I remember looking at some artwork on a website. I don’t remember which website it was, or who the artist was, but there was an obvious suburban scene, and in it was a wolf making its way through peoples’ yards. This resonated with me; it was my experience that though the suburbs had an illusory sense of safety to them, that the wolf did not disappear; it existed on in the cracks of the suburbs: in dark basements, McMansions occupied by mid-level drug dealers, or as leaders in the exploitive bourgeois cults that popped up from time to time.

Perhaps the high schools of these suburbs was where the wolf really had its day: selling drugs, getting into fights, shoplifting, and overall being a nuissance. But the wolf did not disappear afterward. They still roamed the suburbs. Often, they would only go out at night, preferring to keep to themselves away from the prying eyes of a judgmental public. Many times, however, it was the police who were the biggest wolves of all, those guardians of the false sense of security that roamed through the streets day and night with the guns, the handcuffs, the blinking red and blue lights that scared away anything that violated the sensibilities of the public.

Who knows what rights were transgressed to keep out people from the city? For sure, if you did not belong in the suburbs, it was necessary to use stealth to find your way through the winding streets full of provincial people. There was another world hidden in the suburbs, though, of sex parties and magick; drugs were consumed at a rate higher than the inner city; it was just necessary to keep up the facade of normalcy while one went about it. Deals were done through contact with wolves, as you would call a wolf to your house at night, and he would come in and give you your stash, devouring your cash with glee. Divorce rates were high despite the emphasis on family life; people were unhappy.

The word got out about crooked psychiatrists who would prescribe you anything you needed, taking gifts from Big Pharma. It wasn’t known if the ones who gave out the good stuff paid off the police. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. It was keeping these kinds of things generally unknown that kept the facade going; hypocrisy was necessary to keep away the fear of death. Maybe a wolf would still devour you, but you were just as likely to destroy yourself with your lifestyle, your ill mental health gnawing at the edges of your brain.

There is a cliché that says, “anything not nailed down is free”. This, however, is not true. Anything not nailed down is generally viciously fought over by wolves who are just trying to do what wolves do and survive by devouring other lives. In the suburbs, the wolves were given their victims a little bit at a time. They nibbled at them; the victims were doled out, and agreements were made over who devoured who. Too much devouring would bring too much attention, and unwanted attention is the last thing you want in the suburbs.

Everything happened under cover of secrecy, just out of view. No one sold drugs in the park, except maybe really dumb kids in high school who hadn’t yet experienced the pecking order of the suburbs. Contacts were made; things were done through cryptic, minimal messages sent through smartphones, or through minimalist phone calls that used coded language. Oftentimes, the authorities knew who the perpetrators of the slow-devouring were, and as long as they didn’t devour too fast, they were allowed their victims. They were allowed, at least, until they found the wrong victim: someone’s son or nephew who had someone influential in the family, or someone who couldn’t stand to lose the facade of normalcy of suburban life. That is when the trouble begins.

But the wolf still existed; the wolf was an intrinsic part of suburban life, even if this truth was kept under wraps. Everyone knew a wolf, they just didn’t mention it to their neighbors, just like their neighbors didn’t mention the wolves they knew to their other neighbors. Maybe people thought they were letting a tamed dog into their lives, but no, the wolf still lived, even if it didn’t howl at the moon loud enough for people to hear.