Before you here what I have to say I just want you to know one thing: you are not alone in this universe. There is another race called the Vipaks. They colonize by taking over the bodies of certain beings on a planet and then they use those pawns to murder every other thing on that planet. These people are the Chosen Ones. I was a Chosen One, and I am sorry for all that I have done.

My name was -is- Ann Whit, I was a fourteen year old farm girl that knew no other life than an honest and hardworking one. I was normal, I had a few friends and no special person in my life in any personal or intergalactic way. I had a brother named Billy and compared to him I looked like the next Einstein which was a stretch for even the most extensive imagination. I never tried to be reckless or stupid but curiosity ran in the family and there were some moments that seemed better without hindsight than with it.

There was one time when my brother and I wanted to know what would happen if you poured water on a wasps nest (they get mad) and I wanted to know if poison ivy had a taste (grass and cranberries). However, in spite of everything we went through my brother and I were never dumb, we never poured water on another nest and I gave up my life of weed eating. That being said my curiosity didn’t let up with my age as it did with my brother, and it never seemed to bring me anything but bad experiences, unfortunately for me those bad experiences never prepared me for detrimental ones.

CRACK! I jumped up from the pail I was sitting on right before it caved in. Bending over, I was careful not to cut myself on the now sharp edges that were splintering up from the bottom of my makeshift seat. I picked up the pail and walked around to the back of our barn to get another one. Meandering around the barn a gaping hole by the wall caught my attention. Sensing that familiar tingle of curiosity I naturally walked over to take a look. Gradually I began to notice that there was a red glow coming from the hole. I blinked a few times and looked around to make sure the sun wasn’t playing tricks on me.

When I confirmed that it was the ground that was glowing and not my eyes I began to call for my brother before remembering it was his turn to collect the eggs, meaning that he was on the other side of our farm. After about three seconds of extremely logical thinking I decided that I should look down the hole to see what was glowing.  In the hole was something that could only be loosely compared to as a sea urchin. It was red and looked as if it was made of glass, there was a light in its center that was pulsating and before I knew it I was reaching down into the hole, trying to pull it out.  As soon as I touched it, I felt one of the little spikes enter my palm and a searing pain followed.

I dropped the strange object which shattered as it fell. The strange warped glass went everywhere but at the moment I was more concerned with my wounded right palm. The point of entry was beginning to harden and turn a bright crimson red. The searing pain still hadn’t faded, instead it started spreading up my arm and when it hit my torso it dropped to my legs and then escalated to my head, traversing my body until my other hand was in as much pain as the wounded one. Once the pain had engulfed me I felt another sensation that seemed to dim the pain; I felt myself lose control of my body. It was as if I was a robot with no choice to follow the commands of the person with the joystick.

I began lurching forward so I assumed that my legs were moving. My vision had suddenly become sharper and the pain had begun to feel more and the pain had begun to feel more distant. As I approached my house I started to hear a faint voice in my head that grew louder and louder with each step that I took to where my parents were laughing on the front porch. “KILL, KILL, KILL!” Suddenly I broke into a run and attacked my parents. My hands were red and clawed and I tore them apart and left them there. Then I blacked out. It was as if whatever had taken control of me had decided I shouldn’t watch the next part.

I woke up in the Ridgehill Forest. I was wearing the same clothes that I was when I transformed but I saw no wound in my hand. Sadly neither of those things were comforting. My clothes were torn and stained and I still felt strange, as if my blood was still tingling. Standing up I immediately had to lean on a tree, my legs felt wobbly and my feet were ice cold. Jumping out of the puddle that I had been standing in I began to look around. I was right next to the lake where my brother fished, using my internal compass I made my way back to the road.

The walk to my house was long enough for me to try to make sense of what had happened. I couldn’t remember anything though which made it rather difficult. It seemed that everything after the front porch had been blocked out. There was an evil gap in my mind and the more I tried to remember it the more I seemed to forget it, as if it was a dream. As I climbed up the hill to my house I saw the flash of lights and I heard sirens and people shouting, one voice rose above the others. It was Billy. I began rushing forward calling his name. He saw me and his eyes widened as he hurried over.

“Where have you been? I go to the chicken coop, leaving you alone for fifteen minutes and then…” he stopped talking and that’s when I notice my big brother was crying. He had tears on his cheeks and was beginning to scare me.

“Then what?”

“They’re dead. Mom and dad. I thought you were too. I saw them and called the cops. That was about nine hours ago.”

I watched him choke back another sob. I looked around and started to do the math in my head. I had gone behind the barn at about 3:30 and if he was right, then it would be about midnight and he had bags under his eyes and the moon sat gleaming bright in the sky. I was so caught up in my own thoughts I didn’t even realize he started hugging me. I let the feeling wash over me and I shared his grief. The full moment hit me and I too began to let my own tears flow. As each new burning, salty drop slid down my face I felt a new wave of grief and remorse for my parents. It started eating me up. Every memory I ever had that involved my parents ran through my mind at once, drowning me.

One police man was still there and I vaguely answered his questions. I thought it would be in my best interest not to tell them that I had turned into and ugly red clawed monster that tore up my parents. Instead I told him that I was behind the barn then by the lake. Once he felt he had enough answers he got back up in his car and drove off, leaving me alone with my brother in an empty house. That night I lay in bed wondering what to do next. I had a passport, a debit card, and a bank account. I thanked my parents for wanting us to learn financial responsibility.

I began to feel my palm burn again and rushing down stairs to the kitchen I ran some water over it but that didn’t seem to help. I started to hear the voice in my head again and my senses were fading. Whatever it was chose to block me out from the beginning this time and I had no choice but to take a back seat. The last action I can remember was stumbling out and heading toward the fields. My head down so I glimpsed at a part of the person that I had become: red and scaly with pointed fingers with claws.

Waking up in the fields this time I saw that all of our animals had been slaughtered or released and the crop I was in was decimated. It was almost morning and I knew Billy would soon be up. I rushed back into the house noticing that my clothes were again stained with blood. I rushed to my room where I began to change and pack my suitcase with as many clothes and loose coins as I could find, topping it all off with some basic toiletries. I wrote a note and grabbed the cash that I had and left. I didn’t know what would happen when my brother read the note but I did beg him not to look for me and not to expect to see me again, I left only one simple apology feeling that should be enough.

I ran north. I tried to stay isolated but there would be nights when I would feel a burning in my hand and not be able to rush off the streets fast enough. The next morning I would wake up with blood on my shirt and a sick, guilty feeling in my stomach. The more I traveled I began to see a pattern of when or more exactly where my mutation would start. If I was ever surrounded by a large group of people or even just what looked like a large group of people my hand would burn and I would black out. From that discovery on tried to live only in the back streets, keeping my head down and my eyes on my feet. However this reclusive position and the isolated locations made it difficult to beg and more than once I when to bed hungry. Refusing to steal no matter how close I was to malnutrition. I lived in those shambles for months. Just running in the same direction until I would hit a wall or another unfamiliar street corner.

One night about half a year since I had ran away (give or take a few weeks) I found myself on a hill, what I thought was a safe distance from a city. I remember sitting there all night staring at a big city below me wondering how in the world I was going to make it through without hurting people. My first thought was to go around but looking at the edges I saw nothing but inhospitable highway and I shuttered to think of how I was to continue. That moment marked a key time in my life because I thought to myself aloud, “If you killed yourself the night your parents died then there would have been no innocent deaths on your hands.”

I sat on the hill for a long time just staring at my problem, wondering if my life was some sort of sick movie joke. I couldn’t go forward, couldn’t go back and the sides would be a lovely long and hard trek. I wondered for a long time and I guess my parasite decided that it didn’t want to wait because as I was staring at the beautiful skyline of the big city my hand regained the familiar burning feeling. As I lost control I threw myself down the hill, hoping that I would get so hurt in the process that whatever I was becoming wouldn’t be able to move and wouldn’t hurt the people living happy lives so far away.

I was wrong, but the roll down the hill did seem to affect the parasite in me in some way because I felt myself get up and I felt myself sprint to the streets. (That moment was so surreal that I remembered gym class and thought that if I ran the mile like I was running the five to get to the city I would never have settled for 8.43 minutes.) I saw everything that the parasite saw when it decided to terrorize the city. I watched my hands claw and grab at the flesh of adults and children alike. I heard the screams and the car crashes behind me. Then the image became momentarily fuzzy, and it took both me and the parasite a second to realize that we had been attacked: hit in the head by a large, blunt object. Not as hard or blunt as I could have hoped but it hurt the thing inside me. As I crashed to the ground I saw my reflection in a store window.

My eyes we no longer the nice human color of brown that they so often are, they were instead a bright scarlet, reflecting light off of themselves as if they were lights of their own, my skin was the same sickly red shade. There were scales running all over my arms and legs and my face was almost reptilian. I had no lips and an almost nonexistent nose. I had no hair on my head, or it had been covered by this strange slimy film that coated my scalp and skin. I was nothing short of a monster, a laboratory experiment gone wrong. That image burned itself into my mind and as it did I felt myself finally being pushed from consciousness, most probably because of the hit on the head.

The next time I woke up I knew I had been out for a long time, it was night time but my body clock was thinking it was day. I sat up in the patchy grass and saw behind me the police lights flashing and the sounds of fear rising up from the city. I felt sick to my stomach and I threw up in the grass, heaving until I felt like my body had nothing left to give the earth. Exhausted and hungry I collapsed on the ground and the world turned the familiar black but I wasn’t sure if I was falling asleep or passing out from exhaustion.

I woke up in a fluffy bed. The cover seemed so soft and the pillow so fluffed that I began I feel like I was sinking into a puddle of cotton. I started thrashing about in a fruitless effort to get out of the blankets that smothered me.

“Whoa, shhhhhh. It ok there’s someone here.”

“Where am I?”

“A small house outside of Winnipeg, Canada.”

I stopped thrashing and looked around in an effort to find the owner of the soft voice; however, he found me before I found him, reaching behind my head he turned on the light and began to untangle the blankets until I was lying in bed with just a sheet over my legs. Silently he began to feed me soup from a ceramic bowl that looked about a hundred years old. The soup however tasted fresher than the bowl it was served in and I gladly accepted the meal.

“That’s it. Good. Do you think you can sit up?”

I think I exceeded his expectations when I sat up, fluffed the pillow, took the bowl from him and finished my meal before thanking him.

“So I guess you’re better than ok.”

“Yes, I’m totally fine. Thank you for the soup.”

With that tried to get out of bed but his large hand pushed back on my chest until I succumbed to the comfort of his bed.

"So, why am I here?"

“You were lying in the ground covered in blood moaning in your sleep. I thought you were wounded so I checked but the blood wasn't yours. At least not that I could tell because there were no wounds. My first thought was that you lived on the streets because you’re so skinny. I looked for your parents but there was no one around so I picked you up and carried you straight to my bed. You slept for a good twelve hours before you woke up. I guess you could say I'm and idiot for taking home stray girls I find on the street."

"Most people who take girls off the street don’t do it with good intentions so I thinks it's safe to say no one can give you much grief you for what you did."

"So where are your parents? You look around twelve-"

"Fifteen!"

"Sorry. You look around fifteen, I should probably take you back, and I’m sure their worried out of their mind."

"I could ask you the same question. You look around eighteen-"

"Seventeen."

"Oh good lord! Either way, are you really living on your own?"

"I asked first."

"I can't tell you why, but I ran away a while ago. You were right when you thought that I was living on the streets. I used to sort of live in the U.S. but I didn’t- don't want to be near a lot of people so I left Kansas and ended up here a long time later."

"My parent both died in a car crash and so now I have the place to myself. I have a job and I can support myself but it's not the same. I mean now I don’t have to wait in a line for the one bathroom, but it can get lonely too."

I saw his sad eyes crinkle into a smile. I felt sorry for him and a part of me wishes I could keep him company but I began doubting whether or not he would be safe around a monster.

"Oh, and I'm not letting you run off again. Even if you’re ok now I want to be sure there's no trauma, before I let a fifteen year old girl just run off. On top of that you said you live on the streets so that means you probably haven’t had a good home cooked meal in a long time."

“OK, but can I at least no my doctors name?”

“Joey. And you are…”

“Ann.”

I glanced down at my bed, noticing for the first time that I was wearing the same bloodstained clothing had on the night that I threw up. Looking closer I saw that I had gotten blood all over the bed he had put me in. Looking at all the blood the familiar feeling of guilt washed over me but this time a sadness came with it, a strange unfamiliar sadness that seemed to wrap around me like a cold blanket. I pulled the sheet up higher before looking over at Joey.

“I’m so sorry for staining your bed. I’ll wash it off, I promise.”

“Don’t worry, the bed is the least of my worries. Right now I’m more concerned about how a fifteen year old girl survived the massive attack that happened in Winnipeg and escaped without a scratch.”

“I’m not quite sure how it happened.”

My sentence ended there because I couldn’t push myself to go on. I felt the safest I had in months but I still knew that I could never tell anyone about what I had done. He had a strange look on his face, his blue eyes were shining but there was no smile on his lightly freckled face. He was looking down on me over his slightly large nose.

“I have to leave now. Where is the nearest place to sleep, or the most comfortable street?”

“Still can’t let you leave, you’re too weak.” Now this guy was getting on my nerves

“No I’m fine.” Just to prove my point I got up, walked over and looked him in the eye.

“Ok, but you sleep here tonight”

I rolled my eyes and groaned, secretly thankful for the bed and the warmth. The next morning I helped him around the house and again tried to politely leave. But he was persistent on waiting until I was able to support myself which I soon found out meant that I could afford an apartment. The time spent with him was nice but the time spent alone was torture. I had been running for so long that for all the time I was moving my past was never able to catch up with me. I never knew how thankful I was for those weeks and I wish had the strength to disappear from his life. The cold street had kept me grounded and this nice bed was letting me think, it let me relive my past, my horrors. I had the image of me as the red lizard also still burned into my mind, seared to my eyelids so I could see it if I only blinked.

Joey seemed to notice my degrading emotional state and decided that talking would be the best medicine. We would sit on his couch and talk for hours. He would tell me stories of his life and family and in return I would share a little about my past. Those talks were blessings. I learned so much about my doctor. He was incredibly funny but not dry like my father was. He had a heart of gold and knew his limits. He wasn’t pushy or outgoing but he did have strong options. I grew to like him more and more and I guess he grew to like me. Weeks went by of this routine; of talking and hinting and then going to bed for the night.

After a couple weeks of living together I decided that if I stayed any longer the thing inside me might become a little impatient.

“May I leave now? Or do I have to call the authorities and tell them that I’m being held against my will.” He laughed, his eyes crinkling the way the always do.

“Now would you really want to turn me in?” he walked forwards, and I shivered because he had never stood this close to me before, I felt strange yet I was enjoying it.

“You’ve been here for only three weeks but I already feel so very close to you.”

I ducked my head as he continued. He talked about how happy he’s been with me and he was almost finished with that topic when I cut him off.

“There is something I have to tell you but I need to know that you won’t tell anyone.”

“Promise” I looked at him long and hard but his sincerity didn’t waver. So I told him everything, about the glass sea urchin, the mutations and killings and finally I finished with my new found depression. When I did stop talking he was looking at me with such gentleness and sorrow and he spoke so softly.

“I still love you.”

“Then I guess you don’t really know me”

“Yes I-“

“Then how can you love me, look at me, look at what I’ve done. All I do is run, each part of me is worse than the next. I am cold, brutal, isolated, untrusting and untrustworthy, dangerous and unpredictable. I am so many things that amount to what you call a personality. Above everything I was wrong, I was wrong from the start and I am wrong for deciding my life is more important than hundreds of others. How can you love someone who can’t love themselves?”

“So they know they should” I froze, his comment had caught me off guard.

“Do you know what is like to hate yourself?  To see the dark part of something else being forced through you?  No you don’t, I’m the only one who’s cursed in this house. I- I have to go. Goodbye.”

I ran out crying, my entire body burning. I ran away from the house, but my hand started to hurt again but this time I didn’t know why, I guess emotion was another trigger because there was more in me now than ever. There was so much emotion in me that I forced it back. I thought of Joey, Billy, my parents and forced myself not to change. There was a strange noise that passed through my body and then a Vipak was in front of me. It’s pointed hairless head and clawed fingers made me happy that my mutation was not quite the same. But we shared the same dragon red scales and violet eyes. It gave me no time for shock at its startling fast appearance.

“Why are you sssso ssstubborn?” Looking at me it c***ed its head, genuinely expecting to get an answer. Not only did I stay silent but I turned my back on it (a big mistake now that I’m looking back) and started to run. I don’t actually know if it rolled its eyes but it seems like that is what a cold reptile thing would do right before it shoots its prey in the back with a painful stun gun. I woke up in a room with what appeared to be paper and pencil and ten TV monitors all showing scenes of Earth. I watched as more and more the Vipaks materialized onto the surface eliminating all humans on Earth. I sat in shock. The place that they took me to is where I still am today. 

I got to watch these monsters change Earth into part of their empire and I can hate myself for helping. I get food and drink here but it has no taste and I was permanently changed to their sick ugly shape. I am just like them now, cold blood and all. My memories still live on though, they let me keep every heart break and every shining moment of my life. I hate them for it, they say they let me remember but I feel like they forced me to. I never again want to see any antagonizing moment of any of my transformations, but I do, sharp and clear like they were yesterday.  I need you to know something though, if you ever hear my story promise me that you will know that I fought every second I could while I changed, it may not have seemed like I did, but there was no controlling the beast. I am sorry, so very, very sorry.