To all the editors who opened doors, especially George Scithers, Darrell Schweitzer, Patrick Swenson, and Shawna McCarthy

Hugging himself, shivering, David curled up under the reaching bows of a pine tree. A moonlit drift of snow glowed silver just a few feet away, outside his shelter. More snow was falling, and he was naked. If he simply relaxed, he wouldn’t be that cold. But he was afraid. More afraid every time this happened.

He didn’t know where he was, but that didn’t bother him so much anymore. And how strange it was, that something like that didn’t bother him. That was what bothered him. Not knowing, not remembering, had become normal. He didn’t know where he was, but he knew exactly how he got here. It was getting harder to claw his way out of this space, to keep this from happening. He was losing himself.

The fire had taken him again. Blood rose and changed him. In a helpless surge, another body of fur and teeth, claw and sinew overcame him. The hunter, the wolf. He couldn’t stop the Change. He could flee, stumbling into a wild place where no one would see him, where he wouldn’t hurt anyone. Better that he stay here, because the pull was getting harder to resist. Easy to say that this was where he belonged, now.

Sometime in the last year, since this curse had landed on him, his thinking had switched. He wasn’t a human who turned into a wolf. Instead, he was a wolf trapped in human skin. The wolf wanted to run away forever. Might be easier, if he just never returned to human. But he did.

At some point, he drifted back to sleep and woke to bright sunlight gleaming off the snow. Blinding, almost. It would be a beautiful day, with a searing blue Colorado sky, crisp snow, chilled air. And he couldn’t really sit here under a tree, bare-ass naked, confused and depressed, all day.