DAILY PROMPT : [ HP ] In 1879 Swift Runner , believing he is possessed by a 'Wendigo ' , becomes a cannibal

My father was a beast. A sick man, deluded, deranged and monstrous. My sister and I were young and innocent in the first winter. When temperatures drop so low that none go outside, he would beat us mercilessly with a length of hide, forcing us to the frozen edges of our one room cabin, and seating by the fire alone, tempting us with food and heat, only to beat us back again if we approached. 
 
 Those were the good nights. 
 
 In a mood, a savage animal overtook him. His wife long dead and noone to keep him company, he would put me in the woodlot and bar the latch, taking my sister into the house to fulfill his appetites. The screams on those nights will never leave my dreams. He tainted the scent of fresh pine so that it only breathes despair and powerlessness into my lungs. I raged against my wooden cage, but to no avail. 
 
 As I became larger, I was less easily forced into submission, and one night he built up his anger with me after I broke the woodlot. My sister ran away when he came to wreak vengeance upon me, only increasing the furiousness of the beating. I was driven away from my home, a barbaric and horrid place, but warm, and possessing of food needed to survive winter. I found my sister in a nearby ravine, shivering and crying, trying to stop the flow of blood. After one night huddled together for warmth, the brightness was gone from my sisters eyes and the cold had stripped her body of life. I wailed, raged against the trees and the world. Hated the gods themselves for taking my only comfort. 
 
 As if to guide me, a heavy tree branch snapped under my lashings. Pointed as a spike at one end, it was a sure weapon, an instrument of revenge against my father's beastly nature. Ironic that the forest should provide ammunition against the beast, but the forest knows it's own, and my father was surely not one of them. 
 
 I trudged back to my home, through snowdrifts thick and tangled roots, grabbing at my numbed feet. I saw no warmth in the house, though massive footprints dotted the snow. From inside, the sounds of silence, permeated with a soft moaning, as if in delight. A sudden snap, loud enough to crackle through the woods and wake the birds. On reaching the doorway, the smell of raw meat and fresh blood pounded my nostrils. 
 
 There on the floor lay my father, barely recognizable through the layers of his life's water caked on his person. Pooled steaming on the floor were his innards, his left leg jaggedly cut from his body, one the floor beside him his femur, cracked to reveal marrow and bone blood. I did not turn away from that, but exulted in his death, long deserved. 
 
 I turned my eyes on my saviour, but over my father's body stood a creature like none I ’ ve heard of before or since. A demon, human once, but no more. Hair matted against pale skin, ice hanging from locks unshorn. Hands contorted into vilest claws, covered in blood and marrow from a broken bone. Between hands and hair a naked freak, emaciated and vile, bruised but covered in blood, meat and dirt. Staring at me with eyes of ice while a tendon hung from it's mouth, still steaming with the body's heat. I ran to the woodlot, covered myself in my former cage, and barred the door from inside, listening to the sounds of my father being eaten. I felt no rage this time. 
 
 Say what you will of Swift Runner, but to one, he is a hero. 

