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. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ66vbqxXNdg
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡODIwiH8tlo
Things were better as a wild creature.439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN5Yy4TVPw7
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiIWimVkoiF
So, one day, I just went missing. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ48J8VjYwhv
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3zEJat0UHO
The posters with my face on them from concerned townspeople plastered phone poles and were attached to links on social media. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbFOD9L4ZOA
There was even a news broadcast for my search and safe return, along with one of my last photos; not my most flattering. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2GP6H9kdGU
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWa8MQ6SxAO
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. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsTVlMpKGad
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDzT0OggexH
Whispers envisioned that I had been kidnapped and stuffed into the water tower that looked over the town from its heart. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZZGqGeLNcx
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. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡE66M8iv5zz
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWRhMK5IZms
They were logical reasons. My truth was from a place that danced with fantasy. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtA0MjscZV5
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQ89Z07HGWs
I could peel from my skin into a monster; could do it ever since I was born. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzJn8v1iarq
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ023cGAib6J
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. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3IF0q4bsYn
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡufZhLY9FMW
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. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdzf24dBUKo
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3cx97axCJy
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. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQYK4w5j7Xh
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIQN95O7isY
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.439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ64QHUjBvdg
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeto5Mh7ced
It was costing me a fortune to keep up appearances and make sure mouths stayed shut. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKU4UdQnBJM
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWr9MbsPlBx
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. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡT4dlCPga4L
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡe0h6KE0SR6
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.439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡC08IV3LPwQ
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpXVi2MPAjl
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. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnPO2HF7dBw
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. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1TAiPnoaNp
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHAyw19xFOR
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. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3KnvwJuNCM
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡci1LoLfKtf
My tail, long and slender, easily was the length of my own body hunched down on all-fours. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡP6mBJGXCAi
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1NsMRkjyyG
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.439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxSi6PAX4qD
It was too humanoid to be a wild animal, but too feral to be a human playing pranks. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9YTNARxPpK
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzKiVY6q46f
I kept my distance. They always saw me no matter where I was. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjiPMNbdsj5
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡA1tLmrofAg
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. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡS4DII7BzFg
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8yucckA4VI
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. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡStv8nx4gcu
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ54PIgtoqBI
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. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRVccATuQAx
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. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCP4NWUXAv3
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrH3sxFoedw
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. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFMrjhL9Trk
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtqeIbvioOx
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. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlcXlcGPTqU
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtYzUXpDsy4
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. 439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡX4bNYhOHHF
439Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAddZ0MGp8d
It had worked for three months since I disappeared and I was going to keep it that way, for her.
