u/Brokenteeth_168

I’ve always been a good gambler, by extension a great guesser. My life is one big guessing game and I’m always in the hot seat. Every move has to be perfect, every decision carefully planned, every conversation already scripted, and everything remains a game of chance…always. It’s explains why the only form of math I’m good at is statistics, it’s the math I’ve been doing since the very moment I came into being.
I am not a human. That isn’t to say I have never related or loved the human experience because I really do. Rather, I am not something a human mind is meant to comprehend. In 1700s, I would have been called a demon or a changeling. In the 1900s, a sideshow gaff or a freak-show. In modern day, I would be called a cryptid. To be honest, I am not entirely sure what I am. I awoke to absolute loneliness when I emerged from my egg, no sign of any parents or siblings, any animal life for that matter. It was pure silence when it shouldn’t have been. I only saw endless trees from my vantage point on that forest floor. I have done continuous research to figure out what I am. I am not a creature from Native American oral traditions, though I can see why some might think I may be. I have not identified any trait specific to American cryptids aside from mimicking being a person. Not to toot my own horn, I do it significantly better than them. I was never a person, many of these things were people at some point.
The closest thing I come to concluding what I may be is some form of alien but as I have mentioned from the beginning, it’s just a guessing game. I mean what other creature is better at pretending to be your friend, your neighbor, your student, and your daughter with such ease. Most of those cryptids spit out limited phrases or will act nothing like their host’s body. I cram my 7 ft thin frame into a 5’7” skin husk everyday. I have copied her voice perfectly and have learned how to walk better overtime while in the equivalent of being vacuum sealed into a garbage bag, running is still a work in progress. My most recent accomplishment is mastering a cursive signature for her. I feel bad often though, every morning I look at her skin as I hold it up like a letterman jacket in one of those crappy sports movies and think of who she was. What she would be doing if I had not taken her life, metaphorically and literally. She was a nice person, the way her parents, friends, and teachers treat her, it supports the idea that she had an amazing soul. I am glad I get to be her for now.
Her journals tell me of someone who dreamed so big and loved so deeply. More than what I observed of her at least. She wanted to be a physical therapist and was inspired by the PTs who helped her grandma after her stroke. She wrote about the places she wanted to go, how many kids she wanted to have, how she wanted to contribute to her community, and her hopes to one day get married. I wish I could live those out for her but like with many of my skins there comes a point where things get suspicious. I mean skins don’t age up. They are stuck in time and people are endlessly moving forward.
Eventually, I’ll need to fake her death. When a 16 year old looks the same age at 25 or something like that, it starts making people ask questions. Which is weird to think about since she’s already dead but what I mean is her being officially deceased by human standards.
I’ve been many people before. Well five so far, Daniel, Emily, Hannah, Natalie, and most recently, I am now 16 year old Lenora Davidson (though she’s technically 19 years old now). I don’t know if I am supposed to be doing this, it doesn’t feel right but at the same time people were not exactly friendly towards a 7ft grey hairless creature with cat-like eyes, a flat nose, and fingers as long as wooden drumsticks.
I still have a scar from where that bearded man shot me when I tried to play on the playground with the children, it still makes my shoulder ache sometimes. That’s what led to me becoming Daniel, I lured him with his teddy bear. I won’t give you gruesome details of his actual death but I will say it was hard hearing him scream. I will never forget how horrifyingly loud it was for such a tiny body. It was weird skinning him, it was like peeling an orange open but ten times more delicate and if the rind was as thick as a two coins stacked on top of each other.
It was easy getting away with being a toddler since toddlers are still developing personalities so being odd doesn’t appear out of place. I remember stumbling back to the playground, only to be greeted by his mother sprinting at me thinking it was him.
“Mijo, where have you been? I was so worried, I thought I heard you screaming.”, She asked as she knelt down in front of me, caressing his face.
I was still learning language and how humans communicate at this point in time. So I made the best attempt I could, tried to mimic him as best as possible, and replied with the following phrase he said to me as I held his teddy bear;
“I scared, I want mama.”, I mimicked as best as I could.
She became teary eyed, looking into my eyes but hand cupping his cheek. She then scooped us up into her arms. Cradling us as she walked to her car. I remember feeling so warm, so loved, like I was a person. I was finally a person.
I stayed with Daniel’s family for 5 months before faking his death as a freak accident at his Abuelo’s farm. It’s easy to fake deaths when you just have the skin to work off of.
I learned a lot from that time, I learned about emotions. I learned how to feel. I learned what I wanted and I learned what I needed to do in order to survive, whether I agreed with it or not. A lot of you might say, you have a choice. What choice? Get shot at? Be put in some government facility? Be killed and then treated like some science project? An exhibit? Maybe that’s the fate of whoever gave me life. All I know is this is a good way to survive.
Through Emily, I was able to go through 1st to 3rd grade. Through Hannah, 3rd to 5th grade. Natalie carried me all throughout middle school and into freshman year of high school. Now, I have spent the last 3 years living as Lennie. As gross as it is to say, it definitely helped that Lennie was as people say an “early bloomer”. It helped get rid of any potential suspicion in my opinion. It helped that overtime I learned how to get better at becoming these individuals. I usually stalk them for at least a year before actually becoming them.
I learned that it was a better strategy since it gave me time to learn about their habits, hobbies, likes, dislikes, and so on. It makes the guessing game more evidence-based rather than betting it all on black like some drunken divorcee in a midlife crisis. I mean I still vividly remember the night I became Lennie.
It was sophomore year for her, it was at a night football game. By this point I had already been a year out of Natalie. I knew I needed to act soon if I was gonna remain caught up educationally. Lennie was perfect. Smart, popular, beautiful, and funny. Golden locks with blue eyes, a curvy figure, and tanned skin. She was the ideal person to become by human standards. I feel as though aside from physically, I was already Lennie. I had connected to her the most, she had secrets as well like I do. For example, she was secretly a huge anime fan but felt too embarrassed to tell anyone outside of family. I read that in one of that in her journals and also later learned through her search history. She was scared to be her true self, just like I am.
I lured her with the oldest trick in my book, fake an injured dog in the nearby woods. She took the bait immediately.
“Oh my gosh! Was that a dog?!” She exclaimed looking into the woods as she stood behind the bleachers.
“Len, it’s probably just some lost farm dog or something. Let’s go back to the group.”, My- I mean her best friend Nadia replied. Nadia and Lennie had been best friends since 3rd grade, how sweet. Nadia is a really nice person, hilarious too.
I put on the pressure, increasing the cries of the supposed wounded dog.
“Nadia, I’m gonna go check it out. I’ll meet up with you guys. Don’t take the group selfie without me.” Lennie stated to Nadia, before walking in my direction into the woods.
Nadia said something in reply before leaving but I couldn’t make it out over hearing Lennie get closer and closer. Honing in on that.
“Here puppy, come here. It’s ok.” Lennie said gently as she used her phone as a flashlight in the dark woods.
As I looked down at her from the treetops, I couldn’t help but have a moment of reflection. This poor girl, she doesn’t deserve this. Maybe in another life where I wasn’t some freak of nature, we could have been friends. Compared to all the other people I had been, Lennie was the first person I felt as though if she had seen me, I wouldn’t had been such a monster. I would have been something, I would have been someone.
I have no right to ask for pity or forgiveness since remain guessing the morality and ethics of my situation. I remember the sorrow I felt in the moment, someone who I had become attached to. Someone I wanted to be but someone I didn’t want to take away from this life.
I grabbed my scarred shoulder in a brief moment, remembering my own fear. Remembering the screams of the children who saw who I was, the bearded man who called me an abomination and demon spawn before launching a barrage of bullets at me. I remember feeling so scared I was gonna die, running away still hearing the screams as I retreated to my lonely den. All I wanted to do was just be included and feel normal but I had to remind myself that this wasn’t personal as I sat atop that tree looking down at this poor young lady, this was purely survival.
I pounced.
I covered her mouth with my hand as I stood behind her pinning her tightly to my chest. I felt her respirations increase, her scratching my hand with her acrylic nails, and her attempts to scream through my hand being muffled. I wanted to just tell her everything would go quick. I wanted to tell her I would make it fast as possible but in that moment I think I gave her the truest statement I could.
“Lenora, I am sorry. I am truly, truly sorry.”, I said in my voice for the first time in years.
I placed my other hand on her head and twisted her head hard until I heard a loud crack and a pop. I let go of her and her body hit the ground like a tree that has been chopped down.
Despite the people cheering on the bleachers in distance, it still somehow felt so quiet. I fell to my knees and cried. It just was so hard to kill her, I wish I knew how to survive better. I don’t want to do this but I know my options.
After calming down as best as I could, I skinned her using sharp rocks I refined nearby like scalpels. I made sure to separate her face and body (to help me when I needed to breathe on occasion). Maybe I should become a surgeon, I would probably be pretty good at it. I put her face on like it was a ski mask. I snapped her legs on like a pair of skinny jeans. Her torso and arms were like a tight sweater. Her skin clung to mine, I compressed myself down to fit her frame and shape as I assembled the husk. I fixed up the possible kinks in the skin and adjusted as well as possible, logging into her phone to use the camera to look at our face.
Everything was in place. I went to the bleachers and found Nadia with the group sitting at the very top.
“Did you find the dog?” Nadia inquired.
“It must have gotten scared and ran away from me, I just hope it gets help.” I mimicked perfectly as I finally made it to our group of friends at the top.
“It’ll be ok, dogs get lost and then go back home all the time.” She replied. “Alright! Group selfie time!”
Nadia held up her phone, I leaned in next to her as she held the phone high to fit 7 other people. I smiled but I remember feeling so many emotions in that moment.
Grief.
Sadness.
Happiness.
Relief.
Safety.
That photo now sits at our desk in a floral photo frame where it has been for the last three years.
We graduate this May. I am so excited to get a high school diploma. I know it’s a bad idea but I do want to take it with me when the time comes but I’ll leave it, taking it is too much of a risk.
So, I sit here typing on her computer telling my story.
I just want you to know. That I could become your neighbor, your parent, your sibling, your friend.
I’m great at knowing who I could get away as, I bet when I finally get to go to the casinos that I will do great.
I do want you to know that if it ends up being you next, it’s not personal.
It’s survival.

I’ve always been a good gambler, by extension a great guesser. My life is one big guessing game and I’m always in the hot seat. Every move has to be perfect, every decision carefully planned, every conversation already scripted, and everything remains a game of chance…always. It’s explains why the only form of math I’m good at is statistics, it’s the math I’ve been doing since the very moment I came into being.
I am not a human. That isn’t to say I have never related or loved the human experience because I really do. Rather, I am not something a human mind is meant to comprehend. In 1700s, I would have been called a demon or a changeling. In the 1900s, a sideshow gaff or a freak-show. In modern day, I would be called a cryptid. To be honest, I am not entirely sure what I am. I awoke to absolute loneliness when I emerged from my egg, no sign of any parents or siblings, any animal life for that matter. It was pure silence when it shouldn’t have been. I only saw endless trees from my vantage point on that forest floor. I have done continuous research to figure out what I am. I am not a creature from Native American oral traditions, though I can see why some might think I may be. I have not identified any trait specific to American cryptids aside from mimicking being a person. Not to toot my own horn, I do it significantly better than them. I was never a person, many of these things were people at some point.
The closest thing I come to concluding what I may be is some form of alien but as I have mentioned from the beginning, it’s just a guessing game. I mean what other creature is better at pretending to be your friend, your neighbor, your student, and your daughter with such ease. Most of those cryptids spit out limited phrases or will act nothing like their host’s body. I cram my 7 ft thin frame into a 5’7” skin husk everyday. I have copied her voice perfectly and have learned how to walk better overtime while in the equivalent of being vacuum sealed into a garbage bag, running is still a work in progress. My most recent accomplishment is mastering a cursive signature for her. I feel bad often though, every morning I look at her skin as I hold it up like a letterman jacket in one of those crappy sports movies and think of who she was. What she would be doing if I had not taken her life, metaphorically and literally. She was a nice person, the way her parents, friends, and teachers treat her, it supports the idea that she had an amazing soul. I am glad I get to be her for now.
Her journals tell me of someone who dreamed so big and loved so deeply. More than what I observed of her at least. She wanted to be a physical therapist and was inspired by the PTs who helped her grandma after her stroke. She wrote about the places she wanted to go, how many kids she wanted to have, how she wanted to contribute to her community, and her hopes to one day get married. I wish I could live those out for her but like with many of my skins there comes a point where things get suspicious. I mean skins don’t age up. They are stuck in time and people are endlessly moving forward.
Eventually, I’ll need to fake her death. When a 16 year old looks the same age at 25 or something like that, it starts making people ask questions. Which is weird to think about since she’s already dead but what I mean is her being officially deceased by human standards.
I’ve been many people before. Well five so far, Daniel, Emily, Hannah, Natalie, and most recently, I am now 16 year old Lenora Davidson (though she’s technically 19 years old now). I don’t know if I am supposed to be doing this, it doesn’t feel right but at the same time people were not exactly friendly towards a 7ft grey hairless creature with cat-like eyes, a flat nose, and fingers as long as wooden drumsticks.
I still have a scar from where that bearded man shot me when I tried to play on the playground with the children, it still makes my shoulder ache sometimes. That’s what led to me becoming Daniel, I lured him with his teddy bear. I won’t give you gruesome details of his actual death but I will say it was hard hearing him scream. I will never forget how horrifyingly loud it was for such a tiny body. It was weird skinning him, it was like peeling an orange open but ten times more delicate and if the rind was as thick as a two coins stacked on top of each other.
It was easy getting away with being a toddler since toddlers are still developing personalities so being odd doesn’t appear out of place. I remember stumbling back to the playground, only to be greeted by his mother sprinting at me thinking it was him.
“Mijo, where have you been? I was so worried, I thought I heard you screaming.”, She asked as she knelt down in front of me, caressing his face.
I was still learning language and how humans communicate at this point in time. So I made the best attempt I could, tried to mimic him as best as possible, and replied with the following phrase he said to me as I held his teddy bear;
“I scared, I want mama.”, I mimicked as best as I could.
She became teary eyed, looking into my eyes but hand cupping his cheek. She then scooped us up into her arms. Cradling us as she walked to her car. I remember feeling so warm, so loved, like I was a person. I was finally a person.
I stayed with Daniel’s family for 5 months before faking his death as a freak accident at his Abuelo’s farm. It’s easy to fake deaths when you just have the skin to work off of.
I learned a lot from that time, I learned about emotions. I learned how to feel. I learned what I wanted and I learned what I needed to do in order to survive, whether I agreed with it or not. A lot of you might say, you have a choice. What choice? Get shot at? Be put in some government facility? Be killed and then treated like some science project? An exhibit? Maybe that’s the fate of whoever gave me life. All I know is this is a good way to survive.
Through Emily, I was able to go through 1st to 3rd grade. Through Hannah, 3rd to 5th grade. Natalie carried me all throughout middle school and into freshman year of high school. Now, I have spent the last 3 years living as Lennie. As gross as it is to say, it definitely helped that Lennie was as people say an “early bloomer”. It helped get rid of any potential suspicion in my opinion. It helped that overtime I learned how to get better at becoming these individuals. I usually stalk them for at least a year before actually becoming them.
I learned that it was a better strategy since it gave me time to learn about their habits, hobbies, likes, dislikes, and so on. It makes the guessing game more evidence-based rather than betting it all on black like some drunken divorcee in a midlife crisis. I mean I still vividly remember the night I became Lennie.
It was sophomore year for her, it was at a night football game. By this point I had already been a year out of Natalie. I knew I needed to act soon if I was gonna remain caught up educationally. Lennie was perfect. Smart, popular, beautiful, and funny. Golden locks with blue eyes, a curvy figure, and tanned skin. She was the ideal person to become by human standards. I feel as though aside from physically, I was already Lennie. I had connected to her the most, she had secrets as well like I do. For example, she was secretly a huge anime fan but felt too embarrassed to tell anyone outside of family. I read that in one of that in her journals and also later learned through her search history. She was scared to be her true self, just like I am.
I lured her with the oldest trick in my book, fake an injured dog in the nearby woods. She took the bait immediately.
“Oh my gosh! Was that a dog?!” She exclaimed looking into the woods as she stood behind the bleachers.
“Len, it’s probably just some lost farm dog or something. Let’s go back to the group.”, My- I mean her best friend Nadia replied. Nadia and Lennie had been best friends since 3rd grade, how sweet. Nadia is a really nice person, hilarious too.
I put on the pressure, increasing the cries of the supposed wounded dog.
“Nadia, I’m gonna go check it out. I’ll meet up with you guys. Don’t take the group selfie without me.” Lennie stated to Nadia, before walking in my direction into the woods.
Nadia said something in reply before leaving but I couldn’t make it out over hearing Lennie get closer and closer. Honing in on that.
“Here puppy, come here. It’s ok.” Lennie said gently as she used her phone as a flashlight in the dark woods.
As I looked down at her from the treetops, I couldn’t help but have a moment of reflection. This poor girl, she doesn’t deserve this. Maybe in another life where I wasn’t some freak of nature, we could have been friends. Compared to all the other people I had been, Lennie was the first person I felt as though if she had seen me, I wouldn’t had been such a monster. I would have been something, I would have been someone.
I have no right to ask for pity or forgiveness since remain guessing the morality and ethics of my situation. I remember the sorrow I felt in the moment, someone who I had become attached to. Someone I wanted to be but someone I didn’t want to take away from this life.
I grabbed my scarred shoulder in a brief moment, remembering my own fear. Remembering the screams of the children who saw who I was, the bearded man who called me an abomination and demon spawn before launching a barrage of bullets at me. I remember feeling so scared I was gonna die, running away still hearing the screams as I retreated to my lonely den. All I wanted to do was just be included and feel normal but I had to remind myself that this wasn’t personal as I sat atop that tree looking down at this poor young lady, this was purely survival.
I pounced.
I covered her mouth with my hand as I stood behind her pinning her tightly to my chest. I felt her respirations increase, her scratching my hand with her acrylic nails, and her attempts to scream through my hand being muffled. I wanted to just tell her everything would go quick. I wanted to tell her I would make it fast as possible but in that moment I think I gave her the truest statement I could.
“Lenora, I am sorry. I am truly, truly sorry.”, I said in my voice for the first time in years.
I placed my other hand on her head and twisted her head hard until I heard a loud crack and a pop. I let go of her and her body hit the ground like a tree that has been chopped down.
Despite the people cheering on the bleachers in distance, it still somehow felt so quiet. I fell to my knees and cried. It just was so hard to kill her, I wish I knew how to survive better. I don’t want to do this but I know my options.
After calming down as best as I could, I skinned her using sharp rocks I refined nearby like scalpels. I made sure to separate her face and body (to help me when I needed to breathe on occasion). Maybe I should become a surgeon, I would probably be pretty good at it. I put her face on like it was a ski mask. I snapped her legs on like a pair of skinny jeans. Her torso and arms were like a tight sweater. Her skin clung to mine, I compressed myself down to fit her frame and shape as I assembled the husk. I fixed up the possible kinks in the skin and adjusted as well as possible, logging into her phone to use the camera to look at our face.
Everything was in place. I went to the bleachers and found Nadia with the group sitting at the very top.
“Did you find the dog?” Nadia inquired.
“It must have gotten scared and ran away from me, I just hope it gets help.” I mimicked perfectly as I finally made it to our group of friends at the top.
“It’ll be ok, dogs get lost and then go back home all the time.” She replied. “Alright! Group selfie time!”
Nadia held up her phone, I leaned in next to her as she held the phone high to fit 7 other people. I smiled but I remember feeling so many emotions in that moment.
Grief.
Sadness.
Happiness.
Relief.
Safety.
That photo now sits at our desk in a floral photo frame where it has been for the last three years.
We graduate this May. I am so excited to get a high school diploma. I know it’s a bad idea but I do want to take it with me when the time comes but I’ll leave it, taking it is too much of a risk.
So, I sit here typing on her computer telling my story.
I just want you to know. That I could become your neighbor, your parent, your sibling, your friend.
I’m great at knowing who I could get away as, I bet when I finally get to go to the casinos that I will do great.
I do want you to know that if it ends up being you next, it’s not personal.
It’s survival.

I’ve always been a good gambler, by extension a great guesser. My life is one big guessing game and I’m always in the hot seat. Every move has to be perfect, every decision carefully planned, every conversation already scripted, and everything remains a game of chance…always. It’s explains why the only form of math I’m good at is statistics, it’s the math I’ve been doing since the very moment I came into being.
I am not a human. That isn’t to say I have never related or loved the human experience because I really do. Rather, I am not something a human mind is meant to comprehend. In 1700s, I would have been called a demon or a changeling. In the 1900s, a sideshow gaff or a freak-show. In modern day, I would be called a cryptid. To be honest, I am not entirely sure what I am. I awoke to absolute loneliness when I emerged from my egg, no sign of any parents or siblings, any animal life for that matter. It was pure silence when it shouldn’t have been. I only saw endless trees from my vantage point on that forest floor. I have done continuous research to figure out what I am. I am not a creature from Native American oral traditions, though I can see why some might think I may be. I have not identified any trait specific to American cryptids aside from mimicking being a person. Not to toot my own horn, I do it significantly better than them. I was never a person, many of these things were people at some point.
The closest thing I come to concluding what I may be is some form of alien but as I have mentioned from the beginning, it’s just a guessing game. I mean what other creature is better at pretending to be your friend, your neighbor, your student, and your daughter with such ease. Most of those cryptids spit out limited phrases or will act nothing like their host’s body. I cram my 7 ft thin frame into a 5’7” skin husk everyday. I have copied her voice perfectly and have learned how to walk better overtime while in the equivalent of being vacuum sealed into a garbage bag, running is still a work in progress. My most recent accomplishment is mastering a cursive signature for her. I feel bad often though, every morning I look at her skin as I hold it up like a letterman jacket in one of those crappy sports movies and think of who she was. What she would be doing if I had not taken her life, metaphorically and literally. She was a nice person, the way her parents, friends, and teachers treat her, it supports the idea that she had an amazing soul. I am glad I get to be her for now.
Her journals tell me of someone who dreamed so big and loved so deeply. More than what I observed of her at least. She wanted to be a physical therapist and was inspired by the PTs who helped her grandma after her stroke. She wrote about the places she wanted to go, how many kids she wanted to have, how she wanted to contribute to her community, and her hopes to one day get married. I wish I could live those out for her but like with many of my skins there comes a point where things get suspicious. I mean skins don’t age up. They are stuck in time and people are endlessly moving forward.
Eventually, I’ll need to fake her death. When a 16 year old looks the same age at 25 or something like that, it starts making people ask questions. Which is weird to think about since she’s already dead but what I mean is her being officially deceased by human standards.
I’ve been many people before. Well five so far, Daniel Rodriguez, Emily Smith, Hannah Lindholm, Natalie Jarn, and most recently, I am now 16 year old Lenora Davidson (though she’s technically 19 years old now). I don’t know if I am supposed to be doing this, it doesn’t feel right but at the same time people were not exactly friendly towards a 7ft grey hairless creature with cat-like eyes, a flat nose, and fingers as long as wooden drumsticks.
I still have a scar from where that bearded man shot me when I tried to play on the playground with the children, it still makes my shoulder ache sometimes. That’s what led to me becoming Daniel, I lured him with his teddy bear. I won’t give you gruesome details of his actual death but I will say it was hard hearing him scream. I will never forget how horrifyingly loud it was for such a tiny body. It was weird skinning him, it was like peeling an orange open but ten times more delicate and if the rind was as thick as a two coins stacked on top of each other.
It was easy getting away with being a toddler since toddlers are still developing personalities so being odd doesn’t appear out of place. I remember stumbling back to the playground, only to be greeted by his mother sprinting at me thinking it was him.
“Mijo, where have you been? I was so worried, I thought I heard you screaming.”, She asked as she knelt down in front of me, caressing his face.
I was still learning language and how humans communicate at this point in time. So I made the best attempt I could, tried to mimic him as best as possible, and replied with the following phrase he said to me as I held his teddy bear;
“I scared, I want mama.”, I mimicked as best as I could.
She became teary eyed, looking into my eyes but hand cupping his cheek. She then scooped us up into her arms. Cradling us as she walked to her car. I remember feeling so warm, so loved, like I was a person. I was finally a person.
I stayed with Daniel’s family for 5 months before faking his death as a freak accident at his Abuelo’s farm. It’s easy to fake deaths when you just have the skin to work off of.
I learned a lot from that time, I learned about emotions. I learned how to feel. I learned what I wanted and I learned what I needed to do in order to survive, whether I agreed with it or not. A lot of you might say, you have a choice. What choice? Get shot at? Be put in some government facility? Be killed and then treated like some science project? An exhibit? Maybe that’s the fate of whoever gave me life. All I know is this is a good way to survive.
Through Emily, I was able to go through 1st to 3rd grade. Through Hannah, 3rd to 5th grade. Natalie carried me all throughout middle school and into freshman year of high school. Now, I have spent the last 3 years living as Lennie. As gross as it is to say, it definitely helped that Lennie was as people say an “early bloomer”. It helped get rid of any potential suspicion in my opinion. It helped that overtime I learned how to get better at becoming these individuals. I usually stalk them for at least a year before actually becoming them.
I learned that it was a better strategy since it gave me time to learn about their habits, hobbies, likes, dislikes, and so on. It makes the guessing game more evidence-based rather than betting it all on black like some drunken divorcee in a midlife crisis. I mean I still vividly remember the night I became Lennie.
It was sophomore year for her, it was at a night football game. By this point I had already been a year out of Natalie. I knew I needed to act soon if I was gonna remain caught up educationally. Lennie was perfect. Smart, popular, beautiful, and funny. Golden locks with blue eyes, a curvy figure, and tanned skin. She was the ideal person to become by human standards. I feel as though aside from physically, I was already Lennie. I had connected to her the most, she had secrets as well like I do. For example, she was secretly a huge anime fan but felt too embarrassed to tell anyone outside of family. I read that in one of that in her journals and also later learned through her search history. She was scared to be her true self, just like I am.
I lured her with the oldest trick in my book, fake an injured dog in the nearby woods. She took the bait immediately.
“Oh my gosh! Was that a dog?!” She exclaimed looking into the woods as she stood behind the bleachers.
“Len, it’s probably just some lost farm dog or something. Let’s go back to the group.”, My- I mean her best friend Nadia replied. Nadia and Lennie had been best friends since 3rd grade, how sweet. Nadia is a really nice person, hilarious too.
I put on the pressure, increasing the cries of the supposed wounded dog.
“Nadia, I’m gonna go check it out. I’ll meet up with you guys. Don’t take the group selfie without me.” Lennie stated to Nadia, before walking in my direction into the woods.
Nadia said something in reply before leaving but I couldn’t make it out over hearing Lennie get closer and closer. Honing in on that.
“Here puppy, come here. It’s ok.” Lennie said gently as she used her phone as a flashlight in the dark woods.
As I looked down at her from the treetops, I couldn’t help but have a moment of reflection. This poor girl, she doesn’t deserve this. Maybe in another life where I wasn’t some freak of nature, we could have been friends. Compared to all the other people I had been, Lennie was the first person I felt as though if she had seen me, I wouldn’t had been such a monster. I would have been something, I would have been someone.
I have no right to ask for pity or forgiveness since remain guessing the morality and ethics of my situation. I remember the sorrow I felt in the moment, someone who I had become attached to. Someone I wanted to be but someone I didn’t want to take away from this life.
I grabbed my scarred shoulder in a brief moment, remembering my own fear. Remembering the screams of the children who saw who I was, the bearded man who called me an abomination and demon spawn before launching a barrage of bullets at me. I remember feeling so scared I was gonna die, running away still hearing the screams as I retreated to my lonely den. All I wanted to do was just be included and feel normal but I had to remind myself that this wasn’t personal as I sat atop that tree looking down at this poor young lady, this was purely survival.
I pounced.
I covered her mouth with my hand as I stood behind her pinning her tightly to my chest. I felt her respirations increase, her scratching my hand with her acrylic nails, and her attempts to scream through my hand being muffled. I wanted to just tell her everything would go quick. I wanted to tell her I would make it fast as possible but in that moment I think I gave her the truest statement I could.
“Lenora, I am sorry. I am truly, truly sorry.”, I said in my voice for the first time in years.
I placed my other hand on her head and twisted her head hard until I heard a loud crack and a pop. I let go of her and her body hit the ground like a tree that has been chopped down.
Despite the people cheering on the bleachers in distance, it still somehow felt so quiet. I fell to my knees and cried. It just was so hard to kill her, I wish I knew how to survive better. I don’t want to do this but I know my options.
After calming down as best as I could, I skinned her using sharp rocks I refined nearby like scalpels. I made sure to separate her face and body (to help me when I needed to breathe on occasion). Maybe I should become a surgeon, I would probably be pretty good at it. I put her face on like it was a ski mask. I snapped her legs on like a pair of skinny jeans. Her torso and arms were like a tight sweater. Her skin clung to mine, I compressed myself down to fit her frame and shape as I assembled the husk. I fixed up the possible kinks in the skin and adjusted as well as possible, logging into her phone to use the camera to look at our face.
Everything was in place. I went to the bleachers and found Nadia with the group sitting at the very top.
“Did you find the dog?” Nadia inquired.
“It must have gotten scared and ran away from me, I just hope it gets help.” I mimicked perfectly as I finally made it to our group of friends at the top.
“It’ll be ok, dogs get lost and then go back home all the time.” She replied. “Alright! Group selfie time!”
Nadia held up her phone, I leaned in next to her as she held the phone high to fit 7 other people. I smiled but I remember feeling so many emotions in that moment.
Grief.
Sadness.
Happiness.
Relief.
Safety.
That photo now sits at our desk in a floral photo frame where it has been for the last three years.
We graduate this May. I am so excited to get a high school diploma. I know it’s a bad idea but I do want to take it with me when the time comes but I’ll leave it, taking it is too much of a risk.
So, I sit here typing on her computer telling my story.
I just want you to know. That I could become your neighbor, your parent, your sibling, your friend.
I’m great at knowing who I could get away as, I bet when I finally get to go to the casinos that I will do great.
I do want you to know that if it ends up being you next, it’s not personal.
It’s survival.

I’ve always been a good gambler, by extension a great guesser. My life is one big guessing game and I’m always in the hot seat. Every move has to be perfect, every decision carefully planned, every conversation already scripted, and everything remains a game of chance…always. It’s explains why the only form of math I’m good at is statistics, it’s the math I’ve been doing since the very moment I came into being.
I am not a human. That isn’t to say I have never related or loved the human experience because I really do. Rather, I am not something a human mind is meant to comprehend. In 1700s, I would have been called a demon or a changeling. In the 1900s, a sideshow gaff or a freak-show. In modern day, I would be called a cryptid. To be honest, I am not entirely sure what I am. I awoke to absolute loneliness when I emerged from my egg, no sign of any parents or siblings, any animal life for that matter. It was pure silence when it shouldn’t have been. I only saw endless trees from my vantage point on that forest floor. I have done continuous research to figure out what I am. I am not a creature from Native American oral traditions, though I can see why some might think I may be. I have not identified any trait specific to American cryptids aside from mimicking being a person. Not to toot my own horn, I do it significantly better than them. I was never a person, many of these things were people at some point.
The closest thing I come to concluding what I may be is some form of alien but as I have mentioned from the beginning, it’s just a guessing game. I mean what other creature is better at pretending to be your friend, your neighbor, your student, and your daughter with such ease. Most of those cryptids spit out limited phrases or will act nothing like their host’s body. I cram my 7 ft thin frame into a 5’7” skin husk everyday. I have copied her voice perfectly and have learned how to walk better overtime while in the equivalent of being vacuum sealed into a garbage bag, running is still a work in progress. My most recent accomplishment is mastering a cursive signature for her. I feel bad often though, every morning I look at her skin as I hold it up like a letterman jacket in one of those crappy sports movies and think of who she was. What she would be doing if I had not taken her life, metaphorically and literally. She was a nice person, the way her parents, friends, and teachers treat her, it supports the idea that she had an amazing soul. I am glad I get to be her for now.
Her journals tell me of someone who dreamed so big and loved so deeply. More than what I observed of her at least. She wanted to be a physical therapist and was inspired by the PTs who helped her grandma after her stroke. She wrote about the places she wanted to go, how many kids she wanted to have, how she wanted to contribute to her community, and her hopes to one day get married. I wish I could live those out for her but like with many of my skins there comes a point where things get suspicious. I mean skins don’t age up. They are stuck in time and people are endlessly moving forward.
Eventually, I’ll need to fake her death. When a 16 year old looks the same age at 25 or something like that, it starts making people ask questions. Which is weird to think about since she’s already dead but what I mean is her being officially deceased by human standards.
I’ve been many people before. Well five so far, Daniel Rodriguez, Emily Smith, Hannah Lindholm, Natalie Jarn, and most recently, I am now 16 year old Lenora Davidson (though she’s technically 19 years old now). I don’t know if I am supposed to be doing this, it doesn’t feel right but at the same time people were not exactly friendly towards a 7ft grey hairless creature with cat-like eyes, a flat nose, and fingers as long as wooden drumsticks.
I still have a scar from where that bearded man shot me when I tried to play on the playground with the children, it still makes my shoulder ache sometimes. That’s what led to me becoming Daniel, I lured him with his teddy bear. I won’t give you gruesome details of his actual death but I will say it was hard hearing him scream. I will never forget how horrifyingly loud it was for such a tiny body. It was weird skinning him, it was like peeling an orange open but ten times more delicate and if the rind was as thick as a two coins stacked on top of each other.
It was easy getting away with being a toddler since toddlers are still developing personalities so being odd doesn’t appear out of place. I remember stumbling back to the playground, only to be greeted by his mother sprinting at me thinking it was him.
“Mijo, where have you been? I was so worried, I thought I heard you screaming.”, She asked as she knelt down in front of me, caressing his face.
I was still learning language and how humans communicate at this point in time. So I made the best attempt I could, tried to mimic him as best as possible, and replied with the following phrase he said to me as I held his teddy bear;
“I scared, I want mama.”, I mimicked as best as I could.
She became teary eyed, looking into my eyes but hand cupping his cheek. She then scooped us up into her arms. Cradling us as she walked to her car. I remember feeling so warm, so loved, like I was a person. I was finally a person.
I stayed with Daniel’s family for 5 months before faking his death as a freak accident at his Abuelo’s farm. It’s easy to fake deaths when you just have the skin to work off of.
I learned a lot from that time, I learned about emotions. I learned how to feel. I learned what I wanted and I learned what I needed to do in order to survive, whether I agreed with it or not. A lot of you might say, you have a choice. What choice? Get shot at? Be put in some government facility? Be killed and then treated like some science project? An exhibit? Maybe that’s the fate of whoever gave me life. All I know is this is a good way to survive.
Through Emily, I was able to go through 1st to 3rd grade. Through Hannah, 3rd to 5th grade. Natalie carried me all throughout middle school and into freshman year of high school. Now, I have spent the last 3 years living as Lennie. As gross as it is to say, it definitely helped that Lennie was as people say an “early bloomer”. It helped get rid of any potential suspicion in my opinion. It helped that overtime I learned how to get better at becoming these individuals. I usually stalk them for at least a year before actually becoming them.
I learned that it was a better strategy since it gave me time to learn about their habits, hobbies, likes, dislikes, and so on. It makes the guessing game more evidence-based rather than betting it all on black like some drunken divorcee in a midlife crisis. I mean I still vividly remember the night I became Lennie.
It was sophomore year for her, it was at a night football game. By this point I had already been a year out of Natalie. I knew I needed to act soon if I was gonna remain caught up educationally. Lennie was perfect. Smart, popular, beautiful, and funny. Golden locks with blue eyes, a curvy figure, and tanned skin. She was the ideal person to become by human standards. I feel as though aside from physically, I was already Lennie. I had connected to her the most, she had secrets as well like I do. For example, she was secretly a huge anime fan but felt too embarrassed to tell anyone outside of family. I read that in one of that in her journals and also later learned through her search history. She was scared to be her true self, just like I am.
I lured her with the oldest trick in my book, fake an injured dog in the nearby woods. She took the bait immediately.
“Oh my gosh! Was that a dog?!” She exclaimed looking into the woods as she stood behind the bleachers.
“Len, it’s probably just some lost farm dog or something. Let’s go back to the group.”, My- I mean her best friend Nadia replied. Nadia and Lennie had been best friends since 3rd grade, how sweet. Nadia is a really nice person, hilarious too.
I put on the pressure, increasing the cries of the supposed wounded dog.
“Nadia, I’m gonna go check it out. I’ll meet up with you guys. Don’t take the group selfie without me.” Lennie stated to Nadia, before walking in my direction into the woods.
Nadia said something in reply before leaving but I couldn’t make it out over hearing Lennie get closer and closer. Honing in on that.
“Here puppy, come here. It’s ok.” Lennie said gently as she used her phone as a flashlight in the dark woods.
As I looked down at her from the treetops, I couldn’t help but have a moment of reflection. This poor girl, she doesn’t deserve this. Maybe in another life where I wasn’t some freak of nature, we could have been friends. Compared to all the other people I had been, Lennie was the first person I felt as though if she had seen me, I wouldn’t had been such a monster. I would have been something, I would have been someone.
I have no right to ask for pity or forgiveness since remain guessing the morality and ethics of my situation. I remember the sorrow I felt in the moment, someone who I had become attached to. Someone I wanted to be but someone I didn’t want to take away from this life.
I grabbed my scarred shoulder in a brief moment, remembering my own fear. Remembering the screams of the children who saw who I was, the bearded man who called me an abomination and demon spawn before launching a barrage of bullets at me. I remember feeling so scared I was gonna die, running away still hearing the screams as I retreated to my lonely den. All I wanted to do was just be included and feel normal but I had to remind myself that this wasn’t personal as I sat atop that tree looking down at this poor young lady, this was purely survival.
I pounced.
I covered her mouth with my hand as I stood behind her pinning her tightly to my chest. I felt her respirations increase, her scratching my hand with her acrylic nails, and her attempts to scream through my hand being muffled. I wanted to just tell her everything would go quick. I wanted to tell her I would make it fast as possible but in that moment I think I gave her the truest statement I could.
“Lenora, I am sorry. I am truly, truly sorry.”, I said in my voice for the first time in years.
I placed my other hand on her head and twisted her head hard until I heard a loud crack and a pop. I let go of her and her body hit the ground like a tree that has been chopped down.
Despite the people cheering on the bleachers in distance, it still somehow felt so quiet. I fell to my knees and cried. It just was so hard to kill her, I wish I knew how to survive better. I don’t want to do this but I know my options.
After calming down as best as I could, I skinned her using sharp rocks I refined nearby like scalpels. I made sure to separate her face and body (to help me when I needed to breathe on occasion). Maybe I should become a surgeon, I would probably be pretty good at it. I put her face on like it was a ski mask. I snapped her legs on like a pair of skinny jeans. Her torso and arms were like a tight sweater. Her skin clung to mine, I compressed myself down to fit her frame and shape as I assembled the husk. I fixed up the possible kinks in the skin and adjusted as well as possible, logging into her phone to use the camera to look at our face.
Everything was in place. I went to the bleachers and found Nadia with the group sitting at the very top.
“Did you find the dog?” Nadia inquired.
“It must have gotten scared and ran away from me, I just hope it gets help.” I mimicked perfectly as I finally made it to our group of friends at the top.
“It’ll be ok, dogs get lost and then go back home all the time.” She replied. “Alright! Group selfie time!”
Nadia held up her phone, I leaned in next to her as she held the phone high to fit 7 other people. I smiled but I remember feeling so many emotions in that moment.
Grief.
Sadness.
Happiness.
Relief.
Safety.
That photo now sits at our desk in a floral photo frame where it has been for the last three years.
We graduate this May. I am so excited to get a high school diploma. I know it’s a bad idea but I do want to take it with me when the time comes but I’ll leave it, taking it is too much of a risk.
So, I sit here typing on her computer telling my story.
I just want you to know. That I could become your neighbor, your parent, your sibling, your friend.
I’m great at knowing who I could get away as, I bet when I finally get to go to the casinos that I will do great.
I do want you to know that if it ends up being you next, it’s not personal.
It’s survival.

I’ve always been a good gambler, by extension a great guesser. My life is one big guessing game and I’m always in the hot seat. Every move has to be perfect, every decision carefully planned, every conversation already scripted, and everything remains a game of chance…always. It’s explains why the only form of math I’m good at is statistics, it’s the math I’ve been doing since the very moment I came into being.
I am not a human. That isn’t to say I have never related or loved the human experience because I really do. Rather, I am not something a human mind is meant to comprehend. In 1700s, I would have been called a demon or a changeling. In the 1900s, a sideshow gaff or a freak-show. In modern day, I would be called a cryptid. To be honest, I am not entirely sure what I am. I awoke to absolute loneliness when I emerged from my egg, no sign of any parents or siblings, any animal life for that matter. It was pure silence when it shouldn’t have been. I only saw endless trees from my vantage point on that forest floor. I have done continuous research to figure out what I am. I am not a creature from Native American oral traditions, though I can see why some might think I may be. I have not identified any trait specific to American cryptids aside from mimicking being a person. Not to toot my own horn, I do it significantly better than them. I was never a person, many of these things were people at some point.
The closest thing I come to concluding what I may be is some form of alien but as I have mentioned from the beginning, it’s just a guessing game. I mean what other creature is better at pretending to be your friend, your neighbor, your student, and your daughter with such ease. Most of those cryptids spit out limited phrases or will act nothing like their host’s body. I cram my 7 ft thin frame into a 5’7” skin husk everyday. I have copied her voice perfectly and have learned how to walk better overtime while in the equivalent of being vacuum sealed into a garbage bag, running is still a work in progress. My most recent accomplishment is mastering a cursive signature for her. I feel bad often though, every morning I look at her skin as I hold it up like a letterman jacket in one of those crappy sports movies and think of who she was. What she would be doing if I had not taken her life, metaphorically and literally. She was a nice person, the way her parents, friends, and teachers treat her, it supports the idea that she had an amazing soul. I am glad I get to be her for now.
Her journals tell me of someone who dreamed so big and loved so deeply. More than what I observed of her at least. She wanted to be a physical therapist and was inspired by the PTs who helped her grandma after her stroke. She wrote about the places she wanted to go, how many kids she wanted to have, how she wanted to contribute to her community, and her hopes to one day get married. I wish I could live those out for her but like with many of my skins there comes a point where things get suspicious. I mean skins don’t age up. They are stuck in time and people are endlessly moving forward.
Eventually, I’ll need to fake her death. When a 16 year old looks the same age at 25 or something like that, it starts making people ask questions. Which is weird to think about since she’s already dead but what I mean is her being officially deceased by human standards.
I’ve been many people before. Well five so far, Daniel, Emily, Hannah, Natalie, and most recently, I am now 16 year old Lenora Davidson (though she’s technically 19 years old now). I don’t know if I am supposed to be doing this, it doesn’t feel right but at the same time people were not exactly friendly towards a 7ft grey hairless creature with cat-like eyes, a flat nose, and fingers as long as wooden drumsticks.
I still have a scar from where that bearded man shot me when I tried to play on the playground with the children, it still makes my shoulder ache sometimes. That’s what led to me becoming Daniel, I lured him with his teddy bear. I won’t give you gruesome details of his actual death but I will say it was hard hearing him scream. I will never forget how horrifyingly loud it was for such a tiny body. It was weird skinning him, it was like peeling an orange open but ten times more delicate and if the rind was as thick as a two coins stacked on top of each other.
It was easy getting away with being a toddler since toddlers are still developing personalities so being odd doesn’t appear out of place. I remember stumbling back to the playground, only to be greeted by his mother sprinting at me thinking it was him.
“Mijo, where have you been? I was so worried, I thought I heard you screaming.”, She asked as she knelt down in front of me, caressing his face.
I was still learning language and how humans communicate at this point in time. So I made the best attempt I could, tried to mimic him as best as possible, and replied with the following phrase he said to me as I held his teddy bear;
“I scared, I want mama.”, I mimicked as best as I could.
She became teary eyed, looking into my eyes but hand cupping his cheek. She then scooped us up into her arms. Cradling us as she walked to her car. I remember feeling so warm, so loved, like I was a person. I was finally a person.
I stayed with Daniel’s family for 5 months before faking his death as a freak accident at his Abuelo’s farm. It’s easy to fake deaths when you just have the skin to work off of.
I learned a lot from that time, I learned about emotions. I learned how to feel. I learned what I wanted and I learned what I needed to do in order to survive, whether I agreed with it or not. A lot of you might say, you have a choice. What choice? Get shot at? Be put in some government facility? Be killed and then treated like some science project? An exhibit? Maybe that’s the fate of whoever gave me life. All I know is this is a good way to survive.
Through Emily, I was able to go through 1st to 3rd grade. Through Hannah, 3rd to 5th grade. Natalie carried me all throughout middle school and into freshman year of high school. Now, I have spent the last 3 years living as Lennie. As gross as it is to say, it definitely helped that Lennie was as people say an “early bloomer”. It helped get rid of any potential suspicion in my opinion. It helped that overtime I learned how to get better at becoming these individuals. I usually stalk them for at least a year before actually becoming them.
I learned that it was a better strategy since it gave me time to learn about their habits, hobbies, likes, dislikes, and so on. It makes the guessing game more evidence-based rather than betting it all on black like some drunken divorcee in a midlife crisis. I mean I still vividly remember the night I became Lennie.
It was sophomore year for her, it was at a night football game. By this point I had already been a year out of Natalie. I knew I needed to act soon if I was gonna remain caught up educationally. Lennie was perfect. Smart, popular, beautiful, and funny. Golden locks with blue eyes, a curvy figure, and tanned skin. She was the ideal person to become by human standards. I feel as though aside from physically, I was already Lennie. I had connected to her the most, she had secrets as well like I do. For example, she was secretly a huge anime fan but felt too embarrassed to tell anyone outside of family. I read that in one of that in her journals and also later learned through her search history. She was scared to be her true self, just like I am.
I lured her with the oldest trick in my book, fake an injured dog in the nearby woods. She took the bait immediately.
“Oh my gosh! Was that a dog?!” She exclaimed looking into the woods as she stood behind the bleachers.
“Len, it’s probably just some lost farm dog or something. Let’s go back to the group.”, My- I mean her best friend Nadia replied. Nadia and Lennie had been best friends since 3rd grade, how sweet. Nadia is a really nice person, hilarious too.
I put on the pressure, increasing the cries of the supposed wounded dog.
“Nadia, I’m gonna go check it out. I’ll meet up with you guys. Don’t take the group selfie without me.” Lennie stated to Nadia, before walking in my direction into the woods.
Nadia said something in reply before leaving but I couldn’t make it out over hearing Lennie get closer and closer. Honing in on that.
“Here puppy, come here. It’s ok.” Lennie said gently as she used her phone as a flashlight in the dark woods.
As I looked down at her from the treetops, I couldn’t help but have a moment of reflection. This poor girl, she doesn’t deserve this. Maybe in another life where I wasn’t some freak of nature, we could have been friends. Compared to all the other people I had been, Lennie was the first person I felt as though if she had seen me, I wouldn’t had been such a monster. I would have been something, I would have been someone.
I have no right to ask for pity or forgiveness since remain guessing the morality and ethics of my situation. I remember the sorrow I felt in the moment, someone who I had become attached to. Someone I wanted to be but someone I didn’t want to take away from this life.
I grabbed my scarred shoulder in a brief moment, remembering my own fear. Remembering the screams of the children who saw who I was, the bearded man who called me an abomination and demon spawn before launching a barrage of bullets at me. I remember feeling so scared I was gonna die, running away still hearing the screams as I retreated to my lonely den. All I wanted to do was just be included and feel normal but I had to remind myself that this wasn’t personal as I sat atop that tree looking down at this poor young lady, this was purely survival.
I pounced.
I covered her mouth with my hand as I stood behind her pinning her tightly to my chest. I felt her respirations increase, her scratching my hand with her acrylic nails, and her attempts to scream through my hand being muffled. I wanted to just tell her everything would go quick. I wanted to tell her I would make it fast as possible but in that moment I think I gave her the truest statement I could.
“Lenora, I am sorry. I am truly, truly sorry.”, I said in my voice for the first time in years.
I placed my other hand on her head and twisted her head hard until I heard a loud crack and a pop. I let go of her and her body hit the ground like a tree that has been chopped down.
Despite the people cheering on the bleachers in distance, it still somehow felt so quiet. I fell to my knees and cried. It just was so hard to kill her, I wish I knew how to survive better. I don’t want to do this but I know my options.
After calming down as best as I could, I skinned her using sharp rocks I refined nearby like scalpels. I made sure to separate her face and body (to help me when I needed to breathe on occasion). Maybe I should become a surgeon, I would probably be pretty good at it. I put her face on like it was a ski mask. I snapped her legs on like a pair of skinny jeans. Her torso and arms were like a tight sweater. Her skin clung to mine, I compressed myself down to fit her frame and shape as I assembled the husk. I fixed up the possible kinks in the skin and adjusted as well as possible, logging into her phone to use the camera to look at our face.
Everything was in place. I went to the bleachers and found Nadia with the group sitting at the very top.
“Did you find the dog?” Nadia inquired.
“It must have gotten scared and ran away from me, I just hope it gets help.” I mimicked perfectly as I finally made it to our group of friends at the top.
“It’ll be ok, dogs get lost and then go back home all the time.” She replied. “Alright! Group selfie time!”
Nadia held up her phone, I leaned in next to her as she held the phone high to fit 7 other people. I smiled but I remember feeling so many emotions in that moment.
Grief.
Sadness.
Happiness.
Relief.
Safety.
That photo now sits at our desk in a floral photo frame where it has been for the last three years.
We graduate this May. I am so excited to get a high school diploma. I know it’s a bad idea but I do want to take it with me when the time comes but I’ll leave it, taking it is too much of a risk.
So, I sit here typing on her computer telling my story.
I just want you to know. That I could become your neighbor, your parent, your sibling, your friend.
I’m great at knowing who I could get away as, I bet when I finally get to go to the casinos that I will do great.
I do want you to know that if it ends up being you next, it’s not personal.
It’s survival.

WARNING: Mild suggestion of gore

I’ve always been a good gambler, by extension a great guesser. My life is one big guessing game and I’m always in the hot seat. Every move has to be perfect, every decision carefully planned, every conversation already scripted, and everything remains a game of chance…always. It’s explains why the only form of math I’m good at is statistics, it’s the math I’ve been doing since the very moment I came into being.
I am not a human. That isn’t to say I have never related or loved the human experience because I really do. Rather, I am not something a human mind is meant to comprehend. In 1700s, I would have been called a demon or a changeling. In the 1900s, a sideshow gaff or a freak-show. In modern day, I would be called a cryptid. To be honest, I am not entirely sure what I am. I awoke to absolute loneliness when I emerged from my egg, no sign of any parents or siblings, any animal life for that matter. It was pure silence when it shouldn’t have been. I only saw endless trees from my vantage point on that forest floor. I have done continuous research to figure out what I am. I am not a creature from Native American oral traditions, though I can see why some might think I may be. I have not identified any trait specific to American cryptids aside from mimicking being a person. Not to toot my own horn, I do it significantly better than them. I was never a person, many of these things were people at some point.
The closest thing I come to concluding what I may be is some form of alien but as I have mentioned from the beginning, it’s just a guessing game. I mean what other creature is better at pretending to be your friend, your neighbor, your student, and your daughter with such ease. Most of those cryptids spit out limited phrases or will act nothing like their host’s body. I cram my 7 ft thin frame into a 5’7” skin husk everyday. I have copied her voice perfectly and have learned how to walk better overtime while in the equivalent of being vacuum sealed into a garbage bag, running is still a work in progress. My most recent accomplishment is mastering a cursive signature for her. I feel bad often though, every morning I look at her skin as I hold it up like a letterman jacket in one of those crappy sports movies and think of who she was. What she would be doing if I had not taken her life, metaphorically and literally. She was a nice person, the way her parents, friends, and teachers treat her, it supports the idea that she had an amazing soul. I am glad I get to be her for now.
Her journals tell me of someone who dreamed so big and loved so deeply. More than what I observed of her at least. She wanted to be a physical therapist and was inspired by the PTs who helped her grandma after her stroke. She wrote about the places she wanted to go, how many kids she wanted to have, how she wanted to contribute to her community, and her hopes to one day get married. I wish I could live those out for her but like with many of my skins there comes a point where things get suspicious. I mean skins don’t age up. They are stuck in time and people are endlessly moving forward.
Eventually, I’ll need to fake her death. When a 16 year old looks the same age at 25 or something like that, it starts making people ask questions. Which is weird to think about since she’s already dead but what I mean is her being officially deceased by human standards.
I’ve been many people before. Well five so far, Daniel, Emily, Hannah, Natalie, and most recently, I am now 16 year old Lenora Davidson (though she’s technically 19 years old now). I don’t know if I am supposed to be doing this, it doesn’t feel right but at the same time people were not exactly friendly towards a 7ft grey hairless creature with cat-like eyes, a flat nose, and fingers as long as wooden drumsticks.
I still have a scar from where that bearded man shot me when I tried to play on the playground with the children, it still makes my shoulder ache sometimes. That’s what led to me becoming Daniel, I lured him with his teddy bear. I won’t give you gruesome details of his actual death but I will say it was hard hearing him scream. I will never forget how horrifyingly loud it was for such a tiny body. It was weird skinning him, it was like peeling an orange open but ten times more delicate and if the rind was as thick as a two coins stacked on top of each other.
It was easy getting away with being a toddler since toddlers are still developing personalities so being odd doesn’t appear out of place. I remember stumbling back to the playground, only to be greeted by his mother sprinting at me thinking it was him.
“Mijo, where have you been? I was so worried, I thought I heard you screaming.”, She asked as she knelt down in front of me, caressing his face.
I was still learning language and how humans communicate at this point in time. So I made the best attempt I could, tried to mimic him as best as possible, and replied with the following phrase he said to me as I held his teddy bear;
“I scared, I want mama.”, I mimicked as best as I could.
She became teary eyed, looking into my eyes but hand cupping his cheek. She then scooped us up into her arms. Cradling us as she walked to her car. I remember feeling so warm, so loved, like I was a person. I was finally a person.
I stayed with Daniel’s family for 5 months before faking his death as a freak accident at his Abuelo’s farm. It’s easy to fake deaths when you just have the skin to work off of.
I learned a lot from that time, I learned about emotions. I learned how to feel. I learned what I wanted and I learned what I needed to do in order to survive, whether I agreed with it or not. A lot of you might say, you have a choice. What choice? Get shot at? Be put in some government facility? Be killed and then treated like some science project? An exhibit? Maybe that’s the fate of whoever gave me life. All I know is this is a good way to survive.
Through Emily, I was able to go through 1st to 3rd grade. Through Hannah, 3rd to 5th grade. Natalie carried me all throughout middle school and into freshman year of high school. Now, I have spent the last 3 years living as Lennie. As gross as it is to say, it definitely helped that Lennie was as people say an “early bloomer”. It helped get rid of any potential suspicion in my opinion. It helped that overtime I learned how to get better at becoming these individuals. I usually stalk them for at least a year before actually becoming them.
I learned that it was a better strategy since it gave me time to learn about their habits, hobbies, likes, dislikes, and so on. It makes the guessing game more evidence-based rather than betting it all on black like some drunken divorcee in a midlife crisis. I mean I still vividly remember the night I became Lennie.
It was sophomore year for her, it was at a night football game. By this point I had already been a year out of Natalie. I knew I needed to act soon if I was gonna remain caught up educationally. Lennie was perfect. Smart, popular, beautiful, and funny. Golden locks with blue eyes, a curvy figure, and tanned skin. She was the ideal person to become by human standards. I feel as though aside from physically, I was already Lennie. I had connected to her the most, she had secrets as well like I do. For example, she was secretly a huge anime fan but felt too embarrassed to tell anyone outside of family. I read that in one of that in her journals and also later learned through her search history. She was scared to be her true self, just like I am.
I lured her with the oldest trick in my book, fake an injured dog in the nearby woods. She took the bait immediately.
“Oh my gosh! Was that a dog?!” She exclaimed looking into the woods as she stood behind the bleachers.
“Len, it’s probably just some lost farm dog or something. Let’s go back to the group.”, My- I mean her best friend Nadia replied. Nadia and Lennie had been best friends since 3rd grade, how sweet. Nadia is a really nice person, hilarious too.
I put on the pressure, increasing the cries of the supposed wounded dog.
“Nadia, I’m gonna go check it out. I’ll meet up with you guys. Don’t take the group selfie without me.” Lennie stated to Nadia, before walking in my direction into the woods.
Nadia said something in reply before leaving but I couldn’t make it out over hearing Lennie get closer and closer. Honing in on that.
“Here puppy, come here. It’s ok.” Lennie said gently as she used her phone as a flashlight in the dark woods.
As I looked down at her from the treetops, I couldn’t help but have a moment of reflection. This poor girl, she doesn’t deserve this. Maybe in another life where I wasn’t some freak of nature, we could have been friends. Compared to all the other people I had been, Lennie was the first person I felt as though if she had seen me, I wouldn’t had been such a monster. I would have been something, I would have been someone.
I have no right to ask for pity or forgiveness since remain guessing the morality and ethics of my situation. I remember the sorrow I felt in the moment, someone who I had become attached to. Someone I wanted to be but someone I didn’t want to take away from this life.
I grabbed my scarred shoulder in a brief moment, remembering my own fear. Remembering the screams of the children who saw who I was, the bearded man who called me an abomination and demon spawn before launching a barrage of bullets at me. I remember feeling so scared I was gonna die, running away still hearing the screams as I retreated to my lonely den. All I wanted to do was just be included and feel normal but I had to remind myself that this wasn’t personal as I sat atop that tree looking down at this poor young lady, this was purely survival.
I pounced.
I covered her mouth with my hand as I stood behind her pinning her tightly to my chest. I felt her respirations increase, her scratching my hand with her acrylic nails, and her attempts to scream through my hand being muffled. I wanted to just tell her everything would go quick. I wanted to tell her I would make it fast as possible but in that moment I think I gave her the truest statement I could.
“Lenora, I am sorry. I am truly, truly sorry.”, I said in my voice for the first time in years.
I placed my other hand on her head and twisted her head hard until I heard a loud crack and a pop. I let go of her and her body hit the ground like a tree that has been chopped down.
Despite the people cheering on the bleachers in distance, it still somehow felt so quiet. I fell to my knees and cried. It just was so hard to kill her, I wish I knew how to survive better. I don’t want to do this but I know my options.
After calming down as best as I could, I skinned her using sharp rocks I refined nearby like scalpels. I made sure to separate her face and body (to help me when I needed to breathe on occasion). Maybe I should become a surgeon, I would probably be pretty good at it. I put her face on like it was a ski mask. I snapped her legs on like a pair of skinny jeans. Her torso and arms were like a tight sweater. Her skin clung to mine, I compressed myself down to fit her frame and shape as I assembled the husk. I fixed up the possible kinks in the skin and adjusted as well as possible, logging into her phone to use the camera to look at our face.
Everything was in place. I went to the bleachers and found Nadia with the group sitting at the very top.
“Did you find the dog?” Nadia inquired.
“It must have gotten scared and ran away from me, I just hope it gets help.” I mimicked perfectly as I finally made it to our group of friends at the top.
“It’ll be ok, dogs get lost and then go back home all the time.” She replied. “Alright! Group selfie time!”
Nadia held up her phone, I leaned in next to her as she held the phone high to fit 7 other people. I smiled but I remember feeling so many emotions in that moment.
Grief.
Sadness.
Happiness.
Relief.
Safety.
That photo now sits at our desk in a floral photo frame where it has been for the last three years.
We graduate this May. I am so excited to get a high school diploma. I know it’s a bad idea but I do want to take it with me when the time comes but I’ll leave it, taking it is too much of a risk.
So, I sit here typing on her computer telling my story.
I just want you to know. That I could become your neighbor, your parent, your sibling, your friend.
I’m great at knowing who I could get away as, I bet when I finally get to go to the casinos that I will do great.
I do want you to know that if it ends up being you next, it’s not personal.
It’s survival.

I’ve always been a good gambler, by extension a great guesser. My life is one big guessing game and I’m always in the hot seat. Every move has to be perfect, every decision carefully planned, every conversation already scripted, and everything remains a game of chance…always. It’s explains why the only form of math I’m good at is statistics, it’s the math I’ve been doing since the very moment I came into being.
I am not a human. That isn’t to say I have never related or loved the human experience because I really do. Rather, I am not something a human mind is meant to comprehend. In 1700s, I would have been called a demon or a changeling. In the 1900s, a sideshow gaff or a freak-show. In modern day, I would be called a cryptid. To be honest, I am not entirely sure what I am. I awoke to absolute loneliness when I emerged from my egg, no sign of any parents or siblings, any animal life for that matter. It was pure silence when it shouldn’t have been. I only saw endless trees from my vantage point on that forest floor. I have done continuous research to figure out what I am. I am not a creature from Native American oral traditions, though I can see why some might think I may be. I have not identified any trait specific to American cryptids aside from mimicking being a person. Not to toot my own horn, I do it significantly better than them. I was never a person, many of these things were people at some point.
The closest thing I come to concluding what I may be is some form of alien but as I have mentioned from the beginning, it’s just a guessing game. I mean what other creature is better at pretending to be your friend, your neighbor, your student, and your daughter with such ease. Most of those cryptids spit out limited phrases or will act nothing like their host’s body. I cram my 7 ft thin frame into a 5’7” skin husk everyday. I have copied her voice perfectly and have learned how to walk better overtime while in the equivalent of being vacuum sealed into a garbage bag, running is still a work in progress. My most recent accomplishment is mastering a cursive signature for her. I feel bad often though, every morning I look at her skin as I hold it up like a letterman jacket in one of those crappy sports movies and think of who she was. What she would be doing if I had not taken her life, metaphorically and literally. She was a nice person, the way her parents, friends, and teachers treat her, it supports the idea that she had an amazing soul. I am glad I get to be her for now.
Her journals tell me of someone who dreamed so big and loved so deeply. More than what I observed of her at least. She wanted to be a physical therapist and was inspired by the PTs who helped her grandma after her stroke. She wrote about the places she wanted to go, how many kids she wanted to have, how she wanted to contribute to her community, and her hopes to one day get married. I wish I could live those out for her but like with many of my skins there comes a point where things get suspicious. I mean skins don’t age up. They are stuck in time and people are endlessly moving forward.
Eventually, I’ll need to fake her death. When a 16 year old looks the same age at 25 or something like that, it starts making people ask questions. Which is weird to think about since she’s already dead but what I mean is her being officially deceased by human standards.
I’ve been many people before. Well five so far, Daniel, Emily, Hannah, Natalie, and most recently, I am now 16 year old Lenora Davidson (though she’s technically 19 years old now). I don’t know if I am supposed to be doing this, it doesn’t feel right but at the same time people were not exactly friendly towards a 7ft grey hairless creature with cat-like eyes, a flat nose, and fingers as long as wooden drumsticks.
I still have a scar from where that bearded man shot me when I tried to play on the playground with the children, it still makes my shoulder ache sometimes. That’s what led to me becoming Daniel, I lured him with his teddy bear. I won’t give you gruesome details of his actual death but I will say it was hard hearing him scream. I will never forget how horrifyingly loud it was for such a tiny body. It was weird skinning him, it was like peeling an orange open but ten times more delicate and if the rind was as thick as a two coins stacked on top of each other.
It was easy getting away with being a toddler since toddlers are still developing personalities so being odd doesn’t appear out of place. I remember stumbling back to the playground, only to be greeted by his mother sprinting at me thinking it was him.
“Mijo, where have you been? I was so worried, I thought I heard you screaming.”, She asked as she knelt down in front of me, caressing his face.
I was still learning language and how humans communicate at this point in time. So I made the best attempt I could, tried to mimic him as best as possible, and replied with the following phrase he said to me as I held his teddy bear;
“I scared, I want mama.”, I mimicked as best as I could.
She became teary eyed, looking into my eyes but hand cupping his cheek. She then scooped us up into her arms. Cradling us as she walked to her car. I remember feeling so warm, so loved, like I was a person. I was finally a person.
I stayed with Daniel’s family for 5 months before faking his death as a freak accident at his Abuelo’s farm. It’s easy to fake deaths when you just have the skin to work off of.
I learned a lot from that time, I learned about emotions. I learned how to feel. I learned what I wanted and I learned what I needed to do in order to survive, whether I agreed with it or not. A lot of you might say, you have a choice. What choice? Get shot at? Be put in some government facility? Be killed and then treated like some science project? An exhibit? Maybe that’s the fate of whoever gave me life. All I know is this is a good way to survive.
Through Emily, I was able to go through 1st to 3rd grade. Through Hannah, 3rd to 5th grade. Natalie carried me all throughout middle school and into freshman year of high school. Now, I have spent the last 3 years living as Lennie. As gross as it is to say, it definitely helped that Lennie was as people say an “early bloomer”. It helped get rid of any potential suspicion in my opinion. It helped that overtime I learned how to get better at becoming these individuals. I usually stalk them for at least a year before actually becoming them.
I learned that it was a better strategy since it gave me time to learn about their habits, hobbies, likes, dislikes, and so on. It makes the guessing game more evidence-based rather than betting it all on black like some drunken divorcee in a midlife crisis. I mean I still vividly remember the night I became Lennie.
It was sophomore year for her, it was at a night football game. By this point I had already been a year out of Natalie. I knew I needed to act soon if I was gonna remain caught up educationally. Lennie was perfect. Smart, popular, beautiful, and funny. Golden locks with blue eyes, a curvy figure, and tanned skin. She was the ideal person to become by human standards. I feel as though aside from physically, I was already Lennie. I had connected to her the most, she had secrets as well like I do. For example, she was secretly a huge anime fan but felt too embarrassed to tell anyone outside of family. I read that in one of that in her journals and also later learned through her search history. She was scared to be her true self, just like I am.
I lured her with the oldest trick in my book, fake an injured dog in the nearby woods. She took the bait immediately.
“Oh my gosh! Was that a dog?!” She exclaimed looking into the woods as she stood behind the bleachers.
“Len, it’s probably just some lost farm dog or something. Let’s go back to the group.”, My- I mean her best friend Nadia replied. Nadia and Lennie had been best friends since 3rd grade, how sweet. Nadia is a really nice person, hilarious too.
I put on the pressure, increasing the cries of the supposed wounded dog.
“Nadia, I’m gonna go check it out. I’ll meet up with you guys. Don’t take the group selfie without me.” Lennie stated to Nadia, before walking in my direction into the woods.
Nadia said something in reply before leaving but I couldn’t make it out over hearing Lennie get closer and closer. Honing in on that.
“Here puppy, come here. It’s ok.” Lennie said gently as she used her phone as a flashlight in the dark woods.
As I looked down at her from the treetops, I couldn’t help but have a moment of reflection. This poor girl, she doesn’t deserve this. Maybe in another life where I wasn’t some freak of nature, we could have been friends. Compared to all the other people I had been, Lennie was the first person I felt as though if she had seen me, I wouldn’t had been such a monster. I would have been something, I would have been someone.
I have no right to ask for pity or forgiveness since remain guessing the morality and ethics of my situation. I remember the sorrow I felt in the moment, someone who I had become attached to. Someone I wanted to be but someone I didn’t want to take away from this life.
I grabbed my scarred shoulder in a brief moment, remembering my own fear. Remembering the screams of the children who saw who I was, the bearded man who called me an abomination and demon spawn before launching a barrage of bullets at me. I remember feeling so scared I was gonna die, running away still hearing the screams as I retreated to my lonely den. All I wanted to do was just be included and feel normal but I had to remind myself that this wasn’t personal as I sat atop that tree looking down at this poor young lady, this was purely survival.
I pounced.
I covered her mouth with my hand as I stood behind her pinning her tightly to my chest. I felt her respirations increase, her scratching my hand with her acrylic nails, and her attempts to scream through my hand being muffled. I wanted to just tell her everything would go quick. I wanted to tell her I would make it fast as possible but in that moment I think I gave her the truest statement I could.
“Lenora, I am sorry. I am truly, truly sorry.”, I said in my voice for the first time in years.
I placed my other hand on her head and twisted her head hard until I heard a loud crack and a pop. I let go of her and her body hit the ground like a tree that has been chopped down.
Despite the people cheering on the bleachers in distance, it still somehow felt so quiet. I fell to my knees and cried. It just was so hard to kill her, I wish I knew how to survive better. I don’t want to do this but I know my options.
After calming down as best as I could, I skinned her using sharp rocks I refined nearby like scalpels. I made sure to separate her face and body (to help me when I needed to breathe on occasion). Maybe I should become a surgeon, I would probably be pretty good at it. I put her face on like it was a ski mask. I snapped her legs on like a pair of skinny jeans. Her torso and arms were like a tight sweater. Her skin clung to mine, I compressed myself down to fit her frame and shape as I assembled the husk. I fixed up the possible kinks in the skin and adjusted as well as possible, logging into her phone to use the camera to look at our face.
Everything was in place. I went to the bleachers and found Nadia with the group sitting at the very top.
“Did you find the dog?” Nadia inquired.
“It must have gotten scared and ran away from me, I just hope it gets help.” I mimicked perfectly as I finally made it to our group of friends at the top.
“It’ll be ok, dogs get lost and then go back home all the time.” She replied. “Alright! Group selfie time!”
Nadia held up her phone, I leaned in next to her as she held the phone high to fit 7 other people. I smiled but I remember feeling so many emotions in that moment.
Grief.
Sadness.
Happiness.
Relief.
Safety.
That photo now sits at our desk in a floral photo frame where it has been for the last three years.
We graduate this May. I am so excited to get a high school diploma. I know it’s a bad idea but I do want to take it with me when the time comes but I’ll leave it, taking it is too much of a risk.
So, I sit here typing on her computer telling my story.
I just want you to know. That I could become your neighbor, your parent, your sibling, your friend.
I’m great at knowing who I could get away as, I bet when I finally get to go to the casinos that I will do great.
I do want you to know that if it ends up being you next, it’s not personal.
It’s survival.