Page 45 of A Very Monstrous Desire

Was it possible that the monster was right?

That there had never been any choice in this?

That Theo was exactly where he was supposed to be?

Theo did not want to believe that. It didn’t chime with how he had always seen his life playing out and the direction he still hoped he could steer it in. Running around as a purple, glowing monster in the monster dimension was not part of that!

He placed the serum down next to him and looked up at Baku. The monster looked concerned in a way that Theo had not seen before. No, that wasn’t true. He had looked similar when he had rescued Theo from the rages in the forest.

“The queen on my side, not far from here, she can eat through dimensions?” Theo eventually asked, though he already knew the answer.

“She is busy doing just that,” Baku said. “It is not an instant thing though. Eating through dimensions is a time-consuming job. The fabric…resists.”

“And the rest of them,” Theo asked. “They’re there to what? Protect her?”

Baku sat down next to him. “Yes, to give her time to eat through. It does not matter then if they die. So long as she and one more make it through, they can start over.”

“But why?”

“Why does any form of life do anything?” the monster asked.

Abruptly, Theo thought about the number of species on his Earth who mated knowing they would get eaten afterwards and yet still they did it. Or the octopi who died immediately after birthing their eggs. Did they know that was going to happen? Would it make any difference if they did?

“My squadron is going in to kill them,” he said after a moment. “And her.”

“Do you believe they will be able?” Baku asked.

“There were hundreds of the nightmares when we left…” Theo shook his head, not quite sure how it was only a couple of days ago. It felt like days and days had passed. He wondered if time passed more slowly here but knew that it did not. It was just that so much had happened… “There will be hundreds more now, but my people call this a minor infestation.”

Baku picked up Theo’s serum and held it in his hand, the lights within twinkling. “The queens that eat through dimensions rarely stay for long, so the infestation does not get the chance to grow in the same way as some of the others.”

“So the one down in Cornwall…”

“She cannot eat through, at least not now, though that may change in the weeks and months to come.”

“But they wouldn’t be eating through to your dimension?” Theo asked.

“No.”

“Where are they going?”

“We do not know. A third world.”

“So there are more worlds than just ours,” Theo said, which made perfect sense to him. How could there only ever be two? He tried to imagine what that world might be like, the people that lived there. Were there monsters there? Were any of them like the munchers? Or would they, like the people of Earth, be shocked when the rips began to open, and the nightmares began to consume them? “We can’t just let them go through...” he said slowly.

“No,” Baku agreed. “Apart from the damage they might do there, removal of the substance that separates our two worlds is bad enough, but to add another world in…”

“It will damage us all?”

“Each time they eat away at the barriers it weakens both worlds, maybe even all of them.”

Abruptly, Theo thought about the events that had led him to this point, one after the other in his mind, and then perhaps for the very first time wondered how Baku had ended up here as well, ingesting substances which altered him, but being more than willing to do so.

“Baku, how many of your people are there?” he asked.

“There used to be millions, Theo,” the monster said sadly. “But since the nightmare and the rages there are far less now.”

“Do you have a government?”

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