Wendigo Psychosis

By Georgia Bowan

An avalanche. A skeleton found in the ruins, amongst the ice particles, severed limbs sprawled across the horizon, uncovered a beating human heart, still in tact.

The myth of the wendigo is real, we see it on the screen all the time. In blurred images, bad dreams, a whispering word of mouth. That man is a good man. That man does good for his kin.

These men, once healthy and strong, overcome with greed and thirst for blood, turned to the sick side of the moon where nothing grows. That man is a good man though, I swear by it.

They say that if the greed consumes your soul, if you bite the meat of another human, you turn into one of them. Tall, gawking creatures. Mouth agape, when not full of your innards. They’re grey, they crush skulls, they are so alone in their suffering. Yet somehow, despite their loneliness, the earth is crawling with them.

I saw one wearing the suit, speaking from the pulpit, said he wanted to send armies to wipe out the vermin. Another one had no hair, booming voice, spoke of sterilising the lands he had passed on his travels. An explorer. A leader. A homicidal maniac.

Wanted to make blood run through the dirt, wanted to drink it with a straw. His mouth was full of green paper, his finger hovered over a trigger unleashing only hellish suffering. His face is so contorted, can he even be called a man anymore? Can any of them?

Their punishment for eating the hearts of their own people, is eternal and unfulfillable hunger. Nothing can fill that mass pit in their stomachs, not even the thousand corpses of children stacked on top of each-other. They are consumed, they are unrecognisable. We do not claim them, we do not condone their ways.

An avalanche. A skeleton found in the ruins, uncovered a beating heart. No longer human, no longer in tact.