and whispered every fear

I had ever buried.

One sat on my chest

until breathing became work.

One followed me room to room,

making sure

I never forgot

how little of myself was left.

Another slept beside the front door,

guarding the exits.

Another stood

in the bathroom mirror,

wearing my face

but speaking

in a voice

that hated everything about me.

Chapter Six: Every Wolf Had a Name

Soon they were everywhere.

In the mirror.

In the silence between phone calls.

In the long pause before answering,

"I'm okay."

They slept in my ribs.

They drank from my thoughts.

They fed on every good memory

until even joy began to feel

like something that had happened

to someone else.

The house changed after that.

The walls seemed smaller.

The windows stopped letting in light.

Dust gathered in corners

I no longer had the strength to clean.

The air itself felt heavier,

thick with old fear

and the smell of something rotting

where no one could find it.

Friends stopped coming by.

Or maybe I stopped answering.

It is hard to remember

which came first.

All I know is

the rooms grew quieter,

and the wolves grew bolder.

They climbed onto the furniture.

They slept in the hallway.

They scratched their names into the walls.

Failure.

Regret.

Shame.

Loneliness.

Fear.

Each wolf had a different hunger.

One wanted sleep.

One wanted hope.

One wanted every plan

I had for the future.

The oldest one wanted memories.

It fed on birthdays,

old laughter,

the sound of people I loved,

until I could barely recall

what happiness

used to sound like.

Chapter Seven: Living with the Wolves

There were nights

I could feel them

breathing around me in the dark,

their bodies shifting across the floor,

their eyes glowing

in the corners of the room.

And I would lie there awake,

staring at the ceiling,

wondering

if this was all I would ever be now:

a man

keeping company

with wolves.

Sometimes I thought

about opening the door again,

about forcing them back outside.

But I had lived with them

so long

that the silence beyond them

felt almost

more frightening.

Chapter Eight: Part of Me

Because at some point

the wolves stopped feeling like intruders.

They became routine.

They became familiar.

They became part of the house.

Part of me.

And the worst part was not

that they came inside.

The worst part

was how quickly

the house grew quiet

once I stopped fighting them.

Epilogue: The Quiet House

There are nights

when I still hear them

moving through the house.

Not with hunger anymore.

Not with urgency.

Only with the quiet certainty

of things

that know they belong.

Sometimes

I forget

they are there

until I catch my reflection

and wonder

when I stopped recognizing

the man

looking back at me.

The house still stands.

So do I.

But we have both become

something different

than we were

before the wolves

came inside.