The day broke through the night with a distant and silent fury. The sun, rising slowly into the sky, wept its impotent rays over the glimmering tundra of ice and snow and rock. The land was flat and stretching, the panorama free of obstruction or monument. The sky bellowed in the deepest of blues, seemingly untouched by man and his streaking contrails of pollutants and commerce. Temporarily abated, the wind was muted and the cold sat upon the earth with a complacent heaviness, awe-inspiring in its brittle restraint. This was the great white north, a place where survival manifested itself in the tender afterglow of a looming and palpable isolation.
The Inuit, who had slightly inhabited this place since the awakening of their time, ventured here only upon necessity. Mostly, they left it for those beasts - the wolf, the polar bear, the artic fox, the seal - that had been granted the genetic grace to thrive in this clime. Man was largely unwelcome here and this place was wrought with wandering phantasms of those that had perished under its vindictive cruelty. Here, the fragility of living and dying was outlined and omnipresent.
Under this particular weight on this particular day, a solitary figure, clad in seal furs and microfiber thermoplastic ethylene polymer, shook himself begrudgingly awake. The night had thrown his blood flow into a churlish melancholy, leaving his fingers and toes hopelessly unresponsive. Normally, he sported the stiffest morning wood, a steel shaft of true and radiant and petrified glory. But, today, he hung limp and uninspired. Woefully, he felt, frozen. He had slept only fleetingly, his dreams haunted by thoughts of ghosts and redemption and the symbiotic bond between man and God’s wilderness. He exhaled into the morning, watching as his breath formed cirrus clouds of steam before dissipating into nothing.
Mike Barwis had come to this ancient land in search of something, something that was perhaps profound. He had come here to master the law of the wolf, to understand the time-honored tradition of the pack. He had come here to assume his place among the legendary. To do so, however, he knew he would be tried in the ageless court of predominance. He shook his canteen of chocolate milk and found it frozen solidly. Sonofabitch, he muttered. His muscles badly needed casein and whey and glucose. They yearned for it, angrily and rigidly lusting for sustenance.
Barwis harkened back to his ultimate fighting days. He remembered the gassing emptiness he felt while in the octagon, the feeling of standing on the precipice of collapse. He remembered the electric feeling of accomplishment when he rose from those depths. He remembered reaching into the depth of his soul and pulling from it a monstrous and towering force. He remembered peeling his opponent’s skull open in the same way that an orangutan extricates the fleshy meat of the jackfruit. He remembered, simply, the intoxicating nectar of victory and the sweet taste of pwning another man in hand-to-hand combat. This is why we train, he thought. I need to be able to go long, be strong, be mobile, be explosive, change direction well, have great body control and be an effective athlete.
He thought about his wife, Autumn. Her tender caress, her sculpted biceps, her remarkable core stability, her supple breasts layered upon a cement-hard foundation of pectoral muscle. What a woman. Glancing at his watch, he saw the time approaching 10 a.m. Autumn was probably doing power cleans right now, looking foxy and sweaty and altogether magnificent in her workout gear. A lycra goddess. What a woman, what a fucking woman. Barwis thought also about his son, his beautiful spawn. His small, simple gift to the future of strength and conditioning. He loved that boy, loved him harder than he could express in words.
Barwis snapped out of his reverie and remembered that his literal survival was on the metaphorical line. In an effort to shake off the oppressive coldness, Barwis let routine become him: 4,000 calf raises, 2,000 deep-knee bends, 4,000 one-armed military pushups, 8,000 crunches. Rest. Repeat. Vomit. Push it to your limit and beyond, he thought. Push it, baby. Take yourself there. Oh yeah. After it was done, he felt alive in a place feeling anything was really something.
He was ready. His sweat sat wet upon his brow and he disengaged himself from thoughts of hypothermia. Hypothermia was for weak, brittle men, the kind of men who trained on the Bowflex and drank protein shakes. Today would be the day of reckoning. He had come so far and sacrificed so much. He had braved the cold and emptiness; he had fought through snow and ice that cut horizontally and brazenly upon him. His face was chapped and welling red, stung by the ferocity of his reality. He had traversed the untouched canvas of this northern world with little more than his desire to be faster, stronger, better.
Barwis had been trailing the pack of wolves for nearly a week. They noticed him, curiously focusing their marble-sized yellow eyes on him from a distance. They stared through him, trying to rationalize his presence and his purpose. They yipped at him, uncertainly probing for his intentions. They seemed, however, hesitant in approaching him, attentive to his burgeoning masculinity and chiseled abdomen muscles. Their mannerisms were proud but hesitant, as if to say, we hard but this motherfucker crazy.
For his part, Barwis could smell their worry. These wolves, these simple beasts of instinct, they knew that an epic maelstrom of man and muscle was hunting them. But their feeble minds did not and could not grant them the gift of foresight. They knew nothing of cause and affect or altered storylines. But Barwis, he knew.
The day passed and the sun fell onto the horizon. Daylight was a precious and fleeting thing in this cruel wasteland. Instinctively, Barwis knew that the wolves knew that confrontation was to soon walk amongst them. They would do battle, man and beast, and a winner would emerge. The stakes were enormous: if Barwis won, he would become the pack leader. He would control the wolves and they would respect and fear him. It was the law of the wolf, the way things were. But, if by some traumatic twist of fate, the wolves were to emerge victorious, Barwis would be torn to shreds and consumed unceremoniously. He would be left as a blood stain, a small, red-streaked smear on the enormous white loneliness that was this place.
As the stars began to blink into their constellations, Barwis exhaled into the night and sprung forward. It was here, in the speckled beauty of twilight that Barwis made his move. He was living on energy, a lightening bolt, wildly snapping and crackling. The wolves turned upon him, gnashing and showing their teeth in sign of an impassioned defense. But as Barwis steeped forward, they melted away, shrinking into the anonymity of the background. All of them, that is, except for one.
Barwis had long known this would be his combatant. A big, burly bastard who left wormtrails in the snow with his dick. He was a robust thing, a creature of the purest creation. His fur was a deep black, his pelt scarred by brutal battles fought on his ascension to pack leader. He snarled at Barwis, his red gums and chipped incisors flashing menacingly. He was god damned beast, a miserable and vindictive fellow. This would, indeed, be a marvelous battle.
Barwis addressed the wolf with a gravelly and unhinging tone. Listen to me you good for nothing, cock sucking dick hole, you rat bastard canary-toed son of a cunt, today will be your last as pack leader. He paused before starting again. You cheese dick, limp wristed excuse for a predatory beast, I will tear you apart with my hands, I will make you wish you had never, ever, ever slipped out of your mother’s battered and sloppy dog vagina. All you pack are belong to me.
Having said his piece, Barwis rested. The world stopped. Epiphany was upon them.
It happened. Man and wolf, sheathed in muscle and rivalry, collided in midair. Barwis’ body responded magnificently. Upon impact with the wolf, his spine felt like an iron bar, a corrugated steel shaft. The wolf instinctively backed away, searching for strategy. For the first time in his long and distinguished life, the wolf felt the cruelty of apprehension, trepidation in the face of true competition. But, in the continuum of fight or flight, the wolf fought. He lurched towards Barwis, sinking his teeth into the meaty area just above the knee. Barwis yelled in pain and smashed his elbow on top of the wolf’s skull. Together they fell into it, convulsing heap of violence.
The battle raged. The pack looked on in awe and fear. This was cataclysmic. The silhouette of man and beast danced and cut through the night, each landing terrific and massive blows upon each other. As the wolf began to slowly, albeit steadily, tire, Barwis seized opportunity like a philosopher seizes thought. He grabbed for the wolf’s enormous penis. Its significant weight writhed in his hands, snakelike and brawny and undeniably impressive. With a flourish of quick fingers and athletic maneuvering, Barwis tied the appendage into a bowline knot around the canine’s rear left leg. Hamstrung and feverish, the wolf tried to ratchet itself forward, his penis stretching pink and taffy-like. But, to Barwis’ relief, the knot held and the wolf collapsed into a whimpering bundle of fur and defeat. Mike Barwis had won the battle for the ages.
Barwis, in a flourish of victorious abstraction, knew what he had to do next. He sought the pack’s matriarchal female and walked, slowly, over to her. His body ached but his mind was afire with the sparkling riches of achieved success. He had won and winning was the only thing. His heart was aflutter. Upon reaching the bitch, Barwis unzipped and urinated on her, his streaming arch elegantly and gloriously flashing a glint of yellow against the dull, monochromic background of snow and night sky. As he relieved himself, Barwis stared at his crumpled opponent, his felled adversary, and laughed, heartily but compassionately. He was pack leader now. It was, simply, the law of the wolf.
Next: Mike Barwis and Robotsaurus Rex: Rumble in the Jungle
