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. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZZIuaA7rQH
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡF9ESStub8X
Things were better as a wild creature.546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4E8554BUJ6
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXb7emQw0vj
So, one day, I just went missing. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡL0oxTB6RnL
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwEkaVY7uUk
The posters with my face on them from concerned townspeople plastered phone poles and were attached to links on social media. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVb6WrjvAIu
There was even a news broadcast for my search and safe return, along with one of my last photos; not my most flattering. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPeUL6AyHha
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIHLDVLcic4
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. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡf0xdqJdMxu
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaSOpOvmDUY
Whispers envisioned that I had been kidnapped and stuffed into the water tower that looked over the town from its heart. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPkKEAIRaot
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. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFSgHouGdw5
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaBEfLjvlhU
They were logical reasons. My truth was from a place that danced with fantasy. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpT2HZo9KEx
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBlaygJAfM6
I could peel from my skin into a monster; could do it ever since I was born. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZZpiWkuKGc
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPuDlRd2UGQ
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. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgI2qe2WEQ7
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSG8F9iBGBm
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. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6PwYXB5CZb
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2okNUUYuax
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. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJFnk0BTEbK
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeQMMVfpH5c
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.546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbR3Y1WrUpd
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3Oer2iqc0b
It was costing me a fortune to keep up appearances and make sure mouths stayed shut. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWKMf84KL61
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0STxKb8Mnb
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. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTK522lrcZd
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7aHO40rCfS
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.546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmTZ1p2pghi
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHN3g74zqdk
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. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkCmwJtZ8Zs
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. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPWHk4DKYRe
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRKCimI6Z2c
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. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIWz4nFROFe
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqYrDSPZs0f
My tail, long and slender, easily was the length of my own body hunched down on all-fours. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡALRegRuBxZ
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡY8lKw0zX6h
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.546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZNel0TLXTB
It was too humanoid to be a wild animal, but too feral to be a human playing pranks. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡP85dCegDdg
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8i3NSAa4us
I kept my distance. They always saw me no matter where I was. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡip616AcUvt
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0sFVxZsedT
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. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡK3Yr0FTtmr
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmJkbAIkJaS
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. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXb6TKmUMr0
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbonlz67p3X
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. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPGuBXXXWcw
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. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2pKxF83BHh
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZkLlyiHu8i
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. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDd4qK8SFkN
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdowo2RKRdY
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. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsvblh89DOn
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMw98mq0lMi
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. 546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡB4hhD1AFRl
546Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡloK3QNvE1Z
It had worked for three months since I disappeared and I was going to keep it that way, for her.
