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. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ57WQkPLh5E
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡA61z5eljHk
Things were better as a wild creature.633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGTg4ufcOov
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYkWZeoaFZv
So, one day, I just went missing. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpR6Vxm0YWN
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0gJ1dSsJjT
The posters with my face on them from concerned townspeople plastered phone poles and were attached to links on social media. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbkwJvDUZ4A
There was even a news broadcast for my search and safe return, along with one of my last photos; not my most flattering. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKScIOBJOiu
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmzcvCgP7Tu
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. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoM4vkAZqKX
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKSH3oUxyNL
Whispers envisioned that I had been kidnapped and stuffed into the water tower that looked over the town from its heart. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2MfQJ7ueq7
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. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzUGh9kSicN
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNxq4anoMzK
They were logical reasons. My truth was from a place that danced with fantasy. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡL1nc8txxRO
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhtRELhHIRC
I could peel from my skin into a monster; could do it ever since I was born. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLXWk3L08Ab
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFqfkpBr9U6
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. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRnb2p5Ches
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVW3u2L7sUs
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. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr50WJEiGoe
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8m6DMpLhPp
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. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtGnw4XnfPL
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡT8rDCGKw1U
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.633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxx5heaqnpc
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJa9q63ysPN
It was costing me a fortune to keep up appearances and make sure mouths stayed shut. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqixx4pNakJ
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsJggQAiEhU
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. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡT3W2073wlu
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr0BC2UsFpg
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.633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbv0ZbMUQdg
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡERKovREIeq
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. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuSzFTw7mtL
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. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡydV8GxFzzN
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpCQLX3YX6T
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. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡg5L3DSh39S
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNC6ZCzWdYr
My tail, long and slender, easily was the length of my own body hunched down on all-fours. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡili8axPWSw
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡv4DYrfKCqL
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.633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmaKI4g6tza
It was too humanoid to be a wild animal, but too feral to be a human playing pranks. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkbAsrnpu45
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0IQLlEqfbI
I kept my distance. They always saw me no matter where I was. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvXcWH6FHa7
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoe1dYHi7fG
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. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡL3IDIaliZk
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZfMyVHBtj9
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. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7B6xcvp0dP
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXVehisMoUC
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. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsQ3ql8QcVD
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. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡL7GMRN2YWv
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1seDx6yjVP
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. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlWetwJKmwc
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4flUrRoNne
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. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgO2Fb3mOIt
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJIDytluB9E
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. 633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjygLK6TvFC
633Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7oCgabkVp3
It had worked for three months since I disappeared and I was going to keep it that way, for her.
