Am I crazy? are we all crazy??
724 Words
Abby’s POV
Elkhorn was a town swallowed by wilderness, nestled so deep in the mountains it might as well have been invisible. No pack claimed it, no rogues lingered. To the rare humans who knew us, we were just "mountain people"—off-grid, unremarkable, ghosts in plain sight.
Fifteen years ago, my parents wove a careful lie. Survivalists. Homeschoolers. Every year, I aced some government test before vanishing back into the wild. Until five years ago, home had been a cabin buried in the woods, untouched by time or strangers.
I never questioned it.
For most of my life, I believed we were human. My parents never shifted, never hinted at the truth. Then, at fifteen, I started hearing a voice—sarcastic, relentless, and irritatingly smug.
I thought I was losing my mind.
Burnadette—Burnt—was a menace. I ignored her. She refused to be ignored. Then came the pain. A deep, searing agony in my bones, like I was being stretched and crushed at once. I scoured encyclopedias, ruling out rabies and the plague. Nothing fit.
I hid my "crazy" well—until the night it all shattered.
The pain exploded. My body burned, twisted, broke. I screamed. Mom’s face went white.
"This wasn’t supposed to happen yet!" she whispered, calling for Dad.
Panic surged. "Oh my God, is this my period?! Why are you telling Dad?!"
Mom blinked. "No, Abby. This is your wolf."
"My what?! Are we all crazy?! Are we a family of schizophrenics?!"
Before I could flee, Dad scooped me up. "She’s too young," he muttered, carrying me outside.
I thought we were going to a hospital. Instead, he laid me in the snow.
Mom crouched beside me, voice urgent. "What’s her name?"
The voice in my head took control. My lips moved on their own. "Burnadette!"
Mom’s eyes locked onto mine. "Burnadette, make her sleep."
Darkness swallowed me.
When I woke three days later, the truth unraveled. Wolves awaken at eighteen. The first shift happens two weeks later. I was different. Special, maybe. Or broken.
I didn’t believe them—until I saw them shift.
After that, Mom barely returned to human form. I had always thought they slept in the mudroom while I got the big bed. The truth? They had always been wolves at night, shifting back before I woke.
As we neared our old cabin, nostalgia slammed into me. The towering trees, the scent of pine and damp earth, the comforting weight of a place that had once been my whole world. Then my stomach dropped.
The tiny bridge was gone. A fallen tree had crushed the loft—my loft. My room. My bed. Gone.
Tears burned my eyes. I had clung to this place, imagined curling up in my childhood space. Now, it was ruins.
Mom, ever the optimist, clapped her hands. "Guess we’re sleeping in wolf form!"
I groaned. We were supposed to stay human, blend in, avoid detection. Now we had to go into town for supplies—more exposure, more risk.
Inside, a family of raccoons had taken over. We stared at them. They stared at us. A tense standoff.
Then Mom, ever the animal whisperer, cooed, "Are you a good raccoon or a bad raccoon?"
The largest one chattered. She nodded solemnly, then shooed them out—after handing one a piece of jerky.
Dad groaned. "Mia, please. We can’t have generations of raccoons treating this place as their kingdom."
Mom pouted. "Oh, relax. Gram here was born in the loft."
I gaped. "Gram? You named him?"
She rolled her eyes. "No. His mother did."
Dad sighed. "We need to focus."
I exhaled. This was going to be harder than I thought.
The weight of it settled on my chest. Returning here wasn’t just a nostalgic visit. It was a test. Had we truly been seen? Was the human in the woods hunting us, tracking us? My instincts screamed that this wasn’t over. That somehow, the delicate life my parents had built was about to shatter.
The tension coiled in my muscles, a simmering unease I couldn’t shake. The shadows in the trees felt thicker, the rustling of leaves too deliberate. Every instinct screamed that we weren’t alone.
And for the first time since my shift, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to face it.
- Writer
