• I was running.
    I had been running my entire life.
    And one thing has been chasing me.
    Fear.
    My feet ached, and I was sure that, if I looked, I would see my flesh had been torn by rocks, thorns, and an assortment of other materials on the forest floor that were sharp enough to cut through skin. But worse than the pain was the chill to the air, because I knew that the cold I was feeling was not coming from the dropping temperature or the approach of winter. No, this cold made the bones brittle right in my body, my blood almost too thick to move without a lot of work from my pounding heart. This cold was from something so much greater than the weather.
    My lungs hurt, my tongue was dry as a desert, my eyes felt as if they had lead weights on them, but still I surged on. I had to run. I had to escape. I could hear them behind me, baying with those strange calls of their's.
    They had once been my friends, my family. My life. But no longer. They would hunt me down and kill me. Or worse, take me back to that cold white room, strapped to the metal table by shackles that cut through my skin when I moved. The shackles were still around my wrists and ankles, their clanking an alert to my followers of where I was at. I had to get rid of them. But I couldn't.
    And just like that, the forest abruptly ended, giving away to a cliff with a sheer thousand foot drop to the unforgiving river below. I pulled back, stopping myself and falling onto my bottom, my feet dangling off the edge. They were getting closer. I had to move. I couldn't move. Fear was beginning to get the better of me as I heard their footsteps coming closer, closer, always closer.......And just as they burst through the green brush, three women, four men, all of whom I used to know and love and cherish with all of my being, I felt something inside of me shatter into pieces. That last shred of my soul, of who I used to be, was now lost to be forever, replaced by a beast that knew no mercy, only survival. And would kill all that stood in the way. Shrieks ripped from my vocal cords as I felt myself changing, changing in a way that was impossible to turn away from. My nails grew longer, my teeth grew sharper, and my body transformed into something far beyond what human beings have ever seen or imagined.
    As I turned, my blazing red eyes landed on the humans, and I finally figured it all out.
    I was afraid.
    Afraid not of them...but of myself.
    And just as the thought ran through my mind, my last shred of sanity slipped away in a flash of wet crimson.