"Oh, I get it."

I looked over at my girlfriend. "Huh?"

"I know how to do it now."

I turned my attention back to the game, expecting her to whip out a combo that she had been practicing. Instead, there was a vicious tearing sound, and a blur of motion out of the corner of my eye. I shuddered at the noise— it was like somebody had torn into a full set of ribs without holding back— and slowly turned my head to look at her.

She had been replaced by a beast.

I screamed.

She laughed. Her fur shimmered, trailing behind her movement like ribbons. I couldn't recognize her shape at first. She was something like a dog, with paws and teeth and deep black eyes. The room smelled slightly of ozone and burning hair. I scooted away from her on the couch, getting as far away as I could without bolting out of the room.

"Wha... What the f..."

My voice trailed off. She was crawling on all fours towards me. I backed up further, and fell ass-over-teakettle off the side of the couch.

"Ah!"

"Are you okay, honey?"

"S-Stay back."

I slowly pulled myself up to my feet. There was a wall behind me. My hand fumbled around for the entrance to the kitchen. I wasn't finding it.

"What is going on."

"I figured out how to switch. It's surprisingly easy."

"Whh—" I choked on my own voice. "Claire?"

"Yes, obviously."

"No, not obviously!"

She chuckled a little.

"It's not funny. I'm scared. This is scary."

"Aww, c'mon baby, you're making me feel bad."

My hand found the other side of the wall. I slipped around the corner and hid against the refrigerator, closing my eyes.

"What are you doing?"

My eyes shot open. Without making a sound, Claire was inches away from my face. I screamed again. The upper part of her muzzle curled up a little bit, forming a half-sneer. A warm, heavy rumbling sound bubbled out of her throat.

"Please don't hurt me."

"I'm not going to hurt you, stupid."

My body wouldn't move.

"Come here. It's okay."

Slowly, with my hands shaking, I hugged her. She hugged me back. Underneath all of it, it really did seem like it was just Claire. She held me in exact same way, brushed my hair out of my eyes in the exact same way. I could feel the familiar shape of her body as she pressed up against me.

Her big swishing tail lightly slapped at my hands.

I sighed.

"There you go. Atta boy."

"When were you gonna tell me about this?"

"About what?"

"You know what I mean."

She looked a bit sheepish, with her ears folded back. "When I figured it out."

"What..." I very carefully ran my fingers through her fur. "What is it?"

"It's the shift."

It was hyperreal, like someone had reached into my eyes and tweaked the settings just a little bit. I felt like I was seeing things more clearly than I had ever seen before. My girlfriend was a six-foot-tall dog monster, and no matter how much I tried to shift my brain away from that fact, it wasn't going away. I could see her chest rise and fall with every breath. When she blinked, her eyes looked just a little bit silver. The texture and volume of her fur was just the right amount to make her look not quite animal, not quite human. When I had seen this sort of thing online, it always felt fake. It was a suit, or some kind of prosthetic makeup, and no matter how good it looked I could find some kind of fault with it. Something off, or out of place. That was unreality, and this was reality.

This was reality.

"Do you want it too?"

I took a step back, hitting my head on the fridge. "Ow. What?"

She gradually ran a paw-shaped hand down my chest. "Do you want the shift, too?"

The shift. Its name was light and airy like a party drug. It could have been the name of a sports drink, for all I had cared up until that moment. With the effects so clearly in view, it was an impossible question to ignore. The shift. The shift? The shift... I closed my eyes and counted to ten. Claire's tail made a persistent pap pap noise against her lower back. The fur was still tickling against the inside of my arms.

It couldn't be a bad thing, could it? This wasn't something that Claire was unhappy about, and I loved Claire. She loved me. If she was as excited as her tail suggested, this was a wonderful thing. And even so, as I thought about it, my heart sank. I had thought about it many times; how it would feel to be someone else, how it would feel to be an animal out in the woods, how it would feel to have a different body than the one I had. It was a question that sat low in the boundaries of my heart, one that I didn't know how to put into words. What Claire was offering was the answer to that question.

For just a moment, I tried to come up with an answer of my own. I thought about what I might want to look like, if I were to look like Claire. I got snagged on that concept: if I were to look like Claire. I started to hold my breath. My heartbeat got louder in turn, drowning out my own thoughts.

"N-No!"

I ran. I squirmed my way out of my girlfriend's embrace and I ran, like a coward. I slammed the bedroom door behind me and locked it. Claire might have been some kind of supernatural shapeshifting beast, but she wouldn't knock the door down just to get at me.

At least, I hoped so.

I jumped onto the bed and wrapped myself thoroughly in our blankets. The bed smelled like her— I pushed that thought out of my head as soon as it came in. No more thinking about Claire. Thinking about Claire had become a strange, terrifying thing.

"...Eric?"

I shivered under the blankets.

"It's okay, baby, I won't do anything bad to you. We don't have to do anything if you don't want to."

She paused.

"I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings."

I stayed silent. I wanted to respond, but my mind was overwhelmed by The Crisis. Those words floated around in my mind, clashing against each other, ricocheting off of old family memories and long quiet moments spent awake at night. The Shift. The Crisis. Enormous, terrible concepts that refused to leave me alone.

I took a deep breath.

Slowly, I sat up. A moment later I fell back down, easing onto my back. Then, I snapped upright again. I ran my hand down my face. My flat, regular face. I opened my mouth and very gently prodded at my teeth. I tugged on my tongue. I put my hands up against my eyes until my vision was full of lights. I didn't want to make this decision. That was all I could think of. I didn't want to choose between the Shift and the Crisis. I wanted to leave myself on read, to go on a road trip where I didn't have to think about anything, to get absolutely wasted on cheap liquor and forget all of the feelings I was having about anything, everything.

When the shivering stopped, I pulled my hands away from my face and put them at my sides. A cold and empty sensation washed over my entire body. I gripped the bedsheets and sat up, shaking out my limbs to put some warmth back in them.

I had no idea how much time had passed.

I pulled myself off of the bed, kicking the blankets away and swinging my legs off the side. When I stood up, I stumbled a little. The floor creaked, and I winced, but Claire didn't react. It was possible that she had gone somewhere else.

I pushed open the bedroom door.

Clair was sitting there. I blinked and rubbed my eyes; it was Claire as I remembered her. In other words, her human form. So it was possible to change back.

"Hey."

I sat down on the other side of the door, closing it behind me. "Hi."

"Did I scare you?"

"A little."

She smiled sadly.

"That's not why I ran away though."

"Oh?"

I ran my fingers through my hair. If I were feeling more energetic, I would have paced around the room in thought. Instead, I rocked gently back and forth.

"...Eric?"

"I—" I swallowed. "I want you to chase me."

She snorted, letting a smirk creep onto her face. "That's what you were deliberating in there?"

"No. I mean... I guess. I just, I can't choose. I don't want to have to choose." I gestured to her. "Though I guess I don't really have to choose, if you can just change back anyway. Stupid..."

"It's not stupid." She scooted forward, holding my hands. "Tell me about it."

"Mmh..."

Her thumb gently rubbed the back of my hand.

"I wish I didn't have a choice."

"Ahh..." She gave me a look that I didn't know how to parse. I felt myself blush.

"So I thought we'd do what we do when I don't know what to choose to eat for dinner."

"You wanted to make it a game?"

I nodded. "Just a short one. You would, uh..."

I swallowed again.

"You would ch-chase me, and if you caught me, I would lose."

"And if you got away?"

"Then I would win."

"What would you win?"

"My humanity." My voice came out like a whisper.

Claire snorted again, her face breaking out into a genuine smile. "Sure."

I stared at her.

"We can do that."

She took my hand, and we slowly stood up. She leaned forward to give me a peck on the lips.

"Run."

I didn't think twice.

I was over the couch and out the door of the apartment before she had a chance to shift. Surely, I thought, she wouldn't be able to chase me outside in her monster form. There had to be rules against that— but there was a furious pounding behind me, and I knew that I had already made a mistake. There were no rules.

The elevator would be too slow. I slammed open the door to the stairs and practically threw myself down them, taking them multiple stairs at a time until I was out the back door and into the street outside. The crisp fall air hit me hard; I was still wearing lounge clothes, and she didn't need to wear anything at all. My best bet was to hit a direction and stick to it, so that's what I did. I aimed for a local park. It was predictable, but it would be easier to hide there than in city alleyways or suburban yards.

I had never been an excellent runner. I had a lot of stamina, but I wasn't very fast. And even then, I didn't have that much stamina. By the time I made it to the park, I was out of breath. I was freezing on the outside and burning up on the inside, and my heartbeat was drowning out everything around me. It was just me, my pursuer, and the goal.

Prey.

I was acting like prey.

At that realization, I let everything go. I whooped and hollered despite the fact that it was late at night, sprinting my heart out to get into the thicket of the park. Claire would expect me to go on the slide, so I ran in the opposite direction, towards the raw woods. I scraped my arms on branches and cut my feet on thistles— and then I was down, out, in a dip in the soil, surrounded by leaves and the sound of crickets.

I lifted my head and stared out at the park.

"No fucking way."

Claire was already there, walking slowly down the path, monster form on full display. She was walking on all fours, tail swaying back and forth, looking even more like something straight out of a fantasy. I swallowed hard, half-choking on my own spit as my body caught up with me.

She was walking straight towards me. Slowly, surely, directly towards me.

"Oh shit."

I stood up. Branches snapped. She broke out into a trot.

"Shit, shit, shit—"

I bolted for the other side of the park, but I was doomed. I already knew that there was no way to escape her. I tried to dodge left and right, but the full force of a wolf-sized Claire came bearing down on me, claws and teeth poised to strike. I cried out— not a scream but a whimper, a pleading sound. 

"Please..."

"With pleasure."

Her entire body seemed to shimmer. I closed my eyes and flung my arms in front of me, trying to push her away. Instead, her human lips met mine, and her arms pushed me hard against the grass. Even like this, she was somehow stronger. Somehow better. An embarrassingly high-pitched squeal escaped my lips, but she didn't budge. We were locked in place now. Her tongue pushed up against my lips and pressed up against mine. A wave of heat slowly passed from her body into mine.

"Aaaghh..."

"Shhh," she cooed. "Relax."

Her knee pressed hard against my stomach, and I obeyed. I stopped moving. I stopped thinking. In so many ways, I was dead. Captured by a terrifying monster on a moonlit night. A rabbit to a wolf.

I shuddered violently, shouting out into Claire's forceful lips. The hazy smell of ozone filled my nose, and for just a moment it felt like my body was melting away. Claire slipped forward as my body pulled back. A sickening crack rang out in my ears as my skull changed shape. Somewhere below my waist, my legs painlessly snapped backwards and gradually warped into digitigrade paws. I was hyperventilating. Claire made it hard to breathe, when she was like this. She was already transformed. A single monstrous hand brushed along my scalp, holding me steady. Comforting me.

She pulled away, and I gasped.

It was already over.

I looked down at myself. My fur was a low blonde color, but it looked almost white in the light of the moon. Just as I had in the bedroom, I reached up to my face. My nose and mouth pushed outwards in an extremely pleasing way. For once, it felt like I was making expressions with my whole face. I tried smiling. It felt good. I picked at my teeth and very quickly found that I had grown a set of sharpened nails. With my off hand, I traced down my arm and felt all of the tiny changes, the softness, the smallness. I reached my chest and squeezed my eyes shut. This was it, the big change. The Crisis was here and it was all around me. I started to hyperventilate again.

"You're so small."

I squeaked.

"It's really very cute."

"Y-You..." I gasped again. "You can't say that!"

"Why not?"

"It's not supposed to be like this."

She lifted me up. "Why not?"

"I wanted it to be the other way around."

She smiled again. "No you didn't."

I hung my head.

"It'll be okay."

She kissed me— no tongue, not even lip, but the gentle nuzzling of a fluffy warm muzzle. I returned the favor, and she giggled. I thought she giggled. After a moment, I realized that I was the one who was laughing.

"I love you."

Warmth filled my chest. "You'll have to buy me new clothes."

"I know. I love you."

"W-We won't be able to have kids."

"I wouldn't be so sure. I love you."

"I—"

"Shut up." She kissed me again. "I love you."

"...I love you too."

"How does it feel?"

I sat up in the cold autumn night, looking out at the vast sky, feeling the world open up around me. Every possibility was real to me now. The question had not gone unanswered. It was sublime, and unimaginable, and real.

"Amazing."