NOTE: This tale IS NOT mine, I merely translated it into English, the original author of it is the contributor Jaqueline Miguel.
Monday: the most painful day in the world.
Monday: the most painful day in the world.
With a supernatural effort, I
get up from bed and take my breakfast. In
the kitchen, my mother is already there just like a stack of succulent pancakes
and a glass of milk.
“Mmm, that looks good! I'm starving!” I said as I devoured the stack of
pancakes.
“And since when aren’t you
hungry?” She asked laughing.
I shrugged and smiled. Human hunger is never as intense as
wolf’s, so to speak. Hunger is painful, never deadly, but maddening. One thing that nobody can understand
is why we need human food and eat something well… that is "alive". The best theories say that, as we are
half animals, we have the instinct to eat what we kill or something like that
... Well, despite all these
suspicions one thing we are sure: we must quench our hunger, because if we don’t
quench it for some time, we go crazy and are very able to transform in public
and eat the first living thing that appears. But,
contrary to what legends say, we are not affected by the full moon, or silver,
damn, we aren’t even werewolves! I mean we turn into wolves, but we prefer the
term shape shifters.
After breakfast, I went up to my
room and put on a black sweatshirt, the first jeans that appeared, then I put
on my black all-stars and tied my hair up.
Since there was some time until
I had to leave for school, I watched a little television, even if it was only
for ten minutes. The only
programs that were on were boring, so I decided to leave early.
On the way to school, I saw a
moose hidden amongst the vegetation that made my mouth water. It's odd but in this city it was very
common to see moose wandering the streets. For
normal people, they are a horrible and dangerous plague, but for my family,
they were a juicy and delicious plague.
Actually, my parents decided to
move from a village in Alentejo, a region of Portugal, when I was about six
years because, as a family, a cow or two wouldn’t be enough to quench our
hunger, and if we caught more, farmers would suspect. So we went to Europe until my dad
picked up the trail of shape shifter friends who were on holiday in Germany and
suggested to come here.
They also live here, in the other
end of the city; however, they don’t turn into wolves. Instead they turn into a
kind of human with wings, teeth and ears of a bat and they don’t eat meat, just
the blood of prey.
The children of my father's
friends, Adrian and Shioban are my best friends and the only people that I can
truly trust.
I arrive at school and I go
straight into the huge South Anchorage High School.
I practically have no friends
except for a nice girl who sometimes walks with me, perhaps out of pity, named
Sophie.
Most humans follow the instinct
to move away from us so it's hard to make friends.
The bell rings and I go to
English class for the first period. I
sit alone in a desk and I try to pay attention to the lesson. The class was running smoothly when a
knock was heard.
“Come in!” Shouted the teacher.
“I apologize for the lateness,”
A young, beautiful, dark brown spiky haired boy, with incredibly green eyes, a
black long-sleeved shirt, a black leather jacket, motorcycle boots and an
irresistible bad boy look,
came through the door. “I'm new
here. My name is Adam. Adam Hatten.”
“It does not matter,” Sighed the
teacher, obviously annoyed by the interruption. “Mmm ... sit
there on the edge of ... mmm Alexandra.”
Great...
Don’t get me wrong, the guy is
really cute, but the longer he’s with me, the more he’ll find me weird and be
afraid of me, like the rest of the school.
“Hi!” He said, making a charming smile.
I was surprised. Most humans followed the instinct to
get away from me, but there he was sitting ... He must be a shape shifter.
I sniffed twice and the smell
was just of a normal human. Weird.
“Hello,” I said finally.
***
“So, Alex, you've seen the new guy? It's so hot!” Sophie said smiling happily.
“Yes, sits next to me in the first period
of English.”
“Oh my god! So?”
“So what?” I asked confused.
“Is he as cool as the rumour’s
saying?
“I Dunno,” I shrugged.
“My God, if I were to sit next
to him ...” She said with a dreamy
look.
I rolled my eyes. Sophie fell in love too easily and
then suffered… a lot.
We went into the cafeteria to
get food and we sat down at a table where some friends of Sophie were. I sat in the farthest chair.
“Have you seen the new guy,
Sophie?” Asked a short girl, which, if
I remember correctly, was called Anna.
“Yes, he’s so hot,” she
answered. “And you know who is
sitting next to him ... Alex!”
“Alex?” She looked at me with a barely
disguised "poor guy" look.
“Yes! Isn’t that wonderful?! She can ask his number for us!” She smiled.
“It would be so cool!” Said another little girl, whose name I
have already forgotten.
I sighed and rolled my eyes. At the same time, Adam came into the
cafeteria and made a seductive smile for some girls who were the total cliché of popular girls: blondes with pounds
of makeup on top, provocative necklines and shorts that barely covered their
ass, who still wore them, even though it was freezing cold.
I just noticed that I was
staring at him when Stacia, one of the girls whom he smiled to, made me a sneer
and her dumber clone, Avery, stared at me like I was contagious. But what surprised me the most, was
the fact that Adam look at me as well, as if it were normal, something that no
one in this school apart from Sophie, did.
