5 Minute Freewrite Day 567: Walrus

I just wanted some quiet time away from everything I knew, everything that made me remember how emotionally harsh and unforgiving can be the life in the big city. I needed some quiet time, and so “up” I went, further and further north until the predominant color was white. Until the few trees were mostly naked, and the people were naturally silent and respectful of my isolation.

But once inside my cabin, in front of the fire and while picking a piece of wood to carve, a sound in the distance caught my attention. It was a low rumbling, kind of a mumbling, but so low that if it wasn’t for the quietness of this white desert, I wouldn’t have caught it. It came from nowhere for various days, until I grew both used to it and annoyed by it. It made me remember my breathless fear of that unknown presence that always lurks behind the poorly maintained veil of sanity in my previous home, it was, in essence, a giant everything that swallows those defeated by chaos.

And it was there, I felt it now, the thing followed me here. And I needed to stop it.

A slide, some dogs, some food, a shotgun and a couple of axes, those were my partners while trowing myself in the bowels of the great white desert. At some point the dogs died, but I kept going until a salty smell could be felt, and together with that, the rumbling now turned into voices, chantings of people covered in the bloody skins of some animal. They turned around when I got closer, enough to see what was inside the circle: a giant being with giant fangs, mating with a human covered in those skins. Male of female I couldn’t say, but that one and all the others said the same over and over again: I AM THE WALRUS.