#3 - Stripped…
down to the bone, and bone tired, the runner could not look up. Blood dripped from its hands; from eyes and from mouth. The runner knew it was too late. It could not be saved - it could never be saved. How can something with no memory, no self, be rescued? It did not know. Its mind was only in the present, in the torment. All knowledge had been stripped away from its mind with the slow, steady application of demon knives.
It ran from that demon, clutching onto the desperate, flaring pain in every fibre of its being. Feeling was better than not-feeling; better than blankness and numbness and emptiness and transparency.
It stumbled and fell, a flap of skin tangled about its elongated foot. Dirt crumbled into raw flesh, and the runner howled with the pain. It staggered to failing feet once more, then gasped as a dark figure materialised out of the fog.
"Boo," the figure said, then guffawed as the runner set off again, barely keeping itself upright. "You're so close," the demon murmured, its voice oddly flat in the damp air. "Almost the-ee-re." It followed the runner at a leisurely pace, its grin getting wider at every moan and drop of blood that tumbled from its lips. Or what remained of them.
The runner's gait was uncertain, now. Some buried instinct told it to turn around, go no further, stop oh stop, but it could not hear over the wheezing of its breath and the roaring of the demon's laughter and the hammering of the pain.
It swerved, lost balance, fell, and looked up as the demon approached; helpless as the countless human prey it had feasted on itself.
"Ngh-" it said. "Nhow pulaze."
"I don't understand Wendigo," the demon commented. "Do you know where we are?"
The runner - the Wendigo - turned its head and what was left of its eyes widened. "Curuzzruhh-"
"Bingo!" the demon said. "Oh yes indeed, very well done! A crossroads." Its voice was jolly and its smile wider than sin, but the Wendigo felt something behind it that was not jolly and smiley, and it tried piteously to wriggle away.
"Now now, what's this? You can't get away, surely you know that." The demon raised a carefully trimmed eyebrow and pursed thin lips. "You are going to die, that is foretold. But you can take the knowledge that you're helping a good cause with you! That's something, right?"
The Wendigo whimpered, and scrabbled at the loose dirt. It was clawless now - the demon had pulled each and every one, and set them aside carefully - but its bleeding fingertips still made vague impressions in the ground.
"Doing that only helps my cause. Less work for me!" the demon said, cheerfully. "Wouldn't want to get my meat dirty," he did a twirl, the fussy grey coat he was wearing streaming out behind like smoke. "It's such a handsome body, don't you think? Although I don't suppose you can see properly, can you, after I peeled away part of your eyes. Hm," he said. "I should probably get that shovel out now." He swung an ugly backpack off his back and pulled out a shovel blade and three lengths of wood, which he snapped together and then attached to the blade.
Swinging the shovel over his shoulder, he smiled down at the Wendigo with coal eyes. "No hard feelings, eh?"