One Week

She was so tired. It had not allowed her to sleep for almost two weeks now, and her brain felt muddy and thick. Her thoughts swam through but barely registered at all. She could feel herself starting to slip away.

Through her kitchen window she could see the snow drifts that grew steadily and shifted across the wide open expanse of the field. She could see its face as well, but she pretended it wasn't there.

It had appeared quite unexpectedly on the second night of the blizzard, its pale face stark and clear even in the white snowy night. At first she didn't understand. She thought her mind was playing tricks on her, that the isolation was finally taking its toll.

Then she remembered. She remembered nights on her grandfather's knee, hearing strange and frightening stories of brutal Northern winters. Stories of desperate, starving men who did the unspeakable and ceased to be called men. She recognized it then, from those stories of her childhood. The hunger in its eyes made everything clear. The blizzard had brought the wendigo, and she would not survive this winter.

The first few days it simply watched her through the windows, grinning humorlessly, its tattered lips drawn tightly across its face, showing stained and rotting teeth. Every room she entered found that face in the window. On the fourth day when she nervously checked her increasingly meager food supplies (she couldn't imagine how she had been so unprepared for the turn in the weather), it began to howl. The howling was nearly constant now, joining the howling wind from the prairie in a wretched chorus.

On the fifth night she tried to cover her bedroom window to hide that madly grinning skull but it only made the howling grow worse, splitting her head with pain. She no longer slept. She wondered how long it would watch her, its sunken eyes following her every move with an intensity she'd never before seen. Sometimes at night as she sat staring into its pale, gaunt face she wished it would do what it came to do, just to end this.

She tried to keep herself busy during the long days and even longer nights. Currently she was putting duct tape around every window to prevent the reek of decay from seeping in. She had not gotten used to the smell of death, though it was constant and unrelenting.

Finished with her work, she sniffed the air. The smell of decomposition remained; it was inside and out. The face just smiled through the glass. The air felt thicker than usual and her head began to swim. She sat down in her chair across from the kitchen window and looked out on the blinding snow.

The wendigo did something unusual then. It pursed its mouth and blew on the window. In the fog that remained, it pulled its bony fingers along to spell out "one week." Something inside of her snapped, forcing her from her chair. Taking a position before the window she screamed at the creature on the other side of the windowpane.

"What do you want from me?" she cried. The desperation in her voice shocked her.

It grinned back, slowly running its dry tongue across its torn and bloodied lips. She collapsed onto the floor, and the howling began again, even more insistent and pitiable. She could not stop the tears that escaped from her, nor the frustrated sobs that didn't even begin to drown out the howls from outside. One week echoed over and over in her head.

The wendigo grinned.

The next few days were unbearable. She had managed to find a small package of hamburger meat, and sat turning it in her hands. The meat was pink and bloody, and gray around the edges. The scent was alternately tempting and disgusting: metallic blood and slightly decaying flesh mixed with the smell of meals past. She ate it raw. It did not stay down.

The glass of the window said "four days."

The food was gone and the air was chilled in a way she couldn't account for. She hurt through and through. Her head was distorted and confused thoughts haunted her every move. Hunger consumed her mind and the coldness settled into her bones. She sat and stared at the wendigo. It had been keeping watch even more closely now, counting down the days in the window pane. The glass said "three days."

She was huddled under all of her blankets, shivering through the layers. She didn't move, saving her energy. And the glass said "two days."

The hunger was all that she thought of, staring down the creature through the window. She tried to remember how long a person could last without food, but the memory was lost somewhere in the fog. It had to be longer than a week; that much she knew. She would prove this thing wrong. The glass said "one day."

The next morning she was still sitting in her chair. She awoke to find bright white light streaming in through the window. She had slept. A smile crept across her lips, and she felt stronger and clearer. The creature was wrong, and she said so, even as it wrote "today" on the glass.

"I have a plan" she said simply, meeting its eyes. The wendigo grinned.

She calmly rose to her feet (yes, much stronger today) and walked to her bedroom. She brought out her sewing kit, and looked it over carefully. She was not much of a seamstress, but she'd make do. She returned to the kitchen and sought out her best knife, the chef's knife with a razor edge. Gently caressing the small mound of flesh on her forearm, she couldn't help but laugh at the simplicity of her plan. She would prove this creature wrong; she would survive still.

Pulling together all of her nerve she laid her arm across the cutting board, gathering her wits. The cold wind cut her face and she looked up. There in the doorframe it stood, bent and yet somehow imposing, its ribs straining against its torn and tightly stretched skin. It grinned even more broadly now, and gestured to the window: "today."

It crossed the kitchen and gently took her wrist with its bony hand. In the other it held her knife. After weeks of nothing but howls the wendigo finally spoke, "Allow me."