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I thought the changes were a normal part of growing up. When this started, the things happening to my body were kind of subtle, the sort of thing you can shrug off and forget about. When you're a teenager, you get used to things changing all the time, so I didn't question it.

The cycle caught my attention for the first time in gym class. Even though I was in relatively good shape, I always dreaded the mile run they had us do every couple of weeks. It had always been an uncomfortable and embarrassing grind. But one day it suddenly became weirdly easy. I was able to glide around the football field four times like it was nothing. It was a such a breeze that I didn't even realize I had finished. The gym teacher called after me with her whistle when she noticed I was halfway through an extra lap. The other girls looked at me with an uncomfortable mixture of jealousy and confusion as I outpaced all of them.

I didn't like being singled out that way, I was shy and it freaked me out a lot to be thrust into the center of attention. The gym teacher told me that I should try out for a sports team and I blushed. She was confused, certain that I must have been slacking during phys ed for the whole year. I didn't know what to say, muttering something about having extra coffee that morning under my breath before retreating to the locker room to hide.

As I changed clothes, I took a suspicious look at myself in the mirror. I was surprised by the tone in my arms and legs. My abs were weirdly firm too. But I didn't make much of it, assuming that the dance class I went to after school was finally paying off. The transition must have been so gradual that I didn't notice. Or so I told myself.

I considered trying out for volley ball or the girl's baseball team. That might be a good way to get away from my overbearing family and meet new friends. But within a few days I was back to my old normal self, all the strength and tone fading like it had never been there. My body looked soft and ordinary again, a healthy but perfectly average teenage girl.

The same thing happened the next month, and the one after that. And as it went along the cycle got a little more dramatic. Each month I would get stronger for a little while, eating more, doing better at physical activities, and feeling a lot more restless.

People in my family didn't talk about their bodies much. My parents were evangelicals, very conservative. My mother had petitioned to ban health class from our school district because it would inspire premarital sex and teen pregnancy. What little I knew about sex had trickled down from watching television when my parents weren't around to supervise what was on. Years earlier, when I told my mother that I needed to start buying tampons, she put her hand on my forehead and prayed aggressively. So by this point I knew I was better off not asking anything. I was forced to come to my own conclusion, assuming it had to do with my period. It was a cycle after all.

As the months went on, the changes got stranger and I started to feel afraid. I would get more aggressive, impulsive, and irritable. The electric lights and artificial noise were too intense. I kept telling my family that the TV was too loud, but they ignored me, calling me "the princess in the pea" because I "couldn't deal with life." They would scream at me for no good reason, using me as the scapegoat for my mother's emotional instability and my fathers stress. If I needed anything that didn't fit within their script for how life was supposed to be, it was always a terrible burden. They called me "the problem child" and when I tried to speak up for myself they said_I_ was being emotionally abusive.

I hated my family. They blamed every problem on the devil. If I didn't obey them, they said it was because I had a "spirit of rebellion" that needed to be "cast out." I especially hated our church and our pastor. When I was a few years younger he touched me in a way that made me feel completely awful. I was at a prayer meeting and he walked up behind me, asking if I wanted his help to feel the holy spirit. He put his hands between my legs, and then I screamed pushing him away and running to my mother who was downstairs in the lobby. But, instead of trying to protect me, she made me swear never to tell anyone. She told me that I would hurt the church and hurt God's plan if I did. I never forgave my mother for that.

The cycles made me feel more aggressive overall. And when thoughts of that night came up, I found myself thinking about revenge. I wanted to go to the pastors house and tear his throat out. At school, I would snap at people suddenly, a major departure from my ordinary personality. One day an older girl tried making fun of me for dressing in black, a habit I'd picked up because I felt increasingly like an outsider. I lunged on her before I even knew what I was doing, scratching her face and screaming. It took too guidance councilors to pull me off of her. And by the time I was locked alone in the principles office, expecting to be expelled, I was balling tears in a state of total confusion.

As time went on I noticed that I had to shave more often during that part of the month. One morning I woke up and noticed that my breasts were just a little bigger, maybe sort of swollen. I thought it had to be my imagination, but when put my bra on it was definitely too tight. Frightened and embarrassed, I put on a loose fitting hoodie in an attempt to hide my body.

I kept this bizarre situation entirely to myself. I didn't know how to talk about it, and I had nobody to talk about it with. There wasn't anyone I felt would understand. So most of the time I just didn't think about it. I tried different combinations of keywords on the internet, but it led nowhere useful. I wound up spending time on Web MD, reading through lists of symptoms, thoroughly freaking myself out in the process.

One night, I had a sudden sexual awakening. I found my brother and his friends watching scary movies in the basement. We weren't allowed to watch that sort of thing because it was "of the devil." If our parents had found out we would have been punished for weeks. I tried to sneak into the room behind the group of boys, but they tried to make me leave. I begged to stay, wanting to be included. And then my brother made me swear not to tell anyone before allowing me to join them.

The movie was An American Werewolf in London, and as I watched the transformation scene I began to feel...strange. It freaked me out. A lot. My heart started to race and my breathing was more labored. I couldn't tell why it bothered me so much, scary movies had never gotten to me on such a deep level. But at the same time, I started to feel something amazing that I didn't have a word for. It felt good in a way that was surprising and confusing. I pressed legs together quietly as the other kids were laughing and making jokes. The feeling was so intense that I was afraid everyone else would notice. But it felt too good so I pressed my legs together tighter. I was so embarrassed, my face must have been bright red.

Later that night I tried to repent, praying to Jesus again and again for forgiveness. I wasn't sure what I'd done wrong, but I knew I must have sinned somehow. Even though I didn't have a word for the feelings, I knew that it couldn't have been normal. I knew that if the rapture were to happen in that moment, I would definitely be left behind. My parents and our pastor were always warning that Jesus would come "like a thief in the night," and that "no man knoweth the day nor the hour." I cried silently as I promised God that I would never do it again. But God had never felt further away.

I laid there for a while staring out the window at the clouds and the stars. It was a weird mix of feelings. On the one hand, it felt like something threatening was up there beyond the clouds, something I should hide from. On the other hand, it felt like like a place I wanted to go. I felt like a missing part of me was out there somewhere, that I had to find it or remain forever incomplete.

That night, I had a lot of violent nightmares. The images and feelings were chaotic: being torn apart from the inside out, my bones breaking and muscles stretching as I screamed in helpless agony. I saw myself ripping people's throats with my bare teeth, exhilarated by some kind of savage rage. I saw shattered bodies maimed by wild animals, tasted blood on my lips, loosing myself in a torrent of raw aggression. It felt more real than being awake. And part of me wanted desperately to escape. I struggled in the dream, semi-lucid and grasping for a life and a self I could barely remember. But no matter how hard I kept reeling from one horrific vision to the next.

I bolted up from the nightmares, wrenching myself awake with a shriek. My heart was beating like a jackhammer, my shirt was soaked with sweat. Relief washed over me as I realized that it was just a dream. And yet, something was still very wrong. There was a shameful wetness between my legs, a deep insistent throbbing. I placed my hand there in confusion, only to discover that my touch evoked an even more profound spectrum of sensation. There is the dark, still shuddering with fear, I touched myself for the first time, gritting my teeth like an aggressive animal. And when I finally came I was so confused that I could only cry.

I had never felt so divided from myself. The feeling was too good to be real, and yet it had to be demonic. My body had been invaded by darkness absolute, and I loved every second of it.

It was only after that that I started to think about sex. And during the weird part of my cycle, I would think about it a lot more. It was sort of compulsive. The weirdest part of it was that I didn't just want sex -- I wanted it, the stuff from my nightmares, the transformation. I would look at the boys and imagine what it would be like if they changed. And as time went on, I started having the same thought about the girls. But most of all I wanted it to happen to me.

One day I was sitting in class, doing my usual doodles. And before I even realized it I was drawing a werewolf. I shut the book, immediately embarrassed, hoping no one else would notice. This had to be the work of Satan. I had disobeyed my parents and now I was living the consequence. They say the devil "walks too and fro throughout the earth like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour."

My father said the devil was always trying to deceive us and enslave our souls. From an early age, I was warned not to trust my thoughts and feelings. Every day my father would give the same speech, insisting that we are most vulnerable to demonic invasion when we alone with our thoughts. He said that we shouldn't trust our imagination or our feelings because we are fallen creatures, condemned by original sin.

I was afraid that my strange feelings and my creative impulses were a satanic force trying to get a hold of my thoughts; I didn't understand it, that transformation scene had given me nightmares. And yet, something in me wanted it. As the months went on I found myself giving in more often.

Eventually, I was filling notebooks with images of monsters and transformations. I got to be quite good by taking out books on art from the library. I told my parents that I needed art supplies because I wanted to go to college learn some kind of design. They obliged, buying me all the fancy pencils and sketchpads I could use.

It was around this time that I finally realized that my monthly cycle was synced to the moon. I began to fantasize that maybe I really was a werewolf, hoping that would explain everything: my monthly cycle, my perverse obsession. I spent more and more time drawing in my sketchbooks, increasingly detailed scenes that became more graphic as time went on.

The sketchbooks were where I vented all my pent up feelings, my private fantasies, my weird urges. I sketched scenes of bloody mauling, filling out entire pages with a chaotic frenzy of red pencils and red watercolors. I told myself it was therapy, a way to let go of the rage about what happened with the pastor and my mother.

Somehow, I felt more guilty about drawing sex, but eventually I began to sketch that too. The sexual stuff was timid at first, but it wasn't long before I drew innocent looking girls being taken by enormous monsters. But most of all I drew myself, tearing out of my clothes, sometimes tearing out of my skin. Those were the most graphic drawings of all.

The crisis came when my mother found the notebook. I heard her screaming upstairs and understood immediately what had happened. My father tried to calm her down, unable to make sense of her incoherent anguished rambling.

She didn't talk to me after that sealing herself in her room for a long time, saying that she couldn't stand to look at me. And then my dad screamed at me for hours, berating me for everything I had ever done and a lot of things I hadn't done. He convinced himself that I was a witch, screaming that I would spend eternity in hell unless I gave myself to Jesus totally. I wept on the floor in front of him, curled in a fetal position, frozen from shame. My brother looked silently from the corner, but I couldn't bear to face so I never learned what his expression was like.

He brought the pastor over so they could pray and "cast out the demons." Several member of the church stood around me in a circle, praying well into the night. They made me beg Christ for forgiveness, before telling me to tear the pages from my notebook one by one and throwing them in a fire.

Later that night I heard them talking on the phone, and my mother said adopting me had been a mistake. They took away my privacy, my computer, my phone. and my art supplies. At night I was only allowed to have my homework and my Bible.

They sent me to a Christian camp that summer to "set me straight." And, honestly, it was sort of a relief. It was the first time in my life when I could walk in the woods by myself. I ignored what the councilors and pastors were saying, preferring the sound of the forest outside -- by this point my hearing was better than ever.

When the full moon came, my body started acting weirder than usual. I was sitting by the side of a lake in my bathing suit with the other campers. Boys gave me uncertain looks. I had gotten used to my chest swelling just a bit this time of month, but they were probably wondering if it was their imagination. Then there was my body. I wore a one piece bathing suit to try and minimize it. But I also had to sit and move a certain way to keep myself from flexing without clothes on. Overall, though, no one seemed to notice or care. People dismiss things that aren't supposed to be possible.

As usually happened at that time of the month I was getting a little too interested in other people's bodies. The texture of their skin and the smell of their sweat were hypnotic. This time of day I was supposed to be swimming or going out on a canoe. But I felt to awkward getting close to people. I wanted to taste them, grip them with my teeth. If I got to close to them when I felt like this, I wasn't sure if I would do something I would regret.

One of the councilors asked if I was okay, and I claimed that I was praying. In reality, my mind was spinning elaborate fantasies about watching the other campers change.One girl caught me looking at her as she dragged a canoe out of the water. She gave me an angry look and I walked off into the woods, taking that as a cue it was time to leave.

Although it was still daylight, I noticed the full moon creeping over the horizon and thought to myself that I shouldn't judge my own imagination. Everyone is weird in their own way. Maybe I should get over myself and learn to live in my own way. It felt good to be outside in all but my bare skin. The smell of the forest seemed more sacred than anything the church had ever talked about. I felt like I was part of the earth, related to the trees and the animals. I began to wonder if there could be a form of spirituality that was about life and the body, rather than an invisible judge obsessed with control and vengeance.

But as I walked something started to seem off. It was a slight ache at first. I placed my hand on my stomach, trying to quell the feeling. But it only got worse. I started to feel hot, too hot. Sweat was beading on my forehead and I felt like I could throw up. There was supposed to be another group activity that night, a sing along around the campfire, but instead I staggered back to my cot, hoping to pass out.

As I laid there, my hands began to twitch involuntarily. There was a tremor in my limbs that I couldn't stop. And then the muscles in my back and chest began to spasm. I started to panic, hyperventilating. I writhed on the bed, my erratic motions fueled as much by fear as by the spasms. It felt like my body was straining against itself, struggling to do something it desperately needed yet which was utterly unnatural.

Terror washed over me in pounding waves. My vision was swimming so much that it seemed like I was drowning in an ocean of my own fear. With all the fantasies and nightmares, I knew what was must be happening. I stumbled out of bed and ripped my top off. If anyone had been in the cabin they would have been shocked by the sight of a pretty topless girl lurching awkwardly down the hall, breathing heavily and grasping her stomach with all her strength. I didn't care though. I was in too much of a terrifying frenzy to even think about it. When a crisis happens, something just clicks inside of you and you act. I made my way to the bathroom, stumbling and using the wall for support, before locking myself on inside and collapsing on the floor.

My heart was beating so fast and so hard that I was afraid I would have a heart attack. My limbs were trembling so hard it was difficult to strip the rest of the way, but I knew that's what I had to do. I then pulled myself up to the sink, bracing in front of the mirror. Sweat beaded on my forehead, a horrible sensation building in my abdomen as I gritted my teeth. My eyes were squeezed shut, in part from the pain, in part because I was afraid to look. I knew what I would see, the pain was so intense that I couldn't possible look human. Finally, I forced myself to open my eyes for just a second. I froze in place ready for the terrible sight. But there was nothing different.

I panted, staring at my reflection, hunched over and gripping my stomach as the muscles in my back convulsed more tightly. I stood there for a moment, knowing what was coming and trying to muster the courage to face it without crying. But nothing happened. After the pain subsided I spent what felt like an eternity starring into the mirror with a dead expression, confused beyond the capacity for words. When it was over I felt so weak that I could easily have passed out. My vision was going dark, but I had enough will to drag myself back to the cot before passing out from sheer exhaustion.

My mind was blissfully empty when I woke up. It took a moment for the memories to flood back in. The dread I felt was grim and heavy. I felt certain that I had driven myself insane. Allowing the devil into my life had done more damage than I could have possibly imagined. Or maybe it was all psychosomatic. Maybe I was so obsessed with this perverted fetish that I'd hypnotized my body into some kind of weird illness.

But when I sat up and looked at myself, I saw a line of faint white hairs between my breasts. Nothing major. If there hadn't been a lot of sunlight and I hadn't gone to sleep without a shirt, I never would have known. But it was there and I knew it wasn't my imagination. The hairs were fine and soft, extending in a line from my private area, over my belly button, before gently fanning out in the middle of my cleavage.

I sat there for a long time, frozen in a moment of cold understanding. Fear with wonder, relief mixed with dread. I realized that I wasn't crazy or perverted. But the relief of that realization came at the cost of understanding, with devastating finality, that I wasn't really a human being. I finally understood the secret behind my cycle. I had been right from the start -- in a way. This was about growing up, but not in a normal sense. I was growing up to be a werewolf. My cycles were a secondary puberty, a lycanthropic puberty. I would change eventually, but for now my body wasn't ready.

Years passed and the same thing kept on happening. The struggle was so dramatic that I had to shut myself up when the moon was full so no one would see what was happening and conclude that I had epilepsy or something. I begged my parents to let me walk in the woods at night, but they never relented, afraid that I would practice witchcraft.

To hide the truth, I created a character around myself. I pretended to be overzealous about Bible study and homework so I could shut myself up early. Life became an act, and as time went on I learned to go through the motions so well that people stopped questioning me.

I tried to live a normal life but in the back of my mind, I felt as if it was all an act. Guys told me that I was beautiful, but I pushed them away because I felt like a monster. Girls tried to be my friend, but before I could get to know them I wound up lashing out at them. It wasn't long before I was "that weird loner" on the edge of everything.

My parents put me into counseling. But I would just sit there, giving bland predictable answers to their bland predictable questions. I gave up on their religion. Sitting in the church became an agonizing exercise in boredom. Sitting in school became and agonizing exercise in alienation. I begged for permission to go for night walks, but of course, that wasn't allowed.

For a long time, I was afraid it would never happen. And I knew that if it didn't I would probably go crazy. By this point, I was old enough to go to college, but I was afraid to choose before I knew what it meant to be this way. For all I knew, when I finally changed I would loose control and kill people.

I wondered about my real parents. Nobody had any answers. I had been left in front of an orphanage. The state did an investigation but found no leads. That was all anyone had to tell me. What had happened to them? They had to be the reason I was borne like this. So why would they just leave me to discover it alone? They must be dead, I finally decided.

Thinking about that made me feel so profoundly alone. I was sure that there were werewolves and I was one of them. And that meant I had no idea what was so about anything. If what I believed about myself was true, then everyone else was living in a dream world. The world that they call sanity is just the cowardly denial of the vampires and demons I began to think must also exist out there somewhere. But then again, I would tell myself, it must be me who was crazy.

As I got older, the need for sex was more intense than I think it's supposed to be. But I couldn't allow myself to do it because I was afraid I would make someone become like me. Or even worse, if I let go and got into it, what if I suddenly changed? There was no way to sort out what was reasonable and what was paranoid. So I just sank deeper into my isolation.

Eventually I insisted that I had to move away. Something inside of me had shifted, I could sense this time was going to be different. When the symptoms started, they were much more intense. I began to think it was finally time. My whole adolescence had been a blur of fantasies and nightmares about the change. And now that it was finally happening I didn't know what to think or feel. I knew this day would come, but I still wasn't ready. I guess there is no way anyone could be ready.

I asked my parents to use my birthday money to take a bus and visit my cousin. I told them that I wanted to go to school and it would help me to check out the campus where she lived. The agreed, reluctantly. But before I could go, they said I had to speak with the pastor. They were concerned that I would return to "witchcraft" if left to my own devices. My father drove me to the pastors house and left me there so he could "council" me. The unfairness of it was galling, he knew perfectly well what had happened, and now he was leaving me here to face the very man who tried to violate me.

I sat silently in the pastors house as he paced back and forth, lecturing me about "being in the world but not of it." I fidgeted, feeling more uncomfortable in my own skin than usual. It was the night before the full moon, and body was definitely responding. The backs of my hands had a subtle tuft of fine white hairs, my canines felt more pronounced, and my nails felt weirdly loose. He continued carrying on about how I needed to be "washed in the blood of the lamb," pacing behind my chair and pausing with intent.

His hand was on my cheek, brushing a strand of hair out of my face. Just like the fight in school I didn't even know what happened before it was too late. Before I understood what I was doing, I was on top of him. In a surge of adrenaline my nails had broken away, replaced by hard black talons. Those talons were already buried in his face. I twisted hard and ripped his ripped away his cheek in a spray of blood. Without thinking I sank my teeth into in throat, clamping down with all my strength and tearing loose a chunk of flesh. Blood ran down from my mouth as I chewed hard and swallowed. There was not time to think, deliberate, or judge. I was a machine of death, ready to be set in motion. The sweet girl that everyone saw on the outside had been revealed for the lie that it was; the savage animal I longed to release was stirring in her cage.

It was only after I staggered out the back door that thoughts of guilt began to flood my mind. Horror that I'd tasted human flesh. Fear that I would do it again. Exhilaration at the taste. Hatred for myself. The knowledge that I had killed someone eclipsed everything. If I didn't expect to live a normal life before, I knew for certain that would be impossible now. Not knowing what to do I walked the streets for hours. It began to rain but I was too traumatized to care. Within minutes I was soaking wet, my hair matted to my face, my cloths completely drenched. I must have walked for hours, my head spinning, my reality shattered.

Someone pulled up beside me and asked where I was going. I said I didn't know, and he offered to take me to the next town over. From there, I bought a bus ticket and rode the greyhound in no direction in particular. I rode through the night, getting off the following day in an area that seemed densely wooded in all directions. The bus driver warned me that I was in the middle of nowhere, but I made some kind of vague excuse before walking off. As it started to get dark I turned off the road and made my way into the trees. I could hear a stream ahead and thought that might be a calming place to let it happen. If, in fact, it was going to happen.

I felt paranoid about undressing. Living the way I had gave me a lot of weird feelings about my body, along with fear of other people. I kept looking around nervously before finally deciding I was safe. I pulled off my t-shirt and my jeans, sittingdown on a log beside the stream. I was still in my bra and underwear, nervously swinging my feet in the shallow water.

By this point, I could see the moon between the trees. My heart was beating faster and harder than any time before. I could feel my chest rising higher and more forcefully as the daylight faded. My chest heaved. glistening with sweat, soaking through the white cotton of my plain white bra.

Of course, I was turned on. That happened every time the moon was full. In my parents house I learned to touch myself through the spasms to keep myself calm, to keep myself from screaming, but most of all because I wanted to. Before it even started, one of my hands was between my legs. I touched myself nervously as I sat there, gritting my teeth as I felt my insides start to shift and overheat.

For a moment I thought I didn't deserve to feel good through this. I had killed someone, I was turning into something dangerous. And yet, increasingly, I didn't care. It wasn't me who was the monster. It was him, him and all the people who protected him. I told myself that if I was going to make it through this, I needed to let go of everything. I had the rest of my life to sort out the guilt.

I bit my lower lip and hunched forward, my eyes squeezed shut in tense anticipation. My spine pressed unnaturally against the curve of my back. My muscles felt like they were stretching my skin tighter. The sweat was already thick, my limbs trembled and my breath quickened.

The thoughts of guilt came rushing up again. You are a monster. You are a monster. In the intensity of that moment I knew I couldn't bear to hate myself. The fear and the pain were escalating so fast that I knew whatever was going to happen it would be worse than ever. I felt that if I allowed myself to hate who I was in that moment that I would die into the agony. I had to let go. I had to embrace the truth. I had to embrace myself.

And then, finally, my hands begin to stretch. I blinked, unsure if I was imagining it out of desperation. As that happened I laughed suddenly, a feeling of relief erupting in my chest. I'd been waiting for this vindication and release for years. There were no thoughts, no words. Just wonder, fear...and want. Tears started to well in my eyes as my claws began to push away my nails, a bloody sight that should have made me feel sick. Instead, I was excited. I bit down hard and felt the sharpness of my canines on my lips.

I felt red hot. And from deep within me horrible gurgling sounds began to emanate. If you hate throwing up, imagine what it's like to feel your organs move. I should have been afraid, should have been screaming. But all I could feel, for the first time in years, was happiness.

My hand continued to bend and stretch, black hairs piercing through the skin, rough pads forming on my palms. Before I knew it the hair was down my arms. I started laughing. Even as chest jerked, my neck constricted, and my spine stretched, I kept laughing louder and louder. It would have been a bizarre sight: a half naked girl laughing with joy at the sight of her warping hands.

I could feel my back straining against my bra, squeezing my tits against my chest as it pushed outward very slowly. I looked down and watched the fur begin to sprout. And to tell you the honest to god truth it was beautiful. I had watched a dozen stupid I movies about this just to get myself off, I knew it was supposed to be ugly, but all it made me feel was more turned on.

I was panting harder at this point, soft moans escaping between sharpening teeth. The change was building slowly, it hurt. And sometime I would spasm violently as my body strained against itself. As if it was trying to escape the prison of its human form. And there, naked in the woods, an increasingly contorted freak, I finally felt like I belonged in my skin. For the first time in my life, I felt like myself.

The pain was building but I didn't care. I let myself down onto all fours, still wearing my bra and underwear, panting harder, dripping sweat. I kept touching myself, all fear of being seen swallowed up in a roiling current of animal need. Dense grey fur began to sprout between by breasts, peaking out from underneath my bra as they swayed with the erratic rhythm of my shuttering body. I felt a nub at the end of my spine begin to press against my underwear. It was finally happening. I didn't care about anything, I didn't care what it meant, or how I got to be this way. I only cared about getting more. I worked myself up into a rapid orgasm, howling in a awkwardly human voice as my body shuttered in the moonlight.

But when the pleasure faded, I began to fear that this would be as far as it would go. I looked down at myself in the stream and saw that my eyes reflecting the moonlight in an eerie yellow. My arms and legs were more muscular than they had ever been, my torso wider. There was a dark grey mane of fur along my shoulders, along my arms, between my breasts. It was everything I fantasized about. But it wasn't enough.

Instinct told me it would happen if I could only let go. So I started building up another orgasm, my hips rocking as I pressed the side of my face into the dirt. This time there was a distinct rumble to my voice as an I began to moan and pant. I could feel my body gaining mass, my feet stretching. I was so excited that I came right away. But this time, it was as if I had unlocked some kind of resistance deep inside of me. And then it all sped up. My chest expanded violently, the straps of my bra giving way.

A bizarre sensation was building in my spine. I could feel my tail jutting further outward, fur blossoming as it stretched and pushed away my underwear. It all hurt so much, it was agony but I could only smile from the sweet release. My hands and feet were locked on the ground, my feet becoming digitigrade as my entire body shook in increasingly violent spasms of pain. I cried out, the terror finally overwhelming the desire as my humanity slipped away. It hurt so much to lift my hand as the final agony began to rip apart all semblance of the human form. But I had so much lust that I had to do it, even though it felt like my arms were breaking. I touched myself again, relishing the alien sensation of rough pads against the dense grey fur between my legs.

It didn't take much to make it happen one more time. I wanted to see the moon or my reflection as I came but I couldn't turn my head. It felt like my neck was changing and my face was about to crack apart. Whatever it feels like to die or give birth, this has to be worse. But it didn't matter, because I had to do it one more time. I wanted to slow it down for just a few more seconds, I was so close. But when my face finally contorted it drove me over the edge all on its own. I came in the very moment that my human form was extinguished. It was beyond sanity, it was beyond a pleasure. It was freedom. It was at home.

So that's it. I'm not crazy. It's been a few days, and as I write this now I'm on another bus, headed who knows where. Since the change I've been traveling across the country, camping in national parks when the moon was full. It was a plan I dreamed up when I was a teenager, hoping to escape the prison of my awful life after it finally happened.

I checked the news as often as I could, having thrown my phone away the night before it happened. They say the pastor was mauled by an animal and they list me as a missing person. But that doesn't mean I'm off the hook. I've thought about this carefully, and the government must know about people like me. On the internet, people talk about all kinds of things that aren't supposed to exist. And they say the government seeks them out and captures them. A violent death like that would get attention from people up on high. Someone trained to understand the signs of a werewolf attack might recognize it for what it was. And so I can never go back. Maybe I can never settle down.

Whenever I'm in town I try to find a way to use a computer. That isn't as easy as it sounds. Even if you go to a library, they expect you to be a local so you can get a library card. But I've learned that I can get people to help me if I act like lost, confused, and frightened. So librarians usually let me use a computer if I am able to make the right impression. Sometimes I try to find out anything I can about lycanthropy, but there is virtually nothing useful.

Eventually I found the story of a woman who calls herself Rose. Judging from the details, I knew she was talking about real life, even though she was presenting it as fiction. Only another werewolf would understand the things she did, the feelings, the urges, the pain. So, I sent her an anonymous message asking for help. Her response was short and cryptic. If she's smart, she's probably as worried about the government as I am. She told me I should write a journal to keep myself from going crazy. She emphasized that I should be honest with myself about _every_aspect of the change. The word "every" was italicized in her actual message. And that's what I'm doing now, trying to face the truth by writing about it. Honestly, it does help. All these years I haven't really said any of this out loud, or thought about it all at once.

I want to ask her to meet. It's seems crazy to say it, but I've never really had a friend. My whole life I've been stifled in some kind of fundamentalist cult. The people around me might as well have been a million miles away. And then there's the fact that I've never been with someone. Men scare me, even though deep down inside I know I need them. It's hard for me to trust people. And beyond that, I'm too afraid that being with someone would make them change. Who would want that? But if I could find another werewolf...

Anyway, enough about that. The future is uncertain. I may not have money, or much of a plan, but strangely I have hope. It's time to forget the past, this is my time. I know who I am and no one can take that from me. I'll find a way to build a life, somewhere. I'll find a way to understand what I am and learn to live with it. I can't say how, but I'll make it happen. I have to.