I bleed.
I burn.
I sit at the top of the temple upon the stone alter forcing the base of two antlers into my skull.
The skin was weak and tore easily when I scratched it with the bone. I moved the antlers in circles like a drill until my skull cracked to make way for my new crown.
It tickled.
It hurt no more than the spears. None hurt as much as the hunger growing inside.
The bones were ecstacy.
The owls gather around the stone by the dozens to look down on me, on the antlers hanging crooked in my skull.
I feel them straiten out. My skull fuses around them to make us one. To make us whole.
My limbs snap this way.
They crack that way.
My limbs stretch and lengthen till they stay.
My jaw unhinges and I howl.
I howl at the moon.
I scream out to the owls who are watching in death's stead. The same death who refuses to take me.
I howl at the hunger within.
..
I've hunted and eaten enough chimera tails to become immune to the poison. I know because one struck me from the net I caught it in.
Mitch's ring was beside the dragon. I ate like a queen that day, so did a few of the locals, but we'll hollow soon. We will hunger again.
...
Year -. Mind -.
Forgot. Grew.
The parasite that connects the deer to the trees has changed me. One latched to my face. I am thin and scraggly. My arms resemble trees with some moss, it tastes. It all tastes. Everything tastes.
....
Why did I end up here at a Greek shipwreck? Who am I? I read Marie's journals, but they can't be right. That can't have been me? I am a creature of the forest. An eldritch God of hunger. I cannot argue that my mind is broken, but food is not broken. The hunger is the only thing left that makes sense.
YOU ARE READING
Wendigo Island (ONC2024)
TerrorYour greatest fear is monsters in the dark. The last thing you expect is to become the monster in the dark. This story is not about heroes. This story is about ripping away any pretense you have about what it means to be human. At the end of the day...
