Home for Horny Monsters - Book 4

The Person in Charge

Mike was face down on a tall table as Zel and another centaur examined the back of his scalp. He hissed in pain as they checked his wound for any other sources of infection.

After his bath with the fairies and Naia, he had eaten a light dinner and gone to bed. In the morning he woke up with a pounding headache that felt like a sinus infection. The back of his scalp was tender and swollen, and that was when he learned that the moisture from his hours long bath had kept his wound from scabbing over properly; it had opened during his sleep and bled all over his pillow. When the wound had tried to close up again, his pillow and hair had gotten caught inside, which triggered a nasty bout of swelling all along his scalp.

The wound was bad enough that the centaurs had taken him in, and were constantly opening his wound to clean it and apply medicine. Based on the light coming in through the flaps of the yurt, it was almost evening. He could hear music coming from the camp followed by the smell of freshly baked bread that made his mouth water.

"Okay, we may be in the clear," Zel announced. "I want you to lay there until you clot. I'll be back in an hour."

"But I—"

"No arguments." He could hear her tail swishing angrily. "I'm going to make sure you are in the clear before you leave, especially since you refuse to follow directions."

He sighed, and decided not to argue. She had been guilt tripping him ever since his arrival, and not only did his head still hurt, he was bored out of his mind. Zel and her assistant left, and it occurred to him that he should have asked for a snack.

Alone in the dark with his thoughts, he went over his plan for the days ahead. He needed to find a way to cross into the Underworld without simply dying, and felt his best bet would be to speak with Death. Sulyvahn might be willing to explain it to him, but he got the feeling that the dullahan was probably under orders from the queen to keep his mouth shut.

Someone laughed outside the tent, and Mike shifted to make himself comfortable, careful not to rub the back of his head. Zel had given him a haircut to see the wound better, and now his neck was all itchy.

Between lying in the dark and doing nothing else, his mind began to wander. He didn't want to take a nap, but he felt like one was coming, and maybe then he could just skip the next fifty or so minutes and go straight to going home.

He closed his eyes and emptied his mind, then pictured the white sand beach of the Dreamscape. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to get away to the salty shores of his mind after all and take a small vacation where Zel wasn't there to yell at him.

The transition was swift, and he found himself on the beach, his eyes gazing along the horizon of his mind. He was getting better at entering the Dreamscape from a waking state, but it was still more common to fall into normal dreams.

"Ha!" He stood up and rubbed the back of his head. There was no sign of his wound, so he walked down to the edge of the water and pulled off his shoes, then nonchalantly tossed them over his shoulder where they burst into smoke upon impact with the sand.

The water felt cool on his feet and he started walking along the shore. Despite walking a considerable distance, anytime he looked up from the waves, the house was sitting right there, watching him. Sometimes he could circle it, other times it followed, but this little beach paradise was still plenty of fun to visit.

Out in the ocean, a cloud dropped from the sky and rolled toward him, over the waves. Curious, he stopped to watch it break apart on the shore and scatter around him, casting the world into shadows. The house disappeared from view, and all he could see was the surf beneath his feet. The waves broke somewhere to his left, and he kept walking.