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. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWEVGWwaLZv
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQ3UfyBzoRU
Things were better as a wild creature.549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡv8k0bJgWwD
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdrPj3CLl24
So, one day, I just went missing. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1npOBqU02n
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1PMSKoAvHV
The posters with my face on them from concerned townspeople plastered phone poles and were attached to links on social media. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsoWtRKKxjv
There was even a news broadcast for my search and safe return, along with one of my last photos; not my most flattering. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIB54HvJz4c
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZcIKK4R2nN
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. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡicFF64DkF4
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiWnVswAJTh
Whispers envisioned that I had been kidnapped and stuffed into the water tower that looked over the town from its heart. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡduEOFNBmtk
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. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmwJZEf0fw5
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCkNWI7HYBr
They were logical reasons. My truth was from a place that danced with fantasy. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7vobyu3pn5
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNh1IcHpeA0
I could peel from my skin into a monster; could do it ever since I was born. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU66mqJyBNo
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡV69igek2ds
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. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡokIsW49Aht
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAkm2Nn1b5l
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. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡldYp3SUZzP
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7Asr03zNg5
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. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8pAk8SICRl
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTNAgRe7VIq
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.549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkTmQaVJlm7
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgfEb5XTh47
It was costing me a fortune to keep up appearances and make sure mouths stayed shut. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMz4lyyPVta
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡC8QCE0nz1m
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. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMn1pHNyYDV
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtrW0MRwzqs
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.549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhDJ3R1fBRo
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQTQnb5GtlE
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. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbrSUnYqbcq
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. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡy2cVxYZIMI
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkWo6Uwsep8
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. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdHR5AwmWyz
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAJ7dPuNSla
My tail, long and slender, easily was the length of my own body hunched down on all-fours. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdzoAAPE302
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPtz4K6oPZk
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.549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUMWS6j9d7o
It was too humanoid to be a wild animal, but too feral to be a human playing pranks. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxSMQNn4d0z
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ68DfISFqRd
I kept my distance. They always saw me no matter where I was. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVjKJX10i54
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmFMEEo7iaL
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. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxX4ZyNaZxx
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqs7d1uXpZd
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. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9H61PZHKaa
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡc4TaCGvHZJ
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. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8Fgxm4JwAx
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. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡj2OpvKzXwD
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEkMH0WLGSp
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. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWXUv0Ng4vH
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRHUtnnCQzR
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. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5VRunKOYdT
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGkGczw5b14
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. 549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1C3gpNnvkX
549Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbTcSE5nhuC
It had worked for three months since I disappeared and I was going to keep it that way, for her.
