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. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0gN1nrBq2E
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Things were better as a wild creature.471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdbZV406Etm
471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRJFkqGo2yX
So, one day, I just went missing. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡF3R2EA89mE
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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. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmxGepzVpUo
There was even a news broadcast for my search and safe return, along with one of my last photos; not my most flattering. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxos0klj486
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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. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOtbe5FW8bV
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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. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGHMhjzJh6S
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. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡevhEYtFKZg
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They were logical reasons. My truth was from a place that danced with fantasy. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡndfAmK1f46
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I could peel from my skin into a monster; could do it ever since I was born. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrd7LIl5nLy
471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXNaRWgbqUy
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. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhElkrl95GW
471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡW1ZIbPUVJu
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. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2EAZsHGiYm
471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs3fo1STHCK
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. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKqciryDd3x
471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLkQjq6dq6i
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.471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFzgVG0dQEB
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It was costing me a fortune to keep up appearances and make sure mouths stayed shut. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkgMDTnNXOh
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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. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡupxtQcQzoy
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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.471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡv1ME1xRFje
471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡseN61OnFvh
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. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7HROX2OFaR
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. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5erhB3Zcq3
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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. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIDZNmv3E7V
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My tail, long and slender, easily was the length of my own body hunched down on all-fours. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4EFPYocYdi
471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡX4Vb5psxxa
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.471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyvT3p0cn69
It was too humanoid to be a wild animal, but too feral to be a human playing pranks. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWi2aYbvYk7
471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQiNoELOg1F
I kept my distance. They always saw me no matter where I was. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8VSg5LFUb3
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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. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1SlJPCZ91j
471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHGuFneZLyH
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. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtKwesRpZIS
471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡosRbCjgTr6
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. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡroz32FSej8
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. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEarAaKqXnb
471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLxhIg2qk55
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. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1YZdJzJT8q
471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8VbPKHMHZZ
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. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ07VLVgZmfJ
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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. 471Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9N9GayehcQ
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It had worked for three months since I disappeared and I was going to keep it that way, for her.
