"What if I don't want. . ."

". . .to be a monster?" I whispered, my hands going slack.

I stepped away, backing slowly from the farmstead. My anger was still there, my hate, my indignation, but more than all that, there was my pride. My distaste for being pushed; in any direction. I had hated being exiled, I had hated being chase from my home, I had hated being **** down this path.

And I hated feeling **** by my monstrous body.

I started down the road, swaying wearily as hunger and sickness burned through my body. I don't know why I walked, why I kept putting one foot in front of the other, but there was something comforting about it. In truth, I didn't expect I would get much further than an hour's travel. But as I moved I made more than two hours distance, and then three, before I collapsed in the dirt of the road.

I looked forward with fuzzy vision at my hand, stretching forwards, and felt a tiny candleflame of satisfaction blaze; I gone further than I expected.

I guess I'll have to be satisfied with that. . .

I don't know how long I lingered in that place between wakefulness and unconsciousness, where every second is an eternity and yet disappears in a moment. I do know that I woke in the wee hours of the morning, maybe four or five, with a tremendous hunger in me and a hard cock. My hand had visibly diminished in the hours that had disappeared, and I knew, without a doubt, that I was in the final hours of my life.

I rolled over to look at the violet sky, preferring to expire looking at the sky.

I'm not afraid, I lied to myself. Not at all; I made this choice.

I steadied my breathing against the fear, and found my hand questing towards the dagger on my hip. I **** myself to let go, to refuse the easy end the keen knife promised. I wanted, deep down, to linger on as long as I could.

"At least it's a nice night, tonight."

"Is that so?" Someone said from my footward side. I didn't look, there was no point and I didn't have the strength. "Seems like any other night, to me."

"Fuck you." Dying seemed to have loosened my tongue. "Can a man die in peace?"

"You don't look like a man." The voice had a dull quality to it, despite the accent. With a massive effort I managed to lift my head a quarter-inch. My curiosity, a prize from my merchant upbringing, was enough to sustain that movement. All I caught sight of was a cloaked figure, by something in my blood knew it was a woman.

I felt my pants strain, and a vicious hunger awoke in me. I felt a surge of strength, and I knew, in my bones, that my only chance of survival lay in striking. Whatever in her awoke my hunger, I needed it badly. I needed it to live.

To live.