• I fought off contractions that had been shooting up my spine for weeks. I could feel the ribs cracking out of place and into a new position. You could feel my tailbone lengthening and snapping into a long tail. I grabbed a nightgown. Throwing it on I ran out of my house across a few streets and to a deserted alley. There I let the painful contractions take over. I let them engulf me and before I knew it the ground beneath me was a puddle. Stained red and glistening in the light of the moon. Soon I shook my body. I stretched my toes. I stretched my legs did a mock performance of Downward Dog. Then my vision flashed and I saw in Black and white. I could see the texture of everything. The wall behind me was textured in a way that screamed painted brick. Of course I was correct. I felt an annoying sensation. Tension. Growing in my hind legs. I decided I needed to run. I broke into a full-blown run my pads hitting the ground with a soft thud. I decided to focus on the smells. I could smell unwashed human body. A homeless man asleep in a cardboard box. I smelt the unforgiving smell of after-shave. So strong it almost wiped me out. Now one hundred miles away from the alley I had changed in I was at a large prairie. This prairie was very isolated. It was lines with thick forest, full of life, unseen by the human eye. I could smell the morning dew. I needed to run. This was the time to get it out of my system. I ran. I couldn’t feel the ground it was like flying as I ran through this prairie. I could feel the wind slice in a downward pattern across my slender muzzle. After a few hours I stopped running around this beautiful prairie and headed back to the alley I had changed in. Once again I felt excruciating pain as I changed. And as I watched the blood puddle grow I felt myself become human once again. Lycan. Were-Wolf. Wolf. Creature. These are all the names of my kind or so the mortals say, but we, have a much more sophisticated name. We are The Flesh. I reminisced about what I had looked like as a wolf, and what I looked like as a human. In wolf form my fur was a red color with natural blonde, orange, brown, and black highlights. My eyes were two different colors one a pitch green with highlights of red the other pitch blue with highlights of topaz. Now I needed to get home. Before anyone noticed I had left…if anyone noticed then…. well I would have to make up a pretty good excuse. I looked back on the pool of blood I had left in that alley, and turned to run home.

    I had been awake all day and night. Waiting for the humans in my home to sleep. I listened and could hear three sleeping hearts beat. To the beat of the hearts I slid out my two-story window and jumped to the ground. It was a cold pitch night. The perfect kind of night. I felt a gnawing hunger in my stomach, this is what I had been holding back all these months. I needed to hunt. I ran. It looked as though my feet didn’t touch the ground, because they didn’t. I decided to head for the nearest bar. I decided to vamp up BEFORE going inside. I vamped. My eyes pulsated red, my skin a deathly white. My hair grew longer and longer and turned a black with white highlights. My fangs dropped down and turned white. My lip turned into a joker’s smile. I put on my black leather Matrix coat and headed in to find my prey. I returned in ten minutes a guy trailing behind me staring at me. I took him into a dark alley and told him to stay very still. He did as he was told. I watched him, Ready to attack but waiting so he could feel the tension. I blacked out letting my instincts take over the kill. Only a while after when I was licking his blood from my fingers did he realize he was dead. Dammed. Vampire. Bloodsucker. Leach. These are all my names but we, have the name our parents gave us. The Blood. I looked back at the mess of the alley and let out a laugh as I returned to normal. My eyes a silver gray. Hair long but white blonde. Fairly tan skin. I changed my clothing and I walked home. I really didn’t want anyone to know I had left. I would have to drain them. I didn’t want that. As I ran home I thought of the man I had killed. Single, no kids, no family. The perfect meal.