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. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2Kfjf2ubII
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Things were better as a wild creature.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzmQ5kRdsA6
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So, one day, I just went missing. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡx0uIydQ72a
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The posters with my face on them from concerned townspeople plastered phone poles and were attached to links on social media. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzOjV5uqNpu
There was even a news broadcast for my search and safe return, along with one of my last photos; not my most flattering. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBIIqjd5EUZ
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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. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4pPfm0Ss32
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Whispers envisioned that I had been kidnapped and stuffed into the water tower that looked over the town from its heart. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiek9AAl7PN
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. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQkRnZiu2JZ
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They were logical reasons. My truth was from a place that danced with fantasy. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡt1as4kCtht
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I could peel from my skin into a monster; could do it ever since I was born. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVQPp4ft2ON
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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. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi6hNY9mXK6
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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. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9JlrOmgqLi
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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. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡh3G3XKUky7
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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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBgTr2gdiqT
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It was costing me a fortune to keep up appearances and make sure mouths stayed shut. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4aTgyerx1Q
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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. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWYDfeFBpxj
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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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡv3lzoW0e8x
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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. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwBz9xb8B8t
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. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN84GHIJYcQ
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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. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSpPuT4bGzu
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My tail, long and slender, easily was the length of my own body hunched down on all-fours. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVbLosp1Uyu
501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWwyHTCLMP5
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.501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOsPHBeh4KE
It was too humanoid to be a wild animal, but too feral to be a human playing pranks. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbfGvKLOU6q
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I kept my distance. They always saw me no matter where I was. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlFQzL1YToC
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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. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1UkfuMbiPl
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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. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7BUpOTpBbg
501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3CbhfKWEgy
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. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6SZdo8jfcn
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. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡe3ScFyUP8G
501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9rrt2m72Rh
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. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjMaWu0V3kz
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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. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0ctKsn8Ffi
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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. 501Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuEJvfr1my3
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It had worked for three months since I disappeared and I was going to keep it that way, for her.
