When you wake up, and realize your still dreaming, what takes place can only be described as extremely weird. Fortunately for me, life is just that, extremely weird. Todays dream, I am in a high school, which sounds normal, but the fact is, I’m homeschooled, so, weird. I’m wearing a suit, which I’ve only worn once.  Standing next to me are two people, a man and a woman, both people I’ve never seen before. Both are wearing suits, like me, and have ‘my name is’ tags on their chests. Mom and Dad, they say, normal maybe? I think not. I’ve never met my parents; when I was a baby, I got dropped off at a random ladies house in the middle of the day. Weird right? They’re both pretty tall, taller than me anyways; I’m 5’ 11”. They both have black hair and I have light brown. There eyes are brown, my eyes are yellowish amber. There skin is fairly white, mine fairly tan. I’m positive these are not my parents, what’s weird is that I’ve never really cared for figuring out who my parents were.

            Maybe unconsciously I want to know, I really don’t know. A hand is placed on my shoulder, very gently. I turn around to see a woman, who I actually know very well. Rose Morel, she’s my mom. She’s 5’ 9”, blonde hair and brown eyes. She smiles at me, and the weirdness fades away.

        The weird feeling is replaced with a very hot and painful sensation. My eyes snap open, and the pain floods in, all I see is red, and all I feel is pain, indescribable pain. I think hands are placed on my back, I yell, roaring until my voice goes hoarse. “TY!” says a voice, “Its okay! Your alright!” You must be joking, I want to say, this pain is worse than death. I can’t yell anymore, my lungs and throat are in too much pain. I lie wherever I am, writhing in pain, hoping it will subside soon.

        Everything goes black and the pain subsides, peace. This must be what death is like.

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            I feel cool, I slowly open my eyes, to find Rose sitting next to me, holding a wet cloth. “Thank you,” I manage to say, my voice sounding incredibly rough. She attempts a smile, which is more than I can do. Her eyes looks red, I hope she wasn’t crying, but she probably was. “It’s been a while since the last one,” she says. I nod in acknowledgement, and try to stand, but she stops me. “You need to stay put, your body is definitely in no shape to be moving around” she says. Her voice kind and caring, “What would I do without you,” I say.

            I’m covered in sweat, she moved me to the couch? I’m guessing, I don’t remember what happened, I never do. I manage to sit up, she tossed me a new towel, and I dry myself off. She disappears off into the bathroom, turns the water on. We had a routine, one we haven’t had to go through in a while.

            I roll off the couch, and start to crawl to the bathroom. It is a short walk, but crawling, with everything being as sore as possible, it took a while. I tried my best not to make any noise, but I strained in the efforts of crawling. She came out quickly to find me on the floor almost at the bathroom door. My eyes meet hers, and we both laugh. Well she does, I sort of cough and keep crawling over to the bathroom. She walks up to me, and picks me up; my legs feel like jelly, if she wasn’t supporting me, I’d be on the floor. We make it to the bathroom and I slide into the tub with my shorts on.

            She had taken my shirt off before, or maybe I had it off, I don’t know. I feel like I’m floating on a cloud, feeling returns to my toes and fingers. “I put bath salt in there, hope it helps.” She said sounding reassuring. The bath does feel great, well after what happened, just about anything ‘feels’ better. “Thanks, and sorry,” I say, with making eye contact. I hoped I was past all of this, clearly not. She smiles, “No worries. Lets just hope nobody thought I was killing you,” says with a wink, and leaves, closing the door behind her. 

        After some time, I pull the plug in the tub, and turn on the shower. With a lot of effort, I stand, close the curtains, and take a shower. A knock on the door, “I’m coming in,” says Rose. I’m done, just standing in the shower, enjoying the hot water. “I was going to talk to you about something, but now I don’t know if I should,” she says, she puts the lid down on the toilet and sits down. I wonder what she wanted to talk about, “What’s up?” I ask, wondering why this couldn’t wait till I got out.

        “I was thinking about putting you into high school...” she says, “you should finish your high school education, in an actual high school.” She sounds kind of sad, I think to myself, why now? “If you think so.” I say, even though I don’t really want to go to an actual school, I’ve grown fond of our time together. That and the fact that I am probably one of the most socially awkward people in Santa Fe, so high school now, would be weird to say the least. “I got a job offer in New York, and there are some good schools there,” she says.

        I turn the water off, and grab a towel that was hanging on the back of the door. I dry off, and wrap the towel around my waist, open the curtains. I toss my shorts and boxers into the hamper, and walk out of the bathroom, leaving Rose sitting on the toilet, lost in thought. I walk across the hall of our two-bedroom apartment, into my room. It isn’t anything special; I have a desk on the far side of the room, right next to the windows, a good-sized bed, a closet, and a bookshelf, a TV on the wall, a ps3, and a dresser. I walk over to my dresser, grab some clothes, and put them on.

        I walk out of my room, and head back to the bathroom. Rose is still sitting down, thinking. I toss my towel into the hamper, and brush my teeth; I have a weird taste in my mouth. I sit on the sink while I brush my teeth, facing Rose, who is still lost in thought. I poke her knee with my foot, hoping she isn’t too serious about the move.

        She looks up, and half smiles. I finish brushing my teeth, and hop off the sink, spitting and washing my mouth. She stands up and hugs me as I finish. I look up and see the two of us in the mirror. My straight brown hair hanging just above my eyes, my tan skin, amber eyes, slight stubble. She placed her head on my shoulder, and her hair still blond as ever, brown eyes smiling at me, and her tan from the Santa Fe summer. “I’m with you, whatever you decide,” I say, still slightly hoping that will stay.

    “I know,” she says as we break eye contact through the mirror. She lets go of me, and sits back down on the toilet. I turn around and return to my seat on the sink. “After Phoenix, I figured we would be okay,” she says, “I hate to keep moving, especially since we were really happy back there.” I lean over, trying to get her attention, our eyes meet, her bright blue eyes looking up at me. “It was my fault, I got careless.” I say, hoping she agrees, “If you think we should go, then lets go.”

    Deep inside, I hate moving, I hated moving away from phoenix more than anything I have in my entire life. But its not just about me, she has to consider herself too. “When do you want to leave?” I ask, hoping I’ll have some time to myself before we go. She stands up, breaking eye contact, and walks out of the bathroom. I follow, and sit down on the couch I was ‘dying’ on before, smells nice, she obviously cleaned it. She kept walking, into the kitchen. We don’t have much, never did, this one couch, and two TVs, some furniture we bought for the apartment when we got here a month ago.

    Rose has a desktop computer, and a cell phone, no home phone; she likes to keep things simple. And so do I, I don’t have a phone; the only material things I have are my books, TV, PS3, and my beautiful Repsol Edition 2013 Honda CBR250R. I worked at the Zoo in Phoenix, so I had enough money, and bought it for myself. Rose was a little hesitant at first, but she came around to it. She came back into the living room, holding two glasses of milk. I shoot off the couch and take a glass, Rose smiles, and we both sit down on the couch.

    She turns the TV on, and we watch the discovery channel. “Some things never change,” she says, probably feeling ‘nostalgic’, been a while since we had to go through what we just went through. “Most things don’t need to,” I say, smiling as I drink my milk. We caught the end of a show, about endangered species. Rose stands up when the credits roll, “are you going to go out tonight?” she asks.

        I lay out on the couch, “depends when you want to leave I guess,” I say while watching the TV. Rose walks into the kitchen again, “Well were out of meat Ty, so, you might have to” she says as she walks back into the living room. I stand up, stretch my back, touching my toes, “So I’ll be off then,” I say finishing my stretching, and walking to my room. I find my bag hanging on the door and strap it on.

        As I go to leave the apartment, Rose stops me, hugs me, “Be careful this time,” sounding a mix of worry and frustration. I hug back, “Don’t worry,” I say trying to sound reassuring, “I’ll be back soon.”

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            The ride to my place takes a while, about an hour, going way above the speed limit. And by my place, I mean a little hangout I found when we got to Santa Fe a month ago. Its up near the national park, I’ve been hiking during my spare time here in Santa Fe, and couldn’t help but enjoy the things I found. The hike up the mountain isn’t that long, maybe a half hour, but I’m jogging.

            There’s a cave near the top, my place. Walking in I see everything is the way I left it, not that there is a lot here, besides firewood, a small makeshift bed made out of leaves and branches. I place my bag down near the head of the bed, next I take my shirt off, folding it neatly and leaving it on my bed. The wind blows into the cave, and a little chill goes down my back.

            I slide my pants off and take my shoes off; I walk towards the entrance to the cave. The forest is quiet; the bugs are making their noise, a few birds, and the wind, but nothing loud compared to the regular city noise, so quiet. I lean over, going on all fours, and let my body get accustomed to the earth beneath me.

            As I inhale and exhale, my body relaxes, and begins to take the shape of something else. It happens quickly, like always. I shake away the jitters I get after a change and take a deep breath, fresh air. My eyes fixate on something moving down the mountain, and I move slowly, paw by paw. Stretching a little as I go, I feel stiff; it’s been a while since I’ve been allowed to come out.

            My ears twitch to the sound of a branch breaking, I crouch slowly, observing what’s around me. Sure enough, a deer comes stalking in front of the bush I am crouched behind. It bends down to sip from the lake in front of us, I can’t believe I came all this way and didn’t realize. I let my claws out, and relax my legs and back. Inhale and exhale, the deer has lifted its head, taking notice of its surroundings.

            I put my weight on my hind legs, ready to pounce. The deer made the mistake of taking another sip. I’m in the air already, flying at the defenseless animal. It reacts to late; I’m already on top of it. Its eyes panicked, slowly acknowledging its fate. I lower my head, and crush its throat with my mouth.

            The blood soaks my mouth and drips off my chin. The deer’s black eyes reflect an animal, an amber-eyed tiger.