Back in the real world, Howard’s pen was moving itself across the page as the events unfolded.

Gunnar’s double barrel filled with buck shot smelled of gun powder. Howard knew because the barrel was pushed up against his cheek. He wanted to run, but he was backed up against the wall of a gray barn. “I’m not who I seem to be, I promise.”

“You look like a shapeshifter to me.” Gunnar pushed the gun a little harder. “Then again, when is a shapeshifter who they seem to be, anyways?”

Howard regretted loading his main character with knowledge from old lore he found on the internet. “Okay. Let’s try this again. I wrote you. I woke up as your antagonist. I haven’t even written this scene!”

Gunnar grinned.

Howard ducked and ran sideways. His foot hit Gunnar’s boot, and he hit the dirt hard. The attempt turned into a crawl that reached an exit a second too late. Gunnar’s silver blade, an heirloom of his father, stuck out of the door, sealing it shut. “Common! I wrote you!”

Gunnar took a couple steps and aimed his sawed shotgun at him. “Prove it.”

“The blade you just threw was your father’s.”

“Lucky guess.”

Howard ducked just as a shot would’ve ended him. He ran toward another door in the barn and made it out only to run into a dark and locked room filled with hay. The hay seemed as good a hiding spot as any.

Gunnar’s boots landed with a click-click-click as he came into the room. “You know, shapeshifters take the memories of the people they’ve copied. I wonder who you copied to be so messed up.”

At that second, Howard realized what being a shapeshifter meant. He just needed to get out. Think small and fast. Claws and fangs. Howard felt a kind of bone cracking pain he never wanted to feel again. In that second, he became a Tuxedo cat. A new perspective meant a new idea. He saw a small hole with daylight on the other side of the hay.

Outside, Howard ran all the way to the road and up a tree. After a short time, he watched Gunnar leave the barn, rev up his old Buick, and drive the road to the gravel path by the tree. Gunnar even looked at him as he went by. He was none the wiser.

Without a gun aimed at him, Howard now thought about the problem at hand. “Well. It’s either I hunt mice or find a way home. Maybe both.”