The awakening

I woke up feeling like my body was suddenly hosting a bad sci-fi experiment. Something inside me was twitching, shifting, like a dozen tiny ants were rearranging the furniture in my bones. My fingers tingled as if they were planning a mutiny, and my skin felt... off. Not itchy, not sore, just weirdly wrong.
Groaning, I rolled over, trying to convince myself it was just a weird dream or maybe food poisoning. But then I saw it — my left hand was no longer my left hand. It was furry. Small. Clawed.

Oh. No.

I scrambled to the mirror, tripping over my sheets. The reflection was not the face I knew. Instead, a tiny raccoon stared back at me, eyes wide with confused panic. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I registered a hiccup — and yep, that hiccup was definitely mine, which made me hiccup again, only louder.

I tried to think myself back to normal. Please, please, please. But all I got was an uncontrollable urge to rummage through the trash bin across the street and a sudden craving for pickles.

“What the hell is happening to me?” 

I muttered in a voice that was now a weird mix of squeaks and growls.

After a few desperate minutes of flailing and embarrassing hiccups, I managed to will myself back to human form — although I kept the twitch in my left eyebrow, like some cruel reminder that the nightmare wasn’t over.

That’s when I realized: I was a skinwalker now. Or whatever the heck that meant.
I collapsed back onto my bed, eyes wide and heart racing. My life had just turned into a bizarre supernatural sitcom, and I had no idea how to change the channel.

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Dear Diary,

So, apparently, I’m a skinwalker now. If you don’t know what that means, congratulations — you’re probably not cursed. I woke up this morning with a hiccuping raccoon hand and a taste for pickles. Yep, you read that right. Pickles.

I spent the better part of an hour trying to convince myself it was a prank, a fever dream, or maybe just too much late-night Netflix. Nope. Definitely a raccoon hand. Also, why do I have the sudden urge to dig through my neighbor’s trash? Because normal people don’t want to do that.
I don’t even know how this happened. No shady deals, no cursed objects that I know of — unless my grandma’s knitting needles have a secret dark side.

Anyway, here’s the plan: I’m going to keep a diary because someone has to remember this madness if I turn into a full-on animal by next week. Also, writing it down makes it a little less terrifying. Sort of.

Wish me luck. I’m going to need it.
— Your friendly neighborhood skinwalker-in-training

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