It's a Monster

And then I saw them. They were there on the steps. My Galan; he was standing there and he wasn't afraid. But there was some whore I had never seen before clutching his arm like he belonged to her. In a fraction of a second, Brent was forgotten. I could track him anywhere in the city. But that bitch holding onto Galan had to die.

I could probably do her and then come back to Brent. He was so badly hurt that he wasn't going anywhere. From the blood that I could smell, he would probably die soon if he didn't get medical attention anyway. My rage at Brent faded and I went berserk with the need to kill the bitch who had tried to claim my mate.

I leaped over several clumsy people who were trying to get away from me. Two leaps and then a third and I was not only across the large room, but halfway up the huge stairway. I could almost taste that whore's blood and her fear. Her eyes were as big as basketballs and she knew I was coming for her.

She was frozen in place and I started to leap at her and rip her soft weak throat out. There was no way she could either escape from me or fight me off. But then just as I started my leap, something else drew my attention.

"Hey!" screamed Galan. "Go fetch!" He kicked one of the support spindles out of the stairway's banister and threw the heavy piece of wood at me. It hit me in the head and knocked me to the side.

"Come and get me," he yelled. Half of me was pissed at him. But the other half recognized my mate. Both halves of me found Galan much more interesting and forgot about the whore on the floor at his feet. I had her scent as well, though. So as Galan took off running away from her, my instinct to chase prey forced me to follow him.

Strangely enough I was having trouble catching him. Galan was running flat out in a weird zig zag pattern. Every time I started to gain on him he changed direction. And since Galan ran every day, he was in good enough physical condition to make it challenging.

As Galan led me off one way, the crowd went the other way. And before I recognized it Galan had me outside of the building. I realized then what he had hoped for, but also his mistake.

Galan, my love, ever the boyscout was trying to get me away from all of the people inside. He also hoped that he could get to his car. He figured if he could get to it, there was no way I could keep up with his precious Mustang. And he was right about that.

Where he made his mistake though, was in underestimating me and overestimating his own physical skills. I had slipped on the smooth flooring inside of the building. My claws couldn't dig into the hard ceramic flooring. But in the dirt and rough concrete of the parking lot, I began to gain ground.

Galan had also forgotten that by running out through the front door, he couldn't get to the parking lot without going over a locked fence. The gate in the front of the building had been locked after the incidents with Craig and Todd. Galan could run, but he couldn't leap over a six foot tall wire mesh fence.

It didn't matter. Even in that form I would never hurt Galan. But I did want to play with him a bit. He deserved it, for hitting me in the head with that stick and also for being with that dirty bitch at the party. He was mine and I was his. There had been too many other people involved in our relationship as it was.

With every step we took I grew closer to Galan until I was nipping at his heels. Then he pissed me off. That God Damned Galan head faked me. He looked left, but then quickly veered off to the right. I crashed heavily into the building that was on our left side. I ran after Galan and I was pissed. I slashed at him and my claws ripped through his pants and gashed his leg.

I stopped and howled in regret for causing him pain. I had to get my temper in check. I looked at Galan's blood on my paws and realized that I had hurt him badly. He wasn't able to run anymore. He was just hobbling and dripping blood with every step but he never gave up. He had reached the fence when I started back after him. He was climbing slowly and painfully for the top of the fence. When I reached it, I effortlessly leaped over the fence landing on the other side. The movement surprised him. He caught his shoe in the fence and fell but he was really caught on the fence. There he was hanging by his shoe on the fence less than a foot away from me.

He stared into my bestial maw and I realized suddenly. That he wasn't afraid of me. I realized that in the same way that I had been able to recognize him in that fucking costume, even before he took off the mask; Galan somehow knew that I would never hurt him.

I felt it then, the weakness that signaled the onset of me reverting back to poor, fat Beth. I had probably less than a minute before I would begin shedding the hair and shrinking. I reached out to Galan in a gesture that I think he knew was affectionate. I think he also knew that the gash to his leg had been accidental. I knew that Galan understood it all and things were going to be fine between us.

I reached out to try to free my lover from the fence and never made it. The first of the high velocity shells struck me in the chest so hard that it lifted me off of my feet. The bullet hit me before the sound of the shot reached us. i tried to get away then.

"No," screamed Galan waving his hands. "Don't shoot."

Out of nowhere the police swat team approached. Two more bullets hit me in quick succession. Galan fell off of the fence then he hobbled over to me. I was changing back to fat Beth even as I began to die.

* * * * * *

Galan

I lay there in the parking lot with Beth's head cradled in my lap. It suddenly started to rain. I had a flashback to that time a few months ago, when after a very rigorous session of morning sex I was laying on the floor of our shower with Beth's head cradled in my lap in much the same way. I had known then that I should never have let her go that morning. It had been the morning when everything went wrong. Now as we both lay there bleeding, the rain washed our mixed blood away from us and down the sewers.

"I love you Beth," I said softly as my consciousness started to fade from loss of blood. The gash she had given me was deeper than either of us knew.

"Love you too, Honey," she said. "Galan ... Don't let them get the formula. All of my notes are hidden. In ... Apartment ... You know where. Galan, burn them. And then she was gone.

The men from the SWAT team were confused. They thought that they had shot and killed a monster. But when they got to me, they found me cuddling with a very pale, very human, woman. There were three bullet holes in her. They were in roughly the same places they had shot the monster. A crowd started to gather around the scene and they quickly cordoned off the area and called an ambulance in.

"Sir, stay with us, sir," they kept saying as things got darker and darker.

* * * * * *

Epilogue

Galan

The first thing I remember from when I woke up in the hospital was something lying across me and squeezing my hand.

I struggled to get my eyes to open and then I coughed several times. Like lightning, whatever was lying across me, moved. The light in the room came on and I blinked several times to get my eyes to adjust.

"Galan, Honey, you're awake," she gushed. "You scared the shit out of me."

It was Grace. "How ...?" I croaked. My throat was as dry as the Sahara. She handed me a glass of water.

"How long was I out?" I asked.

"Three days," she gushed. "That thing ... That fucking monster clawed your leg to the bone. It took them three surgeries to reconnect your muscles to your femur. They can't figure out how the hell you were able to run like that." She just beamed at me.

"Galan, you saved my life," she gushed. "That thing was coming after me, but you jumped in front of it. You saved Brent too. It was touch and go but they think he's going to pull through. The only sad thing was that they couldn't save Beth. Apparently she ran after you to try to save you or something. Anyway the creature killed her the same way it killed Todd and Craig and tried to get Brent. I don't know any of those guys, but my mom said you two worked with them. I'm so glad you're okay, Honey. We're ... "

She was interrupted by the arrival of several men in suits and a couple in lab coats.

"Ms. Jones, can we speak to him for a few moments?" asked one of the men. Grace turned and looked at me.

"I'll be right outside, Honey," she said. "I have to go tell my mom that you're okay, anyway."

"It's good to see you awake, Mr. Stevens," said one of the men. "We thought for a while that the ape might've killed you too."

"We all know that it wasn't an ape," I said. "Your SWAT team shot my ex girlfriend. I have no idea how she turned into that thing ... " I began. I spent a couple of hours telling them everything I knew including how the three men Beth had killed were connected to us.

They in turn gave me the cover story that I would tell anyone to explain what happened. In exchange for my silence and going along with the party line, the US government had given me three million dollars, after I signed a nondisclosure package.

Beth was buried a few days later. Everyone in town looked at her as a hero. In death she had the affection and respect that had been denied her during her life.

Brent lived, but he was never the same. They were able to sew up the wounds in his face. But even after several plastic surgeries, you can still tell that he had half of his face clawed off. Being thrown through the wall had also damaged his spine so severely that he will probably never walk again. But the greatest damage was to his mind. Brent spends most of his time screaming at flashbacks of monsters attacking him. Even during the rare instances that he is lucid, his memory is spotty. And most of all he is deathly afraid of fat women.

I was released from the hospital after another month. It took more than a year of physical therapy before I could run again. But I'm back to it. Maybe I'm not as fast as I was or as strong, but I get better every day.

Glory remarried her ex-husband. He's a really nice guy. He's very driven. But at the same time very shy. They've both retired now and he puts all of his time and focus on Glory.

They're traveling now. They take lots of trips all over the world to see all of the things they want to see before they begin the next phase of their lives. They're looking forward to being grandparents.

Grace and I got to know each other much better while she helped me through my recovery. Although it seems quick, we really were suited to each other and we love each other very much. Grace, Glory and I all agreed that it would be best if her husband only knows me as Grace's husband. It would color our relationship and theirs with a bad brush if he ever found out that I had spent three months fucking Glory and that if Grace hadn't tricked us at the Halloween party, they might not have gotten back together.

I did become the sales manager and later on Vice President of the entire company. Grace and I love each other and as far as she knows have no secrets from each other. Unfortunately, we have two. Besides the really big one about Beth that I have never related to anyone; there is one more thing that no one including Grace knows. I did go back to our old apartment after both the police and the government concluded their investigations.

There, inside of a heating pipe that was no longer hooked to the furnace, I found all of Beth's notes and her formula. I have no use for it but I have never destroyed it. I saw firsthand what it turned my sweet, gentle, loving Beth into. The government has no business getting their greedy hands on something that dangerous. Even so I couldn't bring myself to destroy it because Beth put her heart and soul into it and maybe someday, someone can use it to do some good.

Grace and I have settled in for the long haul. We want a family with kids a dog and the whole nine yards. We're going to name our second daughter after Glory someday. Grace is already pregnant with our first. We decided by unanimous decision, to name her Beth.

The end.