Windigo

            Eating the flesh of another is said to steal their essence to become more of what I am. It’s a half truth, I have become more powerful but in a way that is making me less human more animal. I don’t mind it really; the animal part is a relief from the human in me who finds it disturbing to eat a fellow person.

            The Native Americans call creatures like me Windigos. I went to the library one evening after work and looked it up. Again half truths, is all I found. I know what I am or rather what I’ve done and need. There it says a person who gives themselves freely to that of the Windigo will go into the forest for seven days and fast and sacrifice themselves to the spirit of the Windigo. That isn’t what happened to me.

            My father, who had moved my mother away from people, took her to a small cabin in the mountains of the Sierras. There I was born, there I was taught what I was taught, and it was there that I died and was reborn. Impossible you say? Hell, I would have agreed at the time, as I lay there in a pool of my own blood. The coldness pulling me under, the air around me I tried to breath kept escaping from the giant hole in my chest that had shredded my lungs. I was ten, and the shotgun blast did some damage.

            I knew I was dead, and then I heard a voice. And then the coldness melted away, and when I came too I was in the hospital. I awoke screaming from the pain. You wake up in a place you’ve never been with electrodes and wires stuck in your body and a half healed hole in your young chest, and see if you don’t.

            I was never the same after that. As I slept I dreamed of a dark shadow, that’s screech paralyzed me. I couldn’t move as the thing came upon me, and its human hands ripped into the soft new skin on my chest going back for my newly reformed lungs and started to pull them out of my chest. I should have died, but then I looked at the creature and I found to my horror that it was me.

            That was the first of many nightmares. And sometimes when I awoke I would find myself in my foster home’s fridge eating the raw meat that was pulled out to defrost. It wasn’t until I was 25 that I finally stopped fighting what was in me and embrace my beast. I bought myself raw meat and left it in the fridge for those late night cravings.

            Life got easier by embracing my sick dark habit, but I craved more. I was young, and most young people crave more in life. I was fine in my secretarial job. It paid me enough to live and to buy a few extra things so I can be comfortable. But unlike most who strive for more in life, my beast strived for more to eat. I became hungry all the time. I ate ALL the time. As much as I swore I would be one of those women needing an electric buggy to get around.

            The doctor said I was fine, and that I had a very high metabolism and perhaps too much iron in my system. I knew why the iron, but I wasn’t going to tell him that I ate raw meat in the middle of the night as I slept. Na, ignorance is bliss. And I believe doctors have daily orgasmic episodes. They might be tagged doctors, but they are a bunch of ignorant fools.

            One afternoon bored and hungry I wondered into the museum of Natural History. There they were doing an exhibit on Indian Folklore. It was there I met my soul mate, and discovered the legend of the Windigo. He worked there at the museum and was very well known for his archeological finds. It was sort of like animal magnetism. Love at first site.

            We enjoyed each others company so well. And one night as I stayed over he caught me sneaking to his fridge and look for meat. He knew I was asleep, so in the morning he asked me about it. And being in love I told him everything, from the beginning. He was not disgusted, as I would have been. I fascinated him. And he supplied my meat cravings.

            I noticed a difference shortly after he started to feed me. At work I received a very deep paper cut, one from a cardboard box and it stung like hell. As I was applying some Hydrogen Peroxide to the cut I noticed there in the bathroom that it had already started to heal. My hunger had faded more, and his meat had a very different taste.

            I had stopped on my way home one afternoon as I caught my reflection in the toy store window. There a statue of Darth Vader was encouraging kids to come in. But it was my reflection that got my attention. I looked normal, but there was something wild about me. I looked at the world slightly different or mostly the people in my world different. I tended to catch myself watching coworkers and other people as if they were prey, and I a tiger. Studying, waiting, until that moment of weakness when I pounce and strike.

            Speaking for my human side it started to freak me out. The love of my life said don’t worry. And made me eat, and it was there that he fed me a dinner of raw meat. I don’t think I’ve ever really ate raw while awake. At first it made me sick, but then the animal in me came to the surface and inhaled the bloody meat. All the time, my lover watched me from across the small table, studying me.

            A few months and we were married. He didn’t whisk me away to some shack in the woods, but insisted I move into his giant condo. Sure, why not? There he asked me to start cutting some hours at work; he made enough to support me. Again, sure why not? He started to feed me raw fresh meat during meals, he insisted on being there for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

            And then he stopped. He said for a while let’s do an experiment on no meat for a few days to a week. I became cranky and mean, and very hungry. Whatever normal food I ate never sated the beast in my stomach and it went on growling and causing me pain. I became sick, and soon I would awake with mud on my feet and leaves in my wild hair. One morning I woke up with blood on my hands.

            My husband told me that he had watched as I ate, and everything was okay. But the pain had not left, and I was still hungry. And I had this weird feeling that it would be nice to get a few dogs. Of course my husband said no. Too much work, and he said that he worried I would get myself hurt with one of them. It was there that I started to question my husband. The man of my dreams. I think he had a secret.

            One late evening, the pain in my stomach was enough to keep me awake. So I lay curled up on our over-sized couch watching CSI reruns. I love Grissom, and his sense of weirdness. This episode was a repeat I’ve seen a few times, but I enjoyed it. Grissom was explaining about larvae when my husband walked in carrying a plastic bag of fresh meat. The smell knotted my stomach. I literally jumped over the couch and pounced him for the bag.

            I sat in the corner eating the meat, as he pulled up a chair and watched me with a smile. When I was through, I showered. Somehow I seemed to coat myself in as much of the food I ate; it was enough to make a normal person sick. But I wasn’t normal.

            I went to my husband and finally asked about his secret. He went to his dresser and pulled out a silver heart shaped trinket box, which he handed to me. I took it and slowly opened it, almost afraid to see what was in it. A little silver key lay in soft red velvet. I looked up at him puzzled. He gave me his super sexy smile, took the key from me, and led me to the basement.

            He told me to close my eyes, for he had a surprise. I obeyed. I heard him unlock the door and push it open. He flipped on the light and pulled me in. He told me to open them. I did, and I stared. For what I saw deserved to be stared at for a while. There on each wall of the small room where heads. Decapitated heads. They floated in bottles of greenish liquid. Their eyes glared at me accusing.

            For me, he said. He killed them, and fed them to me. He said it was a chance of a lifetime to meet that person you were so compatible with. It was there that I went mad. And madness wasn’t bad. He had used me to kill people. Sure eventually I would have killed people on my own, I guess, maybe. But he used me like a dog. This man I loved. Okay so I was a very angry mad person, and well my beast didn’t like my angry mad persona, so it took over. But I got the full show. And for some reason me and the beasty side had a merge. We were one. And the power of the Windigo flared to life.

            I let out a shriek like those in my nightmares, and my husband looked at me frightened, and was instantly paralyzed. Normally a person couldn’t rip into the flesh of another so easy, but I wasn’t normal. And I had strength unlike that of a regular human.

            I tore into his flesh easily. My hands dug into his belly, until my hand wrapped around some intestine and I pulled it out. I knew he was still alive. And it excited me. The intestine was just something to play with. And he was dying, so my hands dug upward. His insides were warm and cushy and soft like mixing the ingredients of cookie dough. I dug up and cracked his breastplate. I wanted him to see so I had to be quick. I pulled out his heart with an easy fluid motion that was almost a blur. And as his life faded from his body I bit into his heart. Over the night I had stripped off all the useful meat on his body and ate it. I had wallowed in his guts and blood while I played with his head as if it were a ball.

            I guess they had found the body by the time I had gone back to my family house. And the heads, and the missing wife. All evidence leads to him, so maybe he had killed the wife and then someone had come in and killed him. I no longer cared; my human side was now one with the animal. Together we lived happily, in a small cave by the old cabin. Drunken hunters, who shouldn’t have been there in the first place, come up missing. Lost hikers and crazy kids. My heart now coated with ice, seemed to not care who I ate. I was no longer human. I am Windigo.