Hunter Ransom

I am Hunter Ransom. Your first impression of me is probably that I am ‘popular’, have tons of friends, girlfriends etc. However that is not the case. All that glory and popularity is what my parents, Abelone and Archer, were hoping for. They were always the outsiders, the losers, nerds etc. So they thought that giving me a cool name would make me popular and they could live their dream lives, through me. However, that didn’t work out how they hoped it would. I am Hunter Ransom, the weird kid, a science geek, and the only one in my school who understands that popularity won’t get you anywhere in life. I am 17 years old and I am in my last year of high school. Many people say that their last year will be memorable; they will have fun and make it the best year of their lives. For me it’s the best year because I have 270 more days of bullying, and then it’s all over. Then it will be my time, when I accomplish many great things, when I fulfill my hopes and dreams and get the career I have always wanted. 

As I walk through those front doors it starts: the calling names, my face being covered in juice or some type of food, and my back being slammed in those tiny blue lockers like every day. You may ask yourself how I get through it; well I keep thinking of how at the end of the day I will go back home and see my pets again. See my garden, the flowers, trees, and many insects. My passion for nature, insects and wild animals is inseparable, it will never go away. I turned my room into a lab when I was 11 and found out about my passion for animals. You may ask “why animals?”, and then I will answer, “Because they won’t judge you?”, if you are cool or a geek, they will accept you. Ever since I was 11 I have been working in my lab doing tests on animals; but nothing that could harm them, just simply taking some blood or hair samples. I have discovered how they communicate, how they form their looks and fur, how they grow and develop and I have been studying their DNA. Since I started living in Africa, the Safari animals are my favorite.  They are so imposing and magnificent. To me the Lion is the top of the Safari; he is the king, the king who cannot be touched. Because of my lab, my testing and all those radioactive animals I created, it has made me what I am today, unequal, strange, different, but the truth is I don’t mind.

I am in my lab creating a sample of the radioactive baby lion in its cage. I am not being disturbed. All the test tubes are still, the liquid in them is clear and not moving a single bit. It is very quiet; I could hear the bee’s buzzing outside, and the fly landing on my window across from me.  The weather is calm, not a single grey cloud in the sky. As I turn around to get more hair samples, it seems like nothing could go wrong. However the day won’t continue to be like that. That day I realize I can use all those blood, urine etc samples I am taking and inject stem cells into my radial artery, I can create artificial genes which would in a period of time be set in motion. Then with the help of some enzymes would speed up the reaction and multiplying the cells of the lion causing a reaction to turn me into one. However over a period of time those cells would be out of my system and I would be human again. When I figure that out I realize that my life would be better as a lion, no one to judge me, no one to throw food at me. So I do it. I take the syringe and inject the stem cells of the lion into my radial artery on my wrist. However it doesn’t work, I don’t feel any difference except the fact that now my wrist hurts. I feel like there is more, I need to inject more and then I will see the difference. I inject it once, twice, three times, but nothing. I keep on injecting and after the 8^th time, I don’t remember what happens. I keep on injecting, until I pass out. I feel a sudden stop in my heart, my heart stops beating... lights out. I don’t feel a single nerve in my body, I don’t feel my heart beating, my blood flowing. My mother realizes I have no pulls and I am rushed to the hospital with stem cells of a lion circulating in my veins. When they bring me to the hospital I am hooked up with wires, needles, and they place the metal machine on my chest and pressing it hard against my heart trying to revive me. Even though my heart isn’t beating, I can feel my soul still in my chest. For a week I am unable to wake up and laying on the hospital bed and my mother holding my hand. After 2 weeks they make a decision, they leave me in the morgue with all the other dead people around me. The next day after those 2 weeks my eyes open, and I was perplexed and stunned. I don’t know where I was or what they were going to do to me. I feel this weird urge to eat some live flesh. I want to rip open that metal container they were storing my body in. I kick and push as hard as I can and it opens, the trap door opens. Suddenly I drop to the ground and I sense a disgusting smell of flesh, but one part of me loves it. I feel this humongous pain in my back, as if every bone which makes up my spine is being broken 100 times. The pain moves down to my arms, then my legs and into my whole body. Even though I was screaming on the top of my lungs no one even looks up, or rushes to help me into the room. I am rolling around on the floor and running on my arms and legs like a wild animal from the Savannah. Suddenly I just feel this pain lifted off my back. I stop screaming, the room is silent and I drop to the ground full of exhaustion. I look around and I see everything from a lower view. As I feel my arm I can feel quite some fur, I can feel a long beard and as I see my reflection in one of the hospital beds, I can see I have turned into a lion. It worked, injecting those stem cells really worked, I am a lion. 

I run around like crazy and am tempted to eat the flesh of those dead bodies. I resist and quickly run out of the hospital. As I am running through the halls I am unable to escape, the doctors who are trying to stop me and catch me. Then I remember, I am the king of the Savannah, I roar at them as loud as I can and they all scatter like little ants running from a grasshopper. When I run out of the hospital I realize I have nowhere to go. I am trapped in the city and have no humans which I could rely on for help, except my family. 

It is getting dark and there are police guards everywhere. There is no way I could have gone past them without being caught. I keep sitting under the tree in the little deserted area of the city.  I fall asleep and dream about how it was when I was a human, when I wake up, it’s like my dream came true. I was a human, had arms, legs, fingers, and my face back. I realize that the stem cells have left my system. So since they are not in there neither is my lion DNA. I run away to my parent’s house and explain everything that happened; of course they don’t believe me. They don’t want to believe me because they didn’t want and abnormal kid. I had no one to go to except to the bullies in school, so I do. 

I have been going to school for one semester without anyone noticing me and my abnormality in my DNA. Tomorrow is the first day of the second semester and we were getting a new girl in our class. I am not excited since I knew she would go to the cool kids and learn how to make fun of me from them. I was wrong, it is different, and she noticed me and said hi. We have been hanging out at parks, my and her house etc. This was my first real friend. She is also in touch with nature and the animals, but I am not ready yet to tell her about my obsession of becoming a lion, until now. In a matter of weeks I fall in love with Veronica Jones. I dont want to fall in love because I could anytime go out of control and kill her at the spot, but I couldn’t stop, so I ask her on a date. We went on a picnic and a ride on the paddleboat.  Ten minutes before sunset I went to bring her to her house and then realized that because of the stem cells I injected the night before are just having an effect, so I am turning right in front of her; I kissed her and run off. I run to my spot under the green tree, in the cave. While I am going there I felt like someone was following me and found out about me turning, I was right. When I turn around to lie down, there is Veronica standing with tears going down her eyes. I was crushed and was so sorry that she found out this way. For the next 2 months she didn’t want to talk to me. 

I want to make sure everything is fine again between me and Veronica, so I ask her to meet me at the place where we had our first date. I needed to prove to her I was no harm while I was in my lion state. When I am walking on my paws toward the paddle boats I don’t see anyone around since it is 4am. Then I feel a pain in my right paw. I fall down to the ground and I see there is a police man shooting and in the corner of my eye I see Veronica running towards me. I roar as hard as I can and run towards Veronica. The policeman automatically thinks Veronica is like me and he shoots her, she starts falling to the ground but I catch her. I place her on my back and run as fast as I can towards our cave. When we arrive I take out the needle from her leg and she is feeling quite sleepy. We both fall asleep in the cave with my fur keeping her warm. When we wake up we are both human, and both happy. I asked her if she is scared, and the answer is no. As we are both walking to school, Veronica asks me a question which doesn’t only turn my day from bad to amazing; it turns my whole like from awful to remarkable. It made me feel like all that bullying was leading me to this, the happiest day of my life. Her question was: can you turn me?

I feel happy, excited, and I feel like I belong in this world. My answer is of course yes. I will turn both of us into full lions, and we could both run into the safari and live our lives surrounded by what we love, nature and animals. Right after school I create more samples of the lions blood, urine etc. I inject the stem cells into our radial arteries 50 times hoping it’s enough to keep us both into our lion shapes. As she passes out I can see the transformation. Exactly what I went through, the pain the agony, but after 30 minutes she is done, and is turned into a lioness. Even though her transformation was painful and was awful to watch, I knew that after that came a wonderful ending, which is what got me through it. The next morning we both wake up with a fur coat and still walking on 4 legs. I realize that now we both have lion genes and we are able to escape into the wild and live our life.