Chapter 1

The teacher Mr. Hanes asked, "So what is the answer ... Danny?"

It got very quiet in the class room. Some students turned around to look at me, though I didn't notice. I was busy looking out the window lost in thought.

Mr. Hanes yelled, "Danny!"

I woke up out of my reverie and looked at him without saying anything. His eyes shot pure contempt at me. "Why do I even bother with you? You'll never amount to anything. I hope you like flipping burgers, cause you'll be doing it for a long time."

I scowled at his remark about my future, but realized that he might be right. I really was headed straight towards a menial job. It wasn't because I wasn't smart enough, I was just lazy and a dreamer. I paid attention to the lesson again now, but it ended soon.

Just as I wanted to get out of the class room, Mr. Hanes called me back. "Danny, wait! Come here for a minute please."

Hesitantly I went over to his desk. "Yes, Mr. Hanes?"

"Danny, I know you're smart enough. Why don't you use it? If you put your mind to it, you can do anything."

I bowed my head in shame. He was so right, but I couldn't help it. "I'll try Mr. Hanes."

"Fine than, dismissed."

Quickly I got out and walked through the deserted halls to the exit. As I neared the exit I noticed a group of boys doing something. I got closer and saw that they were torturing a small rodent hybrid boy. He was being punched, thrown around and even kicked. With a few speedy paces I was in the middle of the group shielding the hybrid boy with my body. I snarled, "Stop it or try doing that to me."

The mob of kids stepped back in surprise and fear. Then a big black guy from the football team, I think his name is Ephraim, came running. Looking right at me, he growled, "Stop fucking with my little Bro." He turned to one of boys, "You okay Lenny?"

One of the black boys nodded but then said, "He threatened us Eph."

Ephraim turned back towards me, "You rotten..." as he stopped speaking, his fist was already swinging towards my head. It impacted solidly with left near the eye and the impact slammed me against the wall. I saw stars before my eyes for a while and heard laughter and other noises. When my sight had cleared again, everyone, including the hybrid boy were gone.

I was all alone, sitting against the wall with a splitting headache and an emerging black eye. I heard footsteps coming my way and a voice said, "Dreaming again Danny?"

I scrambled to my feet and mumbled, "Sorry, won't happen again Mr. Hanes," before I ran outside.

As I walked home, I heard someone saying, "Pssst. Over here!"

I looked around and in the bushes saw the hybrid rodent boy. "Thank you for the intervention, but I think it will make things worse." Then he quickly disappeared from sight.

My dad saw my black eye when arrived home. I told him what had transpired and he started, "In my day I would have made them sorry. Why are you such a sissy?"

I knew better than try to tell him that I hadn't been given a chance. I was very much afraid that he would try to spank his views into me. He did take care of me well enough, but he could get abusive at times. I always wondered what it would be like to have a Mom. I asked my Dad a few times where Mom was and one time he said that she had died in childbirth.

I had checked hospital records one time, but couldn't find anything. The next time I asked, Dad said that she had enough of us and left us for parts unknown. Well, what ever had happened to her, it was just Dad and me. That meant that I was taking the heat if he was pissed or if something happened to me that made me look bad.

The next day at school was worse, as everyone could see my black eye and rumors started to go around that some freshmen had beat me up. I heard snickers everywhere I went and I had nobody to talk to. This was also partly because I was relatively new here. We had moved to this town about 7 months ago and I still hadn't made any friends. The MORFS survivors had their own little group, while the pures had their group. As I hadn't had MORFS, and didn't support the Pures line of reasoning, I wasn't welcome in either one and the other groups didn't invite me either. Since I wasn't actively looking for friends, I guess I was to blame for the situation as well.

The day dragged on and on, relentlessly boring and tedious. Then just before the last lesson I was walking through the hall when a group of freshmen blocked my way. I recognized them from yesterday, they were the ones that assaulted that hybrid kid. The black kid haughtily said, "You can't go this way. It's blocked for you and your kind."

I just wanted to push my way through, but he continued, "Or do you want to get beaten up by us freshmen again." I stopped in my tracks and looked at him, I was getting quite angry already. Then I saw Ephraim standing just of the side smiling smugly at me. Something inside me snapped. I dropped my books and went for him. I got him good with the first punch square on his jaw. He went down, and I was all over him immediately.

Before I could get in more punches the freshmen kids assaulted me, led by Ephraim's little brother. I tried to defend myself as best I could against both Ephraim and the kids, but got hammered a lot. Then people shouted and we all got pulled apart. The teachers and some seniors led us all away from each other. It wasn't long before we were all sitting in the waiting room of the Principal's office.

She saved me for last and the other guys walked past me looking very smug and content as they left.

Then I got called in. "Daniel Montro, come in please." Hesitantly I shuffled myself into the office. At Principle Shodding's invite I sat down on a hard wooden chair. She started, "Well Mr. Montro, what do you have to say for yourself? As I have come to understand it, you started the fight with Ephraim Banks."

I was about to tell her all about what happened, but decided not to. It wouldn't make any difference anyway. So I just kept sitting and looked down to the floor. She spoke again, "Danny? Why don't you tell me what really happened?"

This time I got mad enough to talk, "What's the point? It'll still be all their words against only mine. It doesn't matter that yesterday Banks sucker punched me. And that his little brother is usually looking for a fight, at which point he calls in his big brother. You know what? I have had enough already. Fuck them and fuck you."

With that I shut up and just realized what I had said. Principle Shodding scowled at me now and I saw that she had to compose herself for a moment. In a soft low voice she growled, "Never say something like that here ever again, or you will be very sorry young man. Now since you are such an ill-mannered boy I'll suspend you for two days. Any last words to say before I throw your sorry ass out?"

I swallowed, "I'm sorry Mrs. Shodding. I got carried away."

"Leave my office Mr. Montro. I don't want to see you till Friday."

Dejected I left her office and walked straight out of school, the last lesson was already over anyway. I walked straight home and went to my room. Later I heard my dad come in, so I was about to go down for dinner when I heard the phone ring. I couldn't quite overhear what was being said, but just to be safe I waited in my room.

A little while later I heard my Dad come up to my room and he kicked the door open. "What the hell did you do today, boy? I never told you to go out fighting, and if you do fight, make sure that the blame is on the other guy." He quickly caught me in his big hands and started to hit me on my behind, my shoulders and everywhere else that wouldn't leave any obvious marks.

About 15 minutes later I was left as a pile of misery in my room and was told to stay there. I wasn't welcome to have any dinner as well. I didn't feel like eating in any case, and certainly not in the presence of my father. I played a bit with my old computer and when I got really hungry, I opened a small bag of potato chips that I had hidden for emergencies like this.

The next morning I slept in late, did some homework as I didn't have anything else to do and played some old games on my computer. But somewhere between 2 and 3 o'clock I started to feel sick. I held it in for about a quarter of an hour, but then I had to run to the toilet to throw up. Feverish, I went to bed and when dad came home and called me down for dinner I didn't even have the power to react. He came stamping up to my room and glowered at me lying on my bed. His face changed when he saw that I was really sick.

I think he got worried that I might be sick from his beating, but he called a doctor in any case. The doctor was apprehensive about all my bruises, but Dad managed to ease the suspicion saying that I had been in a fight at school. Anyway, the doctor's diagnosis was quite clear and short. I had contracted MORFS.

Hearing the diagnosis, Dad scowled as if all he needed to do was look after his sick kid. Yet he was pleasant enough to the doctor when he prescribed the usual sleeping pills and IV kit. The doctor started the IV with a starter canister before he left. Dad got the prescriptions filled the same day even. I took the sleeping pill and almost immediately began to feel drowsy. The next morning I barely heard dad grumble, "I'm going to work, someone has to earn the money around here." The next couple of days were a blur. I vaguely remember getting up to take care of my urgent needs and changing the canisters, but eventually I began to hear whispers. You know the type; loud enough to be annoying, but too soft to be understood.

The whispers of people talking were getting louder, but I couldn't hear it clearly enough. There were a lot of people as well and even more started speaking to me. Soon I was getting very annoyed at all the people speaking to me, and yelled as loud as I could, "Stop it already. Be quiet."

The noise died down for a moment, but others kept talking as if they didn't hear it. And soon everyone else was talking as well. I thought I was going mad with all those people talking, till I thought by myself, 'What if I try to single out just one voice. Maybe I can hear it clearly enough.' I listened to the loudest and clearest voice around. Ah there it was, a man going on about his business. How successful he was and such. I homed in on him and soon heard only him, and quite clearly. I quickly grew bored though with his talking. Though some parts about doing business was quite interesting, not only did I feel bored listening to him, but he also kind of moved out of range, and it became difficult to hear him. So I let him slip away and the cacophony of voices was once more in my head.

That's when I woke up from my induced sleep. I thought that I would be fine once I woke up, but the voices kept talking to me in my head. 'What the hell is going on? Do I have supersensitive hearing now or something?' I quickly went to the bathroom and washed my self a bit. As I looked into the mirror, my face looked a bit different, and my hair, which previously had been quite dark had lightened to a dirty blond.

I quickly dispatched the idea of looking for further changes and swallowed two pills this time, as I wanted to sleep without being bothered by all those voices.

For some time I slept without dreaming, dead to the world, but then some of the whispers got into my head again. I ignored them for a while and just rested. I don't know how long I had rested normally, as the voices kept on coming and got louder all the time. I concentrated on not hearing them trying to focus on my just own thoughts. For a time that worked and I didn't hear the voices so much anymore. They were still there though, like the murmur of water from a creek or waterfall in the backdrop of your hearing.

I looked up scared out of my wits at the lights of an oncoming car. It was headed straight for me. I screamed and tried to get out of the way, but my little body didn't move. I closed my eyes as the car slammed into me and I felt and heard my bones crunch before it all became black.

The blackness didn't seem to last long though, and then I was happily driving along in my car, when a big truck started coming at me. I yelled again and swerved out of the way to ... whistling while hanging up the clothes on a washing line. I bent down to get another shirt out of the basket and saw that I was wearing a dress and had a lot of cleavage from my big breasts.

I was about to yell again, when I was kicking a football through the poles and being cheered with my teammates for making the field goal. Then I was falling down into the arms of my fellow cheerleaders and I wondered why I had such great looking legs sticking out from my skirt. I didn't have time to wonder long though, because I was eating a hotdog while looking at the game from the bleachers.

My mind kept switching scene's faster and faster, as if I had a really good remote control and changed channels rapidly. I was a police officer shooting some kid, I was the kid getting shot. Then a little girl seeing the kid get shot. An airline pilot seeing dials going haywire, a sewer maintenance man smelling the foul odor in the sewers. It kept changing so fast and it was so real lifelike that I couldn't take it anymore.

Once I skipped past someone seeing myself lying on the bed. 'Is that me lying on the bed? Why do I look so bad, and is my hair even lighter than before. Wait a minute if I'm looking at myself, does that mean I'm dead?'

The images kept coming stronger and faster, until sometimes two visions overlapped. Then more overlaps happened and I found myself watching several real life TV soaps all together at the same time.

One time I had quite a strong sight of examining myself and saying, "You need to have an expert get a look at him. This isn't normal. Did you watch him as I asked?"

I lost that sight again and saw loads of others, but somehow I did manage to get a faint, "I've been busy and didn't watch him 24/7. But he'll still be okay, right?" I thought it was my father asking that, but I couldn't be sure, I was really out of it, all seeing all those images shooting past. I just knew I was going crazy.

A strong voice tried to bring some sense in my thoughts and images. For a moment things cleared up, and I could hear the voice clearly. I even saw myself on the bed with my eyes wide open and my hair very blond now. The voice said, "Danny, can you hear me? I'm talking telepathically to you. Can you say something?"

I tried my best to respond, but the person couldn't hear me. I became frantic, trying harder and harder, but other images began to blur the person's image and other voices obscured the voice. Soon everything blurred together again.

^^^^^

Mason Boudrie stood up from kneeling next to the bed of the young boy. He addressed the boy father, "Mister Montro, I'm sorry, but I can't get through to him now. Maybe it's because he's still not finished with his MORFS, or it may be something else. I almost could reach inside his head with my telepathic powers but I wasn't strong enough to break through his barriers. He has to come out of it by himself, but he could use some help doing it. What Danny really needs is someone talking to him and thinking of him all the time. I do realize that it is not feasible for you to do so. I can recommend having him institutionalized. But I doubt that it is the best course of action. It would be better if you hired someone to take care of him 24/7."