[FICTION][07/14/2026]THE WOLF OVER WALL STREET
By Daisy Alioto
PART ONE: THE WOLF
I had the dream again, the one where I’m trying to get you to take your pills. I’m running down Park Avenue, tapping people on the shoulder, asking, “Have you seen this man?”
They are responding how you would expect.
So I start poking them in the back of their sweat-soaked dress shirts. Right in the middle of the stain. “Hey!” I say, “Have you seen this man?”
At this point, I’m weaving through the Union Square farmer’s market. My feet are starting to turn to vapor. And I look down and realize I’m holding up a crude drawing of a cartoon wolf.
“That’s a wolf,” one flower vendor says.
“Nonetheless,” I say, “He needs to take his pills.”
In another dream, you’re a baby in the NICU. I tap on your incubator with one long, painted nail. “This is a message from the future,” I tell you. “Take your pills, motherfucker!” Then I leave, of my own volition, because you’re not supposed to yell at the babies.
I launch your pills out of a t-shirt cannon. I apply to work as a janitor at your office so I can crush them into the Keurig pods. I learn how to pilot a plane, and also how to sky write, but I crash after “TAKE,” and die.
PART TWO: THE DEER
After I’m reborn, I start spending time on a message board called take your pills, for girls whose ex-boyfriends don’t talk to them anymore. There is a woman on the message board who works as a public defender in Ketchikan, Alaska.
She met her ex-boyfriend when she successfully defended his case. See, the police in Ketchikan like to set up mechanical deer along the highway. Hunters stop and shine their headlights on them to shoot them. Then the police, who are hiding in some brush––using a remote control to swish the deer’s tail and ears––arrest them. It’s called spotlighting and it’s considered an unfair advantage. She successfully argued that her ex-boyfriend was just passing through.
I dress up like a deer in headlights and wait for you to shoot me.
I make a friend on take your pills named Stacy. “You can know what’s going to happen in advance, but you can’t stop it,” she tells me.
“So true, queen,” I say.
PART THREE: THE WOLF AGAIN
Stacy and I make a plan to smash up your therapist’s office. Then maybe you will need to get a new therapist. One that won’t just ask you how you are feeling but also whether you are taking your pills, going to sleep at the same time every night, abstaining from caffeine, abstaining from weed, abstaining from nicotine, abstaining from alcohol, and abstaining from lying to all of the women in your life.
We agree to wear wolf masks. I get scared halfway up the scaffolding. “Imagine how scared you’ll be if he never gets better,” Stacy says from below, in kind of a low voice. “So true queen,” I say.
We smash your therapist’s diplomas, undergraduate and graduate. We pull all of the drawers out of her desk and dump them on the floor. I find a Tech Deck, which I pocket. “Should I pee in the plant?” Stacy asks. I consider this. A rubber tree plant can live for over 100 years. That’s a long time to hold a grudge.
“No,” I say. “The plant is innocent.”
I know you’re never going to get better.
Climbing down the scaffolding is worse than climbing up. I can feel the adrenaline leaving my body, my limbs turning to vapor again. Stacy hits the ground first and pulls off her mask—it’s you. It was you all along. I let go and float downtown, a wolf over Wall Street.
Daisy Alioto is writing a romance book.