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. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZEYTprAoHY
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgfegMBDkID
Things were better as a wild creature.474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNK89XzSLGX
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2sJDD2M0jm
So, one day, I just went missing. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡARsYhA2Ek2
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡalt6BDEe3W
The posters with my face on them from concerned townspeople plastered phone poles and were attached to links on social media. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAgWuesIND5
There was even a news broadcast for my search and safe return, along with one of my last photos; not my most flattering. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ1Jk58cG3U
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡURNhfMWYG4
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. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdMAmQhbhs4
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKQuuokq8tR
Whispers envisioned that I had been kidnapped and stuffed into the water tower that looked over the town from its heart. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGFe9ReVdpS
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. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5mDC3nHI6V
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡapg10zaBbn
They were logical reasons. My truth was from a place that danced with fantasy. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAmiVBE3b3z
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwEKLvtsbD3
I could peel from my skin into a monster; could do it ever since I was born. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPU3tUgNE0c
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTA2McFpAi9
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. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkJlHMuQUph
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu5PYcciIxU
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. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzYyTKImPmB
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCFsleJUbUy
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. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡixGcnvWsBT
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUu6T2YSlaG
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.474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAZatMcvNYO
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvyeJdOhs8W
It was costing me a fortune to keep up appearances and make sure mouths stayed shut. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡopkEZ2xNad
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡW8R3vkveqA
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. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwJWBOPaTyU
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEIV2tXa21y
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.474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡH4GxSP9WHz
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn96BnjYu8v
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. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhslpdImGa6
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. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJUnnISyazD
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcuVn2tQzWm
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. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8c7kNtvKPT
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYQ9Bz3cPAJ
My tail, long and slender, easily was the length of my own body hunched down on all-fours. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡM0klAbkMfr
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡl9BKIQS4LQ
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.474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSbQmYTMOFa
It was too humanoid to be a wild animal, but too feral to be a human playing pranks. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuRUaxvTqEl
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLJgL5rqylp
I kept my distance. They always saw me no matter where I was. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzorXE05Q8Z
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1DKaJjibXi
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. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0ods0heNK0
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡig2iJHLiBi
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. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHEtlu5ICtg
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpYbx0GSYSv
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. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmrTVGq0sJB
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. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡckTeqMfIbg
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNtp0Bxo2tF
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. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRMk5KxiQjv
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0njRJD7r60
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. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHVky3I4SLR
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRWehJc4y3V
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. 474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡj0kOn99n8w
474Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡljULAjFVUc
It had worked for three months since I disappeared and I was going to keep it that way, for her.
