There comes a time in every person's life in which they are prompted to reflect on their world - the good, the bad, and the ugly. What sort of person have they been? What mark have they left on the world, what impact have they had? Lex, from her prone position on the hospital stretcher, found herself lost in thought. She wouldn't consider herself to be anything exceptional - she was average, plain, in every sense of the word, and she was perfectly content with that. Her life, she supposed, would now be segmented into the before and the after, two distinct halves of the chronicle of her existence.

The before was simple. Straightforward. Lex had an ordinary childhood, being raised by her blue-collar, hard-working father in the backwoods of Clallum County. As soon as she could walk, Lex was strapped into the passenger seat of her father's beat-up truck, surrounded by the swirling scents of cedar and pine sap. She recalled countless days of peering out of the foggy windows, watching her father chop, cut and load endless cuttings into the battered tray of the truck. Lex remembered the way his hands moved deftly over his tools, labouring away for hours to secure endless loads of wood. Being raised by a logger was a blessing, she thought, a continual lesson in valuing hard work and physical prowess. His work was repetitive and arduous and yet entirely necessary, primarily because it was the only work available for him in the isolated surrounds. Lex had asked once why they remained in Beaver, why they persisted in carving a tiny portion of the scraggy land out there for their existence.

Her father had responded with his typical gruff brevity, telling her that it was where the McKinleys had always been. And, of course, it was true - he had been raised there, just like his parents, and their parents, and so on. It made logical sense, and yet Lex had hoped for a different answer. Something more revealing, something that told her more about her father. Her father was pretty well an enigma to her, vastly preferring silence to chatter. In the absence of any other family - a deceased mother, deceased grandparents - Lex wondered almost constantly about her history. What was her mother like? What happened to her? All she knew was it was some kind of sickness, though her father steadfastly refused to discuss it. Just like he remained tightlipped about everything else.

The silence was one of the many reasons Lex left her childhood home. By the time she finished her senior year, Lex was certain that she could fill an entire spiral-bound notebook with essays of reasons. The isolation, however, was her biggest struggle - she delighted in the quiet of nature, but she longed for real human connection. Her father's silence felt stifling, constraining, as if she was contained in some kind of sick sensory deprivation chamber. Of course, the total absence of opportunity was another - she barely completed high school, and unless she aspired to become a logger just like the men of her family, she had to leave. It was a simple justification, and it appeased her father, although she expected that there was some kind of disappointment buried deep down in his mind. As if she would ever know.

Forks was the easy choice. Close enough to home (for the rare moment she would wish to visit), yet far enough that it felt like a break, a clean start. She delighted in its size - thousands of people! Lightyears above the few hundred residents of her hometown. Lex was easily impressed by any degree of development that surpassed her home, and so she was content in Forks. She made a home in the small, dark bedroom she could afford to rent from a stranger. Her housemates were kind enough, and the two women supplied her with enough social interaction in her first week in Forks than her entire life in Beaver. Lex settled easily into her new life, beginning her studies at the local Peninsula College campus and immersing herself into her work. Her life lacked excitement, but the stability was more than enough to keep her satisfied. But - that was before.

Lex's eyes travelled the interior of the ambulance, taking stock of the variety of medical equipment that surrounded her. She recognised some of it, the basic supplies that peppered her home in Beaver and her father's emergency kit in the truck. Lex knew the tubing extending from her forearm was an IV - for what, she was unaware. Traversing the ambulance's contents was an exercise in consciousness, an attempt to remain cognizant amidst the chaos inside her mind. She could feel the kindly EMT stroking her dampened hair, reassuring her in a distant, distorted voice. Lex felt like she was in some kind of fucked up tunnel, being able to see the real world at a far off, unreachable distance. Her mind felt stuck in the past, bogged deep in what she had seen - and what exactly was that? It was like the logical side of her brain was desperately trying to squash her thoughts down into a neat, comprehensible package, one that didn't entirely make sense. But what was the alternative?

Oh yes, Lex would need to acknowledge that there was indeed a horse-sized beast in her kitchen. A beast that had erupted from the figure of her gentle, sweet boyfriend; a beast that had knocked her to her knees. A beast that watched her split her temple open into a bright bloom of blood that came to pepper the faded linoleum; a beast that turned tail and disappeared down the corridor and into the darkness of the forested yard.

Yes. She would consider this the after, the unveiling of the beast that she had previously considered her boyfriend. That was the alternative.