One-Shot Short Stories

The Beast

Morning air wakes me from sleep, just slightly. Half conscious, the cold penetrates my dreams. I'm flooded with images of tundra. The land is vast and paved with white snow and ice. My bare skin on the hard ice, it's freezing, I'm dying. Then I feel it, the slight shudder my body gives just before it transforms. My eyes fly open, awake from my dream, and there I am a big, fuzzy, brainless polar bear. I draw in a deep breath of the frosty mountain air, after a short meditation to clear my mind, the little white hairs retreat and my body mass shrinks back to that of a 13 year old boy.
    It doesn't hurt. At least not much, it's similar to an electrical current shooting down your spine to invade every corner of your body. The curse was placed generations ago, given to my great great great great great grandmother who broke a witch's heart by sleeping with her boyfriend. Thanks to her, every generation of Lavelgough has had their bodies plagued with a beast who seizes their skin in moments of need, or great desire, or worst yet in moments of great emotion.
My parents: Lin and Gary Lavelgough, the black sheep of the family. Choose to run around galavanting as animals, living wild off instinct. If it weren't for my Aunt Genesis, I'd have been the same. When I was about 5, my Aunt came to visit. She found me alone, a wolf cub fighting an owl for the remains of an eaten mouse. According to her, I was barely recognizable as human. She decided then that my parents were unfit to raise a child. My Aunt got custody when she threatened to take my parents to court and they decided society was worse than losing their son. I lived with my Aunt for nearly 7 years. She taught me dominance of the beast. At age 12 Aunt Genesis passed away, and I was forced to return home.
***
    "Good morning love bug," my mother grinned as she walked into the "kitchen", planks of wood I laid between two trees with a log for sitting. She did a little hop and lept, her body sprouted golden fur and she landed in my lap as a panting, slobbering golden retriever. Her tail wacked down hard onto my thigh as her longue lapped gross wet kisses across my cheek.
    "Yes, good morning to you too, mother," I replied, pushing her off my lap while simultaneously wiping away saliva. There was a high pitched chirping that stole Lin's attention and there landed father. A dove, chirping some morning song though I couldn't understand. Remaining human meant I could only understand my parents when they spoke to me in human form, which they rarely elected to do so. Upon sight, mother transformed once more. The two of them chirped their song and flew off together weaving back and forth in the sky.
***
School is an hour walk down the mountain. I wait to put on my uniform until I reach the bottom to avoid any dirt stains or rips in the fabric. Aunt Genesis taught me education was the most crucial element to creating a stable life for myself. That intelligence was the enemy of the beast, it was logical and analytical and everything opposite to the raw impulse of the curse, and it was true. When I was at school the beast seemed to almost disappear, like it went into a coma. It was a place of silence and thoughtfulness, it was easy to maintain a state of apathy. That is, until I met her.
"Hello there, I'm Yessenia," she placed her bag down on the desk next to me, "I'm new. Is this seat taken?"
"No," I replied without looking up from my book.
"Great," she cheerfully exclaimed, sitting down. After a moment of silence she reached a hand in front of my face, "You got a name?" Her bold interruption spurs a twinge of frustration, my nails sharpen. Closing my eyes I breathe to retract the claws.
"Who do you think," the words stuck to my throat as I caught sight of her. She was beautiful. Her hair, a gorgeous brown that waved softly down her back. Eyes chocolate honey, magnified by her glasses and freckled cheeks. My words began to trip over themselves as my face filled with hot blush, and stubby tail fluffed out. Heart racing, I stood, "is in the bathroom?" I laughed awkwardly "Cause I really have to go. Right now," I managed to say before running out the door.
As soon as the door closed behind me I pressed my back against the rows of lockers. Taking a deep breath I was able to calm my pounding heart and return to my normal, tailless, state. I returned to my seat calm as ever and properly introduced myself, and that was the start of my first friendship. Every day Yessenia would come bounding into class full of energy, talking a mile a minute about some new song she heard, or a piece of art she saw. Her voice became an addiction, soothing to my ailing ears. She was absent once, and the silence was deafening, every minute I expected her to burst through the doors with some pointless story that would light up the spark in her eyes. But she didn't come.
The next day she was back, and yet somehow she wasn't. She sat in the same seat, with her same offcentered smile, and yet it was missing. The spark in her eyes, the bounce in her step, it was gone.
"Good morning" she said, squinting her eyes with a tilt of the head to imitate her usual cheer.
"What's wrong?" I asked, skipping straight to the point. Her eyes opened and her face dropped immediately.
"Am I that obvious?" she smiled, but spoke with a sad tone. "My parents want me to be someone I'm not. They tell me I need to choose a side but-" She looked up from the spot on her desk she had been focusing on. Straightening her back she smiled again. "Oh never mind, you wouldn't understand anyway." My lips pursed with anger.
"Screw them," I whispered under my breath.
"I'm sorry?" She cocked her, my reaction taking her by surprise.
"Screw them. You are perfect the way you are. And if they can't see that," The words were swirling around in my head too fast to catch one. "If they can't see that then they're fools." I spit out with a huff of frustration. She giggled, and I felt her lips press to my cheek.
"You always know what to say." She pulled away smiling. But I couldn't breathe. Much like when I first met her I felt the return of my tail and ran to the bathroom without excuse.
My whole body, organs and all, were shaking, I'd never experienced such a thing. What was that? I took a deep breath to calm myself, but Yessenia, her olive skin, full pink lips, the feel of them on my skin were burned into my mind, the tail wouldn't go away. In fact the fuzzy feeling spread like an infection. My nose, replaced with a small pink one that could smell the horrors of a middle school boy's bathroom. My ears, bunny-like, sprouted up twitching to the rushed shuffles of late students. I stepped out of the stall, to the mirror only to hear the door click. There was no time to hide before Yessenia sheepishly entered.
"Hullo? Everything okay in," she stopped upon seeing me, eyes wide.
"Don't look at me!" I tried to say but it was a deep growl, I flinched. My body began shifting again. No, I decided then I would not let the beast get the better of me. I tried to fight the change, to stop the transformation, but only caught myself in the state of skin breaking open. It was agonizing and I couldn't resist it anymore. The beast was free, and it was my turn to sleep.
***
    It's all kind of blurry. I don't remember any thoughts, just images and instincts. I'm not even sure what I really was. I had the paws of a bear, but I was at least six feet tall on all fours. My teeth had rows like a shark, and were pointed sharper than any knife. And my growl, it was worse than ten hundred snarls from ten hundred wolves. What I do remember was another creature in my way. It was lean, unafraid, soft black fur, gentle eyes that felt somehow familiar. It broke my haze enough for me to stand beside the beast and look through my eyes. I could hear it purring, and for the first time I understood the beast.
    "Who are you?" my growls, now comprehendible.
    "We've met before," the creature soothed, slowly advancing, "Is this seat taken?" I could see it now. She was as beautiful of a beast as she was human. The beast took control once more and my consciousness began to fade. But I wouldn't let the beast ruin this moment as well.
    "How?" the only word I found I was able to produce.
    "I can explain everything" Yessenia spoke slowly "You need to free the beast," she continued to advance until her body pressed against mine. Her long tail wrapping across my back trailing soothing patterns on the side, "Can you do that for me?" and for the first time, in her warm embrace, I felt like I could. I was tired of fighting the beast, I gave in to it and just like that the beast was gone. Or I suppose it was never there, not really. It was always a part of me.
***
    Yessenia's family wasn't cursed like mine. She was simply born with the beast she explained. Her parents feared her and taught her to always display dominance over the beast, just as Aunt Genesis had I. Yessenia discovered the more she suppressed her urges the stronger they got, it was painful and tiresome repressing the beast until she felt she could no longer do it. She freed the beast and decided she would simply live wild, and yet when she freed the beast she found there was nothing there. At last her mind was empty, she had found peace. She was able to allow herself to feel emotion, free of fear she may hurt someone. But her life among the people proved dull and sparked her beastly urges. She had found a balance of living free in the form of beast, while maintaining human intellect and connection.
I didn't have to live wild like my parents, nor emotionless like my Aunt. There was a solution, a balance, and she was right before me, and every day after that. Yessenia showed a better way to live with a gift given ages ago to my great great great great great grandmother, whose only crime was love.
***
I don't even notice the crisp morning air nibbling at my skin as dawn wakes me. I shake my thick bear fur and watch it fall to the floor as my nimble squirrel body climbs to reach the nuts waiting on the higher branches. There I find my mother and father still asleep, huddled in their twig nest over their unhatched egg.
"Hello there little friend" I whisper to my unborn sibling. My mother's eyes slowly open. After noticing me she chirps
"Good morning love bug,"
"Good morning," By this point my father began to stir and decided to join in.
"Oh good morning Jenson," He snuggled his beak against my mothers neck feathers. "Would you like to join our morning sunrise watching, or do you have to get to your busy human life?" He said with a questioning and condescending tone. It's true my parents don't much approve of my participation in society, but I will no longer let that get in the way of being a family.
"I wouldn't miss it for the world." I leapt from the branch sprouting wings, with mother and father by my side, we flew high above the trees just in time to watch the morning sun peak out from the mountain ridge.
When I reached the treehouse once more, there stood a familiar shape.
"Hey cool cat," Yessenia, a black cat, sat perched upon my sitting log. I couldn't help but laugh. "Ready to get going?" she asked, her tail playfulling twitching back and forth. Transforming myself to match her I gave my reply.
"Paw-sitively" I smiled, content and filled with pure joy.