The streets were yawning alleyways of living shadow, twisting and contorting in a desire to swallow me whole. Rain poured down on me, washing away the tears but not the pain, the mud but not the taint. My t-shirt had been soaked through long ago, my jeans saturated and dripping, but still clinging to my hip bones. Dogged step after dogged step, combat boots clunking as I walked down the center of the vacant boulevard. I looked up at the almost full moon, threw my head back, and howled like a wolf.

“I can’t take it anymore!” I screamed until tears ran from my eyes again. “I can’t take this, don’t make me do it any longer, I can’t stand it!”

I wanted to rip something, tear it, feel it shred beneath my fingertips. I was so tired of being powerless. And then she appeared. I could hardly see any of her, except a strange shadow in the mouth of a side alley.

“Can’t stand what, knowing you’re helpless to control your own fate?” Her voice was low, gravelly. Akin to mine, only deeper and harsher.

I stopped walking, bowed slightly under the weight of the world sitting on my shoulders, arms hanging low at my sides. “My destiny is just that– mine.”

“That’s what you think.”

I was about to say something else when something stabbed into the side of my neck. I reached up to touch it and realized it was a tiny dart nestled into my fur. Everything started going hazy, white entered my vision, pure bright white, unnatural against the greys and browns and blacks of my prison of a world. I felt like I was laid onto a stretcher, and then everything was gone.

Today they brought in a creature. I’d never seen its like before, though I’d heard of it in

novels. Volf. Wolf-lion hybrid. Feline skeleton, canine skull. Mane. The tail was tipped with a murderous scorpion-like stinger. But it was a novel. It wasn’t supposed to exist. Volfs were, according to the books, shape-shifters, able to take on a human form during the daylight hours. The beast they brought in, sedated, looked like the two forms had fused. It was bipedal and, like a kangaroo, used its tail for balance (or so was my guess). It was even clothed.

It was a monster though. It was only awake for ten minutes, perhaps, when a blip in our system allowed the sedatives to wear off without pumping in new ones.

The beast was vicious. It took out three full-grown men, five hundred thousand dollars in equipment, and yanked out four IVs before it went under again.

It was unanimously decided to assign the beast to Experiment Six One Three.

We confiscated the ragged, soaked t-shirt and the military-issue-like boots, and burned them for fear of contamination of God only knew what. We did not, however, remove its belt and jeans, desiring to retain some shred of decency. The black triangular pendant we deemed important, so we left that as well. The experiment we intended to use it for; the surgery we were to perform on the beast, required the subject to be in somewhat decent emotional condition. Whether or not she was remotely human or felt human emotions was irrelevant. If the pendant offered comfort, it had to stay.

“Damn–” “What’s wrong?” “–it won’t stop–” “The Boss is pissed–” “–bleeding profusely–” “–at you he thinks–” “–it isn’t going to–” “–you screwed it up; that it isn’t going to–” “–make it.”

They thought I couldn’t hear them. They thought I was dead. They were wrong. I could hear every word. I was kept alive and awake by a blinding pain that tore through my whole body. In the moments where I was more aware, I realized I was lying on my stomach. My back almost felt like it wasn’t there, that’s how bad it hurt. I slowly became more and more aware of myself– They had taken my shirt, but left the pendant– they had left my jeans, but taken my boots. I wanted them back; I was cold. I tried to move, to twitch my fingers, my tail, anything, to show them I was alive– but I couldn’t. I was too cold, too numb, too dead.

“Do you think it might have survived the operation?” “It’s doubtful, but possible. We should put it under observation. See if it wakes up.”

Finally they moved me. I felt violated; their hands were on me, touching me, I wanted them off, I wanted them to get away from me! But I couldn’t do anything, I still couldn’t move. I was put on my stomach again. Something kept getting tugged on, they were propping something up– it was attached to my back. I couldn’t figure out what it was and I couldn’t see it. But I knew it was there. Knowing there was something wrong with me scared me, but there was nothing I could do about it.

World-class traveler, that’s me. Taking three different trains and two busses to see a friend. It probably would have been simpler to just take a plane, at that point, but I rather liked taking the land route. Gave me time to relax and watch the countryside fly by. It was always fascinating, watching the scenery shoot past like it wasn’t stationary at all, but as quickly shifting as it actually appeared.

It’s funny how as a writer, I can find inspiration in even the smallest things. Such a random event, like sitting on a train, evolves into a character or a story within moments. Why?

Well I’ll be damned if I know.

It just happens. But that’s okay with me, because it really doesn’t affect me or anything. Not negatively anyway. I just roll with it and see where it takes me. In the long run it usually means more work. But that’s okay.

I’m on the third train when I get an idea for a scene. To anyone else, I probably looked like I was having a panic attack, frantically shuffling through my bag for my notebook, which I always have with me, and a pen to scribble down the scene before it’s gone. I always hate that feeling, working so hard to get a good idea and then, within ten minutes, all I can remember is the rush of knowing I had something good. But this time I get it down on paper before that happens, my notes a jumbled mess of half-finished paragraphs and quotation marks.

It probably looked like chicken scratches, literally. But to me it was the bare skeleton of a gut-wrenching scene. I loved the character a lot, having had him virtually from the beginning of my novels. He was known practically all over America, if I was going to boast, since several books of mine had already hit the shelves.

The bus rides were each about a half hour, so I couldn’t afford to sleep on either. Somewhat boring, staring out the window and trying to force myself to stay awake, while listening to the sporadic announcements of the next stop until I disembarked, only to board the next and repeat the process. When I finally reached my final stop, I looked around for the car my friend had brought to bring me to her house.

“Hey!”

I turned, and grinned when I saw the girl hanging half out of her black Camry’s window, waving one arm to get my attention as the other clung desperately to the roof of the car. I laughed, trotting over to her, trying vainly to still my bag so it wouldn’t crash against my leg, holding the handle and the strap where it sat on my shoulder. “Hey!”

She grins, sliding back into the car and hitting the unlock button so I can clamber into the front seat after tossing my bag into the footwell of the cabin. “How was the trip?”

“Dismal,” I say with a laugh, falling into the familiarity of this conversation. I’ve made this trip countless times, each leg almost brainless now, and I’ve held this conversation a thousand times over. She pulls out of the dinky parking lot and onto the street, the two of us exchanging jokes and laughing about virtually everything as we make our way down a crowded thoroughfare.

She shouts curses on a handful of occasions as people cut her off, and I laugh at her indignant face.

“Must be a full moon,” I say with a teasing smile. “All the morons are out tonight.”

“Yes.” She hisses the word through clenched teeth.

For all our laughter on the subject, I start to feel nervous. I can’t place why– at first I attribute it to having forgotten something at home, so I say nothing. But as she pulls onto the freeway and speeds up to almost seventy miles an hour, the feeling of foreboding intensifies until it hurts to take a breath.

Just as I open my mouth to tell her to pull over, wanting to wait until the feeling passes, a minivan zips in front of us and abruptly slams on the brakes. We have no reaction time at all, and our little Toyota four-door slams into the back of the van, plowing forward into it. Within a moment, the entire scenario is flipped on its head. I can’t possibly understand what’s happened, except that I feel the tremors of another car clipping our fender, then another plows through the rear half of the car.

I hear the distant whine of sirens, and several panicked shouts. I cough, trying to force air back into stopped lungs, to convince a panicked heart to resume beating. I turn my head as far as I can, my body pinned by a half-inflated airbag and my locked seatbelt. The entire trunk region of our car, and most of the rear window, is completely gone. I swallow once, twice, throat working to try and operate properly as I turn my head to my friend, who lies with her face against the steering wheel. I shout, but she gives no response. I work a hand free and shake her, and she falls against her door, blood oozing down her face, and I freeze when I see death in her half-closed eyes.

“N–no!” Blood stains a river of brown hair and I feel tears slipping numbly from my eyes. I begin to feel cold, despite the crackle of flame and faint rush of heat that tells me a fire is burning somewhere close. I look down at myself, seeing immediately the pieces of windshield glass jammed into my chest. I choke on a cry for help, gasping for breath as my body starts to shut down.

“This can’t possibly be it,” I whisper, but I slowly realize, as blood drips from my chest and into my lap, that it is.

I woke screaming. As my pulse slowly returned to normal, I realized that no one was there to see me. Perhaps they were taping me, I didn’t know. But there wasn’t anyone in my immediate vicinity. At first, I couldn’t see anything. Bit by bit I remembered the sensation of something attached to my back. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do first– get up, or see what was attached to me. I couldn’t decide. Finally my vision cleared, though there wasn’t really anything to see, it was just white. A white box, maybe ten by ten feet, the walls padded, undoubtedly to keep me from hurting myself. As if I wanted to be in more pain than I was at that moment. My entire body ached like someone had tried to break my bones with a sack of flour.

I stood. My paws were a bit numb still, but after a little while I could feel them and I could stand comfortably. I took a few steps forward, and then I couldn’t take a step– I was caught on something. I knew, intrinsically, it was what had been propped up before. I took a deep breath, and turned around.

I thought I was dreaming again. But my dreams were less dark than this. I was horrified. I wasn’t just a creature anymore, now I was a monster too. It was a wing. A huge, black spined, red wing. And it looked like the operation that they’d mentioned- the procedure that had attached this monstrosity to me, had been botched. There was a metal patch, and several gaping rends in the membrane. Two of the holes were linked by a golden chain, and one of the spines was hung with a silver chain. With a murr of shock I realized the other end of the silver chain was pierced into my flesh. There was a rod, silver, that went into my shoulder too, to hold up the damned thing. I panicked, throwing myself against the wires that were holding the wing up to the ceiling until they snapped, exploiting the small amount of muscle control I had over the wing at the moment to keep it clutched to myself so it wouldn’t break. It was a horrible game of ‘chicken,’ and if I lost, I would pay a hefty price.

The wires gave first, releasing me so I fell to the ground. One of the wires had snapped around and lashed against my cheek, which started to bleed. The root of the rod and the chain started bleeding as well, until there were rivulets of blood down my back that dripped onto the floor and tainted the perfect whiteness with their crimson. I cried then, for the first time. I sobbed, one hand wrapped around my pendant while the other braced against the ground, weary of this game and wanting to return to normal. I couldn’t take this. I didn’t want this. Still I said nothing. I didn’t want them to know I could speak. Somehow I knew that the less they knew about me, the better. Soundlessly I wept, the tears mixing with the blood until it ran down my face in a wet mess that ruined their floor. Good.

I lay there, on the pristine white floor, for a very long time. Hours, days perhaps. Finally they came back for me.

“It woke–!” “Look, it moved!”

Gee, you think? I was lying somewhere else, now I’m on the floor, and the wires are broken. But of course it makes more sense that “it” didn’t move, the nonexistent wind shoved “it” on the ground and snapped the wires. Come on!

“The wires broke–” “The wing is tender–” “It’ll have to be propped back up–” “Get tech in here right away–”

I’d had it.

I leaped to my paws, flapping my wing hard, lashing out with my arms and tail until two of the uniformed men lay dead and bleeding on the ground. A doctor remained. I assumed he was a doctor, as opposed to an RN or something of the like, identifying him by the knee-length white lab coat (now splattered with blood, point for me!), ID tag, and the stethoscope slung around his neck. He stared at me, shocked. We locked eyes for a moment, and I saw it in his eyes when it clicked that there was intelligence in me. Sentience. He understood it finally. But it was too late for him. He made a break for the door, but it had been locked from the outside– they didn’t want me to get out. He slammed into the white wall where the door had been and pounded on it, shouting gibberish and vain pleas for escape. No one heard him. No one had heard my cries, so they wouldn’t hear his. I leaped, wing flapping until I was held slightly aloft by it as I descended on him like the angel of death.