I used to flinch at the sight of the creatures that lurked beyond the walls skin warped, eyes too bright, limbs too long. I called them monsters. I called them less. I never imagined waking one morning to find those same warped angles in the mirror, to hear my breath rattle in a throat no longer mine, to watch my family’s love curdle into terror the instant they saw me.

Now I crouch on cold stone, wrists bound, a spotlight burning down on my mottled hide. The human standing before me towering, armored, silent studies me the way I once studied trapped beasts. With clinical detachment. With fascination sharpened into cruelty.

I can smell the metal instruments laid out behind him. Sharp. I know what they do to creatures like me what I used to cheer for when the hunts were broadcast as “public safety measures.” I had no idea what the screams meant until I had a throat capable of making them.

My new muscles twitch. My new claws tremble. I’m intelligent enough to know fear is useless here, but it still gnaws at me, a frantic animal inside a cage made of my own mind. If I am to live, I must be clever. Persuasive. Manipulative, even.

I raise my head, let my voice crack in a way that sounds both pitiful and threatening. “You don’t have to do this,” I rasp, the words guttural but clear.

“I’m not what you think. I’m still… me.”

But am I? The anger simmers anger at fate, at humanity, at myself for every time I spat on a creature begging exactly as I am now.

The human doesn’t answer. They never do. Their silence is a verdict in itself.

Still, I cling to the one weapon left to me: the hope that fear and pity taste the same to a hunter.