Page 54 of Shaped to Be Yours

Glowing eyes in the dark.

In the trees.

Teeth.

Pain.

So much pain.

Because something was pulling at me, yet when I looked at my body, nothing had hold of me other than the light. Thelightwas where those eyes were watching me, yet they glowed even brighter than it did.

Why was I so small? Why was I on bare feet? Everything around me, the woods, the light, the looming figure within it, looked bigger than it should. BecauseIwas small.

I was just a little boy.

“Jason!”

I looked up. The light had split the clearing down the middle, like a lightning bolt midair, but within the bolt’s light was something sinister. It had my father. It was pulling him in. And its light, the light it controlled, was pulling me in too.

“Jason, no!” Dad called when my feet slid forward across the ground. “Stay back!”

Daddy, I wanted to cry, too much in pain to speak.The monster has you. What do I do? How do I save you?

Its hands were like claws made out of tree branches. Vines from it wound around my father like rope, keeping him within the light, pulling him in with it. And above my distraught father’s disappearing face… was the glowing eyes in the dark, which only seemed dark because its black sockets were surrounded by light.

In the trees, fading away.

With skull-like teeth, sharp as fangs.

And antlers spiraling up from its head.

Ithurt. It hurt so much to feel that pull, knowing I had to stay.

Because Daddy told me to.

“Jason! I love you.”

“Jason! Jason, wake up!”

I woke to Ricky shaking me. “I-I… I’m awake,” I croaked, but I was shaking all on my own now, even after Ricky released my shoulders. Because I was crying, my cheeks sticky and wet, and I couldn’t catch my breath. At least only a few scales and tufts of fur had sprouted this time, and I willed them away.

Was that what had happened? Was that what took my dad?

And why had I grown antlers last night like I’d seen on the monster?

What had it done to me?

“Jason. Hey. Look at me. Are you okay?”

Maybe I’d imagined it. We didn’t know what I was yet. Maybe I’d only dreamt about antlers because I had them myself now. Maybe it was all mixing up in my subconscious. But how could I be sure?

“Jason,” Ricky said again, soft but desperate for me to answer.

“I-I, um…” I looked at him, and if ever there was someone I trusted with my whole self, antlers and all, it was Ricky. “I need to tell you about my dreams.”

So I did. About all of them. The ones that had been mostly on repeat, and how, since coming home, they’d started to change.

Ricky had plenty of ideas about what the dreams might mean, but like with everything else right now, it only gave us more questions to answer, and they all tied to the same few that really mattered.

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