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. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDSl0BtAkQl
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsPZiv1ye3H
Things were better as a wild creature.600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEGoIOhMfFr
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡchaFcm83EL
So, one day, I just went missing. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRnEPSx3Xk9
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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. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgVycFw9Yjv
There was even a news broadcast for my search and safe return, along with one of my last photos; not my most flattering. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlMxQF39dm9
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMVBdiKIvXP
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. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvZofMfK1n6
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡraQ2Btvjtb
Whispers envisioned that I had been kidnapped and stuffed into the water tower that looked over the town from its heart. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡteyfLEiURq
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. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxOwZcKmrqp
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They were logical reasons. My truth was from a place that danced with fantasy. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡExTUV4bdNq
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs4FgSXPTnZ
I could peel from my skin into a monster; could do it ever since I was born. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrR8yendsNy
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9p2XlprNWM
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. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAW12qOaAAK
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWgz3iWyzQy
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. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeC55SgIKWT
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiufAfIVhV0
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. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKF9yAJofk6
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOCsdqAr9T9
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.600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡucRlcHwyjg
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMHQH0nWVdJ
It was costing me a fortune to keep up appearances and make sure mouths stayed shut. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7QspcPaue0
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoNatiUXFOO
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. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmNIXIKbiYI
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ69V31rAmUV
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.600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLMIHhTwohk
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfYZLsQDGmn
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. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaFAKqLfJhz
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. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPDVrzyqN0Z
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgC4bwyoo7e
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. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDUSBCuRCsw
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0MbvKRZYjF
My tail, long and slender, easily was the length of my own body hunched down on all-fours. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3Oi61rTukH
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3YzX2cg88G
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.600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsMlu6e33zI
It was too humanoid to be a wild animal, but too feral to be a human playing pranks. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEKEVo7QajX
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrQErjxYATj
I kept my distance. They always saw me no matter where I was. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTXMFchnpuq
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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. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnL41jYdnmy
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPGSBAlksEX
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. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgxYxCg6vxJ
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsEAqzxBveL
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. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAz3F2xj5Yf
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. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpmcXzyLKRV
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLrvH7DewG5
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. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbaHckqsghW
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1QbIfTTrkJ
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. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxNNBVo9vfE
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0fNZ9uetGf
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. 600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡH5zOWj769J
600Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDdGmYK47ib
It had worked for three months since I disappeared and I was going to keep it that way, for her.
and then Add to home screen.