Chapter 1: Ryan

Humans are not so different from animals, though they like to think very highly of themselves. Being equated with beasts, with disease-mouthed creatures who operate on instinct and bloodlust, was the sharpest insult that could be landed at the collective race of human beings. Individually, they might understand how unconsciously they operated on a base level. But to call the whole group – all seven billion strong – nothing but animals, resulted in flustered defenses and puffed-up comments about their accomplishments throughout history. As if it made any difference when it came down to survival, to fucking and eating, that humans had erected skyscrapers and monuments or invented weapons and waged war.

Ryan considered himself lucky for a lot of reasons but the main one being that he had never seen the schism between animal and human that so many others did. For him, they were linked so closely that they couldn’t be separated at all. He didn’t find it insulting to view himself as an animal. The more insulting thing in his view was being seen as a human. Humans were messy, complicated, confusing, contradictory. Animals had few objectives in life, and they accomplished them or they died, early and painfully. What could be easier?

But by the same token, Ryan wasn’t giving himself enough credit. He accepted the animal nature of humans more easily than most because of who he was, what he was, and he conveniently ignored how human he was; how complicated and faulty was the wiring that slashed through his brain and body. Just the way it was with humans. Too many contradictions existing in one package.

His friend Rodrigo, someone as human and animal as Ryan was, had a sharper perspective on the true nature of people. Not to mention the true nature of the two of them and the pack they ran with.

“It’s not hubris to admit we’re something special,” Rodrigo said to him on one of their many late night dives into the world of the inexplicable and existential. He sat hunched as he spoke, his broad shoulders and back curled like the break of a wave. “Not just us specifically, you know. Humans in general. We’re exceptional. We’ve got our problems for sure, no denying that, but it’s shallow thinking to dismiss us as nothing but beasts deformed by evolution.”

“What’s so special about us?” Ryan always argued back. “You think because we’ve invented crap we’re some touched species.”

“We have the need to create,” Rodrigo answered sagely. “That’s a human need not found anywhere in nature. Not without human intervention.”

Ryan was close with Rodrigo so he knew all about his fascination with cave drawings and early aboriginal art. To him, it was divinity he saw scrawled and carved into stone walls; proof that the finger of god had pushed itself into the flesh of humankind. Ryan thought his friend idealistic, if just a bit naive. There was nothing to be elevated above in Ryan’s mind. Being an animal wasn’t an insult. Being a human wasn’t a compliment. They simply were.

Of course, the two of them had a unique insight into this topic, like the others they knew like them. As normal as it seemed to them, they knew what they were able to do was an unusual trait. Hence why they gathered in packs and why they had to keep so much of their nature a secret. Ryan and Rodrigo, like the crew they had grown up alongside, were shifters. Nothing special to them, but sure to cause absolute insanity if the world at large was ever to come across them.

Most of the pack, and the others they had met in passing, not only thought being secretive was imperative, they enjoyed it beyond the matter of safety. It was fun for them to know something others didn’t; to be aware of a whole different group of humans that nobody could explain. The shifters learned their spotty history from their families and packs, and there was hardly a satisfactory answer among the lore. Ryan was less inquisitive than Rodrigo, who was always on the quest for explanations and their roots to say nothing of god, but even he sometimes found himself craving more than just ‘we are because we are.’

“Normal humans only have a limited idea of where they come from,” one of the other Alphas said whenever questions bubbled up. “Why should we be any different?”

“But they’re always looking,” Rodrigo pointed out, and even though his point was not disputed. It was disregarded. The rest didn’t care to waste time on the ‘why’ of their existence. The two of them would have to indulge their curiosities in private.

It struck Ryan as funny that creatures like them, like their pack, wouldn’t constantly be wondering how they came to be and why they were created so differently than the rest of the world, but most of them had come from shaky backgrounds; unstable families and homes drenched in poverty. They grew up without the time and leisure to ponder the big questions. Just keeping their heads above water was a full-time job that employed them through childhood, stalking them into their adult life like the snarling lion of hunger, homelessness, hardship. Even now, they couldn’t shake their reality, and they found themselves scraping along when Ryan was positive that a brighter existence was possible.

“Not everything has to be so hard scrabble,” he told Rodrigo one day as they sat on his front stoop waiting for Joseph, the pack’s unofficial driver, to come pick them up.Ryan moved his ropey arms a lot when he spoke, and next to Rodrigo who sat still and thick like a caveman philosopher, he took on the appearance of a marionette, each piece dancing individually on its on.

“You’re talking about folks who won’t even ask the question of how the hell we exist,” Rodrigo answered as they spotted Joseph’s rickety truck rounding the corner and heading towards them. “I highly doubt you’re gonna convince them to be better than this.”

Ryan wasn’t sure if the superlatives ‘better’ or ‘worse’ applied to them. He didn’t want the pack to think he was ashamed of how they lived. As he and Rodrigo climbed into the cramped cab of Joseph’s truck, he kept thinking about wanting something different. That was the word that rolled through his head: different. Not good and bad, not better or worse. Just different.

Joseph’s truck slowed to a crawl then stopped. Leaving the conversation exactly where it was, the two of them got into the cab, and Joseph drove off.