Warning: This story contains violence, gore, and descriptions of eating a human being. If you do not wish to read about this, do not read further. Thank you!

I have never understood humans. I have lived among them for the entirety of my life, but never once has it occurred to me why they act the way they do. They act in dozens of confusing and seemingly contradictory ways, all towards a goal that I can not and have not ever comprehended. I don't wonder because I care to know, only because it confuses me. I'm not right intrigued to know or understand human nature, it's just something that's irked me occasionally.

I believe that I'm nice to them, and I'm usually returned my due respect. Sometimes, though, my politeness is rejected, and outright rebutted with streams of hatred and insults. It doesn't bother me, and I don't allow it to get to me; I don't feel in the way they do. I don't feel anything about the person yelling in my face at the Teddy's Burgers front counter. Something that does intrigue me, though, is that in these situations I always find myself becoming very...

Uncontrollably...

Hungry.

"Mr. H," I addressed and turned to my manager, Huey, after one such event, "Can I go on break?"

Huey looked up from the burger he was making for just a moment to acknowledge that he'd heard me. I assume he was thinking about my question, because he took some time before giving me a straight answer. He asked me a question, "When did you clock in?" And I answered 6 P.M., my normal starting time. I usually make it a note to eat before work so that this doesn't happen, but I was already leaving late, and a meal would have pushed me over the line, so I'd opted to skip it. "It’ll be okay," I'd told myself, "You can eat after work." How stupid of me.

Huey nodded at me. He spoke in a low, gruff voice through his bushy, white moustache: "When Ronnie gets back you can go on break." Ronnie had just gone on break only ten minutes ago. I can't make statements for the average human meal in general, but the average meal at Teddy's Burgers only lasts for 10 or 15 minutes. Just like that, my hunger subsided. Rather, I suppressed it. I suppose I was starry eyed, hoping that my break might perfectly line up with my meal, but circumstances have the chance to ruin coincidences like that. No matter, I would eat. I always do.

Something strange happened over the next twenty minutes. It became slow after 9:30, it always does, so I began cleaning the lobby, as I always do. As I did this, I watched the man who gave me the ear-full earlier stare hatefully at me. He kept gazing, and gazing, and I wondered not what I did to make him so baneful towards me, but what made him stay so late. Twenty minutes passed, and just as Ronnie came back from break, the man, whom I'm now sure is in his mid to late thirties, only just began finishing his stay at the restaurant. Sometimes, stars do align.

"Maddie, you can go on break." Huey said to me as I walked back behind the counter. I was way ahead of him. I grabbed my car keys from the break room and promptly left the building. I normally go out to my car on breaks; I am not too fond of spending time in neither the sweltering heat of the kitchen nor in the frigid cold of the dining room, so my un-cranked car is usually quite comfortable. Primarily, though, it was a good coverup for my whimsical meals.

As the man left Teddy's, he whipped his head back and forth.. Sometimes I wonder what was going through his mind that night after I left. I wonder if, at any point, he connected the dots that the monster ripping into his flesh and separating his larynx from his throat was Maddie. If, before I laid claim to his innards and feasted on his guts, he ever regretted giving me a hard time.

Don’t misinterpret that, I still hold no grudge. Seeing such an easy meal would give any unfed predator the urge to hunt. He was overweight and incredibly unathletic, and he even walked with a limp. He was a prime target. I just enjoy entertaining the thought that maybe there's some moral complexity to my prey.

Long after the man was dead, I continued tearing his flesh from bone with my triangle shaped jaw and curved, backwards-pointing teeth. As I said, I am not one to feel in the same way that humans do. I do not hate them; I eat them. Do lions hate zebras? Of course not, and it'd be silly to imply otherwise.

I began to near the end of my break, and coincidentally the end of my meal as well. I had picked the man bone dry and tucked every bit of flesh once belonging to him into my stomach. He was quite filling; I like the fat ones most for that reason. My long, metallic claws began to shrink back into human fingers and my human legs grew back out of my long, serpentine tail, which began to shrink into my body and form a buttocks. My long, muscular arms shrank back into my body, and the mass deferred into a pair of human breasts upon my bosom. My wide, winged, eyeless head shrank and took on a more rounded, ape-like shape.

Then, I heard a scream behind me. Had I been caught? Surely not, no one comes back here. I turned around and, of course, the woods behind Teddy's was empty. I never know what came over me that night. I was a few minutes away from being late to clock back in, and Huey didn't like it when I was late. I sprang into a full sprint into the woods. I'd just eaten, and the physical boost I get after a meal carries over into my humanoid disguise. As such, after I eat, I'm capable of moving faster than any man-made vehicle, barring maybe the fastest of trains and rockets.

I broke out of the woods to find another monster playing with its food in an abandoned factory lot. He hadn't fully shed his humanoid disguise yet, and I believe he was doing it just to scare his prey. His arms were large and swollen, and beginning to lose any definite shape besides gigantic fleshy cylinders protruding from his humanoid body, and his eyes had popped out of his skull, and they were bulging, black, and beady.

I was never a fan of this act. It didn't upset me to see it happen, I just never found this hunting strategy effective. Many humans nowadays carry weapons on them, and it isn't uncommon for monsters employing this feeding behaviour to sustain undue injuries. However, I saw his kill and was immediately overcome with the urge to intervene.

She was a young woman, around my age at 22 to 24 years old. She wore glasses, had short, red-dyed hair, and was mildly overweight, bearing some excess fatty tissue in her stomach, thighs, buttocks, and upper arms. She was on the shorter side, standing at about 160 to 165 cm tall. Despite being overweight, she clearly bore some prevalent muscle mass on her body, primarily in her legs and on her back. She looked so beautiful. She looked so tasty.

I wanted to sink my teeth into her. I wanted this meal. This dumb son-of-a-bitch without a brain can beat it, this woman was mine. Huey could beat it, too; I could get a new job anywhere in the U.K.! I didn't have much time to shed my skin, so I dashed straight forwards, still in my false form. As I did so my fingers grew longer and sturdier, and my teeth pointed and turned backwards.

I tackled the other monster and sunk my teeth straight into his neck. He roared and used his massive arm to jab me in the ribs. I released his neck and yelled before slipping my fingers into his shoulder and wrapping my hand around his collarbone. Using the leverage, I rapidly jammed my other hand in and out of his chest, causing him to scream in agony. He threw me off, then jumped at me when I landed on the ground, about to crush my head between his fist and the pavement.

I tried to roll away, but not before he could catch my arm beneath his fist, crushing the bones in my forearm. My howls echoed through the parking lot, but I didn't let him stun me. I contorted in a way, pulling on my arm beneath his fist to spin around so that I was no longer prone. The brute didn't even notice I was moving, and was too busy gloating about his successful pin to notice I still had a functioning arm. I then shoved my claws at his face, and my hand drove straight into his skull, most importantly my fingers completely skewered his eyes.

He dismounted me and grabbed at his face. I struggled up to my feet, and, after I regained my balance, I charged at him. Just before I could shove my hand through the top of his head for the killing blow, he was able to spin around and kick me in the chest. I was flung backwards many metres into a nearby tree, hitting my head hard on the trunk. I then fell limp to the bottom, keeping consciousness just long enough to watch the brute run away covering his face. I don't remember what I was thinking in those last few moments before I passed out from my concussion, but I can only imagine it was along the lines of "Bollocks. Now I lose my job and I don't even get to eat the girl."

I woke up in the last place I expected to wake up after passing out in an abandoned factory lot from injuries related to a sloppy fight. Rather than waking up in the fiery pits of Hell, or more likely in said abandoned factory lot, I woke up in a house. Even stranger, it was a house that was not my own. I sat up and looked around. I had been sleeping on a soft, cosy bed. My whole body hurt, which I chose to ignore, and my arm was tied up with a splint. To my left was a nightstand where my smartphone laid down face-up on top of a wireless charger that did not belong to me. I quickly grabbed my phone and checked my voicemails. I wanted to see if Huey called me.

Strangely enough, I had no voicemails. I checked my recent calls, and, even stranger, Huey had called me. Furthermore, I'd answered him. I then realised that I was still entirely nude. The night before was a blur, and I began to consider all of the strange things I might have done while I was unconscious. As I began to ponder, I heard footsteps from behind the bedroom door.

I threw myself to the floor and rolled under the bed. As the footsteps grew closer, a certain primal fear overcame me, but as their source came to the door my fear faded. I saw the woman from last night slowly peeking into the room, as if she was being careful not to disturb a sleeping baby. A look of worry quickly overcame her face. "I just saw her a minute ago..." She muttered before carelessly stepping into the room.

She rubbed her hands together nervously then looked at the nightstand where my phone still sat, open. I thought at that moment that I might be able to snatch her up and devour her whole, but before I could make up my mind she turned around and left the room. I heard her footsteps grow further away, then I heard her yell.

"Madison!" She called out my fake name. "Madison, where are you?" What an interesting situation I found myself in. She was taking care of me. I'd saved her life, and now she'd bonded to me. Truly, I will never understand human nature. Still, as confusing as it is to me, I can still make it work to my advantage. I'd heard of monsters doing this before, but I had never thought to do it myself, mostly because I had never been in the position, and going out of my way to do so would be a chore, but now...

I crawled out from underneath the bed and shook off the dust. I carefully walked over out into the hallway, and looked down the stairs she had disappeared into. She walked into the hallway and immediately snapped her head to face me. Her face changed colour from a pale white to a bright red, and she brought her hand up to her eyes. She turned around quickly.

"Oh. My. God!!! I'm so sorry, uh... I thought it would hurt too much to dress you up, so I just... left you naked. Here, let me get you a robe." She shouted before running off. I was confused. I was under the impression that it was normal for human women to be naked around each other. I returned to the bed and sat down.

How stupid was this woman? A normal human would have surely perished from my injuries, either on the spot or overnight, especially with this primitive splint... I had not received proper hospital care. That much is obvious; if I did, I would have been killed on account of being a monster. Surely, she cannot believe that she saved my life.

She came back into the room with a purple bathrobe, her face constantly turned away from me. I donned the robe and thanked her, only out of courtesy.

"I'm sorry about t' splint," She stuttered, "I don't really believe in modern medicine... So I decided I'd try and help you mysen." She was a moron. Nonetheless, I nodded and agreed with her.

"Thank you. I can't go to hospitals either. I believe they'd kill me." I said, telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth. She naively agreed with me, adamantly so, "You can't trust anyone but yoursen, that's what my mum taught me! Oh, yeah, my name's Sara."

"I'm Maddie." I responded, knowing full and well she already knew my name. She nodded. I thought back to my phone and the call from Huey. "Did you answer my phone last night?" I asked casually. Sara immediately froze as if I was accusing her.

"What?! I mean... Yeah, sorry. I didn't go through your phone, though!" She said, assuring me of something I already knew.

"What did Huey say?" I asked.

"Oh, uh, he asked where t' hell you were and I had to explain to him that you showed up and saved my life."

"You didn't tell him that I was naked, did you?"

"No! That would be weird! That's none of his business!"

Truly, she was the dumbest girl I had ever met. She was the perfect target. I could fatten her up, help her exercise to build more juicy muscle mass, and feed her good food to improve the taste of her meat... Of course, I'd need to tend to many of her other needs, like keeping her happy and financially providing for her, but it would all be worth it. It had just occurred to me then, too, that other monsters might try to reap the fruits of my labour without putting in any of the work themselves. I'd have to defend and protect her with my life. Now I had more to do than eat Teddy's customers and look at shitty memes on the internet.

Finally, my life just got interesting.