It was easier to live the life of an animal rather than that of a human.
Animals didn't have the burdens humans did. They didn't have to struggle to pay rent, keep the electricity paid to cook food and have a hot shower, or have to worry about the same springs in the old mattress stabbing them in the back every sleepless night. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYQ7TZBKOUE
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSRbVD1oNXX
Things were better as a wild creature.596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBzJdYQpDiQ
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIr5VJDBycH
So, one day, I just went missing. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4LRbnXQjMK
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJp8Cwjpspj
The posters with my face on them from concerned townspeople plastered phone poles and were attached to links on social media. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnbKbk9zQPZ
There was even a news broadcast for my search and safe return, along with one of my last photos; not my most flattering. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8LnSuCM8kY
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJYVq8AkNE8
With my disappearance came speculation about what could have happened to the young man who lived in such a small tight-knit town with only one road in, one road out, and a train track cutting through the middle. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSWPuFcokNZ
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡk9okkZLp9M
Whispers envisioned that I had been kidnapped and stuffed into the water tower that looked over the town from its heart. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5oWjicROKO
Others gossiped that I had drowned in the water below the train track that stretched to the East, so that's why no-one could find me. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtfYA4FlFix
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQ6Qn8yvNgx
They were logical reasons. My truth was from a place that danced with fantasy. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ89FrqzXJDw
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡucw5aO24Hb
I could peel from my skin into a monster; could do it ever since I was born. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡX7tYTKSFPE
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡByCa1Cats3
When I was old enough to leave my parents and venture on my own, I chose this tiny town surrounded by forestry and waterways so there wouldn't be anyone to bother me or pry into my strange appearance. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkDkDoJiYTn
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRJvQc9CKel
To them, my black stained hands and speckled arms were from an old injury in an oil company I imagined. I don't know if they believed that, but they didn't pry into it. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡI2JQG4Wl4O
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSDMppYxQ8s
My skin, usually as white as the moon itself, was masked with foundation where it was visible to give it a more natural tone. It was still pale, but not enough to raise alarm of a monster in their midst. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ3EVM3ApZI
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsKTlKittx6
I wore blue contacts over my dark red eyes and burned them with solution every few hours I had to remoisten and refit them. I even considered wearing glasses to try and pull focus from my blue eyes whose shade kept changing every few months to something a little too light or dark from the last.596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnWohvE9hVo
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdy0s5VwOYT
It was costing me a fortune to keep up appearances and make sure mouths stayed shut. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxHQGMbBCn9
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtgHcbjc3qi
But, when I could just peel away that mask and truly be myself, I was free. I didn't have to worry about money or how I looked or each little thing I did that might seem 'odd' or 'impossible'; I could just be me. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFGXNisjfm2
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDbDKmEsLnU
The decision was an easy one, but one that alarmed the town when a strange creature suddenly started being spotted near the train tracks or tree lines.596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡY3V7dmtFFF
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaaY7JmUsh7
My true self wasn't what they were used to. It was a bright white creature covered in skin rather than fur and sporting the same speckled limbs as black as the night. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfBinVx27ny
My red eyes, untainted by chemicals, were the colour of blood. My teeth, broken and sharpened in the shift from my human self, were nowhere as useless as the blunt one’s humans had. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhLMx3ckeOl
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXnV2Ki82sf
I had long ears usually pointed upright to take in all the sounds of nature and its calls to warn me of any of the townspeople getting too brave. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5PWySVfPm1
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGx1biiCPLT
My tail, long and slender, easily was the length of my own body hunched down on all-fours. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4h1wWSucy0
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHJM4oDJ3pd
My slender body reminded the townspeople of a werewolf, others of a wendigo. Despite the lack of hair, people wanted a logical explanation that didn't trip into delusions they refused to accept.596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTHgRyF4NcQ
It was too humanoid to be a wild animal, but too feral to be a human playing pranks. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPMUK3yQq5i
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2gWxCxHNag
I kept my distance. They always saw me no matter where I was. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQ7CQPcGfXM
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡw8rK7YUkp7
With the sun behind me, I trailed the train tracks on my way for the house I knew that bordered it on the way out of town. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfsm4GRjgOq
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡufTV5mnZ8Y
I kept to the East side where the road peeled away and the train track ran on suspended beams towering in the air. No-one could get me if they didn't have access. Between me and the town was a river that the beams pierced through. I stayed on one side until every afternoon when I knew the house on the West side of the tracks and the town would be calling out for me. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUeinyyzfiw
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlFHYyfBVip
A young woman lived there by herself. She was loved by the town she frequented often on her little powder-blue scooter with the cutest yellow milk-crate bolted to the back. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjxiCZ0dcMP
Her orange hair waved out the bottom of her matching helmet whenever I saw her, and her brown eyes had a way of smiling at me when she bumped over the grass alongside the tracks so she could run errands in town. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzrQTOu0wH0
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN0fMiFvRu8
Sometimes, I'd glimpse her as she was parking her scooter by the platform beside town so she could cradle bundles of parcels in her arms from the milk crate and board the train to disappear along the West line. I'd chase after her for only a few meters until the train sped away and I was left to make a shameful walk back. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCBfm84gCxN
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9JY44nCPHj
Because of her schedule, people took to hanging near where the tracks met the land of the town so they could watch me make my way to that little house on the other side each afternoon. It was the only time I allowed them to get so close to me in my moment of desperate desire. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIGRo28WRqM
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3k1GgiYirI
Despite knowing some of the people and their routines, I didn't trust the newcomers who made their homes here and didn't know the unspoken rules we had set between ourselves. 596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4hxKdldiwm
596Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡK8tpuO9J5v
It had worked for three months since I disappeared and I was going to keep it that way, for her.
