Entry Seventeen
Windigo (Dream II)

As you may very well know, I get lots of nightmares. Who here doesn't? Just because not everyone remembers them doesn't mean they don't have them. I hear screams all the time at night, even from the seemingly happiest of people that are ready to be released. It's kinda funny when you think about it. Some of them think they're getting better, but they aren't. No one gets better. My dreams remind me of that.
    I'm running. I'm nearly out of breath. This is a dream and I can't breathe because I've been running for so long. Is something chasing me? Ah yes, of course there is. That must be why my heart was pounding so hard in my chest and my eyes...my eyes are burning. I'm in a forest of some sort. Trees, shadows, bushes, foliage all around me and no path.... There is no path, just miles upon miles of forest. Something's been chasing me all along, like a windigo or something. Yeah, a windigo.... I remember hearing about that once in one of my classes. They used to be some old Native American myth--a creature that would stalk its victim until they went mad with fear and paranoia. I knew some people who were obsessed with the legend and hence that's probably why it's here in this nightmare.
    That's it, though. The worst part about it is that I've been running for so long, and it never catches me. It never catches me. I don't even get to see its face.
    There are hyenas ahead. You would think it'd be the windigo but I know. O do I know. The hyenas are chewing on something. They're jowls are saturated in blood and meat dangle between their yellow teeth. They don't even notice me at first as I stumble into their clearing; they just continue feasting upon their meal. As I inch closer, I realize that they're actually eating a person--a real human being.
    The victim is staring at me. Their eyes are just about the only thing I can make out the rest of them is all blurred. I can see their body ever so perfectly, though. The hyenas have torn them apart from the inside, their entrails spilt, their intestines torn from their abdomen. Their mouth is slightly agape, but they don't scream. They never scream. They're so silent and peaceful but they keep staring at me.
    Next thing I know, the hyenas are chasing after me. No, not chasing. I know because their teeth begin to dig into my face. My skin rips so easily under their sharp fangs. They chew and gnaw until there's nothing left but a cracked cranium and brains oozing out of the bent metal plate in my skull. The hyenas crush my head. The hyenas eat my insides. The hyenas put rocks and bones in my abdomen and they chuckle, they laugh. The hyenas are having one jolly of a fucking good time.
    They leave me for dead.
    It's said that when you die in your dreams, you die in real life. I call bullshit. I'm lying there, dead as a fucking doornail, but at the same time my body lies in my bed, sleeping but tossing and turning and entangled in sheets while screaming so loud one of the staff members comes in and wakes me up telling me that I've disturbed the rest of all the other patients. They give me medicine, medicine, and more medicine to help me sleep, to help my nerves calm, to help me not have any bad dreams. I believe one of those were antidepressants. Funnily enough, when I wake up later that day, I'm nearly bouncing off the walls. Wendel thinks it's improvement. I still call bullshit, because I know.
    Who the hell does Wendel think he is? Some kinda doctor?
    O irony, I sing for thee.

--Alexander

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