A bleak landscape stretched below me. I’d appeared in a cave, next to some kind of rock formation. Green gases billowed around me, the stench of death and putrefaction made me gag.

A thundering earthquake shook the cave. Small pieces of rock tumbled from unseen areas, pelting me with fragments.

I ducked, covering my head. I saw something slither away with a whiplike tail and a mouth with far too many teeth. Where the hell was I?

Walking out to the mouth of the cave, the tableau of the land around me stretched. Huge cracks in the earth ran as far as I could see, which wasn’t that far. Gaseous emissions belched from unseen bilious rocky entrances.

An enormous screech like a thousand elephants all trumpeting at the same time forced me to my knees. A creature stomped around on the surface down there, a shadow in the greenish gloom. Ichor dripped from stalactites around me…

Or were they stalagmites? I never remembered the difference.

The head of the thing came closer. Burning yellow eyes regarded me from the elephantine face. Seven, no eight trunks or tentacles dangled from the front of the thing between immense elephant tusks of ivory.

I backed away from the thing into the cave. Hopefully the trunks couldn’t—

One of the trunks shot into the cave and snagged me by the ankle. I was hauled, unceremoniously out of the cave. I dangled, upside-down, up and over the thing’s head. It reared back, opening it’s mouth.

Inside I could see infernal fires burning in the pits below. Things — people screamed down there. I could see them milling around, caught in the stomach of whatever this beast was.

Fear burrowed icy fingers into my mind. Everything finally connected when the breath of the beast hit me.

I screamed, thrashing.

“No!” I twisted, trying to escape, my fingers scrabbled at my ankle trying to release it somehow.

Without warning my curse threaded it’s way through me. Muscles bunched as my face pushed out into a snout. Fur stippled the surface of my skin and my right claw swiped into the flesh of the elephantine trunk.

It flung me against the rock face of the nearest cliff and I scrabbled for purchase as I tumbled down the side bouncing and flopping hundreds of feet.

I yowled with each bounce, my feral nature forced me to turn in mid-air and I landed on all fours, leaping upward to avoid the mighty STOMP of the creature trying to annihilate me from existence. The elephantine head trumpeted again, and I felt the concussion of one of the trunks smashing against the rocks nearby.

I darted, leaping from rock formation to rock, trying to get anywhere else and hide from whatever the fuck was hunting me.

I dashed on all fours as fast as I could run, swerving to the left and right. I found a canyon that led away from the vicinity of the elephantine beast. My breathing stuttered in my chest as I inhaled whatever noxious fumes billowed from the vents that I could not get away from. Staggering, I coughed, trying to catch my breath—

But it wouldn’t come. Black dots invaded my vision and I slipped and fell on my side. My body slid through the dust, bouncing off rocks and long dead scrub trees.

Panting in the poisonous air, I roared in fury and futility, gasping and driving to move out of the way of the immense foot that descended over me, blocking out the rays of the twin suns burning in the heavens—

##

I awoke in my bed, yelling and thrashing in my covers.

Dad came in, the hallway light illuminating him from behind. “You okay, sport?”

Blinking, I tried to figure out where I was. “Uh, yeah Dad.”

He sat on the edge of my bed, smiling and running his fingers through my hair. “Must have been quite the nightmare.”

“Yeah,” I croaked. “Dad, can I have some water?”

“Sure, son. Be right back.”

He walked out the door. I leaned over and turned on my bed lamp. My clock radio glowed 2:00 AM.

I was in my own body, my Seth male body. My hair was back to it’s short buzzed length and not the curly locks from earlier.

Dad came back with a water bottle. He handed it to me. It was blissfully cool.

I took several long gulps, draining the small bottle in short order. The dream had been so real.

“Want to talk about it?” Dad said, sitting in the edge of my bed.

“Was bad,” I said. “I morphed in it.”

“Good thing that didn’t translate. We’re like three days from the dark of the moon.”

“Wait, what?”

“Yes, I think that’s on the 15th.”

“Today is the 12th?”

“All day.” He smiled.

I did some quick math. April’s nonsense had happened on the first, but to me that was only like three days ago. A day spent as Desdemonia, another as myself, then the third where I became an April copy…had my time on that planet/reality really taken up ten days?

My head thumped painfully. But for now, I was with my dad. He wasn’t trapped as a wolf, hadn’t poofed between dimensions…

“What’s going on in here?” Another voice murmured.

“Seth had a bad dream is all, honey,” Dad replied.

I looked up.

Look, I’m a big guy. I play sports, I date girls, I like fast cars. I’m a tough, strong, supernatural creature.

Seeing my mom again, standing at my door and I burst into tears. “Mom?” I said, running to her and enfolding her in my arms. When had she gotten so short?

She chuckled, wrapping her arms around my torso. “Must have been a doozy,” she said, smiling and patting me on my back.

I put my head in her hair and breathed her essence. She was warm, alive, here.

I didn’t know what was going on. Somehow I’d become magically entangled in something that was pulling me through different realities. They weren’t dreams, each one had been real, each one I felt pain, emotions, tactile sensations. When I’d been flung against the rock face, I’d had the wind knocked out of me. When I’d been in Desdemonia’s body, I’d felt her arthritis flare up in her back and hips.

Three days until the dark of the moon. Three days until the gateway opened. Three days for the nightmare to use me as the Key.

Dad got up and hugged both of us. I saw smile lines around his eyes, a lack of tension in his body, and his hair had actual gray in it from a normal happy life where his wife didn’t die of cancer and he didn’t throw himself into his work for 20 hours a day.

For one moment, my parents held me. I didn’t know how long the moment would last, or what monsters lay in store for me over the coming days. I didn’t know what decisions I’d need to make, what changes would take place, what dimensions I’d need to traverse.

For right now, I had my parents. Tears streamed down my face as I held my mother.

And it was wonderful.