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. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnnI1BnjuTj
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlG1XkIvwvy
Things were better as a wild creature.440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlSpFBOsPMh
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMQE6Xp1V2r
So, one day, I just went missing. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrkErdKRElS
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡruaHWHwF7E
The posters with my face on them from concerned townspeople plastered phone poles and were attached to links on social media. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOrdo6gjtj6
There was even a news broadcast for my search and safe return, along with one of my last photos; not my most flattering. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrmZQlduYs2
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtLqEeFHcbe
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. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBGsgmbejLB
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0qQomRWZL4
Whispers envisioned that I had been kidnapped and stuffed into the water tower that looked over the town from its heart. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZXjVr4CTJe
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. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjdO6tLHV11
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUeGMr0Uvl1
They were logical reasons. My truth was from a place that danced with fantasy. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyrDscroY4J
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡobKsHsT7PQ
I could peel from my skin into a monster; could do it ever since I was born. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeDH6jPaUaJ
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjkXi2ggiQC
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. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡI03fN7PtiS
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRSWXgBR09P
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. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAWIcovjE2d
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡV8Hz5nrGl3
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. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9494LR7ghV
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnFG218zUdO
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.440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡprUrIPy6h0
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7C3ISwlMNl
It was costing me a fortune to keep up appearances and make sure mouths stayed shut. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkHkSAWNDOy
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ71luM3kqij
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. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1YQ9nw1dQe
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpOGyh3x1LX
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.440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5kKvV8lFUx
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ87C6vFTfIA
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. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWUVZZ9xi2w
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. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7KwsDv4ug3
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4FvD6ASvDd
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. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYJtx7YIBCu
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtS4LbDXYto
My tail, long and slender, easily was the length of my own body hunched down on all-fours. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVS3sz0vTDh
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzt7siWqOkF
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.440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYvZvMSo5hU
It was too humanoid to be a wild animal, but too feral to be a human playing pranks. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡy3XH2GNxYq
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJu8lvKWujT
I kept my distance. They always saw me no matter where I was. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWzb5xebLx0
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAgLzdix30c
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. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLt5SaCFDmJ
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuSDKYjiRAl
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. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3x1QxupBr7
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ92m6HzN5M2
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. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ06m71D0Cbr
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. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡW6k9j6Pwfq
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡA9DrvUGenr
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. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN6LwQ9BGlC
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAS6OMVg2vE
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. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEL5Cp3581f
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcFPyGZkRzZ
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. 440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGtVS6vmQm0
440Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0NVraCtmyc
It had worked for three months since I disappeared and I was going to keep it that way, for her.
