Content Warning: This story contains vulgar imagery and gore, so it’s not for the faint of heart.

Last weekend, my family was driving home from our weekly trip to our grandparents’ house, and it started pouring rain. Suddenly, a four-legged figure sprinted across the road. My dad barely swerved the car out of the way in time to save the animal, but our car skidded to a halt in the bottom of a ditch. I got out of the car and ran around the car to see that the animal we almost hit was a small dog. She was drenched with rain and mud, shivering in the spotlight of our car’s headlights. She did not have a collar, but around her ankle was a tag from Build-A-Bear. The only conclusion I could come to was that this dog was owned by someone who worked there. I quickly decided we couldn’t just leave her there, so I opened our trunk and coaxed the dog into the back of our car.

Later that night, my parents and brother decided to get takeout from ¿Por Qué No?, but I had to finish my newspaper article, so I decided to stay home with Ruthie (the name we temporarily gave the dog). I settled down to watch the horror movie, Hubie Halloween, on the couch while Ruthie roamed nearby. When I was watching the movie, during the scary parts I cuddled close to Ruthie for comfort and stroked her fur. It felt kind of strange; it felt straw-like and not soft and natural like normal dog fur. Every so often, I would glance over at Ruthie to see that she was staring straight at me. Her eyes were bead-like with tiny slits and they never stopped looking at me. Suddenly, I looked over at Ruthie and it was almost like her skin was falling off of her body. Something started moving around inside of her skin and then a zipper on her back popped up and a small paw started to unzip itself from inside the skin of what I thought was a dog. The creature dropped into a heap on the floor, and out crawled a tiny, hairless cat. I screamed as the cat hissed and the last thing I saw before I passed out was a wrinkly sack of skin jump at my eyes.