Palms dug deep into the moisture of the forest floor. The trunks of the trees around me formed a circle, a tiny arena, and my eyes flickered between them and the darkness beyond the brush. I felt my chest expand. My breaths grew ragged.

God, when I was sixteen, I begged for the day I’d get to Shift. My friend Dakota, who was older by four years, showed me a cool looking scar on his arm and said he received it after Changing despite a broken arm. He said he nearly died. The guy lived in a heavily protected indigenous reservation, so I’m doubtful the woods around him were anywhere near dangerous.

It’s thanks to him that I went out into the woods the next day, trying to make the morph happen. And it worked. I was a whole four years too early with my Change.

Fuck Dakota, man.

“Ah!”

Each huff welcomed a new spasm, violent and quick, like tiny whips snapping against my calves. If the pain were corporeal, I’d imagine its hands wringing my biceps, twisting them until the bones that were hidden within snapped. They never did, at least, not for me.

My mouth opened wide. I let out ragged, ugly moans until my throat hurt and my harsh, open-mouthed breathing replaced it. In time, the familiar sound of my gasps became low, guttural. The more I inhaled the less like myself I sounded.

Pop.

I lifted my head, confused. My ears pricked.

Click. Pop!

Without a single thought as to how the decision might affect me, my body shuddered violently, reversing everything I had just gone through. My jaw snapped back into place, my knees folded in on themselves, and my breathing turned normal again.

Pop!

The ground next to me exploded in a tiny geyser of dirt and forest debris.

I burst away from the ground and ran. Hunters? In Haze's land?

Or worse. Skinners.  

My heart beat not in my chest but inside my head. The noise was so loud I could barely register the path I was on. When I reached the wire fence surrounding Haze's home, the length of it hit my gut and I flipped over, landing on my back onto his gravel driveway.

"Haze! Haze!"

I couldn't worry about waking him or his family. My knees scraped against the gravel until my naked heels found perch and launched me off the ground. 

Haze opened the door to find a sweaty, naked me tumbling forward.

"What's wrong, boy?!' 

"Skinners - in the woods! They shot at me!"

It didn't take much else. The radio static from earlier resuscitated, but there was no radio in view. Haze rushed past my fallen form and into the woods, a faint crackling emitting from his body.

What was that? 

Who was that?