I had heard the rumors, stories, and gossip about the woods that bordered the old Hastings farm land but I just had to go and see it for myself. I realize now that I should have just stayed in bed or at least gone into work instead. Here I am, laying on the forest ground after tripping over a tree root and rolling down an incline in the land, I mean I was really rolling like the cartoon characters do. I felt my right arm and leg break as well as heard it, my left shoulder dislocated and the underbrush cut and slashed me up as I finally came to a stop at the bottom. It felt like I had been rolling down the hill for hours, my head was pounding and my vision swam.

I blinked a few times, happy at least that I hadn’t landed in a stream or river face down and drowned. I hated going out that way and I hated coming back because I always ended up soaking wet and sick the next few days afterwards. Black and white spots swirled in my vision and I knew I was about to pass out. I groaned loudly as my world went black. I’m not sure how long I was out but I could hear voices and they weren’t the voices of my friends back home.
I let out a moan as what felt like hands pushed and rolled me over onto my back, I let out a hiss as pressure was put on my broken arm. I waited to see what the owner of the hands would do next; I didn’t want to open my eyes but I could tell the person was leaning close to my face. I felt their breath on my face and it smelled like they had eaten spaghetti with a rich tomato, basil, and garlic sauce that had a little too much salt and garlic in it as well as faint smell of minced kidney; my nose wrinkles in disgust.

I’m about to tell them to quit breathing in my face when I hear them say, “Go To Sleep”. I open my eyes wide when that phrase registers in my still pounding head. I was staring into the face of someone I had only read about on the internet but here I am, laying broken and bruised in the forest with Jeffery Woods, aka Jeff the killer leering down at me with that wide Joker like grin.

With him that close I could see how dried out his eyes were as they were slowly shrinking in their sockets, he really had burned his eyelids off or well, cut and then burned them off. That Glasgow smile wasn’t as bad as I had read about. The slash marks he’d made had healed well and weren’t infected-that I could smell anyway-he has a knife poised over my chest, my heartbeat picks up speed and I let out a scream as he drives the knife home. My scream turns to gargles and gasps as blood from my punctured heart and chest fill my lungs and throat. The maniac raises the knife again and starts carving me up like Thanksgiving turkey, laughing giddily as he does this. Now had I been human, well I would have screamed and thrashed around as much as I could with a broken arm and leg and a dislocated shoulder but after the first wave of pain hit, my body went into preparation mode, i.e., getting ready to die and be reborn again. As soon as that happened, I let my mind wander as I waited for the final moment.

Let me explain a little what I mean when I say preparation mode. When this happens, all the, I guess you could say "Magic" that I have running thru my body and I mean it runs thru every pore, follicle, cell, organ etc, well, all of that gathers at the center of my body. Which is somewhere around my lower chest. This insures that my soul-yes I have a soul- gets protected, so that some stronger being can't take it and manipulate it. Once that happens, my body is free to shut down and turn to ash and then my rebirth of sorts. Now, as I was saying------------------------------------------------------------------

As I felt my "life" leave me, I looked at that grinning giddy face and, closing my eyes, just smiled brightly at him. It was mostly in gratitude to him because now I wouldn't have to spend days on the ground healing, the other part was mostly to confuse the hell out of him and as I breathed my last I heard him mutter "- the fuck? tch, weirdo." and as his footsteps faded away so did I. The whole being reborn thing takes between 30 minutes to an hour for younger shifters but with the older ones or the elders it only takes between 10 to 15 seconds to come back. Since I'm considered a young one by shifter age, I knew my body would be laying there on the forest floor, blood and guts left to steam in the cool air.

My magic and my soul can not feel nor are they sentient, they can't tell time nor feel it, all they can "feel" is the heat of my burned up body and the ash that follows. One other thing and this is about the ash. No matter how strong the wind is, the ash won't blow away or anything, not even other shifter's are sure what that's all about. Some think it's so that we can incubate better and others say it does that so that our soul and magic are truly protected. We'll keep studying it. After some time has passed my magic and soul are ready to "rebirth" me. If anyone was watching they would see a bright light with an almost blinding radiance take the shape of a phoenix before forming my new and healthy body. It would be akin to those magical girl animes when the hero transforms into that poofy outfit. For reference, yes, I watch and am familiar with anime.

Once I finished "transforming" I breathed in deeply and sighed, looking to the heavens I grinned and let out a happy shout, " They're real! Ha ha, yes! I knew they existed!! This is amazing.......and no one's going to believe a word I say......Shit." I hung my head comically, sighing dramatically I looked around at where I was; It looked like your typical forest, trees and bushes and different plants everywhere but there was also light fog which I found to be strange and it sent the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. Concentrating a little, I shifted into my usual form when I'm either at home or away from human eyes.

That is to say I now am sporting wolf ears on my head in place of the human ones on the side of my head, as well as a wolf's tail that hangs down over the top of my jeans, both are black in color with the tip of my tail being white as snow. The ears on my head function just like human ones but with the accuracy of a wolfs. This is my natural form and takes no magic to shift to as I just end up dropping the whole human guise. To add to this form, my eye sight becomes sharper as does my sense of smell and my teeth turn sharp like a wolfs. After all of that, I decide to head deeper into the woods to see if I could or would come across more "people" like Jeff the Killer. I took out my phone at one point and found that there was no service and that my all the apps on it were sort of freaking out, like something, or someone was using a high powered scrambler. "Hmm, that's strange..." I shrug and put my phone back into my pocket.

At this point I had traveled quite a ways into the forest and the fog that had stayed with me for so long, slowly faded away to reveal a large grand mansion though it had an illusion on it to make it look like a large wood cabin. That's another thing about me- yes, I know I keep getting side tracked, sorry.- I'm an odd one out of my kind as no one other then me can see through illusions to the true form of something. Like the cabin actually being a mansion, like someone else will see the cabin and all I can see is the mansion, it works with people and animals too, as well as my fellow shifters. Seeing the mansion, I grin wide and laugh softly. "This is going to be very interesting.....".