More of Pika's Writing.

I’m running. Running where, I’ve not a clue. A forest? I ask myself this question as my feet pound after one another, like a never-ending game of tag. No, it’s not a forest. There are trees, yes, but not enough to be considered one. I vaguely feel the impact of raindrops on my hair and skin. It’s cold, and a small breeze whips my hair back. It has to be winter, or at the least, late fall.
I allow myself to glance up at the sky for just an instant, and I spot the faint silvery glow of the moon, obscured by the thick rainclouds. But this diversion of my concentration makes me trip. I fall to the ground, scraping my hands and knees in the process. I look down, and I see I’ve fallen onto a sidewalk. Scrambling up, I push my hand to my mouth, cleaning off the blood that has now formed.
I have to keep running. Why?! What am I running from?
“I don’t know!” I immediately answer my thoughts.
But I force myself to move forward. Somehow, I know I must keep running. I focus myself on the noise of my feet colliding with the pavement. This calms me down some. I turn right on a corner, and immediately want to turn back.
A large figure molds itself within the shadows, about ten yards ahead of me. It’s facing away from me, I can tell this much from the dim glow of a random street light, but nothing else. But that stroke of luck could change any minute. I don’t want this person to see me. I fall back behind a large bush. There’s a small hole in it, which I can look through towards the figure.
Peering through, I notice that the figure is gone. Confused, I push my head up to get a better look around. It couldn’t have gone far in the past few seconds. But I guess it could have, because that’s when I feel a hand claw at my hair.
Screaming, I whirl around. I aim a fist at my attacker’s face. Or rather, what should have been its face. There was nothing there; it was just an empty space in the hood of the sweatshirt it was wearing. My hand collided with the soft cotton of the hood. This makes me scream again. But not before its hand shoves a rough rag against my mouth. I’ve no choice but to breathe in whatever substance is on it. My eyes droop almost immediately, and I feel my legs give way. I crumple in a heap on the wet ground. The last thing I remember is laughter, filled with malice and victory.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The worst way to wake up on a Saturday morning is from your neighbor’s dog barking. I swear, one day I will find the nerve to drive it to the edge of town and just leave it there. Groaning, I thrust my blankets off of me. I swing my legs over the side of my bed and stretch. I look at my clock: It blinks 7:24 at me in big red numbers. I groan again. I stand up, and the old wooden floor of my room creaks under my weight.
Quietly swinging open the door, I glide over to the bathroom. My morning routine, which consists of a shower, skimming a comb through my hair, and brushing my teeth, doesn’t take me more than a half hour. I find myself pulling my old gray jeans and vintage ‘Rolling Stones’ t-shirt out of my closet. Glancing in the mirror, I can’t help but grimace. My ever-growing black hair falls to my eyes. Note to self: Get a haircut, I think to myself. I can just make out my dark brown eyes under my curtain of hair. Aiming my eyes just a bit more downward, I make out the entire skeleton-like figure that is my body. Another note to self: Gain some weight.
Swishing my hair back with a hand, I leave my room and come to a stop at the door directly across the hall from mine. Usually, there is a faint light coming from the crack at the bottom of the door, but this morning there’s nothing to see but shadows. I quickly swing open the door. I walk into the room of my step-brother, Jack. He’s only a year younger than me, he just turned fourteen, but he has this chronic fear of darkness. Nothing freaks him out more. So it’s very odd to see his night light off.
I turn to his bed, pressed against the corner. I see a lump bulging in the middle of the bed and roll my eyes. His night light must have died in the middle of the night, and he didn’t even realize. Personally, I think that he’s over-exaggerating his phobia. Just to mess with him, I back up to the wall, take a running start, and collapse heavily on top of the lump on the bed. I expect him to wake up scrabbling at me, so when nothing beneath me moves, I rip off the covers. I can’t help but grin when I see not a boy, but a pile of pillows and blankets.
“Ayahhh!” is the last thing I hear before I am crushed in between the pile of bed accessories and 130 pounds of Jack.
My hands are quickly forced behind my back, like I’m being put into handcuffs by a police officer. With my arms now useless, I have no choice but to now use my legs to free myself. I thrust my right foot upward, towards Jack’s back, and I know it landed a target, because I hear him gasp.
“Oof!” Jack’s tight grip on my arms is suddenly released.
Seizing the opportunity, I scramble up to my feet, and charge Jack. I wrap my arms around him in a vice grip and force him onto the floor. I pin his arms up over his head, and kneel onto his legs, rendering him immobile.
“Get off of me!” He yells, trying to buck his legs up.
Just to irk him further, I press my face close to his, grinning all the while.
“What are you going to do, Jack?”
“A lot, if you don’t get off of me!”
“And what if I don’t?”
“Then I’ll still do a lot!”
Releasing my grip on him, I stand up and stretch, like it was no big deal that I had just held him down onto the floor. Jack stands up, too, and glares at me with those eerie emerald-green eyes of his.
“What were you doing in my room?” He asks.
I snort. “What were you doing attacking me? Seems to me you knew I was going to come in here and jump on you.”
Jack decides to remain silent, and I know that I won.
“Well, that was a good start to my morning,” I say, smiling with little effort. Jack’s my best friend; I don’t need to fake a smile around him.
Jack returns the smile. “Glad I could do that-”
“Jack and Elixor! Get down here right now! I am not in a good mood!” My step-mother’s voice wafts up the stairs.
Jack and I exchange a look of ‘we are in serious trouble.’ Sighing, I begin to make my way down the stairs. This is something I don’t want to deal with right now: the abusive wrath of my step-mom. I stop suddenly on the landing, and Jack almost smacks into me. Peering around the corner into the kitchen, I knew it was smart to stop. Anne, my step-mom, is cradling a knife, staring absent-mindedly out the window. At first, I thought she was chopping something up on the cutting board. But after a quick glance at the counter, I see no cutting board upon it. That’s when I knew that she was planning on using that knife to hurt us. Bad.
I swivel back around to Jack, and I worry. Yes, Jack is only a year younger than me, and he can probably take just as much pain as I can, but I don’t want him involved in this. I know it’s just me being Mr. Protective Older Brother Elixor, but I hate seeing Jack getting hurt. I suppose my eyes speak of my thoughts, because Jack’s face changes from a look of worry to a look of fear. I push him down silently onto the stairwell, and raise my eyebrows at him, which is our way of communicating to stay put. Sucking in a breath, I make my way into the kitchen.
Anne heard me walk into the kitchen and turned. The grin on her face is filled with malice. It makes her look insane. Her long, brown hair tumbles down to her waist, and it’s nappy and not brushed.
“Good morning, Elixor. I’m guessing you’ve been having a good time so far today, considering all the noise that woke me up this morning?”
So that’s what she was angry about: we woke her up with our roughhousing. On a Saturday, too. She hates waking up early when it wasn’t necessary. Oh boy, we were in for it now.
Not wanting me to seem like I was ignoring her, I had to reply. “Good morning, Anne. Yes, I’ve had a good morning so far. What about you?”
“Don’t act all innocent around me, Elixor. I know that you know what’s going to happen next,” she spits.
I grimace. Yes, of course I know what’s going to happen next. I’m going to be somehow injured with a knife by my step-mom. I nod at Anne, wanting to get this over with as soon as possible.
“Oh, you think I’m going to punish just you today? Oh, no. You’re little brother is going to get some of this too.” She threatens.
This sets me off. “Don’t touch him!”
“He’s my son; I’ll do whatever I want to!”
I twist around and run back to the stairs. I find Jack there, green eyes wide with fear.
“Go, Jack! Run upstairs!”
“But-”
“Go!”
He flees. I hear the door of his room slam closed, and the lock click half a second after. I just have time to breathe a sigh of relief before I feel Anne’s nails scrape into my scalp. I turn, crying out in pain.
“Think you can protect your precious little brother from me with just a door between us?”
I snarl. “At least he has someone trying to protect him!” Her fingers are still tangled in my hair. Yet another reason to get my hair cut: it’ll be harder for Anne to get a hold of me.
Pleased with the fact that I can’t escape her, she laughs. And then she raises the knife, still in her hand. Trying to keep the smallest bit of dignity I have left, I refuse to close my eyes, even in the face of death. She brings down the knife, tip towards me. I expect her to stab me, but then I figure, why would she do that? If she murdered me, she would be the prime suspect. Pleased with the knowledge that I was not going to die, I couldn’t help but smile.
I feel the tip of the blade dig deeply into the skin just below my eye. Then she begins to drag it down across my face, towards my chin. The pain is excruciating; I’ve never felt anything like it. I let out a scream and fall onto all fours. I didn’t want to scream because I knew Jack would hear it. Head bowed, I can feel the thick, sticky blood inching down my face, and I watch it drip onto the floor.
“Now, are you going to help me get Jack down here, or are you going to make me do that again?
I spit out the blood that got into my mouth onto the floor. “There is no way I am going to let you do that to Jack.”
“Then let’s get started, Elixor.”
The repeated use of my name sparks something inside of me. She knows I hate my name, and that’s why she uses it. She wants to egg me on. Well, I guess she’s going to get her way today, because I am angrier than I’ve ever been before. How dare she threaten to maim Jack like she did me? How dare she maim me in the first place?
My anger rising, I force myself to stand up and look at Anne. I brush my hair back with my hand, and I feel that a lot of it is saturated with blood. I stare straight into Anne’s eyes, and I see the look of horror painted on her face. What is she scared of? Maybe she cut me too deep, and I’m losing a lot of blood. I press my hand against my cheek, and I feel fur. Fur!
I glance down at my hands and let rip another scream. Actually, ‘hands’ is now incorrect; I suppose that ‘paws’ would work better. I look down at my legs. They’re covered in black fur. A little bit farther down, I see my feet morph into large paws. I fall to all fours again because my ‘feet’ can no longer hold me up on their own.
I look at Anne again. She’s just sitting there, her mouth wide open with the intention of screaming. But no sound is coming out, she’s so shocked. She quickly composes herself.
“Elixor… You’re a wolf.” Her voice is filled with awe.
I want to say, well no duh, but I can’t speak. Suddenly, I’m aware of the fact that my clothes are nowhere to be seen. I hope that whenever I get myself out of this that I’m not naked.
I need to see myself. I carefully go up the stairs into the bathroom, and I shut the door with my back paw (paw!) to look in the mirror behind it. I look at my reflection and gasp. I was a full-blown wolf! My fur is black, just like my human hair. My eyes are still a deep chocolate-brown.
I can’t believe that this is real. It has to be a dream. There is no way that a human can turn into a wolf. It’s just not physically possible.
I need to find Jack. Now. I nudge up the door handle with my nose and push open the door. I head down the hallway to the end, where Jack’s bedroom is. I scrabble at his door with my paws.

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