Huh? Where am I? Why is it so windy in my room? Wait...wind? My eyes snap open as I take in my surroundings. This is definitely not my room. In fact, I have no idea where I am. There are a lot of trees, how did I get lost in a forest? I sigh, “Better look around and see if I can find anyone else.”

My ears moved up as I heard my own voice. It wasn’t English, Spanish, French, or any other human language. It was growling. I looked around, hoping it was just someone playing a prank on me, but I caught a glimpse of a tail. I jumped, trying to get away from whatever was right behind me. But I felt my newfound instinct take over, and I turned around and let out an inhuman growl, only to see nothing but trees. I let out a confused whine, before I brought a hand to my head, “Argh! What is wrong with me?”

That’s when I saw it. My hand wasn’t a hand at all, it was a paw. My eyes widened in a mixture of horror and shock as the paw moved to where I wanted it to move. I slowly turned around and caught a glimpse of my body, it definitely wasn’t like this when I went to sleep last night. I know I didn’t have a mix of black and white fur covering my entire body, and I was even more sure that I didn’t have a tail.

I saw a pond out of my peripheral vision and I slowly walked over to it, at first I tried to walk on two legs, but I quickly discovered that I could not balance myself like that after a few attempts, all of which led to me falling on the ground. I let out a growl as I continued to walk, on all fours, to the pond. The second I made it to the pond, I looked into the water and I saw my reflection. I’ll be honest, I screamed when I saw what I looked at my reflection and saw a wolf looking right back at me. After a few seconds, I managed to regain control over myself and I looked back into the pond. The wolf was still there. I tilted my head, so did the wolf. I closed my mouth, so did the wolf. I bent down to get a drink, and I saw the wolf’s face coming closer. I felt my tongue lap up the water, and the wolf’s reflection rippled.

My legs, all four of them, turned to jelly and I collapsed. I felt my eyes create tears, “H-how did this happen? Why?”

After some time passed, I don’t know how long, I finally managed to stand up again. I whispered to myself, “What should I do now?”
As if to mock me, the sky thundered and it started raining. I let out a quiet whimper as I knew what I had to now: get out of the rain. I started running through the forest, looking for shelter before the rain got really bad. My new instincts told me that this storm was only going to get worse. Suddenly, I smelled something, something that made my instincts just scream ‘run away’ at me. Before I could react, I felt a net being thrown on top of me. I let out a yelp and I kicked and bit at my assailant, but the net did its job and the assailant was too strong. I glared at my kidnapper, a human, as I was thrown into the back of a truck. My natural instincts demanded that I get back up and escape. But every time I tried to get up, the motion from the truck would just knock me back down. I put my head on my paws and let out a whimper, “I’m so scared, what should I do?”

I fell asleep. I know I was kidnapped, or wolf-knapped, and very scared, but yeah. I fell asleep. The moment I woke up, I jumped out of my bed. Then I noticed some very important details. I had hands. I had feet. I had hair, not fur. I was human again. I was so happy, I grinned, “Guess it was all just a dream.”

I went downstairs and made myself some breakfast and turned on the news. The top story was a car crash, involving a truck. I felt my blood run cold as I recognized the truck from my dream. The news report said that lightning struck the truck for some reason and that caused the crash, additional investigation revealed that an animal of some kind was kept in the back of the truck, but it was gone now. I turned the T.V. off after that and took long deep breaths to calm myself. Suddenly, I heard a bark. A very familiar bark. I turned my head and saw the body that I was stuck in. The wolf nodded to me before turning away and walking off into the distance.