Morning, keep the streets empty for me.
Please.
I head toward the center of town as the sky awakens from its slumber. Lamps flicker off one by one as the sun replaces its guiding light. An old man lies crumpled beside a bench. Eyes wide, staring through me. His soul has been scraped clean. I want to believe it wasn't me. That something else wore my face last night. But the bite in his throat fits my jaw perfectly.
They say animals don't feel guilt. They follow their instinct. But what about those of us in between? The ones who wake up on a bed of spider webs. Those with warm fur and cold tongues that question themselves on how they can change as they notice blood beneath their nails. Those that fight to feel human in an inhuman body…
Memory comes when memory's old. Sometimes in flashes. Teeth tearing through someone. A scream swallowed by the void of a forest. Most times, though, it returns as a scent. Copper. Metallic. Flashes of a face…half-still, half-bitten. I'm never the first to know what I've done. That honor belongs to the early birds. The streets are always cleaner before dawn. Emptied of noise until it's not. The asphalt holds the night's dampness and masks the blood well but it's hard to overlook a body that's no longer whole.
Trust me, I try to leave. I wander the forest. I follow the stream up North. My reflection is cowardice. It only shows me after I've turned back. After the teeth, the fur, the howl. After I've eaten. Where do people like us float? Not in the woods. Food becomes scarce. Not in cemeteries. Everything is already dead. Not in peace because memories remember. The cold finds its way in, always. It settles in my bones long after the transformation fades. The cold crawls all around me and yet I've never found solace in it… even though it never leaves me. Velvet mites, I'd whisper, like a prayer I no longer believe in; velvet mites will keep me warm.
They never did.
I'm in the center of town now. I hear the bell above the door from the bakery ring. I don't look. I can smell who it is. A voice I almost remember whispers, "Anna?" I close my eyes and whisper back, "Take me home." I don't have a home so it's not a place she could bring me. Home is the last person who still sees you as person. Of course, until the moonrise. Then, not even she will see me as a person. Just a hunger that knows it will never disappear. So, for forever, I'll be here. Whispering…
Morning, keep the streets empty for me.