#Gently my mind escapes into the relaxing mode of pleasure#
#A pleasure that will take my mind off the reality of life#
#My past life#

[Strip, leave everything you know behind. Cast off the last vestiges of humanity as you cast off the last constraining piece of woven cotton and leather. Nudity is freedom . . . freedom from expectations, from the faux civilization that humans feel the urge to paint themselves with. They're nothing special, they're just animals. Animals like the rest of us. Animals like me.]

#Life as I know it now#
#And whatever may come it slowly disappears#
#to somewhere in the back of my mind#
#It will remain there until I wish to retrieve it#

[The grass rises to kiss my paws. Silent hunter stalking through neatly-trimmed suburban lawns; they'd never expect something like me here. Breath escapes in pants, frost-beard of exhaled carbon dioxide exhaled like the billowing smoke from the belly of a dragon. I'm no dragon; I'm a killer. I am very real.]

#Yes I will stay here for awhile for I need the break#
#A break from the pressures of life#
#and everything that lay in the palm of life's hands#

[My mind is clear. There is only the pleasure of the outdoors, the song of the wild coursing through my veins like some incredible drug. It is a drug, this mixture of adrenaline and dopamine pumping through my system. My paws are poetry in motion, churning silently through the grasses. I am a black ghost; am I real, or just a figment of the imagination brought on by insomnia?]

#This mode is incredible#
#It's out of this world#
#Too bad I must always leave it#
#But that's life#

[The concrete is rough beneath my paws. The lights burn, halogen halos of mercury white searing my eyes. I hate this place; it reeks of corruption. It is depravity, the subjugation of free spirits by the unnatural order of academia. This is not a life; this is a prison of books. The walls are stacks of computer printouts. The bars on the windows are spent ink pens, drooling thick streams of red, blue, and black like gashed arteries.]

#That's life#

[I can't believe I came back. Each time I run, I get a taste of freedom. Obligations drag me back to this false reality. I hate the mask of civility I wear when I deal with these sheep. They make me sick; they squander the gifts God has given them, spending their lives chained to desks, their hands shackled to keyboards.]

#Shift#

[I hate this place. I don't belong in this body. Everything feels unnatural in this form. My limbs are too long; my skin is too sensitive to the cold, strangely devoid of hair. My senses are dulled; everything, which so formerly appeared in stark contrast, is now blurry, muted, cold. I can't stop shivering, even though I know I'm not cold. The adrenaline shock is setting in; the endorphin high crashes around me. No human sensation can compare to that high; no drug can reach its peak, no wild sexual escapade can fill the void left behind when the change hits. I am a warm, fleshy-pink corpse with a wild, dark-furred soul. No one notices; they never see the truth, just what they want to see.]