When I was first born, my father picked me up and held me for a brief moment. He looked at me in my fleshy-pink lump of a form and only uttered the word: "Okay." That word would then go onto define the rest of my existence up until now. "Okay". Unremarkable, indescribable. Only the mediocre and nothing further in terms of excitement or disastrous. I was the fifth child of a family that struggled to hold together any notion of being family beyond its most literal definition. A group of people, related even if only loosely, existing in this world.
When I turned 13 years old I became conscious of my first thought. I thought to myself: "I really am just Okay, aren't I?" Through my troubled pubescent hormonal years I'd remind myself everything was okay, clinging to normalcy as a crutch for my deteriorating mental state. My family would tell me it was right to do as such. "Just act normal," and "You're fine," were words I'd hear both as praise and seething criticism on the daily. And so, when I grew up and was first able to leave the house without fear of breaking the sense of normalcy, I did so.
At 18 years old I moved in with my high school sweetheart, a boy several years my senior I'd met at the library. He was arrogant, angry, and an irrational egomaniacal bastard that I could only muster apathy for. Yet, somehow, his cruel words and disgusting mannerisms were better than the cold detachment I found at home. "After all," I thought to myself, "it's better to live like this and regret it than to not do anything at all."
My only valued companion was a girl I'd meet at the convenience store just outside the aforementioned library. Her cool manner of speaking enticed me. When she was arrogant I was excited by it, proud of how intelligent and confident she was-- even if she was horribly wrong about most things. I was entranced by how she would casually slip into her mother tongue, a far off language with a sort of rhythmic bounciness to it when spoke that I was reminded of music each time. In hindsight, it seems I always surrounded myself with people who seemed to be the complete opposite of myself. I, someone who speaks slow and flat, with a bitter edge I can't seem to properly express, admire those who are forthright in their likes and dislikes.
It was a dreary afternoon on a Friday, the day I hated most. The day when traffic would become heavy from outbound residents of my sad coastal town, seeking to do something new and exciting with their short-lived vacation for the week, and the incoming surge of tourists who thought our sad waters a destination novelty. Some beastfolk were made for these gloomy skies and the hustle of pseudo-city culture. I myself was not, nor was my family. We were, and still are, of course, lions. Lions who need the thin dry air of a savannah and to run for great lengths along the plains.
"What is... 'Ee-fee-nee'?" A man much larger than myself was hanging over my bicycle, struggling to read the cursive lettering of a decal I had applied to it several summers ago.
"An-fee-nee," I corrected.
"How do you get that from that?" He gestured with his hands as if it would illustrate his point somehow. I found it to be annoying and overly expressive, unbefitting of small talk or the introduction that was taking place currently.
"It's my name," I responded mostly dry, though my uncomfortable agitation snuck in a biting edge at the end of the sentence. I immediately became self-conscious, feeling both rude and equally overly-expressive.
The man looked me up and down, memorizing my shape and the expression on my face thoroughly while I instantaneously forgot his own. My companion had arrived to the scene, a grocery bag in hand and latté in the other. She was truly a beautiful girl, her hair long and a velvety midnight black. Her frilled blouse was elegantly tied with ribbons and pearls, her skirt just lengthy enough to be modest while still showing off her legs. I was dazed for a moment as a warmth washed over me.
"This is Jackson," she blurted out as she took my hand into the softness of hers, then forced it into the disgusting grip of Jackson's. "He's the guy I was telling you about! We're finally getting our own place together, instead of me just visiting him all the time."
I smiled weakly, nodding my head to the man in courtesy. He did the same, though his smile seemed to curl at the edges as if he'd just thought of something unpleasant. I hate this man.
For the next half of a year I'd tolerate this man's presence at my meetups with my friend. Each and every time we conducted a phone call I'd hear him in the background, making snide remarks dressed up as pleasantries. On my own end I'd feel the uncomfortable touch cold arms wrapped around my waist, lingering glances on my phone screen from demon I kept. Perhaps, I thought at first, I was projecting my own fears and disgust from my situation onto my friend.
"Alice," I'd message her. "Let's get together soon, okay?" My virtual letters adorned with excited emoticons and foreign letters shaped into more familiar, cute imagery. When I watched the decline of her lively responses fade into all-lowercase nothings, I truly at that moment knew her soul was being as eaten away as mine was. When I watched her cover her face in thicker layers of makeup designed to obfuscate instead of enhance, when our hangouts turned to guilt-filled obligations with her lover, when I watched him grab her when neither thought I was around.
Though I'd lay awake at night fantasizing about how I could rescue her, reality was not so fantastical. One day I found her, my beautiful Alice knee-deep in the bottle and crying. There was an insistence to let it all be. It would be my fault if he left her, it would be my fault if she had to be alone in this life. She repeated these sorts of sentences to me over and over. Why shouldn't we be alone together, then? I wondered angrily. Why do cling to something disgusting? When Jackson entered the room that night, and he raised his hand at me, then at her, I hoped that all of us would come to liberating end.
Beastfolk are able to transform at will to their original primal forms. It was a skill, so it's not entirely to say at will. I had family members who were never able to find their foundation in such a way. Some beastfolk, though none in my family, would exclusively live as animals. I was more along the lines of the former-- almost entirely human with only a few slip ups resulting in a transformation into my rawer self.
That night I must have truly been an animal. Jackson's head was crushed swiftly between my jaws. The bite force of a lioness is somewhere up to around 1,000 PSI. I certainly must have hit that upper limit as his skull cracked my maw. The feeling was akin to biting into a pistachio, expecting to find a hard exterior but finding it already deshelled somehow. Comical, in a way. I knew it deep down, and it would come to fruition as she raised her phone to her ear with a shaky voice, but I'd never see Alice again after that night.