It's that jerk awake at midnight
Looking to your left and then right until your eyes adjust, drawn to one corner
there it stands.
Tall, grey skin over bone pulled tight as a drum
Still panting through its corn husk lips as if it is trying to keep blood pumping
Its heart removed.
The monster is back to feed.
You're walking home at night, stomach growling again
Turning a bend you run into a wall of a smell
Decomposition, palpable and thick
the Windigo stands under a street lamp bathed in light
Ashen skin nearly translucent, eyes meeting yours, it stares. Dry lips parting
Its teeth are revealed.
Rows of razors with human flesh still clinging to their yellow tinge
The same teeth that bit you years ago
Now its blood runs through you.
Your feet are bare, thick with mud as you run through the woods
Ice spikes the air and your lungs, your legs carry you, thin skin, grey like the day
You're searching.
Looking, pining for the next human you see because maybe when this one meets your mouth and is greeted by your teeth you will feel full.
You will feel complete
That smell of death and hunger will cease to linger around you
But you never find it.
This is the punishment you are handed.
Bones stinking out sorer than a thumb, barely human but still a cannibal, feasting on the flesh of the innocent
Scouring for that one last bite that will satisfy
The one piece of flesh that will make you breath easy and smooth
Hoping and holding out for the person that will fill your belly, curb your appetite
Wanting, Waiting for the pink to come back to your cheeks and the drear to stop its lingering
It stays.
That musky oder still permeates
Your stomach crys out
Your lips remain dry and cracked, all you can taste is the blood running onto your tongue
You are alone at night
Fear doesn't reach you because you are that thing that makes people cringe at in the dark
Teeth gnashing, eyes rolling, hands grabbing, skin peeling
Trying to clutch for the last shred of humanity
Choke it down.
Swallow
only to throw it back up
You will never be full
A spring gone dry
A wheat field molded
Your own eyes sewn shut by your inability to see
And what does it even matter anymore?
The malevolence already surges through your bloodstream
The disease is already infected into your system
So lift your eyes to the peaking sun
Open those desert lips one last time
Not for medicine, for one last cry
And run back to the tribe.