Being single sucks.

Sucked big hairy balls, with which Melanie had no personal experience. Melanie had little experience with men at all. Not for a lack of wanting a man, more because she worried about hurting a man.

As in putting him in a hospital…

Who says he wouldn’t like it? her inner voice purred.

No one liked stitches. Hence why she avoided getting close to anyone of the opposite sex, but right about now, a sturdy man might have come in handy to give her a hug and say he’d handle things. Don’t misconstrue, she wasn’t weak. Melanie could handle stuff on her own; she was just so goddamned tired of it. For once, it would be nice to let someone carry the burden. To say, “Don’t worry, I got this.” Right about now, she could have used a man who would gladly carry the groceries home.

The list in her hand appeared short enough, but the juice mother insisted on would make it heavy. She also wondered if she’d have enough funds. Her mother’s failing health had meant more expenses than usual. More than the meager government checks could handle and she’d long since spent her last actual paycheck.

Some days Melanie was so tired of scrimping every penny she could. Of cutting coupons and dealing with debt collectors. She’d not asked to be burdened with a sick mother, one made ill because she’d pickled her liver her entire life.

At times she railed against fate, a cruel mistress that had Melanie take on the care of her mother at the expense of her own happiness.

I am only twenty-two. Twenty-two and barely kissed. Twenty-two and never made it anywhere past college. Nope. She’d gotten stuck going back home to take care of the woman who had made her life miserable.

Why can’t she just die?

I could help it along. A pillow over her face. A dropped toaster in the shower. A little something in her evening cocoa. Except the cocoa sometimes got tossed in her face, so it would be a waste of the expensive drugs.

Sounded cruel? Walk a mile in her shoes. There was no love between Melanie and her mother. Hadn’t been for as far back as Melanie could remember.

Maizie had never been a true parent to Melanie. Ever. Melanie had been taking care of them both since she could walk and feed herself from the damned fridge.

Just her and a mother who hated Melanie because Daddy left the picture. She couldn’t have said if Maizie’s drinking drove him away or if the drinking came after.

It didn’t matter. Melanie was so bloody tired of it.

The cashier rang up the total. “That will be thirty-six forty-two, ma’am.” About three dollars more than she had. The embarrassment of having to pull some items from the checkout no longer had the ability to bring heat to her cheeks. It happened all too often. A coupon she tried to use failed or something ended up a little pricier than expected. She yanked out the crackers. There went her breakfast for the week.

After she paid, she grabbed the plastic bags by the handles and hoped they wouldn’t split this time. She could carry the two bags easily, not enough food to create any true weight. A good thing seeing as how the store was two miles from home. God forbid she used any money to take a bus.

“Lazy cow. God gave you legs so use them.”

God had given her claws, too, but she kept them sheathed.

As a car swept by, a big white sedan, the windows tinted and closed, with climate control, she sighed.

What would it be like to have money? Not just any money, big money. The kind that meant never looking at a price tag when you shopped. The kind that could hire a nurse for her mother. Or, even better, stick her mother in a home—and bribe the staff to give her daily enemas plus feed her peas. Maizie hated peas.

When she’d had a rough day and couldn’t sleep, she liked to fantasize about what she’d do if she had money. The best she could hope for was to win the lottery to make those dreams come true.

A girl like Melanie—born in poverty, with a diploma in hospitality, and a face that never went further than pretty—would never marry a man who drove a luxury car. Especially since she had a secret. A furry secret that added a layer of difficulty in her search for a man.

I am not one hundred percent human. An admission she never made out loud, but she couldn’t exactly deny it to herself.

I can change shapes. She didn’t know why.

Most likely she’d gotten her special side from her daddy because her mother certainly wasn’t a shapeshifter like Melanie. The one time she’d asked, her mother had slapped her so hard and accused her of being a druggie, she’d hissed and almost swiped back.

What if I am wrong? What if the times she went into the woods and shed her clothes and became her other self, her wilder self, were a fantasy? I could be crazy. Maybe I’ve only imagined I turn into a cat.

She’d take fantasy over reality any day. Some days she wondered what it would be like to stay as her other self, to run wild in the woods and never come back. Then it would mean not hearing, “Melanie, is that you, lazy girl? Get over here. I soiled myself. And the bed.”

Of course she had, because her mother wouldn’t wear a diaper. Too degrading. But apparently shitting herself wasn’t.

“Coming, Maizie.” She sighed as she set the groceries on the counter. Would this nightmare never end?

That evening, as she laced her mother’s cocoa with a sleeping agent, one prescribed by the doctor to give Melanie a break, she decided she needed to get out. To breathe. She’d been cooped up for months now, at her mother’s beck and call, only managing to slip away for short periods of time, barely enough to get her paws wet.

Tonight the moon would rise, full and fat. Tonight, while her mother slept, she’d let herself run wild.

Free.

And maybe never come back.