The creature ran towards civilization like a headless chicken, all the while making dying noises bound to attract attention. It seemed to feel no need to hide or disguise itself further as it stepped erratically into the small maze of stalls of the weekly market. At this early hour, it was quite empty but a few people still passed by the creature. Their reactions were somewhat dull as the shock of seeing that sickenly white body covered in blood left them hesitant to do anything else but what they had already planned to do before seeing it. The thing was, it was obvious the creature wasn’t human. It had no genitals and its face kept morphing. Looking at its face was like looking at a kaleidoscope; the creature would instinctively change its features according to the facial structure of the next person it saw. In front of such monstrosity, most people chose to turn a blind eye as the creature showed no sign of aggression. If anything, it looked more lost than any of them, running chaotically without consideration for its upper limbs. It wasn’t the first time that those civilians had seen a monster as one would appear once in a while around town before being shipped to the capital to be dealt with by the competent authorities. But for most, it was the first time they saw a shapeshifter in the flesh.

They said they were highly valued on the black market.

But because they were, they were hard to come by as they would hide by blending into the local population. This one was different. It was oozing fear but it didn’t fear any of the beings it was passing by in its frantic state. The thing it was running from, it was impossible to guess as people couldn’t see anything on its trail. Maybe it realized itself that nothing was following it because at one point, it slowly stopped running. Then it stopped walking, and its face stabilized into a rather ordinary looking face, kind of a mixture of every face it saw until now.

It stood there between two stalls, making the stall owners silently freak out. Everyone here was hoping someone would take care of this thing and drag it away, but as they were all thinking the same thing, nobody moved. Until someone did.

Pete’s son was a freak. A big sturdy freak, and people would never leave him alone with a child or a woman. Pete kept saying that he wouldn’t hurt a fly, and maybe that was true, but they knew for sure he was able to hurt anything else as they often saw him get lost in a senseless rage and a pit of unvented carnal desire. For him to be the one to jump on the creature and drag it away like an animal in heat wasn’t a surprise.

What was surprising was that the creature didn’t defend itself. It just let it happen.

People saw Pete’s son drag the creature in a nearby alley behind the local bakery, and failed to feel relieved about it. Somehow, it just didn’t feel right. Maybe that was because she thought so that one of the stall owners decided to call Pete to warn him. To be honest, no one cared about what could happen to Pete's son because everyone was scared of him. But still, it was just wrong to let it happen like that.

Wrong.

That’s what the creature felt like right now. But there was a better world for it.

Bad.

The creature felt bad as the hands on its skin kept digging like looking for gold. Pete's son seemed to understand human anatomy better than the creature because it seemed quite obvious to him that the creature was missing some important part. He kept looking for it because he was too dumb to take a clue while the creature silently watched him. The man had dragged it by one arm into this empty alley, and had accidentally broken it doing so. That arm was lying limp on its side like a broken toy while the feeling inside the creature’s gut kept escalating.

I don’t like this.

It was a simple thought but it was the first one that the creature started using a personal pronoun since its birth. Usually it would be detached from what it thought about. But this thought held emotion. Exactly, that emotion was disgust.

Still, the creature didn’t move according to it. It let it be.

It had spent so much time being passive inside the main body that it didn't know how to take action. The main body was what the creature called the quadruped titan it came from, the one that had appeared on the beach. The creature had lived inside the main body for 49 years before being spit out this morning, and during those 49 years, it hadn't decided anything for itself.

Because there was no self.

Inside the main body, everything was the main body - before being ripped off into existence.

Running away from the main body was the first action the creature ever took. But it was easy to do, because it was fueled by instinct. It had spent so much time inside the main body and now it was finally free; of course it would want to stay free.

The creature never knew what it was like to be free when it was a bunch of cells inside the main body. But when its fresh skin touched the sand of that beach, it instinctively knew that was the word for that peculiar emotion it felt then. It was free.

Right now, it didn't feel so free.

It was trapped between the wall and the man, and it didn't like that.

It didn't like being touched.

It didn't like being trapped.

The momentum of those emotions were building up when the man blindsided the creature by grabbing one of its arms and yanking it to the ground.

Pete's son seemed to have figured out that any hole would do, and now he was aiming for the creature's mouth. The creature felt its shoulder getting dislocated but didn't let any sound past its lips.

Now seemed a bad time to open its mouth.

The man tried to pry open its jaw with brute force, and the creature's bones crushed under its hands. Being just born, the creature's bones were too fragile to resist the man's brutality; its current body was just an imperfect draft made on the spot, after all. In the end, the man broke its jaw open and started to unbuckle his belt.

The creature watched as he manipulated its genitals to put them in its mouth and a sudden shiver made its body tremble. It tried to retreat and violently hit its head against the wall. The man didn't care and put its penis into its mouth, as he had intended to.

That's when the creature took action for the second time of its very short life.

When the man felt the teeth touching him, he didn't immediately retreat, absorbed in pleasure. But then the teeth cut him and he backed off hurriedly, startled by how sharp they were.

The creature looked at him in silent assessment. Its mouth had lost its shape; its lips had melted and its jaw had reconstructed itself to form a mouth-like vacuum full of a hundred of sharp pointy teeth converging to the center of the vacuum. The whole thing looked like pain spelled in capital letters, and the creature had done it on purpose.

It was provoking him.

Daring to try and do that again.

The man and the creature stared at each other without moving. The creature was looking at his eyes; the man was looking at its teeth. And slowly, very slowly, the creature saw the man's eyes changing.

Their color deepened into obsession as waves of lust brought tears to the corners of his eyes.

Impatience was written all over his face, like he had waited for this his whole life. His expression of joy was naive, untainted, but his subject of joy was warped so badly the creature couldn’t understand it.

But somehow its feeling of disgust disappeared as morbid curiosity took over. Fascination burned the tip of the creature’s ears as it blushed furiously into the color of the blood covering its half-assed body. Its brain could only manage one thought.

Do it.

Do it again.

It was silent understanding that brought them closer again. The man walked towards the creature, and the creature sat up in acceptance. He reached for the creature’s head as the creature looked at its erection. The man’s hand caressed the bald head of the creature and the creature felt like every time the man moved, the lack in its comprehension of this world deepened. But there was no real time to think about it, as the man thrusted into its mouth suddenly and the creature’s eyes widened in horror and novelty.

Blood dripped into the creature’s grotesque mouth, maybe more than it should have.

But the man didn’t care and kept thrusting. He was badly hurting himself each time he did but the pain only widened his pupils and shortened his breath in ecstasy. The creature let the blood drip out of its mouth like excess saliva, wondering how badly you can hurt a man while still pleasuring him when suddenly it heard footsteps running their way. It didn’t bother to move but its eyes changed their focus to the entrance of the dead end street they were in.

A few seconds later, an older man rushed over with frightened eyes. A strong odor of sweat was coming from him, following him like musc as he grabbed his son and threw him against the opposite wall. For a second, Pete didn’t understand where the blood was coming from; but then he saw the creature’s mouth and realization washed over him. He turned over the body of his struggling son whose pleasure was quickly turning into despair as his father's interruption broke his fantasy. When Pete saw the badly mutilated penis of his son, he lost composure. He held his son down blankly not knowing what to do.

A part of him was thinking about going to the hospital, the other wanted to let the other die right there. That was his pride talking, all of his words coming back to haunt him. My son would never hurt a fly. How many times did he say those words ? How many times did he make himself believe them ? When everyone kept telling him that his son was dangerous for others and for himself. He remembered that day of fall when Mary had watched his son play on the living room floor, destroying every toy he would touch, and said to him : "If you don't teach that child to control himself, one day you'll lose him."

It seemed like she was right, after all.

Pete looked back at the creature sitting on the ground while holding his son with trembling hands.

It would have been so much simpler if the creature had been the crazy one. But even now, as he looked into its eyes, he couldn’t see anything like he could oh so clearly see into his own son’s eyes. And it broke him down.

It broke him down so badly he stayed like that without doing anything until some people came to help a moment later. Mary called an ambulance and the police as soon as she reached the scene. A man separated the father from the son as Pete’s eyes worried him. Another wrapped the creature in a blanket and tied it up, trying not to look at the blood dripping off its monstrous mouth. Maybe the creature felt their apprehension because it finally closed it and reverted its jaw structure to that of a human’s. Blood was still wetting its lips, but it was still better than nothing - that’s what Mary thought as she looked at it, ears buzzing from psychological shock.

Then the ambulance came, and the police shortly after.

She watched the creature being taken away by the police while feeling lost. She knew it was for the best, but still.

She didn’t really understand why that thing was the one wearing cuffs.