Page 58 of A Very Monstrous Desire

But perception was everything in the end. Theo knew that the signals his brain received were what he perceived as reality, and it was the same for Baku, for the munching monsters, for the rages…

The serum was going to change those signals and that perception. Even for Theo. This wouldn’t hurt him. It wouldn’t alter him at the genetic level. But if he took too much it would change how he was perceived, and Baku’s test suggested that might be irreversible, and it wouldn’t matter how human he was inside, no one would ever see him that way again.

“Are you ready?” the monster asked.

Theo pulled the stopper from the vial. The purple liquid shimmered below him. Was he ready? Honestly, Theo wasn’t sure. If he could have taken care of this situation without needing to ingest a substance that he knew next to nothing about, that would have been preferable. But that wasn’t an option, this was the only way.

“Yes,” he said after a moment.

“It will be almost instantaneous,” Baku said.

“I know,” Theo said, and then before he could really consider it, Theo downed the serum.

It didn’t really taste of anything, but Theo could feel it move into him. He drew in a deep breath of air before looking up and locking eyes with Baku. The monster had taken his as well, and Theo watched as the serum instantly darkened his skin from a light violet to a deep, vibrant purple. Even his moonlit eyes changed slightly, the greys and the blues suddenly joined by violet swirls.

“Are you okay, my human?” Baku asked.

“I feel a little strange,” Theo said.

“Dizzy?”

“Yes…” Only it wasn’t a normal sort of dizziness. Instead, Theo felt like he was vibrating slightly.

“A headache?” Baku asked.

“No.”

“Nausea?”

“Not yet.”

Theo looked down. His hands were purple. The same deep purple as the monster’s. He turned his palms over. They were a lighter violet with little freckles of silver.

“I’m glowing,” he said once he took in the strangeness of what he was looking at.

“It is the remnant of the shimmer from the nightmare’s dimension,” Baku said.

“Will I glow in my world?”

The monster reached out, and he took Theo’s hands in his. Their purple fingers interlocked. “Yes,” he said. “You have part of another world within you now.”

Theo wished he had a mirror close to hand. He would have liked to see if his brown eyes were also purple. If his hair and rapidly developing beard had changed colour at all. He drew in another shaky breath as his body continued to vibrate in a slightly odd way. It felt like he’d drunk way too much coffee.

“Will the vibrations stop eventually?” he asked.

Baku tilted his head. “I do not know, Theo. I have not experienced that.”

“Wonderful!” Theo said.

Baku frowned. “You will let me know if they get worse?”

“I will.”

“And when you are ready?—”

“I’m ready now,” Theo said, and he stood up, because he realised then, almost as if the knowledge had been given automatically to him, exactly what the vibrations were.

He stepped out from behind the bush where the flowers were now crying slightly, recognising something that was a nightmare and yet not a nightmare nearby. The actual nightmares guarding the rip turned as Theo approached them, and they vibrated furiously to acknowledge his presence.

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