Dear Fellow Traveler,
He woke with a violent start, nearly hitting his head on the roof of the shallow cave, the rigid ceiling just barely missing the top of his head. The small scream that came out of him had also startled the rattlesnake a few feet away. It caused the creature to hiss at him aggressively as it shook it’s rattle in warning, it must not have noticed him, he didn’t have much body heat after all. After a moment of making itself known, the venomous diamondback chose to run away rather than to attack him. Not that it could break his tough skin.
Hopefully.
Seeing the snake, Harley took a moment to collect himself. He took deep breaths, trying to remember how to breathe correctly, or trying to get his heart to remember how to beat at a normal pace. Looking around, it reminded him he was still in the hot Arizona desert, within a small cave he had made camp in, and not the snowy woodlands being burned alive. Feeling somewhat relieved, Harley rubbed his face feeling his nervous sweat start to dry as his skin became cold again. He'd need to take a bath again. Hopefully his “monster musk”, or whatever it was, didn't stick to his sleeping bag again.
Because yes, that was his biggest worry. Not his nightmare, or the fact a poisonous snake was literal feet away from him. He always felt weird during the realizations of how out of balance his worries and thoughts had gotten. He worried about weird things, had to go to different lengths to not only stay sane, but to keep out of trouble. Then there were the nightmares.
"What is my life…?" He asked no one, flopping back down to stare at the cave's low ceiling.
The nightmares weren't frequent, but they were always the same regardless. The way the woods looked, the faceless group watching, and the scarily vivid feeling of the flames.
The young man had never been afraid of fire before, so he could only guess it was an instinctual fear, because it was the only way to really kill a wendigo. You could stab them, shoot them, or cut off their heads, but if you didn’t burn them, they’d come back. He'd flinch whenever he flicked to life his lighter or get shaky handed whenever he started a fire himself, his body practically rejecting the whole idea, he had burned himself a few times too. Hot areas wore him out, hot food burned in his stomach, but it was the only way to feel normal. Nights were cold and the fire drove the creature deep within the pit of his soul.
Still, what bothered him more than his consistent nightmares, was the absence of guilt. Never once had he been able to feel guilty. That's what bothered him.
"I'm sorry, I wish I could do better…" he apologized again. He always apologized to those three when he remembered them. The wendigo inside him seemed to eat his guilt and the feeling of trauma from that night. It haunted him. But that wasn't quite the same as trauma. To Harley, trauma meant he would see them in his dreams, hear them in his head, feel a gut turning feeling, and blood chilling spike when he would think he had seen them in a crowd.
He never did.
In fact the only time he saw their faces was when he opened his wallet and pulled out a picture of them. He couldn't remember the time between stumbling across their campsite while suffering the fever to waking up in a pool of blood and an overly full stomach. He knew what he had done. He just couldn't remember doing it exactly. He had of course panicked, he vomited feeling ill, and he heard that thing’s voice in his head, taunting him. Than it ate his guilt…
So instead, Harley felt more guilt over not being capable of giving those three a genuine apology.
The tired soul thanked whatever god was there that the wendigo didn't eat all his fear or empathy, who knows what kinda monster he'd be without them. It would eat it all someday, but at the moment, he was still himself, no matter how much the creature chipped away at him.
Two men and one woman. That's all he knew about them because he never researched what the police found from that night. He didn't want to know.
When it was obvious that he was going to have another sleepless night, he didn't bother to try and go back to sleep. Harley slipped the picture of those three back into his wallet and started packing up his sleeping bag. "Might as well start walking." He sighed as he slung his bag over his shoulders, and put on his headphones to listen to music.
Thinking about it, he also thought about that night alot less than you’d think. A normal person would probably have nightmares about that kinda event every night. Just another reminder that he wasn't human anymore he guessed.
Though it wasn’t like Harley didn’t regret what happened.
He went into a state of shock when he realized what he had done. The voice of that thing in his head laughed at him, it was loud at first, but nowadays it was a whisper he could ignore. The shock didn't last long either after the wendigo settled inside him, and his body adapted to the changes it forced.
That night was something that haunted him instead of traumatized him, but like a lot of other things, he locked it away deep in his mind whenever it tried to surface.
It might not have been a healthy way to cope, but it was the best he could do without a therapist or confessing to the police that he ate 3 people, and was now literally a cannibalistic monster with the strength and life span of said 3 people. Cause lord knows the damage that could be done if he was locked in a prison-
Yeah, you get the picture, not exactly ideal. Let alone something a normal person would need to worry about.
It was easier to handle, when he accepted it as it was, a crappy situation with equally crappy solutions. None were actually solutions, unless you count the “So no one else can get hurt” one, which by the way is also a solution used for animals who have rabies or have attacked someone. He was probably both at this point.
“Haha dark humor,” he said grimmly to himself as he walked through the darkness. Yeup, being left to his thoughts wasn’t ideal either. "It’s not like I don’t do what I can to try and avoid worst case scenarios, either.” he muttered to himself. Bringing up his bony hands to his face, he rubbed his face to keep away the drowsiness, "I also gotta stop talking to myself…." He sighed for the 50th time.
He stuck to small towns when he needed a bit of social interaction, and stayed in hot climates, so he could manage the things inside him. Socializing helped ignore its voice, and the heat made it too weak to crawl out of the box Harley shoved it into. And lastly, if he kept from having hunger pains, he wouldn’t eat people.
It was still about a few hours of walking between water breaks before a small town came into view and dawn started to peak over the horizon. The sky was dyed shades of violet, blue, crimson and yellow as the sun started rising. The twinkling stars faded from sight as the light stretched across the land and sky, chasing out the cold night, and bathing everything in color again.
He had seen a lot of sun rises since his travels had started, odd how he never had the mind to appreciate them before.
"You can eat a lot of things you gross bastard, but you can't eat this," he laughed weakly to himself as he brought out his phone to take a subpar picture of the scenery. His life was ugly, cold and lonely, but at least the world was still beautiful.
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