The Beast Within:

Nobody knew what happened that night.

There was no explosion. No meteor. No strange announcement from the government. No warning from scientists, astronomers, or anyone else.

The world simply went to sleep as it always had.

People went to bed beside their partners, kissed their children goodnight, locked their doors, finished homework, worked late shifts, watched television, played games, complained about work, and made plans for the following morning.

And then they woke up.

Everything was different.

At first, most people thought they were dreaming.

A woman looked into her bathroom mirror and found a pair of fox ears where her human ears had been.

A man woke up with a thick layer of fur covering his arms.

A teenager discovered that his fingers ended in claws.

Someone screamed after finding a long reptilian tail tangled beneath their bedsheets.

Others woke to feathers covering their bodies, animal-like eyes staring back at them from mirrors, elongated teeth, whiskers, horns, wings, paws, hooves, or entirely unfamiliar features.

But the strangest part wasn't the physical transformation.

It was that their minds had changed as well.

Not completely.

They were still themselves.

They remembered their families.

Their names.

Their childhoods.

Their friends.

Their jobs.

Their ambitions.

But something else had appeared alongside their humanity.

Something instinctive.

Something ancient.

Something that seemed to have always been hiding beneath the surface.