It began when I was ten. I woke up, and screamed. My parents rushed down the hall, but when they opened the door and saw me, I watched their fear melt into laughter. Their smiles told me this was something good, that this was exciting, that this was supposed to happen. They hugged me, but said nothing.


    My brother took pity on me when our parents kept quiet. He took me aside and patted me on the back and flashed his canines and said, “You''re growing up." He explained what would happen to me and I threw up at his feet. After I cleaned myself, I asked if there was a way to stop it, and for the second time that day, my horror met laughter.


    I prayed. I begged for anyone to listen, to whisk me away to a life that made sense. Each morning, I woke up disappointed. And each morning a little more of myself was gone. And each morning it took longer to recognize my face in the mirror. And each morning I wondered if my bedroom window was high enough. And each morning I wondered if it would hurt.


    My fingers grew longer, my nails grew sharper; I destroyed everything I reached out for. My limbs sprouted, gangly and obscene, seemingly ordinary to everyone but me. None of my clothes fit right anymore. And I was congratulated for it. They acted like this was some accomplishment, like I should greet this with open arms, like it was something I could ever want. I was reduced to a body I could only ever fail to resist.


    I lost my sense of time. The mornings bled into each afternoon, bled into each evening, bled into each night, bled all over the bedsheets. I cut until the pain was quiet. I made the skin as unrecognizable as the frame underneath it. I was slapping coats of lead paint on a condemned house. By the end, there was no one left inside. There was only the rot, the rats, the rank refuse of a thousand transients. I leered through the clouded windows, watching life happen to me.


    I tried to get them to understand, but to them my misery was a performance, a tantrum I''d outgrow, something to be laughed at: "I remember what it was like at that age.” I stumbled everywhere, not adjusted to the new shape I was taking on. I could have bashed my face into the wall until I was a fine, red pulp, and they would’ve only crooned, “Oh my, how you’ve grown!”


    When the change was undeniable, when I towered over my peers, when the hair was unmanageable, when my teeth shredded my cheeks whenever I spoke, when I felt too monstrous to be human, my father took me out to where our family had been born: to the clearing in the forest.


    He held my hand, smiling down at me, as we slunk through the trees. I pulled at him and he gripped me tighter. When I started kicking, he scooped me up in his arms. Ahead, between the trees, I caught a flash of the clearing.


    I bit his arm.


    My teeth sank towards bone. I ripped my head to the side like a dog and watched a chunk of flesh land in the leaf litter. The blood tasted sweet.


    But my father didn’t let go. He cursed in the same breath as his laugh. The clearing was inevitable.


    In those last moments, my tongue pushed at the scraps of his skin stuck between my teeth. I spat his blood to the side, afraid of what I’d do if I let it linger on my tongue any longer. Chuckling and shaking his head, he dragged me past the forest''s edge, into the clearing, and into adulthood.


    The forest was untamed, but here in the clearing, the grass was short. Clippings stuck to my sneakers as I trudged towards the field''s center. The grass gave way to rock, and at the very center, the rock gave way to a shallow puddle. My father sat me down, crouched to my height, then ruffled my hair and gave me one last smile. He turned and stepped into the water.


    And though I begged it not to, the moon rose.


    I watched his muscles destroy the body underneath as they writhed like snakes in the moonlight. His face elongated, the teeth shot outward like arrows piercing flesh. Hair sprouted along every inch. With the sound of a forest being felled, every one of his bones snapped and reformed and snapped again under the weight of the new muscles, until finally he''d twisted himself into a four-legged monstrosity. Only his eyes remained human. Nestled above a grim snout, they bore into mine. Rip, tear, shred. Rend the flesh until you are free.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    It snarled and bounded into the woods. Droplets of water flung off the beast, spattering me. A howl echoed through the night.


    If God answered any of my prayers, it was the one I made then, buried inside my discordant screams. I prayed until I coughed blood, and then I kept going, gargling through it. By the end, my curse flowed past my teeth and I tasted myself, once more hating how sweet the bitterness had become.


    I fell to my knees and stared at the moon, mirrored in the red puddle of my drool. I cried and waited for the final act of my transformation. But it didn’t come. Hoarse, I managed a thank you to whoever heard my screams. But there was no mercy in His miracle. I had no choice but to watch a pantomime of my future unfold in the night''s hunt.


    In the distance: someone screaming, growing quieter. My father''s howl. Triumph. I curled into myself and gave up, letting my head crash into the rock underneath me. There were the trees, there was the moon, and then nothing at all. The night marched on.


    A smell of iron; thick, wet air cocooning my face; a nudge; a growl.


    I opened my eyes.


    There it was again, the beast that had stolen my father''s eyes. It kept nudging me, its muzzle red and staining my clothes with each push. It flashed its teeth. Behind the wolf was a mess of viscera. I stood up, steadying myself by gripping its slick fur. It led me to the kill.


    A puddle of limbs, guts, and bones glistened in the fading moonlight. The gore ballooned out, following the suggestion of a flannel jacket and scraps of denim jeans. Ribs rose from a pale, bleeding mound. A pair of glasses poked out of a tangled bit of scalp, hair swaying in the night''s breeze. Amongst those strands, shards of glass glittered.


    It was the hands that did me in. They always remained recognizable in the aftermath. Fingers were all bone and little meat, and so my family often left them untouched—two lighthouses in a sea of carnage. I retched.


    The wolf pushed me towards its feast. It bent low and lapped at the mess, its tongue licking the blood off those pristine fingers and revealing a gold band, shining in the last light of the night.


    The slurping of its maw filled my ears and the bitter iron scent nauseated me. The wolf lifted its head. Some worm-like piece of anatomy bobbed from its teeth as it stared at me, then nodded at the mess. When I backed away, its stance went wide, its ears stood up, and its snout split into a bloodied snarl. I took another step back. The thing with my father''s eyes growled at me. I cast around for some escape, but at every turn, peppered between the trees, was another pair of eyes. I recognized all of them.


    And so I stepped toward the remains, fell to my knees, and sunk my fists into the flesh. Rip, tear, shred. I squeezed. It was still warm; the guts slid around my fingers. I pulled handfuls of meat to my mouth. The tissue bled in my hands and I felt its heat wafting to my face. Rend the flesh until you are free. l bit down.


    And you, you hateful thing, you open your eyes. You see clearer than you''ve ever seen before. The smells are overwhelming, the taste is overpowering. You chew, you swallow, you savor each bit of gristle, and you bend down for more. Your father watches you. His tail is going back and forth and his whimpering is getting faster. You throw back your head, letting the prey slide down your throat. You don''t stop and I hate you for it. I hate everything we''ve become. Your fur is bloodied, your stomach is full, your father is delighted, and you don''t stop. You rip, you tear, you shred. You even nip at the hands. There''s only the bones left now. You, such a wretched and disgusting creature, lick the grass where the blood had soaked into the dirt. You look up, lock eyes with the moon, and let out a low, guttural howl.


    But I won''t let it happen. You turn around and see the spot where I had collapsed. You see the pitiful puddle of blood I''d coughed up, and when you tilt your head and stare into its reflection, you see me. Rip. I bite into your legs. Tear. Blood spurts, your claws flash out against us, but I keep going. You howl as if that will save you. Shred. Our father is shrieking and even I can see him now. The moon is setting and the beast is collapsing into a familiar shape. Bones snap. He''s screaming at us to stop. Rend the flesh—in my jaws I taste myself again and it is bitter and I spit you out and I laugh because I can''t stomach the taste anymore and that absence is ambrosiac—until you are free. I pry your fingers off me. I rip, I tear, I shred, I rend you into nothing. I destroy what I hate so I may become myself. With your newborn claws, I peel back the skin and scrape the muscle free. I break us down and drape a new future over the bones.


    You collapse and now our body, my body, has contorted into a less hateful shape. My father is on his knees and he''s begging me not to do this, but it''s already done. I stare at my hands, bloody but human. My teeth are flat and dull; my cheeks will know peace again. The sun is breaking over the tree line and I hear a harmony of howls slowly choking into human wails. The rest of my family stumbles into the clearing. They look at me like I''m a monster, like I''ve betrayed them, like this isn''t beautiful. Their limbs are long, their teeth are sharp, but I am not one of them. I never was.


    For now I stand alone, but soon I will turn away and leave you in the clearing with the rest of them. Soon I will find others like me. My body will ache. My mind will race. I will have gained everything in your loss.


    When I''m out of sight, I''ll jam a finger into the back of my throat and puke out my past. For the last time in my life, I''ll wipe the blood from my mouth, and for the first time in my life, I will smile.