Soup - Animal | Penana

It was easier to live the life of an animal rather than that of a human.

Animals didn't have the burdens humans did. They didn't have to struggle to pay rent, keep the electricity paid to cook food and have a hot shower, or have to worry about the same springs in the old mattress stabbing them in the back every sleepless night. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwYXSDmNK1x
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Things were better as a wild creature.192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMfh87HO1o7
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So, one day, I just went missing. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFLnQW92ZhV
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The posters with my face on them from concerned townspeople plastered phone poles and were attached to links on social media. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtLacCK1GN1
There was even a news broadcast for my search and safe return, along with one of my last photos; not my most flattering. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpQ9fRepJdL
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With my disappearance came speculation about what could have happened to the young man who lived in such a small tight-knit town with only one road in, one road out, and a train track cutting through the middle. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFTekxvmdkv
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Whispers envisioned that I had been kidnapped and stuffed into the water tower that looked over the town from its heart. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdpfz2RRq2I
Others gossiped that I had drowned in the water below the train track that stretched to the East, so that's why no-one could find me. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQYw7XBJHGP
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They were logical reasons. My truth was from a place that danced with fantasy. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaXNlNuvaz1
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I could peel from my skin into a monster; could do it ever since I was born. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEA3EOHmmyK
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When I was old enough to leave my parents and venture on my own, I chose this tiny town surrounded by forestry and waterways so there wouldn't be anyone to bother me or pry into my strange appearance. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxODykB4ooc
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To them, my black stained hands and speckled arms were from an old injury in an oil company I imagined. I don't know if they believed that, but they didn't pry into it. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPmIVUy78nf
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My skin, usually as white as the moon itself, was masked with foundation where it was visible to give it a more natural tone. It was still pale, but not enough to raise alarm of a monster in their midst. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDqC7vVEkki
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I wore blue contacts over my dark red eyes and burned them with solution every few hours I had to remoisten and refit them. I even considered wearing glasses to try and pull focus from my blue eyes whose shade kept changing every few months to something a little too light or dark from the last.192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlTpfYHU57h
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It was costing me a fortune to keep up appearances and make sure mouths stayed shut. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNQ8oC9T8Tm
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But, when I could just peel away that mask and truly be myself, I was free. I didn't have to worry about money or how I looked or each little thing I did that might seem 'odd' or 'impossible'; I could just be me. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7J0McAKdSJ
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The decision was an easy one, but one that alarmed the town when a strange creature suddenly started being spotted near the train tracks or tree lines.192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjk63Ei6DGA
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My true self wasn't what they were used to. It was a bright white creature covered in skin rather than fur and sporting the same speckled limbs as black as the night. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡATEIX64vNF
My red eyes, untainted by chemicals, were the colour of blood. My teeth, broken and sharpened in the shift from my human self, were nowhere as useless as the blunt one’s humans had. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9V0pJAz3gW
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I had long ears usually pointed upright to take in all the sounds of nature and its calls to warn me of any of the townspeople getting too brave. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ61aHxMjEbu
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My tail, long and slender, easily was the length of my own body hunched down on all-fours. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0qiqN1p1UQ
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My slender body reminded the townspeople of a werewolf, others of a wendigo. Despite the lack of hair, people wanted a logical explanation that didn't trip into delusions they refused to accept.192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQFL70ETKDG
It was too humanoid to be a wild animal, but too feral to be a human playing pranks. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡphT6p7rpeQ
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I kept my distance. They always saw me no matter where I was. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡw2N2L8Nj3k
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With the sun behind me, I trailed the train tracks on my way for the house I knew that bordered it on the way out of town. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1JIvigjUim
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I kept to the East side where the road peeled away and the train track ran on suspended beams towering in the air. No-one could get me if they didn't have access. Between me and the town was a river that the beams pierced through. I stayed on one side until every afternoon when I knew the house on the West side of the tracks and the town would be calling out for me. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSrFfQKflpg
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A young woman lived there by herself. She was loved by the town she frequented often on her little powder-blue scooter with the cutest yellow milk-crate bolted to the back. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjAc8yGcC2T
Her orange hair waved out the bottom of her matching helmet whenever I saw her, and her brown eyes had a way of smiling at me when she bumped over the grass alongside the tracks so she could run errands in town. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCTqTnItrFJ
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Sometimes, I'd glimpse her as she was parking her scooter by the platform beside town so she could cradle bundles of parcels in her arms from the milk crate and board the train to disappear along the West line. I'd chase after her for only a few meters until the train sped away and I was left to make a shameful walk back. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9vfsDeIp5r
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Because of her schedule, people took to hanging near where the tracks met the land of the town so they could watch me make my way to that little house on the other side each afternoon. It was the only time I allowed them to get so close to me in my moment of desperate desire. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfh1aSBo91W
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Despite knowing some of the people and their routines, I didn't trust the newcomers who made their homes here and didn't know the unspoken rules we had set between ourselves. 192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJpSBH4vps5
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It had worked for three months since I disappeared and I was going to keep it that way, for her.