The attic smelled like dust and old cardboard, the kind of place sunlight only visited through a slatted window at odd angles. Sapnap had climbed up there to find the missing charger he was certain he’d left behind. Instead, he found a movement — a small, deliberate skitter across a stack of comic books — and the instinct that had kept him alive through awkward childhood encounters with bugs kicked in. He froze. The skitter stopped. Sapnap didn't think, he acted: a glass cup from a nearby shelf pitched down and thunked over the creature like a makeshift bell jar.
For a long, excruciating second, there was silence. Then, impossibly, a voice squeaked from beneath the rim
"P-Please let me out!"
Sapnap's hand hovered above the glass. His heart did that ridiculous flip where it tries to escape through his throat. He had trapped a spider. He had trapped a talking spider. He imagined the headlines. He imagined yelling.
"...No."
The voice went high with outrage. Tiny legs beat a rhythm he could feel more than hear against the cardboard floor. A pair of too-bright eyes peered up at him through the cup — not the cold, insect eyes Sapnap expected, but...they looked pretty like human eyes.
"Why?!"
the voice demanded. Sapnap swallowed. He kept his hand on the rim like an anchor in a storm.
"You scare the shit out of me"
he admitted, and the words landed between them, loud in the dusty light. There was a long, slow pause. Then, with a theatrical huff, the creature folded one delicate foreleg across its chest.
"What...? You're saying that you, the person who trapped me against my own will and made me try to deal with the fact I might die at any moment...is scared of me? of tthe tiny little spider?"
Sapnap snorted despite himself. It was absurd — this tiny creature, this drider with a humanish face and... suprisingly pretty talkative. He had expected animal instinct, maybe even teeth. Instead he was looking at a face that raised an eyebrow.
"..."
Sapnap rubbed the back of his neck.
"…In my defense the way you run freaks me out..."
"....and I'm kinda scared of spiders"
Sapnap mumbled. after a while of silence, the drider said.
"...im Karl by the way"
those words made Sapnap’s palms itch with the need to apologize.
"Next time try saying hello instead of playing toupée with the nearest household object"
Sapnap's fingers loosened. The argument made him laugh. He'd stolen something from himself in that moment — the panicked, reflexive part that flinched first and thought later. He lifted the cup. Karl clicked his mandibles once. He climbed out with careful dignity, legs folding like an exotic umbrella. Up close he looked even stranger: a torso that could have belonged to a small, wiry human, wrists ringed with too many joints, and a soft, rueful smile that almost made Sapnap want to reach out and touch him, purely to disprove the old spider myths in his head.
"So,"
Karl said, arranging himself on the desc he was.
"Now that I am not on the menu, can we talk about why you were rummaging through my attic?"
"...you live here?"
Sapnap asked. Karl shrugged, a motion full of silk and economy.
"Sort of. Borrowed space. I prefer low humidity and a steady supply. And humans always forget better things up here."
Sapnap asked what felt important for him: "Are you—like, dangerous?"
Karl laughed, a sound like somebody flicking a violin string.
"Dangerous? To what? To dust bunnies? To your fragile dignity? No. To people who step on me while distracted? Possibly. To those who underestimate conversation as a form of diplomacy? Absolutely."
They talked in fits and starts — Sapnap awkward and earnest, Karl merciless and sincere. He learned Karl loved the slow patterns of storytelling, the way a good joke has to be threaded like silk across a room. Karl learned Sapnap collected ridiculously lot of superhero comics and had, more importantly, a soft spot for rescuing stray animals, even if his rescue protocols were loud and dramatic. They were talking for a pretty long time. Outside, the rooftop sounded like a city readying for night, and inside, under the slanted sunlight, Sapnap and Karl found the odd, simple truth: fear makes people do funny things, but friendship — however small, however spider-sized — makes better ones.
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Dream groaned. He felt like he got hit by a train, or like his plane crashed … Dream gasped as everything came rushing back to him – the robot fight, the celebrations, the plane crashing. He pushed himself into a sitting position, looking around for his friends, but instead he found something even stranger than three little monsters. He looked to be in some sort of hanger, like where planes would go for storage, except it was filled with over a hundred of that giant robot he fought. There were so many of them, all standing over three hundred feet tall, looming over him and ready to be dispatched at any minute. Dream, despite knowing he stood at a hundred feet tall, felt small in the face of so much strength.
Looking down at himself, Dream found that what he was wearing had changed. Instead of the green military jumpsuit that he had worn for two months, he was wearing a skin-tight black and green jumpsuit. It had lines running up and down the arms and legs, and it glowed dimly in the pitch-black hanger. It looked almost alien in design, like the spandex a fictional hero would wear.
His friends were also nowhere to be found, despite last seeing them in his hands, which scared Dream.
Were they … dead?
The thought made his eyes sting with tears.
While Dream was distracted, something whizzed behind him, and he gasped. He turned around, only to hear the same whoosh of air behind him again. When he turned back, he came face to face with what could only be described as an alien.
The alien – for it was neither man nor woman – was just shorter than the length of Dream’s hand. It looked to be about eight inches tall, but realistically, was probably eight feet. Its skin was the colour of the night sky, with glowing starry freckles to match smattered across their cheeks and forehead. It had hair, too, that matched the same white of Dream’s, and it was long enough that it was in a complicated braid behind their back. Its face would have looked human, if not for the too-much upturned nose, long canines, and four glowing green eyes. It was also dressed in green robes that made room for the four arms it had. It floated on a hovercraft at chest level with Dream, who was still on the floor.
All in all, the alien looked ethereal.
The alien smiled. It looked like the smile of someone who had seen a human smile before, and had practiced said smile in the mirror, but didn’t truly encompass the human emotion it was supposed to convey. “You must be terrified,” a smooth, rich voice came from the alien. Dream was surprised that they spoke in English. “You wake up in a strange place, wearing strange clothes, faced by a strange being, floating on a strange hovering device. It’s all very strange, isn’t it?”
Dream glowered at the alien. “Hardly. It’s not the first time.”
“You must think you’re funny,” the alien said dryly.
“Look, who are you, and what is it that you want from me?” Dream asked.
“You may call me Lord Exdee,” the alien – Exdee, because Dream was not calling it ‘Lord’ – said. “And you have stolen what is rightfully mine!”
“I didn’t steal anything from you,” Dream protested, “I didn’t meet you until today!”
Exdee sighed, like Dream was a particularly dumb individual. “Your enormous, grotesque body,” it said, and Dream frowned. “Did you never wonder how you grew so large? Your body absorbed a considerable amount of quantonium, the most powerful energy source in the entire known universe. Did you really think you could keep it from me forever?”
“That’s what this is all about?” Dream demanded, growing enraged. “You destroyed parts of Florida, you terrified millions of people, you …” Dream’s voice got thick, and he struggled to speak. “… you killed my friends, just to get some stupid energy source?”
“Silence, Earthling!” Exdee snapped. “Your voice is grating on my ears. It’s time to go to the extraction chamber!” Suddenly, a metal platform swooped in below Dream’s feet, and another metal layer floated above him, like magnets that swayed together, and then there was a spark; a giant glowing green force-field was created between the two metal layers, trapping Dream in between them like prison bars. It hummed with power. He reached out to touch the force-field, only to gasp when it gave a powerful shock. Exdee laughed. “This is just a small bit of what one can do with a little bit of quantonium. It’s a shame that you won’t be around to see what the true power of quantonium can do in the hands of someone who knows how to use it.”
“I know how to use it just fine!” Dream spat. He stood and punched the force-field, only to gasp again because it shocked him. He shook out his fist, glaring at the alien.
“Don’t bother,” Exdee said. “That force-field is impenetra –”
Dream punched again, throwing all his strength behind it, and this time, his hand went right through the force-field, hitting Exdee’s hovercraft and flipping it. Exdee barely got a hold of its hovercraft, saving it from falling, and then gaped at Dream. “– what the hell?!”
Dream grinned, all teeth, and used his hands to reach into the force-field to pry it apart. He ignored the continuous shocks it gave him, pushing through, until he swept it all away. Without the force-field, the top metal platform fell, and Dream caught it with both hands. Rage coursing though him, remembering the plane crash and how his friends were all dead, Dream threw the platform at Exdee’s hovercraft. Exdee flew away at high speeds, and a large metal door smoothly closed behind it. The metal platform bounced off the hanger door, leaving a large dent behind. Dream got up and walked over to the hanger door, glaring through the little window provided.
Exdee, out of breath, laughed in relief. Its voice was muted through the window, but no less enraging. “That should stop you from getting to me, you freak –”
Dream punched through the metal hanger door like it was wet paper.
Exdee shrieked and flew away.
“Computer, close door hanger two!” It yelled.
Dream ran after Exdee, determined to catch it and … well, Dream had never thought of himself as a violent person, but he wasn’t sure he would be able to hold himself back from killing Exdee after all he had done. Barely thinking about the morality of wanting to kill an alien terrorist, Dream punched through the next door, much the same as he did with the first. Exdee shrieked again.
“Close door, hangar three! Door, hangar four!” But Dream kept running, punching and crawling through them all. Exdee screamed, “Computer, close all the hangar doors!”
Dream just barely missed catching Exdee as he zoomed into a smaller hallway, much too small for Dream to get through. But he could follow above, where the hallway became a small narrow tube in the floor. He used his enhanced hearing, ears twitching, to tell where Exdee was in the tube. He punched through the metal, just barely missing each time, until finally – finally, near the end, his hands grabbed hold of the flying machine Exdee used, sending him skidding out of the back end of the hallway and into a large room. Dream got up and followed, breathing heavily, watching the little alien running away from him. Dream started running, relishing in the scream from Exdee, up until –
Exdee reached the end of the walkway, pulled a giant lever, and thick glass walls shot up around Dream, surrounding the metal patterns on the floor he was standing on.
“NO!” Dream screamed. Just when he was so close!
He banged on the glass, watching it fracture beneath his fists. He pursed his lips, doing it again. More fractures. In the background, he heard Exdee shriek and yell, “Computer, begin extraction!”
Suddenly, there was a loud few beeps, and then the feeling of a vacuum being held up right against his chest. His hair started to float. A bright light – neon green – flowed from his chest and upward. Dream stumbled. He could physically feel himself getting weaker. More of the light, like hundreds of bioluminescent plankton on the water, floated through the air. Dream’s vision shrunk. He was … he was shrinking, getting weaker and weaker, as the quantonium was stolen from his body. Dream tried to keep hitting the glass – he was so close to breaking it, to getting free – but he only got smaller and smaller, weaker and weaker. His vision went fuzzy until he was left slumped on the ground, too weak to move.
He looked down at himself.
His hair was still white, his ears still felt pointed; he ran his tongue along his canines, and they were still elongated. Even with all the quantonium siphoned from his body, he was still a freak.
Dream heard a sinister chuckle, and he looked up, only to find the alien, Exdee, looming over him. Exdee had looked so small earlier – barely the size of his hand – but now he was at least two feet taller than Dream. It made Dream feel weak, it made him feel scared. All his rage was gone, replaced by fear.
“Finally, I have all the quantonium,” Exdee said gleefully. “And finally, I can rebuild my civilisation on a new planet.” Dream frowned. Rebuild his civilisation? What was that supposed to mean? “Any thoughts on where I should start?” Exdee hummed; it was an unsettling hum, like one a computer made. “Your planet, perhaps? Earth does look ripe for the picking.”
Dream snarled, a growl building low in his chest. He pushed himself to stand. “You keep your hands off my planet – ugh!”
Dream was stopped by a large hand around his neck. One of Exdee’s four arms was outstretched, holding Dream two feet up in the air. Dream’s feet dangled helplessly. Exdee snarled right back at Dream, baring his fangs, which were larger than Dream’s. “If you wanted to stop me, you should have done it when you possessed the quantonium! Now … now you’re nothing.”
“There are innocent people down there who didn’t do anything!” Dream choked out.
“There were innocent people on my home planet before it was destroyed,” Exdee hissed. It threw Dream to the ground, and Dream hit the metal, body slumping. He rubbed at his bruising neck, tears in his eyes.
“I’m sorry your planet was destroyed,” Dream said, “But that’s not a reason to kill billions of innocent people. Please …”
“It’s too late,” Exdee said, voice hollow. “My whole planet was invaded. My family were taken as slaves. My partner was killed. I barely escaped on one of the invader’s ships with the little bit of quantonium that I stole. And with that bit of quantonium, I thought I could defeat the invaders … but it didn’t work. I didn’t have enough. So, I ran away, like a coward, thinking I could come back to save my family. But it’s been years now, and I’m never going to get my family back … and neither are you.”
-
“What … what are we going to do now?” Karl asked meekly.
The three monsters stood beyond the wreckage of their plane. It was completely totalled and on fire. The only reason they had survived was because Dream had grabbed them and taken the brunt of the impact. Then, limp and nearly dead, Dream had been beamed up toward an alien spacecraft, like every cheap, tacky alien movie ever. Now they were stuck in the middle of nowhere, Dream was missing, and they had no idea what to do.
“I … I don’t know,” George said. He mostly felt hollow. Dream was gone – most likely dead – and the dread and grief were creeping up on him eagerly.
“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,” Sapnap said. “We’re not going to let this … this cheap, stupid alien take Dream without a fight. We’re going to get up there, find Dream, and take that alien down!”
“And how do you propose we do that?” George snapped.
Behind them, someone cleared their throat. There was the sound of mini thrusters from a jetpack.
“I think I can help,” Bad said, then he gestured behind himself, where another cargo plane had landed. “I came as soon as I heard the plane went down.”
“Bad!” The monsters yelled.
-
The cargo plane took off with all three monsters and the general. In the cargo hold, Bad turned to the monsters. His brown eyes softened.
“All right, so, I know I haven’t treated you well enough over the years,” Bad began. He wiped a tear from his cheek. “But I need you to know that I … I care about you guys. And we can’t let this alien terrorise Earth and take our Dream. These jetpacks I’ve given you – they have enough juice to get you guys up there, but not enough to make it home. I’ll come get you if I can. If I don’t, it means I’m dead … or late. Don’t jump to the worst conclusion. I’ve been your warden for close to a decade now, and I would do anything to keep you guys alive.”
Bad threw each monsters a jetpack, showing them how to secure it and tie the straps, and how to work the buttons. As he was helping Karl get his jetpack on so that his Jell-O-like body wouldn’t consume it, the pilot yelled from the cockpit.
“General!” He screamed, “it’s targeting us!”
Outside the back of the plane, they could all see where a large ball of energy had been shot out of the UFO. It was homing in on their plane.
“That’s your cue,” Bad told the monsters. “Go, go, go!”
All three monsters jumped out of the cargo hold, using their jetpacks to soar toward the UFO.
“Now,” Bad said, “to deal with the other problem …” He turned toward the large ball of energy – practically a missile – heading toward them. He thought about Patches and her latest transformation. He grinned. “I have a plan.”
-
The three monsters landed in the hangar, which thankfully, had been open and left unguarded from the outside. They were quick to infiltrate the ship, following the path of destruction which could be the work of none other than Dream – after all, the holes punched through the metal? It had his name written all over it, and that elated the monsters, knowing he was still alive. They still had time. Now, they just had to find him …
-
“Slave!” Exdee called. Immediately, another alien hurried into the room. This alien looked a lot less humanoid than Exdee. They had four beetle-like wings, mandibles, and eight spider-like eyes that glowed red. They were dressed in a garb similar to what Dream was put in. The alien bowed to Exdee, and Exdee sneered at them, “Take the prisoner to the incinerator. He’s useless to me now.”
“Hail Lord Exdee!” The alien clicked out, sounding high-pitched. They then jabbed what looked like a laser gun into Dream’s shoulder blades. At the very least, they were shorter than Dream, though he wasn’t sure he would be able to take them in a fight – not with their weapon and sharp claws.
Dream had no choice but to walk forward, following the ‘slave’ further into the ship.
“So,” Dream said, trying to stall, “what’s your name?”
The alien seemed to fumble with the laser gun for a moment, as if not expecting the prisoner to talk or ask them questions. Their face didn’t display emotion very well, as insect-like as it was, but Dream got the feeling they were surprised.
“My – my name?” They asked. “Why do you want to know? So, you can steal it?!”
“How do you steal a name?” Dream asked, genuinely confused.
“I – I don’t know!” The alien sputtered. “But you Earthlings – you’re a sneaky sort, I heard. You can do lots of things. I don’t doubt you can steal names.”
“Well, as a human, we can’t steal names,” Dream said, not disclosing that he wasn’t exactly human anymore. “And I think calling you ‘slave’ is pretty rude. Slavery isn’t okay, like, at all. Here, I’ll go first: my name is Dream. What’s yours?”
The alien made a weird clicking sound. “My name is Jurelle.”
“Jurelle is a pretty name,” Dream offered.
Jurelle went quiet and then made a high-pitched squeal sound. He wasn’t sure, but Dream got the impression that Jurelle was blushing.
“So, why do you do Exdee’s bidding?” Dream asked.
“Lord Exdee,” Jurelle corrected, “is the high and mighty lord of ours. He comes from a higher race of beings than us. He is smarter, stronger, and bigger. He came to our planet and enlightened us about the use of technologies that we couldn’t ever hope to begin to understand or make. He took us in, under his arms, and allows us to work for him for free.” Jurelle sounded like they were reciting a mantra.
“Work without pay?” Dream tsked. “You’re being taken advantage of; I hope you know that.”
“Lord Exdee would never!” Jurelle squeaked out.
“I’m just saying,” Dream said, “slavery isn’t good. He doesn’t even know your name. If I were you, I would be pissed. Do you even get sick days or dental?”
“What is …” Jurelle made another clicking sound with their mandibles. “What is … ‘dental’?”
“You don’t even have dental,” Dream said, shaking his head. “It’s where you get free services to take care of your teeth … or in your case, your mandibles. It’s basic healthcare.”
“No,” Jurelle said slowly. “We don’t get dental.”
They were silent for a second, and then:
“I would like to have dental.”
Dream grinned.
“If you help me,” he started, “I can help you get dental.”
“I …” Jurelle got quiet. “I don’t know …”
They continued to walk, turning down one hallway, only to come face to face with …
The three little monsters!
Dream felt overwhelming happiness, so much so that his eyes started to water. “Karl, George, Sapnap! You’re alive!”
He ran to them, pulling them into one big embrace. It was different than before, when he could hold them all in the palm of his hand, but it was a good different. Dream liked being able to touch and hold them like a normal human. It made him feel soft all over. Unfortunately, their reunion was cut-off. Jurelle hunched over, pointing their laser gun at the three little – or, well, not as little as before – monsters. Dream immediately stood in front of the gun, protecting the monsters.
“No, Jurelle!” He said, “It’s okay! These are my friends! They can help set you free!”
“And get dental?” They clicked.
“And get dental,” Dream confirmed. At the monsters’ confused looks, he sighed. “It’s a long story. We don’t have time for it – we need to escape first!”
-
“The only way to escape and ensure that the alien – Exdee, you said his name was? – will not come back after us and continue to terrorise Earth is if we blow up this ship,” George insisted. He was walking beside Dream, who was, in turn, beside the alien – Jurelle, he thought? George had never seen another person who looked like himself – all insect-like – but he still couldn’t take his eyes off Dream. Dream, who looked the same as always, with his beautiful white hair and bright green eyes, but was now human-sized. If he were being honest, it was throwing George off-kilter.
“So, how are we going to do this?” Sapnap asked, cracking his knuckles.
“We need to find the main power source,” George said. “Whatever it is, it must be similar to nuclear power to charge a ship this big – and nuclear power is very, very dangerous if it explodes. It would be perfect to take down an entire alien ship.”
“You need the main power source?” Jurelle asked. “That’s easy. It’s right there, above the extraction chamber.”
Jurelle pointed with one claw. Down the hallway, it opened into a large room, where the ceiling stretched for hundreds of feet in the air. The walkway dropped down into darkness and in the middle of the ceiling was a huge power source. It looked like a generator of some sort, made up of a bunch of different grey metal tubes and cubes, whirring gently and glowing faintly.
“Well, that was easy,” Karl giggled.
“Come on,” George said, “it’s time to blow some shit up.”
-
They left Jurelle on the ground with the laser gun to guard them.
Using Karl’s abilities, he jumped all the way up to the ceiling, stretching his body thin. Dream, George, and Sapnap grabbed onto his body as he bounced to the ceiling, letting them in through a crack in the generator. Once they were in, they let go of Karl and spread out, looking for main power core. Dream ducked under a metal tube and into a smaller part of the generator, only to come face-to-face with a giant glowing … brain? It had a bunch of wires attached to it, and a keypad in front with odd symbols. The brain, in a computer-generated voice, said: “Warning: intruder!”
“Dream?!” George called. He also ducked into the small space, and his brow furrowed when he saw the brain and keypad. “Huh. I guess we can try and guess the code to get into the computer.”
“You will never figure out my code,” the computer voice said.
“Artificial intelligence!” George said, looking excited. “That’s so cool –”
“George,” Dream reminded, “the power source?”
“Oh, right,” George said sheepishly.
“Your puny Earthling brain cannot possibly work around my security protocols,” the computer said haughtily.
“Okay, new plan,” George said, looking furious, “we fuck shit up until it does damage.”
George cackled maniacally before he reached out and grabbed hold of the wires, yanking at them until they ripped out the brain. The brain pulsed angrily. George started fiddling with the wires until electrical sparks flew everywhere. The computer voice started to glitch and squeal. “Warning: security protocol had been breached. Ship has been set to self-destruct. Total annihilation in t-minus seven minutes.”
Dream and George glanced at each other and grinned.
-
“What?” Exdee growled. “What do you mean the security protocol has been breached?!”
“The prisoner escaped and reunited with his Earthling friends,” the computer said, matter-of-factly. “They ruined my power source and main computer. The ship will explode in t-minus six minutes.”
“Well, launch the robot invasion, then!”
“Invasion is no longer possible. All branches of the ship have been shut down.”
“FUCK!” Exdee roared. “Those petty Earthlings! Fine! Divert the quantonium to the bridge and prepare my escape capsule! Make sure to get all possible quantonium transferred and block the slaves from using my escape route. I don’t want any of them to ruin my plan for the quantonium.”
The quantonium from the extraction chamber started to flow through glass tubes to the statue of Lord Exdee situated in the middle of the room. The statue was twenty feet tall and was the perfect likeness of Exdee, right down to its sneer and long canines. The core of the statue opened up to a pod that would protect Exdee from outer space. One of its four arms was outstretched, holding a large glass ball, which was hollow. On the inside it could be seen that the bright neon quantonium collected into the glass ball, lighting it up with a green glow. Exdee watched this with pursed lips, anger and fear growing in its heart. This would not be the first time it had to run away, but this time, it would have all the power needed to start anew.
-
Below, once Dream, George, Karl, and Sapnap had left the main power source, they found that Jurelle had disappeared. It wasn’t hard to see why; all around them was pandemonium. Slaves – all different alien species, some of them looking like insects, some of them looking like fish – ran in all different directions, screaming and crying. Weapons were forgotten on the ground.
Sapnap laughed. “Look at that! They’re all running! The monsters have won this one!” Dream elbowed Sapnap in the gut, making him choke. “You know, for not being so ginormous anymore, you’re still pretty strong …” He rasped, holding his gut.
“Sapnap!” Dream hissed. “Those are all slaves! It’s not their fault that Exdee enslaved them. And they’re not running from us, they’re running from –”
“Ship will self-destruct in t-minus five minutes,” the computer echoed.
“That,” Dream finished lamely.
His eyes locked on the large hangar door in front of them. It was slowly sliding closed and would eventually trap them in the main room of the ship, left for dead in the explosion.
“Come on!” Dream said, “we need to start running, or else we’re going to be stuck on this ship when it explodes!”
Altogether, the four monsters started running. Fifty feet, thirty feet, ten feet – they got closer and closer as the door continued to close slowly. Dream led the way with his long strides, outpacing the other monsters easily. Only a few feet away, he held out a hand before the door closed, managing to hold it open and get through right as it clicked shut.
Breathing heavily, he whooped cheerfully. “Yes! We made it!” He exclaimed. But all he was met with was silence. Dream turned. Behind him was no one – the other monsters hadn’t gotten to the door in time.
“Guys?!” He called.
Through the metal, his ears twitching, he faintly heard, “Dream, if you can hear us – get out of here while you’ve still got the chance!”
“No!” Dream cried. He tried to pry at the doors with his hands, but they wouldn’t budge. He growled, banging on the metal with his fists. “Ugh! If I was still a giant, I could do this!”
“Dream!” George said, voice urgent. “We meant it! You better be running right now!”
“No!” Dream growled, “I’m not leaving you guys!”
The little monsters obviously couldn’t hear Dream the way that he could hear them, because Sapnap’s next words were: “We were supposed to rendezvous with Bad after saving you. He’s outside the ship, waiting for us. Go while there’s still time!”
“Don’t worry about us, Dream,” George said. It sounded like his forehead was pressed against the metal crack, voice thick with emotion, but quiet, as if he didn’t mean for Dream to hear him. “You finally have a chance to get your old life back.”
“But I don’t want my old life back,” Dream said, voice meek.
“Ship will self-destruct in t-minus four minutes,” the computer echoed.
Dream could feel angry tears welling at the corner of his eyes. He hugged himself tightly, glancing down at his feet, trying to fight off the tears. None of this was fair, he thought. But that’s when he spotted it: a hover craft, just like the one Exdee had used before. It was lying on its side, abandoned by the slaves in the ship in favour of running. It hummed quietly and glowed with a faint green light. Beside it laid an also abandoned laser gun. Dream frowned, ideas starting to form in his head. If he could remember the way back to the extraction chamber, from where Jurelle took him, maybe he could find Exdee …
And he would make Exdee pay.
-
“They think they have stopped me?” Exdee growled. It slammed its fist down on the table. “Well, they have stopped nothing! I will come right back to Earth and destroy it all, just like they destroyed my home planet! Earth will know the wrath of Lord Exdee, just you wait –”
“The inferior carbon-based life form, or Dream, is no longer contained,” the computer interrupted.
“WHAT?” Exdee exclaimed. “Where is he? Send a robot probe! Crush the Earthling!”
“Sending robot probe and – oh, uh-oh,” the computer said, sounding oddly human. “He is coming your way in t-minus thirty seconds –”
The metal door behind Exdee practically melted open from the laser on the laser gun. The laser shot through the giant hole it melted, almost hitting Exdee square in the chest. Exdee barely threw up the table in front of it, the metal taking the shot instead of itself. Exdee gasped, looking over at the Earthling, who was stepping through the new hole in the door, obviously on a warpath.
“Are you crazy?!” Exdee demanded. “You could have killed me with that thing!”
-
“Then we understand each other,” Dream said darkly.
“Quantonium has been successfully diverted to the bridge,” the computer interrupted. Dream watched as the last of the statue and tubes stopped glowing, and all the bright green light being concentrated in the glass ball that the statue of Exdee held. He frowned. If that was the quantonium, then … “The escape capsule is ready for transport.”
“Hah!” Exdee said. It casually strolled over to the twenty-foot-tall statue of its likeness. The chest of the statue opened to reveal a pod, just the perfect size for someone like Exdee.
“Like I told you before,” Exdee said smugly, “you should have defeated me when you had the quantonium. Have fun exploding!”
Before Exdee could step into the pod, though, a laser was blasted directly into the pod, melting half the controls. Dream stepped forward, standing right beneath the outstretched glass ball. He leveled the laser gun at the alien, glaring. “Open the doors and let my friends go, and I’ll let you use whatever is left of your escape pod. If you don’t … well, I’m sure you can figure it out.”
Exdee looked close to having an aneurysm. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t!” It cried. “That’s what happens when you set a ship to self-destruct – everything shuts down! And now, thanks to you, we’re all going to die! And there’s nothing you can do about it, Earthling!” It finished off with a sneer.
Dream’s brain was working on overdrive, trying to think of a way to save his friends, up until he glanced up at the statue and the quantonium held in the glass ball. He smirked. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” he said, aiming his laser gun at the statue. “And the name? It’s Dream, not Earthling.”
And with that, he shot the hand of the statue, causing the large glass ball of quantonium to fall directly on top of him. Everything went black.
-
“Total annihilation in t-minus one minute,” the computer echoed.
Around them, the ship was falling apart. The walkway was slowly crumbling, electrical sparks shot from the walls, and the generator malfunctioned above them. All the slaves had long since run or fallen off the walkway to their deaths, at least sparing them from the explosion. George, Karl, and Sapnap were left alone on the wrong side of the doors, and they were getting prepared to die.
Sapnap turned to George. “It’s been an honour knowing you, Doctor Cockroach.”
George sniffled, wiping tears from his eyes. “I told you not to call me that, you fucking demon.”
“And I’ll see you guys tomorrow, for lunch,” Karl added.
Sapnap gave a tenuous smile. “That’s right, Karl.”
“And there will be candy, cake, and balloons, too,” George added.
“Cake and balloons for lunch?” Karl gasped. “It’s going to be the best day ever! I love you guys!”
Just then, there was a large groan from above, and the three little monsters gasped as they looked up. The generator, which was roughly a hundred feet by two hundred feet in size, had fallen from the ceiling. As it hurtled toward them, they all flinched and ducked their heads, waiting for the inevitable. But it never came. After several seconds of not being crushed, George and Sapnap exchanged glances. They finally looked upward, only to find Dream – back to his giant size, maybe even bigger – holding the generator up above his head, saving them all from being crushed. Dream’s face was scrunched up in intense concentration as he struggled to get hold of his strength.
“Holy shit …” George breathed. Dream had never looked so breathtaking.
Dream grunted as he heaved the generator over his shoulder and over the side of the walkway. He got down on his knees, reaching out to his three little monsters, who were eagerly herded into his hands.
“Come on,” Dream said, breathless. “We need to get out of here.”
“Good enough for me!” Sapnap said, laughing.
“Thank god you came along!” George said.
Dream gathered all three little monsters in his hands, holding them to his chest as he jumped off the walkway. He held out his fist, like Superman, and punched through several metal floors in the ship before they were suddenly outside, falling on the landing pad at the bottom of the ship. Dream took the brunt of the impact, grunting in pain and letting go of the three little monsters to put them down. Below them was more than a thousand-foot drop, too far for Dream to tank safely. If he jumped he wouldn’t survive, but neither would his friends.
“Total annihilation in t-minus thirty seconds,” the computer called out.
“Nowhere to go from here,” Dream gasped. “Where’s Bad? You said Bad would be here!”
“He’s supposed to be here!” Sapnap argued.
“He said the only reason he wouldn’t be here is if he was dead!” George said worriedly.
Just then, there was an explosion from behind them, blowing them all off the landing pad and into a free-fall. All four monsters screamed before, suddenly, they hit something soft and firm. Dream gasped into familiar fur. In front of him, latched onto a furry brown horn, was Bad. Below them was Patches, the cat-caterpillar – or rather, now the butterfly-cat. Sprouted from her back were two newly formed beautiful brown-red-and-white patched wings.
“I said I would be dead … or late!” Bad yelled over the wind.
Behind them, as they flew away on the new butterfly-cat, the alien ship exploded into over a million pieces. Sapnap laughed joyfully. Dream was just happy that everyone he cared about was alive and well. They slowly headed back toward Florida – toward home.
-
As soon as Patches landed safely in his parent’s neighbourhood – maybe accidentally pushing aside a car or two on the way down – Dream was quick to slide off her back. He loved Patches, truly, but he was glad to have his feet back on the ground. Dream then spotted a crowd growing on the road, made up of all his parents’ neighbours and friends. He heard the yelling from his own friends – “He’s back!” and “Dream’s the goat!” and “Did you see what happened?!” – and then he saw his parents.
“Clay!” His father and mother called at the same time.
“Mom! Dad!” Dream exclaimed.
For all he had wished he was a giant back on the alien spaceship to help save his friends – and how he didn’t mind being this size once again – he still wished that sometimes, he could be smaller, if only so he could hug those he cared about. And, just like that, his body seemed to listen to him. With a gasp, Dream was suddenly shrinking down. He was still absurdly tall – maybe ten feet or so – but he was actually able to hug his mother and father like this. His parents’ jaws dropped at his display of power, but they still welcomed his embrace.
“Oh, gods,” his mother said. “I hope you’re okay. That – that alien didn’t lay a hand on you, did they?”
“I’m fine, mom,” Dream said. “In fact, I’m better than fine. I feel great!”
And he wasn’t lying. Ever since regaining the quantonium, his body had healed the bruises around his neck and wiped away any aches and pains he’d had.
But then his ears started to twitch as he heard a familiar voice.
“Excuse me! Hello! Coming through!” From the crowd emerged Quackity, a camera man following intently behind him. Quackity was dressed in his usual work attire, a nice suit jacket, slacks, and leather shoes, along with his hair being gelled back. Quackity turned to Dream with a smile, having to crane his neck to look Dream in the eyes. His eyes widened. “Dream!”
Dream’s eyes locked on his ex-fiancé. “Quackity?”
“Babe,” Quackity started, “I thought long and hard about what happened between us – and I want you to know … I forgive you.”
“You … you forgive me?”
“Of course!” Quackity said. He gave what was probably supposed to be a reassuring smile, but only came off as arrogant. “I decided … it wasn’t your fault you got hit by a meteor and ruined everything. And you know what? I say maybe you didn’t ruin everything – I just got a call from New York. They offered me the network! All I need to do is get an exclusive interview from you.”
“… really?” Dream asked.
“Yeah!” Quackity had stars in his eyes. “I get my dream job, and you get your dream guy. It’s a win-win for Team García!”
“Quackity, that’s … amazing. You know what – is the camera rolling?” Dream tilted his head.
“Absolutely!” Quackity gestured to the camera behind him. “All you need to do is – whoa!”
Dream quickly grew back to his hundred-foot-tall size with a mere thought, his entire body glowing a faint green. He knelt down and picked up Quackity by the back of his suit jacket, causing Quackity to have to hug himself so he wouldn’t slip out of the jacket and fall the twenty feet to the asphalt. Dream held Quackity up in front of his face, and he watched as Quackity gulped thickly. He grinned, all teeth, sharp and white.
“Good,” Dream said, “because I wouldn’t want your fans to miss this. After everything you said and did to me over the years, this is Clay Greene saying: Goodbye Quackity!”
He gently flicked Quackity, but with his increased size and strength, Quackity went flying into the air.
Dream knelt lower and whispered to Karl, “can you catch him?”
Karl nodded and quickly moved over to catch and swallow Quackity from his free-fall, eventually spitting him out. Quackity was left slumped on the asphalt, covered in purple goo and utterly humiliated. Karl stuck his tongue out and said, “bleh. You taste like a selfish jerk.”
Quackity turned toward the camera with a defeated look in his eyes. “Just … turn it off.”
-
As it turned out, some of the slaves got off the alien ship before it exploded by using the few free escape pods. Hundreds of aliens – from insect-like looking humanoids to lizard-looking aliens – came off the escape pods, seeking asylum on Earth. The American government had to deal with these asylum seekers, but it was by the persuasion of Bad that they were treated as people and not slaves. By hosting them at Area Fifty-Something for a few months, they were able to integrate the aliens into human society by giving them jobs, homes, and yes – with Jurelle as their spokesperson, they all got dental insurance, as well. And eventually, the humans in Florida got used to their new monster and alien residents.
-
“Monsters, I’m so proud of you!” Bad said, back at Area Fifty-Something. The monsters were gathered in the commons, and Bad was back in his jetpack. Patches laid on the floor, flapping her wings and swishing her tail, enjoying pets from Dream, who currently stood at three hundred feet tall for an easier time petting the new butterfly-cat. “You saved not just Florida, not just America, not just hundreds of alien slaves, but the world as a whole! While the property damage costs from your fight and the explosion may be high, my pride for you guys is even higher! But, and I hate to say this, the world needs you again.”
“What is it, Bad?” Dream asked. He turned and pulled his knees up to his chest, hugging them. Patches meowed loudly when he stopped petting her.
“It seems a snail fell into a French nuclear reactor, turning into a giant monster in the process. As we speak, it is slowly making its way to Paris.”
“Well,” Dream said, looking over at the three little monsters. He grinned and said in jest, “I’ve always wanted to go to Paris.” By now, they all knew his failed engagement and ruined honeymoon story. Sapnap snorted, George smiled, and Karl giggled.
Sapnap looked over at Patches. “I’m in if Patches is in.”
Patches meowed in agreement.
“I’m in!” Karl said.
“Count me in, too! I’ll go anywhere Dream goes!” George said, then blushed, seeming to realise what he just said out loud.
“Well then,” Bad said, “it’s time to save the world again!”
Far, far away from Earth – though, maybe a little closer this time – a spaceship floated through the vast galaxy. Inside that spaceship, Exdee stood overlooking a giant screen, which showed real-time footage from its robot probe on Earth. For a while, Exdee saw nothing but the stupid buildings and technology that the Earthlings had invented. The robot even crushed a few Earthlings, nothing sad there. But then he showed up. The freakishly large Earthling, the one that stole his quantonium. Exdee got increasingly angrier and angrier the longer he watched the footage, seeing that – that Earth freak beat his robot! Its ethereally beautiful face became marred with a sneer, long canines bared.
Above it, its computer’s voice echoed. “Retrieval has failed,” the computer said. Exdee slammed its fists down on the table in front of it, denting the metal. “Don’t get upset. It happens to everyone.”
“That lower life form thinks he can steal my quantonium?” Exdee demanded. “Send another probe!”
“Quantonium cannot be retried via robot anymore,” the computer said matter-of-factly, ignoring the building rage on Exdee’s face. “The carbon-based life-form, locally known as ‘Dream,’ is now too strongly bonded with the quantonium for that to work.”
“Oh,” Exdee said, taking this personally, “he thinks because he’s all big and strong, and he can destroy my robot probe, that he’s going to send me running and hiding?” Exdee snarled, eyes flashing dangerously. It balled its four fists in rage and fear. “My days of running and hiding are over! Computer, set a course to Earth. I will retrieve the quantonium myself, even if I need to rip it out of the Earthling’s body one cell at a time.”
-
Not long after the robot’s demise, the military came back to pick the monsters up. Patches was acting a little strange, and her fur looked a little bleak, but she was still easily lured away from the damaged bridge with a large ball and string. The other four monsters left in another plane. Back in the cramped cargo plane, sitting hunched over, and thankfully only a hundred feet tall again, Dream was still riding the high of defeating the alien robot. Beside him sat Karl and Sapnap, listening to him ramble. George was still sitting on Dream’s shoulder, and Dream didn’t even care – in fact, he found it comforting, the way George was cuddled up to his neck, gripping the collar of his jumpsuit with his little claws.
“Two months ago, if you had asked me to defeat a giant alien robot, I’d have told you to go fuck yourself,” Dream said, excitedly. He flapped his hands. “But I did it! Me! I’m still shaking. Like, did you see what I did out there? I grew to over four hundred feet tall!”
“You were heroic, one could say,” George joked, poking at Dream’s neck. Dream blushed. He lifted his head to see George in his peripheral vision, who was staring up at him with awe. “I especially loved how you saved those people on the bridge; it was a nice touch.”
“But did you see how strong he was? He completely ripped the arm off a three-hundred-foot-tall robot!” Sapnap added. “Now that was badass!”
“I liked the part where he grew,” Karl said. “The green lights were pretty.”
“Yeah, that was so cool, too!” Sapnap said. “I just wish … I don’t know? That I’d been able to do more? My fire didn’t even dent the robot.” He crossed his arms over his chest and pouted.
“Oh, poor Sappy,” George teased, “couldn’t compete with the big, strong giant? No wonder you’re depressed.”
“Hey, I’m not depressed!” Sapnap snapped, “I’m just … tired.”
“Why are you tired? You didn’t do anything?” Karl said.
Sapnap growled.
“Okay! Let’s stop there!” Dream said, holding out a hand and stopping Sapnap from jumping Karl. His fingers wrapped around the tiny figure completely, and Dream winced, but Sapnap didn’t seem to care. He was more focused on getting to Karl, hopelessly fighting against Dream’s hand. Dream was just glad he didn’t light himself on fire while he was holding him. “Let’s just say everyone was a little rusty at first. I mean, I definitely didn’t start out that heroically … besides, we’ll all be back to our old selves soon enough, and Sapnap can go back to fighting George and being badass.”
“What … does that mean?” Karl asked sadly. “… ‘back to our old selves’?”
“What Karl is trying to say,” George said carefully, “is that we like the new Dream. I don’t – I mean, we don’t – want you to … leave us.”
“Well, that’s sweet,” Dream said, “but I have a normal life waiting for me, you know?”
“So, uh, tell me, exactly, how this ‘normal life’ thing works with you being a giant?” Sapnap asked, gesturing to Dream’s … everything.
“Well, you saw what I did out there, right?” Dream said. “I can … what did George call it? Size-shift? I went from a hundred feet to fifty feet, to four hundred feet tall in seconds. I must be able to shrink down even more, right? There’s something going on with the extraterrestrial energy I absorbed – there must be some way to control it. Besides, Quackity won’t rest until we figure out how to work it. We’re a team, after all … not that we aren’t, though,” Dream said sheepishly, gesturing to the three little monsters. “But I miss my old life, you know? I want to see my friends and family and fiancé again.”
“Maybe, then, we could meet them?” George asked tentatively.
“Really?” Dream said. “You guys would want to meet Quackity?”
“Oh, I want to meet him, alright,” Sapnap muttered, grinding his fist into his palm. Dream figured he wasn’t supposed to hear that, so he ignored it until: “Sure. But we would also want to meet your family. That’d be okay, right?”
“Of course!” Dream said. “My parents loved my old friends, and they’ll love you, too.”
-
Dream was able to feel the plane touching down. He was literally shaking with excitement.
“First stop, Salt Springs!” Bad said cheerfully. He leaned over the railing of the platform in the cargo plane, looking down on the monsters with a smile. “Dream, I called your family to let them know you were coming home. I also called the Salt Springs Police Department and told them not to shoot at you. You guys have until midnight, where we’ll meet back up to transport you guys back to base.”
Dream looked up at Bad from where he was hunched over in the cargo hold. The man wasn’t wearing his typical jetpack right now, instead he was just wearing his casual military uniform, his long hair was tied up in a bun, and a few loose strands framed his face. Now, Dream wasn’t stupid enough to call Bad a friend – he was still an infamous military general, and the one in charge of keeping the monsters locked up. But Dream also knew enough to know that Bad didn’t need to give them visitation times in the real world; he didn’t need to give them their freedom back. He could have forced the monsters to face off against the giant alien robot for no reward. Except he didn’t. Instead, he purposefully made a deal with the president so that his monsters could have more freedom, and that made all the difference.
“Thanks, Bad,” Dream smiled. He scooted out of the cargo hold after the ramp lowered, following Karl and Sapnap. George made a strange clicking sound and jumped from Dream’s shoulder to catch up with the other two, gliding with his wings.
After Dream got on the road, he reached up and stretched, feeling immediate relief. He looked around the area, quickly recognising the houses and road signs. The houses were pristine, the white picket fences were straight, and cars were parked out in front of every house. Everything was tinier than Dream remembered, and it was a little hard to get his bearings at first due to the new perspective he had (so high up in the air), but just being home made him feel warm inside. It helped that it was late, and the neighbourhood was empty of driving cars or people loitering, so Dream was able to step out onto the road and begin walking without fear of stepping on anyone.
“Whoa, this is … really nice,” George muttered. If Dream didn’t know better, he would guess that George looked a little self-conscious. “I didn’t know you came from such a … normal neighbourhood.”
“I did tell you,” Dream said, “that I had a normal life waiting for me. I wasn’t kidding. Now, come on. My parents’ house is this way.”
As they walked, Dream tried to coach the three little monsters on interacting with people in the outside world. After all, they had all been locked up for over a decade and hadn’t had normal interactions with others in a long, long time. Or for people like Karl, who had been locked up almost immediately and never had contact with the outside world, never.
“Okay, so, just remember, my family aren’t used to seeing anything … out of the ordinary, like … you,” Dream said, wincing, gesturing to George and his bug-like features, “or you …” He gestured to Sapnap and his demon characteristics, “or … you,” Dream pointed to Karl and his goopy body, “or even … me, now, I guess.” Dream sighed, trying to ignore how much of a freak he was now. “So just, you know, be cool. Don’t freak them out. Don’t break anything. Don’t set anything on fire. Don’t eat anything unless offered.” Dream gave a hard stare at each little monster in turn.
Karl pouted. “But what if I want to eat their car?”
“Karl, no!” Dream scolded.
Before he could say anything else, he was interrupted.
“Clay?”
Dream froze. He hadn’t heard that voice for two months, and he turned to find his mother standing on the front porch of her house. Dream hadn’t even realised how close they were to his parents’ house. His mother looked almost the same as she did on his wedding; her copper hair, which Dream had inherited, was curly and pulled up in a high bun. Her brown eyes were wide with surprise. But now he could see the large bags under her eyes, and how ragged she looked. Beside her, his father stepped out from inside the house, green eyes also wide. To the side of them were all Dream’s friends: Punz, Sam, and Sylvee. Seeing all his friends and family made Dream’s eyes begin to sting with tears. He was very careful as he kneeled on the front lawn, bending down to tentatively reach out to his parents. He winced when he saw just how large his hand was in comparison; it could curl completely around his mother. But instead of being cowed by his size, or thinking him a freak, his friends and family eagerly stepped forward to be within his hands for a hug – or rather, a mockery of a hug.
“Mom? Dad?” He said, “Punz, Sam, Sylvee?”
“It’s so good to see you again!” John, Dream’s father, said.
Helen, Dream’s mother, stepped back to get a better look at her child. Dream knew he looked very different from the last time she saw him, and he looked away, insecure. When his mother saw the rough state her son was in, though, she placed her hand over her mouth in emotion. “Oh dear … did they … experiment on you?”
“No, mom, I’m fine,” Dream said, giving a small smile. “I just got done fighting a giant alien robot – I’m allowed to look a little rough.” He laughed nervously when his mother gasped.
“They made you fight that thing?” Helen demanded. “We saw it on the news, and we were all so scared. We were lucky it was on Anastasia Island and not closer to home.”
“But I bet Dream gave it a good ass whooping,” Sam joked.
“Right?” Punz added. He looked toward Dream and whistled lowly. “I mean, at your size now, you must be insanely strong. No need to go to the gym at all.”
“His outfit could use a little fixing, though,” Sylvee commented. “But other than that, I think the white hair is cute. At least you didn’t lose any of your curl – oh. Who are they?” Sylvee pointed behind Dream, toward the three little monsters. Suddenly, his friends and family looked apprehensive. Dream pulled his hands away to gesture to his other, monster friends.
“It’s okay, they’re with me. These are my new friends – George, Karl, and Sapnap. The only one missing is Patches, but she’s too big to bring to the neighbourhood.” Dream pointed to each one in turn. They all smiled nervously and waved. Karl giggled. Dream looked back to his friends and family, finding someone was missing. “But … where’s Quackity?”
“He’s at work, sweetie,” Helen said, frowning. Dream could already guess what her opinion on that was.
“You know how he is about his career,” John shrugged.
“We all know,” Sam mumbled, at the same time George muttered: “Oh, of course.”
Dream watched as his old friends and his new friends stopped, turned to look at each other, and a mutual understanding flowed between them. Dream almost groaned. He did not need his friends and family ganging up on Quackity.
“Well,” Dream said, “we can’t celebrate without him. I’ll go get him if I have to.”
He stood up, being careful to put room between himself and his friends and family, so that he wouldn’t crush them. He was about to start walking when his mother called, “Clay, wait! What do I do with your friends while you’re gone?”
“Just put out some snacks! They’ll eat literally anything!” Dream said, waving flippantly. And then he was on his way to the St. Augustine’s weather and news station.
-
Once George was sure Dream was out of earshot, he turned to Dream’s friends and family. For a moment, he felt a yearning; he yearned for the normalcy that they had, the way they effortlessly accepted Dream and his giant-ness, and the way Dream wanted them around rather than George, Karl, and Sapnap. But that moment passed quickly, as he realised there was no use in wanting for things that weren’t possible. Instead, he hesitantly stepped forward, pushing his hair and antenna back in a nervous tic.
“So, we all agree that Quackity isn’t the … best for Dream?” George asked, trying his best to keep civil.
Sam – or who he assumed was Sam – snorted. The man had a kind face, short beard, and blond hair. He was also tall, probably six feet or a little taller. “He’s an asshole,” Sam said bluntly. “But I’m already assuming that Dream has waxed poetic about him to you guys?”
“Yeah, what else would they do, all locked up?” The shorter man, also one of Dream’s friends, asked.
“Punz!” The girl – Sylvee? – hissed.
“Nah, it’s good,” Sapnap said, shrugging. “I spend, like, ninety percent of my time watching anime or playing video games. There’s not much to do at Area Fifty-Something. Dream arriving was probably the most exciting thing to happen to us over the past few years.”
“You play games? Which games do you play?” Punz asked excitedly.
While Punz and Sapnap got into a passionate conversation about the best video games to play, which Sam and Sylvee joined – apparently George was surrounded by sweaty gamers – George turned to Dream’s parents, who were watching the exchange between monsters and Dream’s friends with fond looks. George had once been human before, and even though he wasn’t dating Dream, he still felt the nervous jitters one got before meeting a partner’s parents.
“I’m George,” he said, offering his hand, careful to angle his little claws away from them. “And Dream is my friend. He’s told us a lot about you guys. He was so excited to see you again.”
“Well,” Helen said, taking George’s offered hand, “it’s nice to have someone looking out for Clay.”
-
Quackity laughed at the joke his fellow new anchor cracked about the weather. “That’s hilarious, Charlie.” He turned back to the camera. “You know, that’s exactly the kind of down-home country humour I’m going to miss when I’m in Tampa.” He straightened his tie and smiled. “But unfortunately, this is Alexis García, signing off for the very last time. Good night, St. Augustine!”
Quackity held still as he kept smiling into the camera, until the director signaled to him.
“And … cut!” The director called.
There was a smattering of clapping throughout the studio, and Quackity stepped off his box and turned to the make-up artist who approached him to touch-up his looks. The woman was about Quackity’s height, if not a little shorter. She had long blonde hair and bright blue eyes. Her name was Alyssa, and she was beautiful. Though she had a disinterested look on her face as she brought a make-up brush to his cheek, Quackity knew she was only playing hard to get. He grinned at her.
“Did you like that sign off?” He asked, “I just made it up on the fly –”
“Uh, Alexis?” An intern tapped Quackity on the shoulder. Quackity turned, only to find the intern towered over him. The boy looked way too young to be working in a news station, and he had a nervous air about him.
Quackity gave a sharp glare to the intern interrupting his conversation. “What?”
“You – you have a visitor on the roof. Um, standing by the roof … building? Uh – actually, it would just be easier to show you.”
Quackity looked at the intern in confusion. “Who would want to meet me on the roof?”
But nonetheless, he followed the intern to the stairs that led to the roof, and he gave the intern a confused look when the kid’s hands shook as they opened the access door. His confusion only grew when the intern squeaked out a “good luck!” before practically running away. But then he turned around, saw what stood next to the building, and his confusion was shocked away because there, standing at almost a hundred feet tall, was Dream.
His hair was a little different, his eyes looked too bright, and he was wearing a military green jumpsuit, but it was definitely his ex-fiancé, Dream.
Dream, who had disappeared two months ago, and never reappeared or reached out.
Dream, who was a giant now, apparently.
-
Dream felt happy butterflies in his stomach when he saw Quackity. It had been difficult to get a hold of someone who could reach out to Quackity, but after talking to the manager of the news station building – who had come out to see what the ruckus was about, seeing as how half of his employees were staring, gaping at the scene outside their windows – he was able to wait outside the building while someone grabbed his fiancé and brought him to the roof. The building only came up to his waist, so he carefully got down on his knees, so that he could see Quackity face-to-face.
It took a while, but finally, Dream saw the access door open to the roof, and Quackity stepped out. He looked handsome, as always. Unlike his mother, who looked like she hadn’t gotten any sleep the past month, Quackity looked well put together. His suit was impeccable, his hair was gelled back, and his brown eyes shone in the moonlight.
Dream winced. He knew what he looked like, especially after his fight with the robot. But he knew Quackity could look past that … hoped he could look past that. After all, he was going to figure out a way to get back to normal. Soon, he would be back to his normal life, with normal friends, and a normal size. Though, he would miss George, Karl, Patches, and Sapnap – but … normal was better. Right?
“Yeah,” Dream agreed with Quackity, “I am … big. But I’m still me. I’m still the same guy you fell in love with.”
“Except you did just destroy the Bridge of Lions,” Quackity said, throwing his hands out helplessly. His eyes were wide, his breathing unsteady. He took a couple steps back from the edge of the building, away from Dream, and Dream’s heart sunk.
“Well, but that was the only way I was going to stop that giant robot,” Dream said meekly, remembering how much property damage he had caused because of his size alone. Then he remembered how the three little monsters had cheered him on and praised him for defeating the alien robot. He smiled softly at the memory, suddenly proud. “I mean, did you ever think I could do something like that?”
“No,” Quackity said, deadpan, “I didn’t. I can say it never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, occurred to me.”
Quackity gave Dream a ‘what the fuck’ look and Dream grimaced.
“Look, I know this is a little weird,” Dream said. Then looked down at himself, kneeling, just so he could be eye-to-eye with a building. He laughed self depreciatingly. “Okay, it’s a lot weird. But we’ll figure it out! I’m not stuck like … this.” Dream gestured to his body. “I can size-shift. If I can figure out how to do it on command, I can be … normal again. And I know that, together, we can find a way to get me back to normal.”
“Dream,” Quackity said, like he was talking to a child, “Try and look at this from my perspective. I have an audience that depends on me for news, weather, sports, and heart-warming fluff pieces. So … you expect me to put all that on hold while you try to undo this thing that happened to you? That I had absolutely nothing to do with?”
“Yes,” Dream said, frowning. Quackity sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “That’s exactly what I expect. What – what about the life we always talked about? Don’t you still want that?”
“Of course!” Quackity reassured. But then he pulled the rug out from beneath Dream’s feet: “I just … don’t see how I can have that with you.”
Quackity winced.
“Quackity,” Dream said, voice thick. “Please, don’t do this.”
“You have to face the facts, Dream,” Quackity said seriously. “Please don’t crush me for saying this, but I’m not looking to get married and spend the rest of my life in someone else’s shadow. And … you’re casting a pretty big shadow. I’m sorry, but it’s over.” Quackity walked back to the access door and opened it before turning back to Dream. “Good luck figuring out … all of that.”
-
Dream didn’t want to go back to his parents’ house and embarrass himself in front of everyone by admitting he was dumped by his fiancé. It was a good thing, then, that by the time he got back, the cargo plane was already back and ready to go. Dream wiped away his tears so that no one saw, hugged his parents and friends one last time – or what passed for a hug at his freakish height – and then climbed into the plane to go … home? What else was he supposed to call the military base that had held him prisoner for two months and would now probably hold him forever.
He wasn’t really in the mood to talk, but it seemed like the three little monsters were.
“Wow! Your friends and parents are a lot nicer than Quack …” Sapnap glanced over at George, who was giving Sapnap a sharp glare. “I mean, your friends and parents were really nice. Punz, Sam, and Sylvee were great to talk to about video games. They didn’t even treat us like monsters – they treated us like people.”
“Right,” Dream said, voice hollow, “Monsters.”
“Anyway, how was Quackity?” George asked.
For a few moments, Dream was silent. His heart still felt broken. But then he looked at the three little monsters, who had stuck with him throughout the two months of imprisonment – who hadn’t treated him any differently for being a freak – and rage filled him.
“Quackity is a selfish jerk,” he spat.
“No!” Karl gasped.
“Yes!” Dream said, even angrier. “All that talk about ‘us’ – ‘I’m so proud of us,’ and ‘us just got a job in Tampa’ – there is no ‘us’! There was only Quackity. Why did I need to get hit by a meteor and turn into a freak to see that? I was such an idiot!” Dream stopped when he felt tears starting down his cheeks, and he hunched over more, hiding his face in his hands.
He felt a small touch on his ankle. When he looked down, George was staring at him with an intensity that was frightening. “You are not a freak,” George said firmly.
“You guys said it yourselves – we’re all monsters,” Dream said. “I’m a monster. I was stupid to ever think I could go back to a normal life.”
“Maybe you can’t go back go a normal life, but … is that really that bad?” Sapnap said hesitantly. “I mean, we’ve all established that Quackity is an asshole. But your parents, your other friends – they’re awesome. They welcome you just how you are. And you have us, too.”
“That’s right,” George said. “You have us. You have … you have a new life. Look at what you’ve done so far: you saved Florida and probably the entirety of America from a giant alien robot!”
Dream wiped at his tears and sniffled.
“You know what … you’re right,” he said. “Why did I ever think life with Quackity would be so great, anyway? I mean, meeting you guys? Amazing! George, you can crawl up walls and build a supercomputer out of a pizza box, a couple of stray wires, and radio antenna. And Sapnap – you’re from a completely different universe, can breathe fire, and you’re literally so badass!” Sapnap puffed his chest out in pride. Dream turned to Karl. “And Karl, you … you’re near indestructible. I mean, who else could be completely ripped in half and smushed like a pancake and end up without a single scratch?”
“Sapnap?” Karl guessed.
“No, you!” Dream said, laughing.
“Amazing!” Karl exclaimed.
“Don’t short-change yourself, either,” George said.
“Oh, I’m not going to second-guess myself ever again!” Dream said, riled up now. “I mean, look what I’ve done without Quackity. Fighting an alien robot? That was me, not him. And that was amazing!”
The three little monsters all agreed and cheered.
Dream opened his mouth to thank the others, when suddenly, the cargo plane shuddered violently. Dream hit his head on the ceiling and hissed. That was going to leave a dent in the metal. The three little monsters all yelled-out and fell to the floor. The intercom crackled and the pilot’s voice came through: “We’re, uh, experiencing some moderate –” the plane shook violently again, dropping through the air “– okay, we’re experiencing severe turbulence. Weather’s all clear, but it looks like we have interference from another aircraft, so I’m going to perform an emergency landing.”
“What would another aircraft –” Dream didn’t get to finish his sentence because he experienced the sudden feeling of his stomach dropping, and despite there being no windows in the cargo plane to see outside, he knew what that meant. He lunged forward to grab his friends, scooping them up in his giant hands, holding them to his chest in the hopes that he could keep them safe.
Then there was a crash, the sound of metal ripping, a bright light, and everything went dark.
The new jumpsuit that the prison – military facility, Dream mentally corrected himself – had made him was odd. Well, from what Dream could see through his tears, it was odd. It was mostly a military green, except for the black patches on the shoulders, elbows, knees, and on the breast and leg pockets. What Dream would put in said pockets, with apparently being a giant now (how big even was he? With Bad looking to be barely four inches tall), he didn’t know. The thing would make him look like a janitor.
When he picked up the jumpsuit, unfurling the folded clothing and seeing the pant legs fall all the way to the floor, underneath he found a pair of black sneakers. Dream almost snorted, eyes still stinging, as he thought about how normal a pair of sneakers were in all this chaotic mess.
He didn’t want to be wearing a military uniform, or jumpsuit, or whatever it was officially called – he wanted to be wearing his pyjamas, nesting in his bed while he waited for Quackity to come home from work, while he lazily scrolled through his phone. He wanted to be on his honeymoon, enjoying Paris and appreciating the Eiffel Tower at night. He missed his friends and family, and –
And as he took off his wedding suit and shoes, it made his chest echo in hurt. He remembered the dress he was going to wear, instead of the suit, and his tears almost doubled.
He’d just wanted to feel pretty and special on his wedding day, and now …
Now he’s a freak, and that’s the last time he would ever see his friends and family ever again.
-
They tried to take his wedding suit and shoes away – to “repurpose the materials” they said. When Dream had grown from the power of the meteor, his clothes had (for some reason) grown with him. But Dream wouldn’t let those tiny bastards take the last thing he had of the outside world. He punched holes through three solid metal walls, decimated another helicopter, and resisted the two tranquilisers they shot into his thigh just so that he could keep his hands on his clothes.
By the time Bad came around and saw what was happening, his face got so red that it almost looked like a tomato, and he demanded that the military personnel back off and leave Dream be.
Apparently, even though Bad was the one keeping Dream locked up, he still cared about his “monsters.”
Dream hated that he had to feel grateful for being allowed to keep the literal clothes off his back.
-
As it turns out, the brown mush that was spit out onto the table previously was supposed to be Dream’s breakfast. It looked less like oatmeal and more like vomit, but Bad reassured Dream that it was a mix of all the proteins and vitamins that Dream’s body would need to stay healthy. Bad explained to Dream that after being tranquilised at the wedding, the doctors and scientists on site at the military facility had had a set amount of time to run tests on Dream’s body (invasive, much?) and that they discovered that Dream was not just a human grown to giant size – he was something inhuman now.
Dream’s skin was near impenetrable now, his teeth had sharpened, he’d grown pointed canines, his ears were pointed now, his hair had lost all its melanin, his senses were sharpened, and he’d gained superhuman levels of strength. His body worked differently, as well, and his diet needed to consist of a lot more protein and fats than before.
Proteins and fats that came in the form of brown mush, it seemed.
When Dream asked Bad if they could try to make the food at least a little appetising, Bad promised that he would try … but in the meantime, Dream was stuck either starving or eating what was provided.
So, after two days of a food strike, and absolutely starving for it, Dream finally took a seat at the metal table in what he learned was the common rooms, picked up the oddly bent spoon (it was still misshapen from when he tried to kill George with it), and dug into the mush. It didn’t taste bad, per say, but it didn’t taste good, either. It was very bland, like the slightest taste of whole wheat bread, unseasoned chicken, and mashed potatoes all mixed together. Dream was able to stomach it, at the very least, which managed to calm his raging hunger.
And then heard them, his ears twitching toward the noise.
“Ah, looks like the giant returns.”
“His name is Dream, Sapnap. How would you like it if I called you Demon?”
“Well, I already call you Dr. Cockroach, so –”
“That’s it, you little! –”
Dream turned in his seat, the metal uncomfortable on his butt. He spotted the three little monsters – er, his fellow prisoners – standing on the far side of the room. The metal plating that made up the door to their rooms was slid slightly open, allowing for the monsters to walk out from underneath it and come into the giant commons room (seriously, the room was giant – even to Dream). Even with the distance between them, Dream’s vision was near perfect now, and he can spot that George is wearing a turtleneck, slacks, and a white lab coat overtop it. There are large slits cut out from the back of his shirt and coat to make room for his wings. Sapnap, on the other hand, is wearing a baggy grey sweater with what looks like an anime character on it, basketball shorts, and his hair is a complete mess. Karl, the slime-guy, wore … nothing. Purple and gooey, he looked flat like a Ken doll and walked like one of those goofy video-game characters.
Dream watched as George lunged at Sapnap, little prickly claws at the ready. Sapnap yelped and, seeming to forget he could literally create and control fire – and that he also had claws (bigger than George’s, to boot) – he tried to dodge and run.
Karl took several large steps away from his two friends and then raised a fist, yelling out in encouragement. “Fight! Fight! Fight! My money’s on George!”
George managed to catch his claws on Sapnap’s sweater, shredding the left sleeve, and making Sapnap cry-out, “hey! That took a whole month of good behaviour to get!”
Sapnap then turned and ran right toward Dream. Whereas the room would only take a few long strides for Dream to cross, it took quite a while for George and Sapnap to play Tom and Jerry and cross the room to Dream’s table. Dream gasped and lifted his feet when Sapnap tried to dodge and hide behind one of his sneakers. With his bouncing leg and inability to sit still due to his ADHD, Dream feared he would step on Sapnap. But to Dream’s dismay, Sapnap jumped and grabbed onto one of the loose laces, climbing like his life depended on it. And to his credit, he made it to the top of the shoe, all three to four inches of him (and actually, now that Dream thought about it, he was probably closer to between five to six feet tall, which would make Dream how tall? Dream didn’t want to think about it, it almost made him dizzy).
George wasn’t far behind, but when he jumped, he just fell short of reaching the laces. Sapnap, on his hands and knees on top of Dream’s shoe, leant over the side to stick out his tongue at his friend. Just when George looked ready to use his wings and fly up to catch Sapnap, Dream intervened.
“What – what are you doing?” Dream demanded, feeling a little jittery from being so close to all three monsters. He was very careful when he put his feet down, trying to avoid stepping on George or Karl (though he’s not sure Karl is not indestructible, with how he split in half on his first day – or even George, who he whacked with a giant metal spoon … several times). But apparently not careful enough, because Sapnap yelled out and lost his balance as soon as Dream’s shoe hit the floor, and he rolled off the shoe and fell to the floor with a groan.
“Oh my god, are you okay?” Dream felt big and awkward as he stared down at Sapnap, who was tiny and groaning on the floor.
“I’m dying …” Sapnap groaned.
“No, you’re not, Stinknap,” George snapped. He marched over to his body and kicked it.
Sapnap yelped and jerked into an upright sitting position. He growled and held out his left hand, lighting it on fire and swiping at George with it. George shrieked and backed off, hiding behind Dream’s shoe like Sapnap tried to earlier. Dream stared down at them, feeling awkward and lost. Did the two of them fight like this all the time? He half expected Bad to appear over his shoulder, flying with his tiny jetpack, to tell them to knock it off.
“Uh …” Dream said, hesitantly. “What’s going on?”
All three monsters stopped and stared up at Dream, finally seeming to realise that he was an actual person and not a wall or object to hide behind. George gave a nervous laugh, rubbed his hands together like a fly, then pushed his hair back, along with his antenna. He stepped out from behind Dream’s shoe, coming in line beside Sapnap – who quickly stood up and patted down his hoodie – and Karl, who giggled at the other two. George craned his head back to look Dream in the eyes.
“Uh, sorry about that!” George said loudly, for seemingly no reason at all. Dream winced at the volume level, his new enhanced hearing making it grate on his ears. George cupped his hands around his mouth, yelling again. “We didn’t mean to use you as a playground!”
“I can hear you just fine,” Dream mumbled, ears twitching. “You don’t need to yell.”
George blinked, confused. “You can – you can hear us when we speak normally?”
“I heard you earlier,” Dream said. “You were talking about what to call me. You said I was ‘the giant.’ And then, when you and Sapnap started to fight, Karl said he would bet money on George.”
Both George and Sapnap seemed to flush with embarrassment, though Karl stayed the same purple as ever. He didn’t appear to be ashamed and in fact he giggled again. “I still think George would have won, had you not gotten in between them. Someone should owe me money.”
“Karl!” Sapnap cried. “Why do you always bet against me?”
“Because I’m better than you,” George said, almost automatically.
“Do you two always fight like this?” Dream asked, propping his chin up on his hand, leaning over the table to watch the three little monsters. “I thought, for sure, with you three stuck in here together, you’d be best friends. But so far, you’ve tried to kill each other multiple times, and always argue.”
“Why would I want to be friends with Stinknap?” George demanded.
“Why would I want to be friends with a know-it-all?” Sapnap spat.
“What’s a friend?” Karl said dumbly.
Dream sighed. “Okay … whatever floats your boat. But I’m not looking for any fights, nor do I want to get between your fights. I’m just focused on getting out of here … somehow.”
Sapnap snorted, then wheezed when George elbowed him sharply.
“What?” Sapnap said, “he said he wanted to leave! That’s the funniest thing he could have possibly said.”
Dream, absentmindedly, twisted his foot, causing the three monsters to take several steps back, wary of the giant. Dream frowned. “Why’s that so funny, then?” He asked.
Sapnap rolled his eyes. “Have you looked at yourself lately? You’re, like, a hundred feet tall. I know Bad said that you used to be human, but … well, it’s pretty hard to see now. There’s no way you could ever go back to a normal human life. You’re like us, now. You’re a monster.”
Dream felt his eyes start to sting.
“Sapnap!” George hissed. “You didn’t have to say it like that –”
“No,” Dream said. He had to clear his throat because the word came out thick, “he’s right. I’m not exactly human anymore. Not sure why I thought … it was stupid.”
“Dream –”
“No, it’s okay.” At George’s skeptical look, Dream gave him a tenuous smile. “Really, it’s fine.”
-
After the last talk with George, Sapnap, and Karl, Dream wasn’t exactly eager to go back into the commons room to reunite with them. They clearly weren’t looking to be friends, nor did they think highly about Dream and his new size.
A “monster,” that’s what Sapnap called him.
Granted, he’d also called himself a monster in the same breath, but it still hurt.
Unfortunately, he didn’t really have a choice in whether he saw the others again, because breakfast was served at the same time for all of them. So, Dream walked over to his designated table, sat down on the uncomfortable metal chair, and started digging into his morning slop. He ignored the three little monsters who chowed down on their own food at their table. Until …
“Uh, Dream?”
Dream ignored George, trying to finish his food faster so that he could leave the room quicker.
“Dream?” George said, slightly louder.
Again, Dream ignored him.
“Dream!” George yelled, jumping out of his seat and waving his hands.
Dream flinched, ears twitching at the overly loud voice. “I heard you just fine the first time,” he mumbled, finally placing his dented spoon back on the table, finished with his breakfast. He stood, pushing his chair away from the table, wincing at the screeching sound it made against the metal flooring. George visibly stumbled at seeing Dream’s full height, which only made Dream feel worse. “Have a good rest of your breakfast,” Dream spat, walking back over to his room door. When he reached the door, he crossed his arms and waited for it to open, like it always did when he was ready to go back to his room. He tapped his foot impatiently as it took a little longer than usual to open.
Behind him, he heard the scurrying of shoes against the metal ground, and he didn’t even need to look to know George was following him – though it took him longer to cross the distance, due to Dream’s huge size and … and Dream didn’t want to be thinking about how much of a monster he was right now, so he tuned out his thoughts and George’s footfalls. He turned back to his door, which was finally opening for him.
“Dream!” George called out again. “Dream, wait! I just want to talk!”
“Talk about how much of a freak I am?” Dream snorted. “No thanks.”
And then he stepped into his room, watching the door close behind him, and seeing George’s tiny shoulders slump as Dream disappeared behind metal.
-
Dream’s room was small, comparably speaking. Though it must have been hundreds of feet wide and tall to accommodate Dream’s new size, to Dream, it felt like the college dorm he’d once had. Barely ten feet across, and even shorter on the other wall. The bed, which stuck out from the wall and could be retracted back into the metal, took up most of the room. There was a toilet in the corner, with minimal toilet paper (which, again, Dream had to imagine was actually huge in size, so it must have taken a lot of resources to make), and on the wall was the sad little kitten poster that had been there since day one.
When Bad had asked Dream what he liked to do for fun, to see if he could get him anything to stave off the boredom of doing nothing but sleep for so long, Dream had come up short. His life mostly consisted of hanging out with friends and socialising – which he couldn’t do now. He had worked in an office beforehand, fiddling with coding and computers, but that had been his job. He liked to play video games when home alone, but Dream didn’t figure they could come up with a computer big enough to facilitate his gaming hobby. He used to like to write short stories and fanfiction, but that presented the same problem as before, with not having the proper tools for someone his size. For a while, he used to workout at a gym, and he found that it helped quiet his mind, until Quackity told him he didn’t like how big he was getting, so Dream stopped. But now that he was alone, without Quackity, and it was his only option … well, Dream mentioned all this to Bad, but left off with, “maybe some kind of workout equipment?”
Bad brightened under Dream’s uncertain expression. “Well, I’ll put a pin in getting you a computer, but workout equipment? That’s something that we can facilitate just fine. We’ll simply take what we make for Sapnap and build it bigger for you!”
And so, a week after his request, Dream had several pieces of workout equipment delivered to and installed in his room.
There was now a pull-up bar installed on the far wall (which Dream doubted he would be able to use, despite his heightened strength, because he didn’t have that much upper body strength), several moderately sized dumbbells, a yoga mat, a jump-rope, and a stationary bike (that took up a lot of space but was totally worth it – Dream missed going on bike rides). And best of all was the radio that was brought in. When Dream blinked, confused at the sight, Bad had sheepishly said that he thought some music, along with the workout equipment, would be the best combination. Dream, getting teary-eyed at the consideration from Bad, agreed. He had to resist the urge to hug the man, mostly because a hug at his size would probably terrify the other. The radio went in the corner of the room. It was big enough for Dream to fiddle with the knobs and buttons and got all the local radio stations that Dream missed.
So, when Dream stepped into his room, ignoring George, he went straight for the radio, turning it to his favourite radio station. He then went to the stationary bike, got on despite the uncomfortable seat, and started cycling aggressively to the next pop song that started.
-
Dream was let out of his room for dinner next.
Part of his new biology was that while he needed to eat a lot more to compensate for his size, he didn’t need to eat as often as he did when he was human (and gods, Dream didn’t want to think about how he was no longer human). After two weeks in the military facility, they were still figuring out the best diet plan for Dream; right now, they were only serving him two moderately sized meals a day. Even as that stood, Dream didn’t feel hungry at all as he prowled out from his room into the commons. He debated skipping dinner altogether and going to bed early, but he knew Bad would be upset with him if he went on a perceived hunger strike again. And Dream didn’t want to disappoint Bad. He may have been part of the people keeping him locked up, but he was also the most sympathetic person he had met so far.
Bad had went through a lot of trouble trying to give him a viable hobby instead of making him live like a brain-dead lizard in an empty room, and Dream didn’t even want to imagine what it took to make workout equipment for someone his size. Not to mention that Bad had been the deciding factor in letting Dream keep his wedding suit, forcing the other military personnel to back off. Bad had also advocated to fix Dream’s food. Bad cared for Dream, at least a little, and that alone was enough to make Dream sit down at his table and start digging into his improved food.
It was still a slop, almost porridge, kind of situation. But now Dream actually had a plate for it to go on, instead of eating it off a dirty table; he had a non-dented spoon, a cup he could drink from, and he had a new sink installed in the commons that he could use to fill his cup with water, wash his hands, and wash his plate in.
The slop at least tasted more like a mildly seasoned chicken and turkey stuffing mixed together, which was much better than what it was before.
So, Dream had a lot to thank Bad for.
What he would not be thankful for was that fact that he had to eat dinner with the three little monsters. At the very least, Patches – or whatever the name of the giant monster was – was never invited into the commons when it was breakfast or dinner time. None of the little monsters said anything to him this time around, either, and George looked suitably ashamed for trying to talk to him earlier. Dream ate as quickly as he could without choking and was quick to stand and head toward his room, before George finally spoke up.
“Dream, wait!”
Dream only stopped because he was in front of his room door, and he was waiting for it to open back up. For some frustrating reason, it didn’t open. George was getting closer.
“Look, Dream, we’re sorry!”
Dream growled, low and rumbling through his chest. He startled himself, surprised by the sound he made. He didn’t know he could do that, and it was only another reminder that he was no longer human. He heard George clear his throat behind him, and Dream debated punching his door to get it to open (hey, it worked the first time, don’t judge him).
“Dream, will you just talk to us? I said we’re sorry. We didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
The door still hadn’t opened, and Dream knew, at this point, that it was probably on purpose. Bad had talked to him about making friends with the others. It wasn’t that far of a stretch to say he would purposefully lock the door just to force Dream into socialising with the three little monsters.
“It’s not … it’s not that,” Dream said. “I don’t care about that anymore.”
“Then why won’t you talk to us?” George demanded. When Dream looked over his shoulder, he saw the George’s big, brown, bug-like eyes staring up at him with a ferocity that was startling. The man was barely the size of Dream’s pointer finger, and yet he could be intimidating when he wanted. It didn’t help that he resembled a bug, which Dream found creepy. Behind George, Sapnap was trying and failing to make it look like he wasn’t listening-in on their conversation, twirling the bone of whatever charred meat he had been eating before. Karl was, as always, staring off into space and giggling. Dream was beginning to think he really didn’t have a brain.
“I don’t like … not being human,” Dream finally said, begrudgingly. “I don’t like reminders of where I am, what I am now … and you guys are just giant glaring reminders that I’m no longer where I’m supposed to be.”
“And where’s that?” George asked, voice surprisingly soft.
Dream debated the pros and cons of opening about his civilian life. He didn’t know how long George, Karl, and Sapnap had been locked in the military facility. He didn’t know if they ever even had civilian lives, like Dream did. Had they all been humans before being turned into … freaks? Or had they always been monsters, doomed to be locked away from humanity since birth? Dream figured, it wouldn’t hurt to talk about his life, just a little bit. They couldn’t do anything about it, anyways.
“Well,” he started, crossing his arms over his chest, “I’m supposed to be on my honeymoon right now.”
“You’re married?!” Sapnap shrieked from across the room.
Meanwhile, Karl asked, “what’s a honeymoon? It sounds delicious.”
Dream sighed. This would take a while.
-
Over the course of the next week, Dream slowly explained his life to the three little monsters, and in turn, he got to learn about their lives. As it turned out, they hadn’t all been locked up forever.
George – his full name was actually George Brown Davidson. He had been renamed by the government to “404,” as one of the first “monsters” captured and experimented on. He used to be completely human, up until he’d had an … accident in his lab. George had graduated early from university with a PhD in chemistry and biochemistry and was working on a doctorate soon after. He moved to America to do his research. He was trying to produce original research in human DNA engineering but hadn’t had any volunteers to be tested under his work, nor the money to fund animal testing. So, he’d used himself. He’d been trying to create a serum to give humans the cockroach ability to survive, and he’d used DNA from multiple bugs to create said serum. Overall, it was meant to make a human immune to disease (or at least mitigate their symptoms), to make them resistant to radiation poisoning, and make them damn near indestructible. Unfortunately, there were … multiple side effects – like being mutated into a human-cockroach hybrid.
Once George realised what he had done to himself, he tried to hide from society. He’d succeeded, too, for almost a whole year – up until someone caught him digging through their back garbage, called the police, and George had been detained by a special military unit. He’d earned his nickname 404: Not Found for two reasons: no one could find his original work and research, because he’d hidden it so well, and because he managed to escape and hide from the military three separate times, before finally being moved to the military facility they were in now.
Dream, though he still found how George looked creepy – even creepier now that he knew he was supposed to emulate a cockroach – could feel sympathy for the man. Just like Dream, George had been human and had his entire ripped away from him by an accident.
Sapnap was a whole different story – he was apparently a monster, through and through.
Sapnap was supposedly from a different world, where monsters and magic were the norm. He described the world as an equivalent to the medieval time period of humanity. Up until he pissed off a magic user and was teleported to a different universe – here – Sapnap had never had trouble with being a demon. But then he’d been plopped down in the middle of the Florida everglades, wrestled with an alligator that tried to take him as a meal, and been taken in by the local park rangers for wrestling said alligator. Then they’d noticed that he wasn’t human – which was around the same time that Sapnap realised he was no longer in his home world – and Sapnap had tried to make a run for it. He didn’t get very far before he was tased and restrained, then taken in by the same task force that stole away George. He, too, was renamed by the government; his new name was “Inferno.” Dream tried to ignore the fact that magic and alternative universes existed for the sake of his sanity.
Karl, somehow, had the least believable story.
A genetically altered tomato was combined with a chemically altered ranch-flavoured dessert topping at a snack food plant. The resulting goop gained consciousness and became an indestructible gelatinous mass, which in turn, became Karl. Karl had been a quick learner of the English language but seemed to lack any other sort of innate learning capability. He genuinely didn’t have a brain and was very cooperative when the US government detained him, unlike George and Sapnap, who both tried to run away.
And lastly, there was Patches, who was even bigger than Dream. Although, Dream was slowly coming around to having a humongous cat-caterpillar follow him around the commons, purring up a storm and begging for belly-rubs. Apparently, nuclear radiation turned her from a small kitten into a three-hundred-foot-tall monster that attacked Ohio. The radiation, instead of killing Patches, had mutated her. It hadn’t taken much to turn her from a huge kitty batting at skyscrapers like they were cat toys, to a well-trained and well-mannered cat-caterpillar. Food, shelter, and using all the training possible, made Patches into the ultimate pet cat. It helped that she was insanely smart for a cat. Patches also quickly claimed Dream as her favourite – though, that might have just been because Dream was large enough to give her proper pets, rather than the tiny monsters from before. Sapnap still lamented over losing being Patches’ favourite.
And finally, Dream shared his story.
Sitting cross-legged on the metal ground, to be closer to the three little monsters, Dream started to talk. “I was supposed to marry Quackity –”
“What sort of name is Quackity?” Sapnap blurted.
“What sort of name is Sapnap?” Dream retorted. “Besides, his name isn’t really Quackity – that’s just a nickname that all his friends use. His real name is Alexis. Anyway, I was supposed to marry Quackity, but I wasn’t allowed to wear the dress I wanted because Quackity wanted me to be in a suit. Then he cancelled our honeymoon because he got a job offer in Lincolnville and needed to go right away. And I was kind of upset over it, because I thought the dress was beautiful, and I was really excited to go to Paris. But we’re a team, you know? And marriage takes some sacrifice. So, I said it was fine, and he went inside the church to finish getting ready – and before I could join him, I was hit by a meteor.”
Sapnap snorted and Dream narrowed his eyes. “Bullshit,” Sapnap said. “If you were hit by a meteor – even at this size – that would kill you.”
“It very much didn’t kill me,” Dream said, rolling his eyes. “In fact, Bad thinks getting hit by that meteor was why I grew to the size I am now. My entire body apparently radiates pure extra-terrestrial energy, which could have potentially come from the meteor. I must have absorbed all the energy from the meteor, because it was gone by the time I woke up.”
“And then what?” George asked. “You just … grew?”
“Not at first,” Dream said. He tucked a white curl behind his ear. “I’d say it took about half an hour before anything happened. Quackity was the first one to point out, at the pew, that I was … glowing green. And he noticed because we were standing face to face, for once.”
“For once?” Sapnap asked, brow cocked.
“Ugh, I’ m supposed to be short – like, six foot four – not a hundred feet! So, I was standing a couple steps down from Quackity, so that we were the same height on our wedding day.”
“What? Six foot four is not short!” Sapnap squeaked.
“Well, I mean, it’s not the tallest. Quackity said –”
“Quackity seems to say a lot of things,” George muttered. It gave Dream a flashback to when his mother said the same thing on his wedding day, which seemed so far away now, and his eyes almost started to tear-up. “And how tall is Quackity?” George asked, this time louder – and actually meant to be heard, unlike his previous comment.
“Oh, uh, he’s five foot six.”
“Well, I don’t think Quackity has room to talk about whether six feet is tall or not,” George said, quite haughtily.
“He didn’t mean anything bad by it,” Dream defended. Even though he was still upset with Quackity over some of the fights before the wedding – and the cancellation of the honeymoon – he still loved the man. He wouldn’t stand for others sullying his name. Then Dream hunched over on himself when he realised the others were staring at him like he was stupid. “Quackity just gets a little insecure over his own height, and it’s not his fault that I’m taller … was taller … still am taller … than him. Besides, it doesn’t matter anymore. As soon as I was at the pew, I started to glow green and grow. The entire church collapsed on top of me. Then the government task force showed up, tranquillised me, and brought me here. I ruined my wedding, and I’ll never get to see my friends, family, or fiancé ever again.”
Dream crossed his arms over his chest in finality, defensive.
George gave Dream’s knees a sympathetic pat from where he sat next to the giant, and Dream fought the urge to flinch. No one had touched him for over a month, and definitely not any creepy crawlies. Not that George was actually a bug … but still, it was hard for Dream to overcome the thought.
“I don’t think it was your fault your wedding was ruined,” George said.
“Yeah!” Sapnap, speaking up. He looked incensed. “That stupid meteor is the reason all of this happened, not to mention your fiancé – OW!”
Sapnap yelped as George crawled over to him and hit him over the head.
“What? I was just saying that Quackity seemed like a shit – OW! Stop that!”
“Read the room,” George hissed.
Dream snorted. “It’s okay; my family didn’t like Quackity, either. My mother never approved of the engagement. I’m used to it by now.”
“I wonder why,” Sapnap muttered.
“Well, anyhow, the government apparently renamed me to ‘Nightmare’? Which is kind of ironic, considering my nickname, but –”
“Wait, wait – nickname? Your real name isn’t Dream?”
“No? Why would my parents name me Dream?”
“I asked you for your real name on the first day you were here, and you said it was ‘Dream’!” George seemed exasperated.
“Well, my real name is Clay, but everyone I know calls me Dream.”
“You don’t look like Clay, though,” Karl said. “You look like Dream.”
“For once, that’s the smartest thing you’ve ever said,” George muttered. “Karl’s right, though – you don’t look like a Clay. Dream suits you.”
“Thanks? I guess?” Dream said, “Anyway, I –”
“Good morning monsters!” A chipper voice called, followed by the sound of tiny thrusters on a jetpack.
Dream gasped (he didn’t scream, thank you very much), surprised, and turned around, throwing a punch at the same time. He wasn’t sure what he thought he would accomplish with it, but in his mind, he had just been jump-scared. His fist connected with the metal wall behind his back, punching through the material like it wasn’t even there. Then Dream realised that it was just Bad, who was flying a few feet away (at least, a few feet to Dream), who had accidentally snuck up on Dream while he was distracted with the three little monsters. Everyone stared at Dream and the giant hole in the wall. Dream hurried to apologise. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to do that!”
Bad looked shocked. “… that was twenty feet of reinforced steel backed by a hundred feet of concrete. And you punched through it like it was wet paper … on accident.”
Dream blushed.
“It’s a good thing I came to bring you for testing, because that … that needs to be tested.”
-
Dream was, ashamedly, taken from the commons and onto a moving platform to take him for his first medical check-up since he was tranquillised and brought in. Bad assured him that the hole in the wall would be repaired within a few days, but he suggested Dream not try to create anymore property damage in the meanwhile. Dream winced at the joking tone Bad used, knowing that Bad wasn’t actually angry – he rarely, truly got angry – but Dream still felt sorry for what he did. He kept forgetting just how big he was, and what that meant for the people around him. He had probably caused hundreds – no, hundreds of thousands – of dollars in property damage, on accident, just because he became startled.
He could have hit Bad.
After seeing what his fist did to concrete and metal, Dream didn’t even want to think about what he could do to a human.
Human.
Gods, Dream was thinking like he wasn’t human anymore.
And he wasn’t, was he?
The medical check-up confirmed that, at least.
A team of doctors walked around his feet, all business, no play. They checked his pupil reactions with large spotlights (which hurt), they asked him to open his mouth to give them a better look at his teeth (which were apparently harder to look at while he was passed out), and they did other random tests – like drawing blood with a giant needle (because smaller needles couldn’t penetrate his skin) – that seemed better suited for a normal doctor’s office, rather than in a military facility with a giant.
One of the doctors, bless their heart, actually tried to explain everything to Dream, who was looking more and more confused by the second, yet nonetheless let them run all their tests. She had wavy brown hair that was pulled up in a high ponytail, dark brown eyes, and was wearing a pink lab coat, unlike most of the other doctors with blue or white coats. If he squinted, he could see her name tag read “Doctor Caroline.” The doctor explained that they were trying to get a baseline on Dream, to see how his health should look for his new form. That way, they would be able to tell if he got sick or hurt and know what they were supposed to get his health looking like after. Dream nodded along and ignored how another doctor shushed the first, telling her that Dream was just “a dumb giant” who “didn’t need to know their work.” But if, when he was asked to lay down to allow the doctors to walk over his chest and check his resting heart rate, he moved a little and scared the shit out of the second doctor, then that was none of anyone’s business.
The wink the first doctor gave him made him feel a little better, though.
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It was strange – the beeping sound was nothing like the alarm he usually set on his phone – but he figured that it was probably Quackity’s alarm going off instead. Which was also weird, now that he thought about it, because weren’t they supposed to be on their honeymoon? They should be able to sleep in however long they wanted. Why would Quackity wake them up so early? Dream felt like he could sleep for another hundred years.
Dream groaned. “Babe, could you hit the snooze? Why did you set the alarm? We’re on our honeymoon – argh!” Dream yelped as he tried to roll over in bed, only to fall face-first onto the floor.
A loud bang reverberated around the room, courtesy of the metal flooring, and Dream groaned in pain. Moving into a sitting position, he reached up to grab at his forehead, which was pounding, only for his hair to fall in his face. He stopped – and stared – because his hair was white. No longer in the messy bun and straightened, loose white curls hung in his peripheral vision. Dream pinched a piece of hair between his thumb and forefinger, holding it out in front of himself. And then his eyes went out of focus as he switched from staring at his hair to the room around him.
He thought the metal flooring was weird, but all around him, the walls were made of strange metal panels, square and small. In front of him there was a glass panel that looked out into nothing but darkness. Behind him, when he looked, was a metal table sticking out of the wall. On it was a small pillow, pitiful and flat. That was what Dream had previously been sleeping on, before he fell and suddenly made-out with the floor.
Dream looked down at himself and found that he was still wearing his wedding suit, for some reason, complete with his dress shoes and painted nails.
Why would he still be wearing his wedding outfit on his honeymoon?
And where was he?
“What’s going on?” He muttered, eyeing the room around him.
The beeping that woke him earlier was still going, and it was starting to get annoying. He quickly located the source – above him, sticking out of the ceiling, was a red flashing light with a small speaker sticking out of it. The dark room flashed red continually, and the speaker continued to beep and beep. Dream was tempted to stand and reach for the speaker, if only to try and crush it to make it stop.
Suddenly, the red light stopped flashing. The beeping stopped. The light and speaker retracted into the ceiling, a little metal panel sliding shut behind it with a loud bang, as if getting on Dream’s nerves one last time to give a last hurrah. Behind him, the metal table – bed, whatever it was – retracted into the wall just as fast as the light. Then there’s a whirring sound, and suddenly, the rooms dropped like an elevator, but much harsher and dangerous. Dream yelped as he hit the floor again, watching through the little glass panel as metal, bright lights, and grey flew by alarmingly fast. He stayed on the floor until the room stopped roughly, throwing him to the side and making him yelp again.
In front of him, the entire wall lifted like a sliding garage door, showing a huge, mostly empty, room. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all metal. It was also well-lit, unlike the room Dream was in now. In the middle of the room there was a metal table and chair.
Suddenly, the wall behind Dream started to push forward. Dream, still sitting, gasped as he struggled against it, not wanting to be pushed into the new room. He splayed his hands out, pushing against the wall with his feet, but his efforts were futile as eventually the wall stopped, and he was sitting in the new room. Breathing heavily, he looked around, eyes wide. Before, he had underestimated just how huge it was – the ceiling must have stretched fifty feet above his head, at least. It was daunting, and Dream stood hesitantly, startling when the large metal wall slid shut behind him. Dream took a couple more steps into the new room, toward the table, unsure about everything. He was man enough to admit he was even a little scared of the strange rooms and lights and metal.
He was walking to the table when he felt himself step on something, heard a metal twang, and he startled. When he looked down, he saw … a tiny table? And a tiny chair – now smushed by his shoes. He reached down to pick up the chair, smaller than what he would imagine one would use for Barbies. It barely weighed anything. He squinted, confused. Why was there such tiny furniture?
More questions, unbidden, come to him. Where was this strange room? Why was he here? And more importantly – how does he get out?
Just then, he hears something – like whispering. He dropped the chair, letting it clatter to the ground.
“Hello?” He called out to the empty room. He felt his ears twitch – a strange sensation he’s never felt before – as there was more murmurs. Then, strangely, he can hear the words perfectly, as if they were whispered right into his ear. If he’s being honest, what he hears doesn’t make his situation any less confusing.
“Is it just legs? Did they capture a giant pair of legs?” He heard one voice say.
“Shut up, Karl! They’ll hear us!” Another voice said.
“How? Legs don’t have ears.” First voice again.
“Just shut up!” Was the final thing he heard before the whispers fell silent once again.
Dream walked over to where he heard the voices, still scared and cautious. There was a large metal wall, just like the one that had closed behind him before, but this time it was slightly cracked open. Underneath was darkness. He bent down, getting on his knees, and looked into the darkness. He squinted as his eyes got used to the dark, but he saw nothing. “Hello? Is there someone there?” There was nothing – no response. He grunted. “Could you tell me where I am, at least?”
When he still didn’t get a response, Dream stood again, frustrated. He walked back over to the table, taking care to avoid the doll furniture on the floor this time. Then, the strangest thing happened – a long and thin plastic tube descended from the ceiling, right above the table. It opened up at the bottom, spewing beige mush into a pile on the table. A metal spoon soon followed after, sticking out of the mush at a weird angle. Dream flinched away from it, not sure if it was food or poison.
Before Dream could do anything else, there was a scuttling sound, like a mollusk on metal.
Dream flinched. “Shit, what was that?”
He had no idea what made the noise, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. He grabbed the spoon and held it out in front of himself, as if it could protect him from any bugs or crabs that decided to come out of the woodwork … or metalwork, if the room’s composition was to be considered.
Dream surveyed the room, trying to spot what made the noise, before turning back to the table, relaxing minutely. But then he saw something on the table – and truly, he could not describe that something if he tried. It was only two or three inches in height – about the size of a Polly Pocket Doll – but it looked so realistic that Dream couldn’t help but think it was alive. It looked like someone’s cruel idea of a fairy, but they brought out the doll and bug-like features to make it truly unsettling. Its eyes were large and brown, but looked like wasp eyes, with no pupil or iris, just all sclera. Its hair was a dark brown and thick, but two long antennae stuck out from the bushy mess, like a butterfly. Its hands had tiny claws, and on its back were little wings, like from a cockroach – and Dream would know, having lived in several unsavoury apartments before.
The bug-like doll looked strange enough, and Dream was trying to figure out how it got on the table, when it moved. It rubbed its hands together like a fly, pushed back its hair, and cleared its throat. A surprisingly human voice came out of the doll. “Hello, I’m –”
Dream, though he hated to admit it, screamed. “Ew!”
Dream, though he stood at six feet and three inches, and though most people thought him to be tough, absolutely hated bugs. They creeped him out to no end, and his instinct was to kill every single spider and roach he found in his home. And right now? This was no exception. His instinct kicked in and he tried to use the spoon to kill the bug doll, not wanting to touch it himself.
Unfortunately, the bug was a quick mover, and evaded his hits several times, talking all the while. “Will you stop?!” It screeched. “Careful, you almost hit me –”
Finally, Dream’s spoon hit true, and the bug-like doll finally flattened out on the table, dead.
At least, Dream thought it was dead, until it groaned. “Whatever mad scientist made you, they really went all out.”
“You … you can talk,” Dream said, stupidly, only processing it now. Before, he had been so creeped out that it hadn’t clicked in his head that this bug-thing might be an actual person. The bug – person – whatever it was – only groaned in response.
“Hi, there!” Another voice said.
Dream jumped in surprise, tripping over something on the floor. He grunted in pain when he hit the metal flooring. When he looked down, there was purple goo on his dress shoe. He reached out to take it off, hating the feeling of the slime on his hands, only for the goo to move on its own, forming the shape of a person, like some kind of purple Play Dough. Like the bug person, this one was only a few inches tall. The person hung upside down from his hand, and Dream grimaced in disgust. He threw the slime to the floor. “Ugh!”
The slime person broke in two, falling apart into two separate piles of goo. One pile of goo rose up, forming a human face and eyes. “My back!” The goo person cried. Then they smiled. “Just kidding! I don’t have a back.”
They easily moved over to the other pile of goo, reforming back into a full person again.
Above, on the table, the bug person groaned, this time not in pain, but in exasperation. They peeked over the side of the table, their bug-like eyes shining in the light. “Please ignore Karl – as you can see, he has no brain.”
It was true – Dream could see straight through the purple goo, and there was nothing.
“Pfft,” Karl, the goo person, said. “You don’t need a brain! Totally overrated, Gogy.”
“May I remind you who has a brain and a PhD, and who doesn’t?” Gogy – god, what a weird name – said. His antennae moved up and down in irritation.
Dream just stared in disbelief at the two – monsters? – when something approached from the foot of the table. Just like the other two things, it was only a few inches in height, and it looked strange. Its skin was tinted orange, with bits of black around the eyes, like a panda, and tipped black on the claws it had. It had a mullet of black hair, with two orange and black horns sticking out. Dream could see tiny fangs hiding in its mouth, and a tail that swung back and forth casually behind it. Its eyes burned a bright orange, like fire, with the sclera being black. Dream couldn’t help but think the tiny person looked like one of those miniature demons you would see on the shoulder of characters in comic books.
“Wow, look at you, you’re huge!” The demon thing said. “Now, I know what you’re thinking – first day in prison, you’re big, and you want to take down the toughest guy in the yard. Well, I’d like to see you try!” Then the demon thing cracked its knuckles, grunting, and held out its hands at its side. They lit on fire, and Dream had to do a double take to make sure it was real. The demon grinned, looking proud of itself. Its hands extinguished. “Hey guys – look, he’s speechless!”
The bug person spread its wings and jumped off the table, floating down to the floor where the other two monsters (Dream still wasn’t sure what the three things were, exactly, and whether they counted as people or something else) were. Gogy wrinkled its nose in frustration. “Sapnap, you’re not making a very good first impression.”
“Yeah, like you did any better, Mr. Cockroach!” Sapnap – the demon thing – defended. “At least I didn’t scare him into trying to kill me and denting the new table.” Dream, belatedly, realised that Sapnap was right – there were now several new dents in the metal table, though he didn’t know how he could have done that. He wasn’t that strong, was he? “Besides, this is the first new monster in years, and we couldn’t get, like, a wolf man or a mummy? You know, someone to actually spar with. Your scrawny ass never wants to do anything with me.” Sapnap finished his rant by pouting and crossing his arms.
“Oh, forget it,” Gogy said. It turned to Dream, bug eyes staring unblinkingly, and being unsettling in general. Dream shuffled backwards. “What’s your name, anyway?”
Dream, still hugging his knees to his chest, answered: “Dream.”
Gogy squinted. “No, no, no – we mean, like your real name, not whatever the government named you. For example, I’m George – but they like to call me 404. What do your friends call you?”
“Dream.”
“Dream?”
“Dream.”
“You know, you’re not much of a talker,” George – not Gogy – pointed out. “What’d you even do to get so big –”
Just then, there was suddenly a beeping sound, not unlike the alarm that was in Dream’s room earlier. George stops mid-talk and the three little monsters all perked up and ran over to the tiny table that Dream had observed before. George grabbed one chair, Sapnap ran and jumped into another, and Karl was left with the squished chair that Dream had stepped on earlier. Karl shrugged and moved toward the chair, the metal passing through his gooey body.
“Yes! Food time!” Sapnap cheered, punching his fists in the air. In his excitement, his fists light on fire briefly, shooting fire flares into the air, before extinguishing.
A long plastic tube descended from the ceiling, much like what happened earlier with the mush on the normal-sized table, but this time smaller and centred around the tiny table. It deposited what looked like coal and burned meats in front of Sapnap – who happily started biting into the charred meat with his hands alone. Large bones and metal cans of what look like energy drinks are thrown – quite literally – at Karl, who simply absorbs them into his body, disintegrating them into his purple goo. And lastly, George gets … Dream has to squint, but it looks like sushi. He didn’t know bugs liked sushi, let alone that a monster like George would eat something so normal.
Meanwhile, Dream is still having a crisis over where he’s sitting. Only now was he starting to remember what happened at the wedding, his recollection fuzzy. He’d thought that it was all a dream, but now … now, he’s not so sure. After all, he woke up in a strange place, met three little dolls – monsters – strange people – whatever you wanted to call them – and he saw no way out.
“Oh, please, god, tell me this isn’t real,” Dream muttered to himself. He carefully stood, backing away from the three at the tiny table. “Please tell me I had a nervous breakdown at the wedding, and now I’m in a psychiatric ward on medication that’s giving me hallucinations …”
Suddenly, Dream felt fuzz behind him, like he just backed into his grandmother’s old carpet wall.
He looked up.
Standing over him was what looked like a cross behind a giant, a cat, and a fuzzy caterpillar. Covered in fur, coloured in patches of reddish brown, the monster – for this, for sure, is a real monster – looked down on him. Its nose twitched and its cat-like ears swiveled. It had to be at least twenty feet tall.
Dream cursed. “What the fuck!”
The monster roared.
Dream cursed again and started running to the other side of the room; this time, his strides are long and strong, and he makes it there in three seconds flat. Where was this speed when he needed it at the wedding?
Briefly, he hears Sapnap yell. “Hey, don’t scare Patches like that! She’s really skittish!”
Dream ignored Sapnap, hurrying over to where he remembered the wall moving from earlier. It was a door – it had to be a door. It had to be able to open again, maybe into another room where he wouldn’t be surrounded by monsters, where a normal human could tell him what was going on. “There’s got to be a door here! Where’s the door?” He banged his fists against the wall several times, flinching back when he realized the several-inch deep dents he left in the metal. What the hell? Since when was he strong enough to bend metal? “Please!” He calls out. “Please, anyone! Where am I? Let me out!”
Behind him, George called out, “Hey, hey – that’s not a good idea!”
“Let me out!” Dream demanded again, feeling anger course through his body. For a second, it seemed like the room got smaller, before his fear returned and the weird perspective shifted away. He banged on the wall one more time, leaving a huge hole in the metal.
A surprised face greeted him on the other side of the hole – a human face.
A tiny face.
“That was carbon steel,” a surprisingly high-pitched voice said, coming from the tiny human.
There was a whirring sound, and the wall in front of him lifted like a garage door, groaning when the dents scraped against the other metal. The tiny human was revealed to be using some kind of futuristic jetpack, silent and steadily keeping him in the air at Dream’s height. The human had long hair, down past his shoulders. He was wearing a black beanie, wire-rimmed glasses, and had a goatee. The rest of his outfit looked to be some sort of military garb, with some medals glinting on his breast.
“Monsters,” he called, “get back in your rooms.”
Karl, George, and Sapnap all groaned, but didn’t protest past that. They got up and retreated to different walls in the room, which lifted and shut behind them. The giant monster – Patches, Sapnap had called it – her? – made a sound disturbingly like a meow but was led back into her cell by a giant light.
Dream turned to the tiny human. This was his only chance to get real answers about where he was and what was going on. “Thank god you’re here, I thought I was going crazy!”
“Trust me, you’re not going crazy,” the man said, smiling.
“Then, you don’t mind me asking … why are you so small?” Dream asked, scared to know the answer.
“It’s actually you that’s big,” he said. “You’ve been turned into a giant.”
“What – no!” Dream denied. But then he thought of the wedding; he thought of how he grew and grew, until he burst out of the church. He thought of how small Quackity seemed in his hands. He remembered how small the three monsters had seemed. He thought of how his hair had turned white, how his hearing was suddenly better, and how strong he seemed now. “How …”
“It’ll all be explained to you,” the man said. “The name’s Bad. I’m in charge of this facility. Now, follow me – it’s time for your orientation.”
-
Once Dream stepped onto a moving platform, Bad seemed ready to start. He didn’t even say anything about the two small – well, small to Dream – helicopters that followed them the whole time, or how they looked ready to shoot Dream if he made the slightest wrong move. Bad just kept jetting along, like nothing was wrong. “In 1950, it was decided that the general public could not handle the truth about monsters and should focus on more important things – like paying taxes.” Dream couldn’t tell if that was a joke or not, but Bad just smiled and continued. “So, the government convinced the world monsters were the stuff of myth and legends and locked the monsters they could find in this facility.”
“But I’m not a monster!” Dream protested. He flung his hands out. “I’m just a regular person –”
One of his hands hit one of the helicopters, which had gotten too close. The helicopter went flying, spinning wildly and falling below the platform, into the darkness. The entire way down, the pilot screamed.
Dream flinched. “… Sorry?”
But Bad didn’t seem phased. “Accidents happen!” He said, like Dream didn’t just take out a military helicopter with a flick of his wrist. “But let’s try to keep those accidents to a minimum, alright?”
“… alright,” Dream said, still feeling guilty.
The platform Dream was standing on shifted, making him startle and throw out his hands for balance. He was careful to keep them far away from the remaining helicopter. Bad seemed to ignore what just happened in favour of barreling on with his explanation. “You’ve not only gained massive size, but also massive strength. Earlier, you punched through ten feet of carbon steel. Not to mention that you’ve gained non-human qualities, like sharpened canines, changed senses, and pure white hair. Now, as far we can tell from the numerous scans and tests we conducted, your current condition is because your body absorbed a massive amount of energy, not seen from this Earth. Where you got that energy from, we’re unsure, but some of the brightest minds were stumped by it. One voiced that it almost seemed like the same energy that came from the sun, like an extra-terrestrial source, but that would be impossible unless –”
“Oh, I was hit by a meteor,” Dream said, nonplussed.
For once in their entire conversation, Bad’s calm and collected appearance cracked.
“You were what?!” He yelped.
“Hit by a meteor,” Dream repeated. He played with his hands, suddenly feeling sheepish. “I’m not sure where it went, because it was gone by the time I woke up. But I was hit by a meteor on my wedding day, and I just thought it was a crazy fever dream, so I ignored it, but –”
“But now things are starting to make more sense,” Bad finished for him. “Alright. I have some calls to make, now that you’ve given me that bit of information. I’ll take you to your cell.”
The platform moved again, but this time Dream was ready for it, and he kept his footing. He looked around the large room he was in – at the moving jeeps, helicopters, and bright lights. There were multiple platforms and lots of people scurrying around. He glanced upward and saw multiple large glass windows, showing into little cells that contained the monsters from earlier. Sapnap was lifting weights, George was fiddling with what looked like Legos, and Karl was … well, he was just sitting there and giggling. Dream was surprised he was even able to see them from where he was standing – he guessed his vision was also something that was enhanced.
Dream turned back to Bad. “And how long will I be here?”
“Indefinitely,” Bad said, distracted by some sort of screen on his jetpack.
Dream sucked in a sharp breath. Indefinitely? That could mean anything from a week, up to years. And Dream wasn’t stupid – in his current condition, with how big he was, he wasn’t going to fit into normal human life. Unless something could reverse what happened … maybe he could get out, then.
“Can I at least contact my friends and family?” Dream asked hopefully.
“No,” Bad said, like he didn’t just rip out Dream’s heart.
“What about my husband – I can’t just –”
“Sorry, not him, either.”
“Do they at least know where I am?” Dream asked, desperate.
“No, and they never will!” Bad said cheerfully. He turned away from his screen. “This place is not even known to most of the government, let alone regular citizens! There will be zero contact with the outside world.” Finally, the platform stopped moving, and a large panel on the wall opened. The platform moved again, sliding Dream neatly into the new room. It looked much like the room he was in when he woke up – small, all metal, and it had a metal table sticking out of the wall with a singular, sad pillow. And now, on the table, there was a folded outfit, mostly black and green. If Dream squinted, he could see a singular poster taped above the bed, of a kitten stuck in a tree, with the tag line ‘Hang in there!’ Bad flew closer to Dream, smiling softly. “I had the prison psychologist redecorate your cell, to try and make it homier.”
Dream’s eyes started to sting.
Today had been a long day. Not only had his wedding been ruined, but now he was locked up in a military prison with no way to contact the ones he loved. He was branded as a monster and stuck as a freak indefinitely. He didn’t even get a proper room – just a small, sad cell. “But I don’t want a poster,” he said, starting to cry. “I want a real kitten. I want my family and friends. I want to go home.”
“Oh, please don’t cry,” Bad said hastily. “It’s not that bad – don’t think of this as a prison. Think of it as a hotel you’ll never leave, because it’s locked from the outside! Oh, well, maybe don’t think of it like that – but still. You’ll be treated well. Just put on your new jumpsuit, and we’ll be good to go!”
The door started to close, and Bad turned sideways in his jetpack, looking at Dream through the slowly closing space. “Oh yeah, and one other thing – the government has changed your name to Nightmare.”
Then the door slammed shut, leaving Dream in a dimly lit cell, alone.
