Page 18 of A Very Monstrous Desire

“You are welcome,” the monster said very formally.

Theo wondered where he had learned his English. He had an accent which, if pressed, Theo would have said was vaguely French, though the rumbling noises he sometimes made were almost a bit Greek. Dimitri had sounded similar at least. It was all oddly intriguing, and Theo did not know what to think of it. He didn’t know what to think about the monster full stop.

He was leaning against one of the luminous walls. Here with a light on him he looked very purple indeed and his eyes like pools of moonlight. Abruptly, Theo realised that though the monster had a slight silver glow to him, he wasn’t shimmering. Theo looked down at his own hands quickly.

“Am I shimmering?” he asked.

The monster nodded. “You do not belong in this world.”

“Why can’t I see the shimmer?”

“Because you are looking with eyes that do not belong either.”

“But you’re not shimmering,” Theo said slowly.

“In your world I would. The frequencies…they do not quite align.”

Theo was struck then by the differences rather than the similarities between them. This…man…was from another world. He was an alien really. Theo was having a civilised conversation with an alien!

Abruptly, he imagined what his parents and sister would think about the whole thing. They had been oddly proud when he’d told them about his conscription despite also telling them that he did not want to go. Caroline had done a tour herself in Wales and despite the fact she had lost two of her fingers to a munching monster bite, she insisted the whole thing had been good fun. She had met and married her husband there though and there was now talk of some children, so perhaps she felt the loss of the fingers was worth the gain of a partner.

Theo shivered as he wondered what he might lose and gain on this forced inter-dimensional jaunt. He shook his head at that and looked around the sparse room, trying without even realising it, to find a touch of normality. There was a table and chairs, something that resembled a bed, and a huge data screen surrounded by equipment, and that was pretty much it.

“It’s safe here?” he asked after a moment.

“Yes,” the monster said. “It is protected from the inhabitants of these lands.”

“The monsters,” Theo said.

“That is what you call them.”

“All the monsters that come into our world come from here?”

The monster nodded. “Yes, the spots are mirrors of one another.”

“And your people…”

“We do not live here. We left a long time ago when the rages came.” He shrugged one massive shoulder. “We had little choice. The rages do not…share.”

The rages…Theo did not like the sound of them at all. “What are these rages?” he asked.

“They deserve the name monsters by your definition. That is all I will say. They are not your concern for now.”

“They are if they’re close by.”

“They cannot get to you in here,” the monster said. He gestured to a bowl of what looked like pasta on the table. Pasta. “Eat that.”

Theo was starving so did not refuse. It might actually have been pasta. The taste was close enough. There was an empty bowl nearby. The monster had clearly eaten whilst Theo had been having his mini crisis in the bathroom, though that was surely a positive thing now that Theo thought about it. If the monster ate wheat-based produce, then clearly Theo was safe from a munching after all.

“For now, we will rest,” the monster said when Theo finished his meal and was given water to wash it down. “In the morning, we will set out to deal with nightmares.”

“Rest? You mean sleep?” Theo asked and suddenly the idea of that was very tempting indeed. Now that he’d eaten, he realised he was tired. All the running, all the action, Theo suspected he could sleep for hours. Besides, he really needed to give some thought to his situation, to his abduction, and what better way to do that than whilst resting.

“Sleep there,” the monster said, and he gestured to the platform that was clearly a bed. “When we awake, we will refuel again and answer one another’s questions.”

Theo nodded gratefully and made his way over to the bed. It was little more than a shelf really, carved into the wall, but there was padding on it and a blanket draped over it also. Feeling like it was only polite, Theo removed his muddy running shoes and goo-splattered army jumper before crawling onto it. The bizarreness of the situation hit him all over again.

He was in an alien dimension, though it was clearly a copy of his one or thereabouts—the spots mirroring each other suggested as much.

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