Everlasting (Complete)

Everlasting Secrets

“You’re a fucking freak Kelsie and that’s all you’ll ever be,”

For most teenagers bullying was a cruel twist of fate. To be judged and abhorred by the very people who were supposed to be your friends... It was troubling and hurtful and in extreme cases potentially life threatening.

Yet for Kelsie, it wasn’t like that. It was true that she was hated, every girl sneered at her and every boy mocked her. To them it didn’t matter that she had the same wheat coloured hair as most girls and she didn’t have to dye it. It didn’t matter that she had beautiful cornflower blue eyes, because she was different and being different was a crime at Beach-road high.

As a child Kelsie had been popular, back in the days when it was cool to go swimming in the ocean every single day without a care in the world but as a teenager not so much. Nobody could understand why she didn’t want to dye her hair crazy colours or slather on fake tan and prance around in bikinis. But the one thing which truly sealed her fate was her forearms because unlike every other girl in her school Kelsie didn’t want to pluck and wax and tan and comb and preen every square inch of her body. She shaved the necessary parts and that was that after all when has a little arm hair hurt anyone? Unfortunately the girls at school didn’t see it like that, it could have been taboo the way they reacted. As if she was dirty and disgusting and flea infested.

Today was one of the harsher days of bullying, it was close to 3pm and Kelsie had already been the victim of shoves, jeers and jokes. At lunch she’d had yoghurt dumped over her head and as she walked away from the school building, bottles of seawater and half empty coke cans were hurled at her. Yet she truly didn’t care, because this was the last time she’d ever see them, because she had a secret.

As a teenager Kelsie had never really been through puberty. Her breasts barely reached the smallest size, she didn’t get spots or greasy hair, and oddly enough she’d never had a period. Doctors and nurses had referred to her as a late bloomer, but she knew the real reason why; it was because she was not human.

Instead of bleeding every month, Kelsie would spout soft, downy hair on every part of her body; it was so shiny and sleek and thick that it could only be described as fur. When this happened she would skip school and dive into the ocean where she entered her true form, there she would remain for a day until it passed, and then she would return to the surface and suffer another twenty eight days torment before the cycle repeated.

Only this time it was different, today was her eighteenth birthday and that meant she got to finally choose between living in the ocean for the rest of her life with her family or living on land; she had chosen the ocean.

She shifted uncomfortably as she walked to her favourite spot on the beach, her fur had sprouted more than ever and her clothes felt like they were suffocating her. Every part of her body itched and burned; she could already hear the ocean calling to her.

She stripped naked and took one last look behind her, her classmates had followed and were stood on the pier bewildered as they tried to spot her. She smiled to herself, let them wait.

Finally she was free. For the last time her body shifted into her paranormal form and she slid into the water before diving into the murky depths, excited to see her mother. She did not regret leaving the human world and never returned to it again.

K.E.L.S.I.E

S.E.L.K.I.E