It’s slow. The split of my nails. Slow as the others come in underneath, black and sharp and heavy. My knuckles bloat. Joints fizz as they reassemble. My skin bubbles in the moonlight, fat blisters that erupt into gray fur.

There’s an inferno of screaming. The sound of my suffering permeates the woods, charges the mist with an electric danger. All other creatures, anything else alive out there, holds still, arrested by the violence.

My eyes burn. There’s a pressure inside them, coming from the reshaping of my head. I reach up and press my leathery palms into them so they don’t seep from me.

I’m on my knees, but then they give out and I fall forward. The fur spreads like fire, like I’m being flayed with hot irons. It’s unbearable.

I’m dying.

The force of my screams sends my teeth from me. The new ones descend, and with them comes the howling.

And the rapture.

I snap the handcuffs off easily.

The chicken is gone. I crunch the bones between my teeth, taste their delicious marrow.

The rest of the meat. It’s gone so fast. I blink and I’m gnawing on my own fingers.

The squirrel. Hanging over my jaws as I hold it by its long, soft tail.

It’s not dead when I swallow it.

I can hear its heartbeat for a few seconds after. Feel it writhing there in my gut.

Until.

There’s a loud heartbeat. The loud heartbeat of a big heart.

I claw up the side of the distillery and jump down into the clearing.

There’s a flash of fur. It’s fleeing. It knows.

I’m after it.

I’ve got it by its back leg, by its sweet doe foot. I rip it off. The mess of the tear splashes in my face. I shake it from my fur.

Without its leg it won’t get very far.

I’m on it again, my fingers in its eyes. In a fury, I twist, and it stops moving.

The moonlight is heavy on the back of my head, forcing me down, deeper inside the deer as I feed. I lap up its blood, let my hungry tongue soak in it.

The awareness is both sudden and slow.

There’s the squish of insides against my snout. The red film over my eyes, like I’m looking through tinted warped glass.

It’s like I’m chained to the frenzy, but a second ago I was nothing but the frenzy. I’m a whisper. But I’m here now.

A hostage in my own body.

I try to pull away from the deer. To spit it from my jaws. But this body won’t listen. It keeps eating and eating and eating.

There are things beyond our control.

My body.

My body is beyond my control.

This is the truth. The truth of me.

What if I can’t control myself in this form because this is what I really am? What if this is what I really want?

Power and violence and freedom and oblivion.

I let my eyes roll back and the monster win.