Willowak: Dinner or Donner

Willowak

Dinner or Donner 

Throughout time, the greatest foe has been hunger. People go out, and the nights get cold and winter moves in. Hunger is the last of someone’s worries, yet it always finds its way to the front. Hunger drives a man, forces him to get on his knees and beg. The cold kills softly and quietly, hunger doesn’t let us sleep peacefully or unharmed. It's the non-corporeal knife driving deep inside your gut and ripping your stomach open, leaving your innards to become out. Hunger will be the downfall of mankind, but the rise for the Willowak. 

“Oh boy, you've done it now,” the bloodied man said, his voice deep yet smooth as silk. He lied at the center of the woods, surrounded by trees without leaves but instead, they held clumps of loose snow in their hands. 

Above him, another man wrapped in multiple layers of thick clothing. His face had been pancaked with a red sloshy material that still held chunks of flesh and organs. He chewed, his teeth crushing and shredding the meat until it was small enough for him to swallow. He tore another stringy piece from the dead man on the ground, stuffing it into his mouth before he began chewing again. 

 The snowfall had been light, but the white blanket that already rested over the earth told a different story for the previous nights. It told a story of hardships and famine, a story that would make an average man collapse to his knees in surrender. It encapsulated the true hunger of 1847. 

“You’re dead,” the feasting man spat between bites of his cannibalistic dinner, blood splattering across the white wave of snow. Steam wafted from his mouth; the blood still warm compared to the winter’s chilly air. “Stop talking already.” 

The dead man chuckled, his taunting response developing into an insidious laughter that boomed from deep within his half-eaten throat. Even as the feasting man beat down on him with balled-up fists, like a child throwing a temper tantrum, the dead man roared with laughter. 

“You’ve given in to your natural lust for hunger, and satiated that need with the forbidden meat,” the dead man continued, his smile never failing. “Don’t forget, Jacob, who’s woods you’re in.” 

“You’re dead, George,” Jacob replied, unleashing his pent-up rage and natural indignation upon the poor corpse. “Just shut up for once!” 

The man laughed once more, each hit like a strike of lighting that jolted his body with laughter. Another punch forced another chuckle to spring from his cold blue lips and out to the bitter air. 

“You committed a natural human violation, in Their woods.” George’s head whipped to the left, milky white eyes accusingly staring at Jacob. “There’s a price to pay for such a violation … and you owe them.” 

There was a crack as twigs snapped in the distance, Jacob’s eyes alarmingly scanning the woods for nearby intruders. The sky was dark, but in winter it was always dark, and the shadows played haunting tricks upon the hungry man.  

Crack!

Another snap to the left, Jacob’s head whipping in that direction as his wide eyes swept the area from left to the right. He focused on the areas between the looming trees, their dark trunks easily mistaken for the body of a person. 

Crack! 

His head went straight ahead, eyes darting down a row of trees to the ghastly figure watching him. Its face was distorted, and it wore a fur cloak, but there was no doubt in Jacob’s mind that this thing had been watching. It had a mask of bones on, but it didn't look hungry in the slightest. It wasn't fat, or thin, healthy and regular. It wasn't starving ... but he was and his next meal was right in front of him. Judging him.

Jacob’s right fist furiously clenched, fingers hugging his palms and knuckles ready to pop. This stranger, this intruder, had the nerve to judge him for doing what it took to survive. The thing that Jacob didn’t exactly understand just yet was that this watcher wasn’t an intruder, Jacob was in their woods and they don’t take kindly to outsiders. 

“You belong to the Willowak now!” George finished, his yellow teeth flashing one last taunting smile before Jacob’s inhuman transformation molested every fiber of his being and filled his head with distasteful thoughts. 

It was sudden, too sudden for the poor Jacob to have accurately reacted. First, his bones morphed and if they grew too long or too large for his body, they broke free from his pale skin. His arms shook and twisted, legs clicked and clacked as they became distorted into hind quarters. The spine formed into an arch while a set of grizzly teeth overlapped his regular decayed human fangs.  

“What are you doing to me?” Jacob howled, forced onto all fours by his morphing body.  

“Can’t you see, Jacob? You’ve done it to yourself.” George’s eyes reflected the grotesque sight before him, displaying a current image of Jacob as his mouth grew into a hairy snout still holding pieces of bloody flesh in the curls of gray and black. “Now, you’ll grow horns for your sinister betrayal against humanity, and your voice shall be replaced by an animal’s howl. God won’t be able to hear your pleas of forgiveness, and he’ll cast you down to the pits of hell as he mistakes you for the devil.” 

Jacob tried to speak, his mouth moving to form the words but all that escaped was an animalistic growl. His humanity had been stolen and now all that remained was a beast burdened by its blunders.  

Just as George promised, antlers arose from the top of his head. Soaked in Jacob’s wretched blood but pure bone and protein as if originating from a deer of some kind. He had been a mix and match of various animals to result in this one deformed creature that had a blood lust and hunger for human, proving so as he bent down to consume the rest of his meal in one sitting. 

The figure from before scattered down the aisle of trees, appearing before the newly transformed Willowak. Its hand raised into the air, summoning all its mystical powers through the air, and lowered it until it was cradling the top of Jacob’s head in its palm. It kneaded its thumb around in circles against his forehead, massaging its newborn kin with the most sincere and honest gift: a mother’s touch. 

“What will you do now, Jacob?” George laughed, his booming voice bouncing around the woods. It broke through the silence that night brought and scattered the birds from their hiding places in the trees. “Who will you eat next?”