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| - It was my friend Kaden’s birthday party about a month ago and, I must say, it was pretty fun. My three friends—Enrique, Cody, Ean and I went over to his party at his house. We went there on a Friday and stayed over for the night. We played videogames, ate cake and, best of all, drank a crap ton of soda. This fun ensued until three o’clock in the morning, when his dad finally told us to lie down and fall asleep. We did the first thing, but not the second. We got some sleeping bags out, and just talked for another hour or so. We joked around, talked about some stuff, and then the topic of the Wendigo came up. The Wendigo is a cannibal demon of Native American mythology that I wrote a short, scary story about in my Creative Writing class in school. I let my friends read the story the day before, and they said it was scary. But I figured they were more scared by the picture on the cover page than the actual story. The picture sure was frightening. It showed the portrait of a Wendigo: the skull-like head of a deer placed on a human-like, bipedal body, with long, narrow arms and fingers, and crouching, long legs with hooves like a horse. The body looked like it was rotting away, as if the Wendigo was a corpse. It had blood dripping from its long, sharp teeth. Enrique loved the fact that the Wendigo scared Cody and Kaden so much, he basically teased them in the black of night that it was coming to possess them, turning them into cannibalistic spirits. "Shut up!" they would tell Enrique. "Seriously, shut up!" "What, are you scared?" he would taunt at them. I thought the entire thing was really funny, as, of course, there was no such thing as the Wendigo. But I could tell that they were getting even more afraid. Once, Kaden looked at a window without the blinds over it and thought that the Wendigo would stare at him through the window. He was too scared to actually get up and shut the blinds, though, so I did. Enrique continued to tease them. He got out his laptop and Googled images of the Wendigo. Then he went on the Wikipedia page for the Wendigo. He read aloud, "All cultures in which the Wendigo myth appeared shared the belief that human beings could turn into Wendigos if they ever resorted to cannibalism or, alternatively, become possessed by the demonic spirit of a Wendigo, often in a dream." "What’s a demonic spirit?" Ean asked, watching the taunting unfold. Enrique Googled it. He found out that a demonic spirit is like a ghost, except it can possess your body and have control over all of your actions. He also found out that if you say a demon’s name out loud, you have summoned it. You have made it its duty to possess you. "Well, if that’s true," Enrique said, "Wendigo, Wendigo, Wendigo, Wendigo, WENDIGO! Come get me Wendigo!" "Enrique, shut up!" Cody and Kaden said, both of them on the verge of throwing something at his face. I interjected, "You guys, the Wendigo is fake. Now shut up and go to sleep." "Whatever. I’m tired anyway," Enrique said as he yawned. And we fell asleep. The next morning, I woke up and went to the bathroom. Nobody was up, yet. I decided I would eat some cake from yesterday for breakfast. I went to the fridge and got some. As soon as I turned around, I let out a frightened screech. Enrique was up and was in my face. "Whoa, you scared me there," I said. No response. He just gave a face; a chilling face. His eyes were sunken in, and he gave me a non-smiling, wide-eyed, pale look. I sat down at the table and ate the cake. Soon, Ean, Cody and Kaden got up. A few hours later, my mom picked me up and I went home. That night, I went to bed afraid of the Wendigo. I remembered what Enrique said, and I became increasingly more and more frightened. Eventually, I gained enough confidence to finally just sit up in my bed and say, "It doesn't exist so I’m going to say its name: WENDIGO!" A few seconds passed. See Taylor, there is no Wendigo, I told myself. Then I heard a scratching noise at my bedroom door. It started out barely audible, before it became louder and louder and louder. Oh, God! Oh, God! What have I done? The scratching noise was so loud, I thought that it was going to break down my door, whatever it was. Finally, I got out of my bed and approached my door. As I started walking towards it, the scratching got louder and louder. My hand, inches away from the knob, was hesitant to open the door. From the time my hand was inches away to when I finally opened the door felt like an eternity. I twisted the knob slowly and slammed the door open. And I didn't see anything. I heard a barking noise, and I looked down and saw my bulldog, Fat Chops. Relieved, I let the dog into my room. On Monday, I returned to school. My school is a charter school that has a dress code, and on that particular day, I received a detention for forgetting to wear my belt. The next day I had soccer practice, so I knew that I had to serve it that day. The day went on normally, but at three o’clock, I had to go to Mrs. Foster’s room to serve my detention. I was the only one in the room with her. After a few minutes, she told me that she had to go somewhere really quick. "Okay," I said. About a minute later, I saw Enrique outside the door and he came in. "What’s up?!" I said, glad that he was there. He looked at me with the same pale face he had given me earlier, with his sunken-in eyes and neutral expression. "Are you okay, dude?" I said. No response. "Hello?" He got up and went into the corner of the room, and just sat there. "Enrique," I said, growing more uneasy. "Ennnnrrrriiiiiiiiiiiqqqquuuuuee…" I repeated. "ENRIQUE! Dude, you are starting to scare me!" All of a sudden, he put his face up at the ceiling and started to transform into a hideous, pale-skinned, jagged-toothed creature. Afraid, I started slowly moving backwards. He was possessed by the Wendigo. I broke the window in the classroom and ran out of there. Next to the school were some trees that I thought I could hide in. I ran probably a hundred feet to get into the trees. As soon as I got into the foliage, I hid behind a tree trunk that was wider than me. I was afraid to look back at the school. But slowly, I turned my head backwards. I was hesitant to, but I wanted to see if he was still following me. As soon as my eyes were facing towards the school, I was face-to-face with the demon. I ran further into the trees. They were covering up the sun, so it got darker. The air was very humid, yet cool breezes came by. Eventually, I think I lost him. It felt like I had been running from the demon for hours. Sure enough, I looked at my watch and it was already seven o’clock. Even though I had lost my pursuer, I still bit my fingernails in terror. Finally, I got out of the forest. The trees led me to a road, lit with one streetlight. The road only had a few houses on it. I started walking down the road, looking down. When I raised my head, I saw, under the streetlight, my bulldog, Fat Chops. I ran to her and started petting her. "Who’s a good girl? You are, yes you are!" I said in a baby voice. "What are you doing down here, Fat Chops? Huh, what are you doing?" She started whimpering. I looked behind me, thinking that maybe she was whimpering because of something out of my field of vision. I was hesitant to look back, but I slowly turned my head and saw… nothing. "Oh, it's okay, girl," I reassured her. I started walking down the road, as Fat Chops followed, and as I started getting further away from the streetlight, it got darker and darker. Eventually, I saw another streetlight. Still, I kept on walking and saw another light further down. Finally, I passed five of these posts and, underneath the light, looked at the time on my watch. It was nine o’clock. I had been on that road for two hours. I started running, in a hurry, and looked behind me. Fat Chops was nowhere to be seen. So, I started running back, looking for my dog. "Fat Chops!" I would call out. "Fat Chops!" As I went under another streetlight, I looked at my watch. It was twelve o’clock. That seemingly short period of time was three hours. I went up to the light pole and saw a missing poster… for me. Past the streetlights, I looked at the house in front of it. It looked exactly like the houses I saw before. Dazed, I started running as fast as I could. I got to the next streetlight, checked the time and saw it was one in the morning, even though it felt like five seconds had passed. I ran further, and eventually the streetlights came closer and closer together. I looked down at my watch. Each minute passed in a fraction of a second. Finally, my clock read, "3:00 AM," and stopped. It was the devil’s hour. Suddenly, I tripped on something and fell in the street. As I regained my footing, I looked down the street and saw a pair of very tall legs. As I looked up, I saw them connect to a skeleton-like body with long arms and slender fingers. And on top of that body, the skull-like head of a deer. "Come here," it said in a raspy, devilish voice. My body froze. And it started coming closer and closer and closer. It was right in my face, but then I regained my muscle movement. I fell back to the pavement, closed my eyes, and just hoped I would make it out alive. As soon as I opened them, it was morning and I walked back to my house. And my mom sure was happy to see me. "Taylor, we missed you so much! Where have you been?" she said, as I walked in. It was hard to tell her the story about what happened, so I didn't. "Do you know where Enrique is? He’s been missing, too," she told me. I simply nodded sideways. They never did find Enrique. Nobody knows what happened to him. But I do. The Wendigo hasn't quit, either. At night, I constantly hear a whispering in my ear. My window gets knocked on. I have nightmares about it. But before it can possess me in my dreams, I always wake up. I always fight for my body. Well, I’m not going to fight for it tonight. I’m done dealing with the Wendigo.
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