Short story

Short story
Neal Chapman

The twigs brush my face as I race by, the cold air stinging the scratches left behind. I glance up to see the moon start to appear behind the clouds. my heart starts beating faster and faster. my only thought is to keep on running, try and get away from all of the people I care about. Whenever i glance behind me and see the lights from my village the word faster flashes in my mind. Suddenly, a root grabs my leg and pulls me to the ground. i stumble into the fringes of a clearing. while on the ground i can feel a tingling in my extremities. "no, no no!" I yell out loud. I look up to the sky to see a full moon staring back at me. It started with my fingers, my nails extending, while my fingers shorten into paws. the bones in my fingers breaking as they conform into their new shape. it moves into my arms, the cracking sound was almost as bad as the actual bones breaking. after about a minute of excruciating pain, i passed out. In my sleep, I saw flashes of what i hoped had been a dream. the flashes consisted on faces that i recognized, their eyes clouded with death. everything was cloaked with a maroon filter.

I look around, seeing nothing but a sunny ski above me. i look to my left, and see the tree line, thick with spruce trees. I slowly rotate my head clockwise, and see that i am in a clearing of the forest, it looked strangely familiar. As i complete my head turn to my right, I see exactly what I didn't want to see. I could see the back of a head laying right next to me. Their was no body connected to the head. i jump up and the contents of my stomach empty themselves onto the grass. My mind is racing, what have I done, is repeating itself throughout my head. I look down at my body with horror, i was naked, streaked with dried blood. I get up and started running, i was running away from not just my village, not just from the people who i have killed, but also from my very life. The knowledge that once every month i turn into a monster and have to murder people,  made it that i could not enjoy life. As i was running, i saw a cliff in front of me. i run to the edge and look down, the river hundreds of feet below rushed by with the ferocity of bear. i jumped, knowing that the world will be abetter place without me. as the wind rushes by my face, i smile. i smile with the knowledge, that i would not be able to hurt anyone else anymore. the river rushes towards my eyes, than everything goes black.