RDP Tuesday: WILDERNESS

Summerween Writing Challenge: OWL

In another life, before he found his home in the forest, the barred owl who did most of his hunting in the cemetery with  nine unmarked graves and a smattering of bones scattered along the ground was had been named Waffles by the humans who had found him with an arrow in his wing and nursed him back to health.

Waffles didn’t exactly dislike humans, but he knew to stay away from them and he knew some of them were good and some of them were bad and that there were things in the forest that looked human and those human  smelled like death and their eyes burned red in the darkness.

Waffles and creatures who shared his appetite for an easy meal that this scent carried, knew these particular humans  would be good  to eat but that they took great exception to anything that tried to make a meal of them. So when Waffles saw these gray shadow people drifting through the forest, he pulled his wings tight to his body and he was as quiet and still as one of the corpses buried in his graveyard.

Waffles rested during the day, but on this particular morning, it was cold and foggy and still  a little dark he opened his eyes and was surprised to see a man under his tree, with two small bundles placed on the ground in front of him.

The man was kneeling. He opened one bundle up, shook it and a small human tumbled out onto the ground. The second bundle he opened was larger. Waffles knew what dogs were and that was what the man dumped on the ground with a grunt.

The man looked up and saw Waffles looking down at him and then he said, right to Waffles ” Tell your friends breakfast is on me. ”

The man stood up, he kicked the body of the child and out of his way and then he stopped and turned around. ” I hope you enjoyed that bite you got out of me you bastard ” he stomped on the dogs head and ground his heel as hard on the poor animals face as hard as he could, which wasn’t easy because the forest floor was very soft.

Then the man picked up the trash bags, he kicked around the leaves and dirt and then he started to walk and he disappeared into the trees.

But the man wasn’t alone, something gray, something that didn’t notice  or care how many eyes tracked it from the bushes and tree tops and from behind rocks was following him and it was hungry. Waffles sat still, very, still and through the darkness in the distance he saw the hungry gray human catch up with the man.

He saw the man turn around, he saw the Gray Human- whose family name was Wendigo reach out grab the man by his neck,  he saws the Wendigo shake the man and when he was done,Waffles watched the Wendigo  feast in peace and in private  and in a little while the Sun came up and Waffles fell asleep.