My shoes slapped on the wet concrete tiles as I ran like the wind towards the house. I could feel the grasses edging the path reaching out and brushing my jeans like the fingers of a ghost.

I had been running for a couple minutes, and my breath was burning in my lungs. The crisp morning air didn’t help as I tried unsuccessfully to calm down.

It was fine. Everything was fine. I would make it back in time, and the day would go on normally.

But I couldn’t stop myself from looking back.

The Pack chased me, their misty limbs trailing off into the distance as they gained on me. Birds, giant lizards, creatures I couldn’t name, sped after me, colliding with each other in their haste.

I was slowing down, my legs on fire. My arms were still pumping, though I knew I couldn’t go on much longer. The house was too far away. I wouldn’t make it.

I felt a fear deep in myself. I didn’t know what would happen. No one knew, but whatever it was, it was about to happen to me.

My heart raced faster and faster as I got slower and slower. I could feel them at my heels, wild dogs on a hunt.

There was a crack in the path. An uneven patch, made so a person going in the right direction would trip. I know to avoid this. But today, I was having too close a call to pay attention to the pavement in front of me.

I gasped as my toe caught on the crack, tumbling and hitting the concrete with a thud.

Within a second, The Pack was on me.

The natural sounds of the world around me were sucked into a vacuum of absolute silence. It felt as though every part of my body was being stretched this way and that. Not in a painful way though. More uncomfortable, as I couldnt see through the pale blue light shining all around me.

Then as suddenly as they had pounced, the bright light cleared and everything seemed normal again.

Except, I was running faster than I’d ever run before. I peered down at myself, horrified when I realized that it was not human legs that were carrying me.

They were the front legs of a horse, but not a typical horse. My back legs were big and shaggy, like a bear, and I could feel that I definitely didn’t have a horse’s head. My body was pale blue and foggy, just like… Wait.

I whipped my head around, and realization dawned on me like a curtain falling away.

I was running with The Pack.

Creatures ran wildly around me, their heads snapping back and forth and their mouths chomping on the air.

I expected to hear growls, or snarls, but the suction of noise was eerie. It was absolutely silent. As much as I strained to hear something, anything, there was nothing. Like being in a black hole.

Suddenly, I had a strange urge to run like the wind and leave everything else behind. Confused, I shook my head as if that could rid the sense.

I didnt want this. I didnt want any of this!

I tried to stop running, but something in me wouldn’t let my legs slow down. Maybe it was the awful certainty that if I stopped, I would get crushed by the creatures surrounding me on all sides.

My eyes flicked back and forth and I distantly wondered how a panic attack would show up in a horse. Just as my knees started to buckle, the animal right beside me leaned over and kept me from collapsing. With its stable side against mine, my head cleared and I was able to look to my left.

The creature was smaller than me. It had an eagle head, with a short beak. Its body was that of a giant ant, and attached to its back were dragonfly wings.

I stared.

Then I paled. If me, a human, was turned into this, than that animal was a human too, before.

Who was it? Could that have been my friends grandmother who died last year? Or even my Dada, who passed before I was born?

I clenched my teeth as horror washed over me like a bucket of cold water.

I could tell, deep inside, that this would be how I spent the rest of eternity.