Jackie wakes slowly, light drops of rain fall from the sky and hit her naked, battered and bruised body. She couldn’t remember how she got here; the last thing she remembered was her father hitting her repeatedly. She couldn’t remember why he had been hitting her, but it didn’t matter, he never needed a reason to use her as a punching bag. However, today was different, she couldn’t figure out what she had done to cause him to start beating her like he did. Her head was hurting her from where her father’s belt buckle had smacked against the side of her head, she reaches up with her petite hand and could still feel blood seeping from the wound.

Jackie stands up very slowly on weak, wobbly legs and starts walking around the clearing. The last thing she remembered before she blacked out was her father’s foot connecting with her head. As she looks around, she spots some footprints in the wet ground near where she woke up. She kneels carefully, still feeling unease and takes a closer look at them, they looked like something left by a huge cat. Her nose starts twitching and she hears voices coming towards her. She looks into the woods from where the sound was coming. Her nose was picking up faint scents of cologne, sweat and gun oil.

She looks around for a tree to climb and climbs carefully up its branches. Something inside her was telling her to hide and not trust those voices. She had always been a tomboy, so climbing trees was second nature to her. She scurries up the tree as high as she could and hides among the dense cluster of leaves and limbs. She peeks out from behind the main trunk of the tree to see whom the voices belong.

She sees two men with rifles emerge from the forest. They stopped right at the spot where she had been lying on the ground.

“Where did it go?” One of the hunters kneels where the grass was flat. He examines the outline and sees blood from which the light from the full moon is reflected.

Jackie watches from her high, hidden vantage point as one of the men looks at the spot where she woke up, the other man is walking around to see if he could find any more footprints. “Here are some more tracks, but these are human tracks.” He said, he follows them into the woods but loses them.

She watches and listens as one of the hunters kneels at some more tracks she left, the second hunter; the one who had been following the other tracks, walked over to his friend.

“I can’t find any more tracks other than the ones we followed in here. I did find some blood spots, but that was it. I have no idea where a cat as big as we saw could have gone, the ground around here is soft enough for it to leave tracks.” He rubs the back of his neck.

“The question is, from where did these human tracks come? They look to be about the size of a child, you don’t think these tracks were made by some Were or other sort of supernatural creature, do you?” he said, looking as his friend.

“I don’t know if it was a Were or another type of supernatural creature, but whatever it is, I want to mount it on my wall. Did you see how big that sucker was when it came running across the road? It was huge and had two huge teeth that looked like a Saber-toothed tiger from the dinosaur’s period. I want to capture it and either stuff it or mount it as a trophy. Forget about keeping it alive and displaying it. That would cause too many problems.” He said, as he kept looking around for the human who had made the tracks he found.

Jackie shivers from the thoughts of what that guy was saying, was she the creature he was talking about? Was she like something out of a comic book or maybe a weird Were creature? How could she find out if she was this creature? She didn’t know any one that was a supernatural creature. Was that the reason her father beat her so badly? Did he know what she was? How could she go about finding out what she was? All these thoughts floated around inside her head as she kept watching the hunters.

The hunters kept working the area to which they had followed the tracks; they were covering the whole area and backtracking for any sign of their prey. Jackie remained quiet in her hiding place, watching the men. There was no way she could climb down without alerting them to her presence, when they finally leave; Jackie slowly climbs down from her hiding place. The drizzle had stopped, she is naked, wet and hurting all over; her tummy rumbles reminding her that she had hadn’t eaten anything for days. Her father never fed her and if he did, it was scraps, he just bought booze and that was it. Since the pain she was feeling hadn’t subsided at all, she guesses she must be some sort of mutant like out of comic books. Most Were creatures she read about healed their injuries either in their animal form or in their human form.

Jackie stands next to the tree in which she had been hiding and listens to the various sounds floating around in the night air. Her ears start twitching as she hears running water not too far away; she thinks she could attempt to catch some fish or something from the river. In the dark, she follows its sound back to its source. The pitch-blackness of the night didn’t bother her, she could see as clearly as if it were daylight. It felt weird to her being able to do this, but at the same time, natural. After about an hour of walking, she comes to the bank of the river, and follows it until she comes to a flat area where she could walk into the middle of it.

The cool rushing water felt cold against her warm skin, it sent goose pimples up and down her body. She carefully wades out into the middle of the river, which came up past her stomach, she felt the pull of the current, but it wasn’t too strong and wouldn’t knock her off her feet, she looks down into the water with her night vision, looking for fish. She spots one and reaches down to try to grab it, it moves and so she misses it. She tries three or four more times, before discovering she was getting faster at grabbing for them.

She catches one and throws it to the bank. She tries for some more, catches three and throws them to the bank. She then heads back to the bank. She’s been camping before with her friend’s father and helped him clean fish, she looks around for something sharp to use to scrape off the fish scales. She feels her fingers tingle and then her fingernails start growing, she looks down at her fingers and sees how long her nails had become. They were at least three inches long; she uses her fingernails to scrape the fish, cut them open and gut them. She sits there and looks at them, they are ready to put on a fire.

She looks around for some rocks, sticks and tree branches, it was easy for her as she moved about in the darkness. After about an hour, she had a nice fire going, during her search for wood and such, she had found a Swiss army knife someone had lost, she also found two rocks she could strike together to make a spark, she cooks the fish and eats all three of them, they tasted so good to her. She lies on her back on the soft moss and looks up at the full moon in the night sky, it was so clear and bright with stars, it was like looking at a river of stars. She slowly falls asleep from exhaustion. The temperature was nice and her belly was full. She felt extremely tired from everything that happened today.

Edited by: Dave