“I think we should have claws.”

“Pinchers.”

“Fangs!”

“Fur.”

We threw our ingredients into the twenty-gallon plastic tub we’d stolen from the Galliones’ backyard and dragged into the woods behind our cul-de-sac: mud, birch twigs, mosaiced cicada wings and their crunchy shells too, a squirrel tail severed by a neighbor’s cat, deer scat, robin’s feathers, fresh mulch, pebbles, and bright red honeysuckle berries, ready to pop. We mashed a few in our hands to ensure they were ripe and juicy, the pulpy insides coating our fingers. 

“More mud!” we cried. “More berries!” And some spleenwort for good measure. 

When the concoction was thick and ready—each of us had a turn stirring, chanting, perfecting—we scooped the mixture into our eager hands and bathed ourselves in it. Over our arms, caking our faces. Then we ran naked through the trees. Exhilarated, exalted. Not a downed tree or thorny thicket could slow us. When we got to the county road beyond the woods, we hissed at the feeling of the pavement beneath our bare soles, the man-made horror, the pollution. We retreated into the tree cover, reluctantly chasing the setting sun back to our street.    

At home, our mothers scolded us. Us dirty girls, us heathens! Our fathers regarded us over the tops of their newspapers. They did not yet know that we were going to be the most fearsome creature this town had ever seen.

*

We argued over whose idea it had been. Molly had been at the pool last summer when some seventh grade boys jeered at her, made kissy faces, called her sugar tits. She hadn’t responded; instead, she pulled her shirt back on and lay stomach down on the slatted pool chair, the open middle dipping her spine like a saucer. She was fiddling with the torn end of her towel when she spotted the insect through the fence, just beyond the chain link. Molly wondered if it was a female, a lady mantis. She read in one of her science textbooks that females bite the heads off males after they have sex. An ultimate act of power. The lady mantis wouldn’t have let those boys get away with it, she thought. No, the lady mantis would’ve made kissy faces back, and when one boy got close enough, she would have gone in for the big chop.   

In Sloane’s bedroom, later, amongst pink frills and a scalloped lace comforter, we discussed the lady mantis. Why not become her, one of us posed, or someone like her? There were plenty of people in need of punishment. There were plenty of people who could use a good scare. No one listened to us in those days. We were small and rife with unheard complaints, our opinions of little consequence, our grievances ignored by our families and teachers alike. We wanted to make trouble. We wanted to be taken seriously. 

“What if we?”

“Could we?”

“Is it possible?”

“Why not try?” 

So we scoured far and wide for the resources to teach us how. Kristen took her big brother’s book about cryptids from his bedroom when he was at baseball practice. Greta checked out a guide on witchcraft from the public library. Molly tallied the wrongs against us. And Sloane gathered the materials for our spell. Behind our cul-de-sac, beneath the elms, we redesigned ourselves and gave birth to our new form—the heft of Bigfoot with the speed of Mothman, the fear factor of the wendigo with the local draw of the Loveland Frog—a toothy, matted, extendable creature with the sharpness of the lady mantis. 

We knew it would take time for the transformation to be complete, for us to control our power whenever we wanted. We felt the pains in our bones. We writhed in our beds, panting and sweating. Our mothers pressed cold towels to our foreheads, blaming our sickness on the night’s adventure in the woods, some cold we caught. But we knew the truth. Our bodies were changing. 

On the first full moon after our spell, we met once again in the trees behind our cul-de-sac. The moon’s silver light emitted all sorts of magic. Greta read that witches and women receive power from the moon. Something about divine femininity, something about our menstrual bleeding. Even better, though, we knew lunar light forged many a monster, and we were no different. We felt our claws extending, our hackles raising. We danced and howled and watched our teeth gleam in the moon’s soft offering. Ecstatic, we rutted against trees and tussled in leaves fallen victim to autumn’s first frost. 

We made two rules: We hunt in a pack, never alone, and we decide our evening’s activities with a unanimous vote.  

And then, with our pact made and plan established, we ran for the road. We’d never been faster. Our vision was sharper, our sense of smell stronger, our reflexes quicker. Even under the trees’ dark blanket, we did not falter or trip over an errant root. We could sense any obstacle and collectively circumvent it. It was as if the forest were a familiar home we could navigate room to room with our eyes closed. 

When we reached Route 36, the two lane highway heading out of county, we stalked up and down the cold pavement. It was a popular throughway during the day, but at night, you’d only find the odd driver or trucker. We figured it was just the place a monster would lurk. One side was flanked by woods, the other by dry husks of corn swaying drunk in the night’s light wind. The rustling of the stalks’ browned leaves sounded like a chorus of whispers, as if the fields approved of our plan.  

As headlights appeared, we crouched in the roadside ditch, gazes trained upwards through the grass. On its approach, we saw a young couple, the woman shut-eyed in the passenger seat with her legs propped on the dashboard. Her companion drove in concentrated silence. As the breeze of the passing car ruffled our hair, we swarmed onto the road, chasing after the sedan, two of us pulling up beside it. In the driver’s side mirror, we saw the man’s eyes widen, a flash of confusion, then fear. As the car accelerated, so did we. As it swerved, so did we. Faster and faster it sped, and faster and faster we chased until Kristen called, “That’s enough,” and we peeled away, rabid with laughter. 

We did this again and again. Mostly lone drivers, one young family with a sleeping child in the backseat. We didn’t much care about who was in the cars, not really. It wasn’t about them. It was about testing our newfound strength, our new bodies. A few trucks blasted their horns, and one pulled over for a look around, but we disappeared back into the brush by the time he stepped onto the road. Backlit by his truck’s headlights, he looked like a monster himself, tall and thick-fingered, looming long against the cement. We cried our eerie cry, and he hurried back into the cab. 

Near dawn, we slunk through windows back into our beds, trembling and spent, adrenaline waning as the sun shyly rose. Later, when our mothers had roused us from dead slumber and corralled us to kitchen tables, we listened with ears perked towards the newscast on the TV. 

How strange, our mothers said. Must have been kids?  

Animals, our fathers corrected. The reports said they looked like rabid dogs, foxes, large owls. Something fast enough to chase those cars. Something fearsome enough to give those men a good scare.

*

For several weeks, we prowled the outskirts of town under the beckoning light of the moon. We’d go to school with twigs in our hair, smelling of damp earth. At night, when we finally rested in the final silver hours, our limbs twitched as if still giving chase.

It was not enough. We wanted more. 

One of us—Kristen or Greta or Molly or Sloane—suggested it was time to move our nighttime activities into town. Our neighbors were too complacent, happy to ignore the news reports about the creature sightings on the county roads. A fluke, our parents said. A crock, said others. Some hoax. They needed to learn what we could do. We were ready to strike at the heart.   

“Who should we—”

“The boys from the pool.”

“Daniel?”

“No, Michael.”

“He is the worst of them.”

“He is always—”

“Making gestures, calling names. Looking up—”

“Skirts, from under the bleachers.”

So it was decided. We ran out of the woods, past the houses with the sleepy front windows and the warm streetlamps with melted puddles of light. We were silent and swift, slinking along the hedgerows and between garbage cans, gone from yards before dogs started barking. In minutes, we had Michael’s house encircled, stalking its perimeter like wolves to a lamb. When we struck, it was practiced and swift. We tore through his mother’s begonias, shook the flower beds from their roots. His prized possession leaned against the garage—a black BMX bike, sleek and lethal. While the rest of us searched for his bedroom window, Molly sunk her teeth into the tires, which deflated with a hiss like a faulty parachute. She ripped the seat from its stump and broke off the handlebars like you would snap a graham cracker. Crisp, down the perforated line. For good measure, she bent the frame and tossed it over her shoulder into their yard.    

Sloane located his room on the second floor, catching the pungent scent of preteen boy—pimple cream and unwashed armpit. We shimmied up the drainpipe to the flat roof. Our faces crowding the pane, lips bared and fangs gleaming, we raked our claws against the window, scarring the glass. Rap tap, rap tap. Beneath his forest green comforter, Michael stirred and blinked his small eyes. We held our grins until he noticed us, hand frozen to his face in mid-rub, and for a moment, all of us shared one breath. One, two, three seconds, before Michael screamed for his mother, bolting upright in bed. With a last collective hiss, we launched away from his window. We leaped across the alleyways, cartwheeled along the roof cruxes, and galloped along the shingles, howling into the night.   

Just awful, our mothers said over breakfast the next morning. Who would do such a thing? Who would terrorize that boy, destroy his family’s yard? 

We smiled to ourselves, tucking our dirt-crusted fingernails beneath our shirt sleeves. 

They’re coming to our homes, whatever they are, our fathers said. They’re getting too close. You’ll be careful, won’t you? they asked us. 

“Of course, Daddy,” we responded. “We’ll be good.” 

We were not good. We were tired of being good. We had tasted power and liked the metallic bite on our tongues. So instead, we visited the girl in our class who called one of us a nasty word, one not worth repeating. We smashed through her window, raining glass into her hair. Instead, we visited our pre-algebra teacher, who gave everyone a pop quiz he knew we would fail. We used his car as a scratching post, popped the tires with our claws, peeled metal off its siding like birch bark. Instead, we visited the old woman down the street who called in noise complaints when we biked through the neighborhood. We ate through her vegetable garden and tore up her pots. One of us—Kristen or Greta or Molly or Sloane—sunk her teeth into the rabbit she kept in a hutch.

Only she did it, but we all experienced it.

On security cameras, our predatory eyes reflected light, obscuring our faces with glare. On the evening news, footage showed something feral, something sharp and clawed. We could not recognize ourselves in these videos. We looked so unlike ourselves, so unlike the girls with the neatly parted braids and yes-ma’am smiles.   

We reveled in it. 

We slept less and less and hunted more and more. Our desire was like a fire in an abandoned barn—once caught, its destruction could not be stopped. One night, we tore through the chicken coop on the Haskins’ Farm, just to see how it felt. We choked on feathers in our throats for days but did not mind. We proved to ourselves that we were capable of such ferocity. We were not afraid of a little blood. Together, we learned that we could bring down a full-grown steer. We became bolder, trying handles on locked doors until we heard panicked footfalls rushing down the stairs. 

Our fathers bought guns, or they bought more guns. Our mothers organized community meetings. Our neighbors formed watch groups, and the police increased patrols, but still we went unnoticed. We became experts at washing ourselves of the night’s activities by daybreak, the dirt and grime snaking down the drain with the scent of our strawberry-scented shampoo. We should have known that we couldn’t go on forever, we suppose. But a Jenga tower is always sturdy until the wrong block is pulled.

*

One Friday when we met beneath the elms, one of us did not arrive. It does not matter who, exactly. 

The three remaining paced around and around each other, our formation off-kilter like a mutt missing a limb. We shredded bark with our claws and wailed at the new moon, but she did not answer us. Nor did she the next night, or the next, and by Monday, we were near delirious with need when we cornered her in the schoolyard. 

She couldn’t leave her house, she explained, our hands clutched tight in hers. Her father had nailed the windows shut. He sat awake at night with a rifle, guarding his family from monsters. From us. He was scared to let his daughter out of his sight. He’d even wanted to call her out sick from school to keep her under his watchful eye, but she needed to see us, she said. She needed us.  

What she did not say, but we knew: She did not need him. 

In our bones, we felt that if we couldn’t be together, we would disintegrate. Our fur would fall out; our teeth would dull. It needed to be remedied.

“A slumber party.” 

“This Saturday.”  

“My place.” 

And so, three of us planned and plotted and schemed and begged our parents to let us sleep over that weekend. Every night we couldn’t hunt was torturous. We felt the unspent energy would burst our skins like an overripe berry. One of us shredded her bedsheets, another gnawed on the knobs of her hand-me-down dresser. But we refused to hunt without her. We would not leave her behind. If one of us were caged, who would be next? If we could not rely on each other, on our rules and promises, then what did we have? 

If you do not think us the heroes of this story, then you have never been a girl.  

With the news cycle quiet and no reports of animal attacks, cautious relief descended over town.

Maybe they’re finished, our mothers said. They’ve been scared off, said our fathers. 

And because of the bloodless week, the uneasy stillness, the father allowed his daughter to attend the slumber party after all. He released the princess from her tower if she promised she would not leave her friend’s house until he came to fetch her. A part of her would have once been happy that her father was worried about her, that he was paying attention. How often had she wished that he would take more than a passing interest in her life? But no longer. She bristled under his smothering concern. She had learned to protect herself. He had it wrong: she was not the hunted, but the huntress. 

That Saturday, with the four of us finally together again under the empowering embrace of darkness, we felt power rush through our veins. Freed, unhindered, like a splinter removed from the pad of the foot or a collar loosened around the neck. We transformed right there in the bedroom, amongst the teddy bears and tutus and soft confines of our girlhood. 

Should we have stopped? Perhaps. Could we have stopped? No. We did not want to. 

We knew what we had to do. We leaped from the bedroom window and ran to a familiar house. Moving quietly over the back porch, careful of the rotted beams, we peered through the sliding door. The father sat in the glow of the TV, some mindless late-night rerun washing the otherwise darkened room in a kaleidoscope of light. A rifle lay on the coffee table at his feet. We’d seen this gun before, during a hunting trip last year. We were familiar with his weapon. 

We tapped at the windows, and he startled. Rap tap, rap tap. He grabbed the gun and held it in practiced carry, slowly inching towards the door. We looked at him, looking for us. Like a trick mirror, we could see him trembling inside the snow globe of a living room, all the while he couldn’t see us just beyond the glass.  

 After steadying the rifle, the father stepped into the unseasonably warm fall air. He turned towards us, lifted the heel to his shoulder, and paused, lips parted. Our eight eyes met his two. In his hesitation, he was not hard to bring to his knees. He wobbled just slightly, and we pounced. He screamed, and so did we, too loud, not thinking, not registering that he was repeating his daughter’s name, one of us—Kristen or Greta or Molly or Sloane—though we could not tell you which it was. They are all the same to us now.  

It wasn’t until he was a twitching mass on the porch beneath us that we heard other voices, suddenly, yelling. Stop! Freeze! 

We hissed at the flashlight beams burning our eyes. Too bright, too bright. We shielded our faces with bloody claws. Surrounded by animal control with their nets and slack-jawed officers with their high beams and the neighborhood watch, the fathers with guns organized by the mothers at their meetings, we raised our hackles and backed into a tight circle around each other. We blinked slowly, wiped our mouths.

“Watch out, officers.”

“We get hungry, you see—”

“We get angry.”

“We cannot help ourselves.”