Morgan Berry’s mother had always wanted a daughter and when she gives birth to a son, she simply dresses him as a girl and treats him as she would a daughter. When he’s picked on and teased at kindergarten, she homeschools him herself. Morgan is eight when his mother brings home a new beau, a no-nonsense man called Dennis O’Rourke. He compliments his new ‘daughter’ on how pretty she is and when his mother doesn’t correct the man, Morgan flees the room in embarrassment. Naturally, Dennis eventually discovers Morgan isn’t a girl. From that moment on, he barely acknowledges Morgan’s existence and is, in fact, openly hostile to his cross-dressing step-son. On the eve of Morgan’s eighteenth birthday, Dennis, now an alcoholic, bashes his stepson until Morgan loses consciousness. Morgan wakes up outside. He has no idea how he came to be under a tree on top of a small hill beneath a starry sky. He’s trying to work it out when he meets Reginald Batt, of the Big River Batts. Morgan and Reginald become inseparable and together they experience worlds of wonder and awe. Morgan is shown sights he could never have imagined and in the process he learns many things about the world, and about himself -- the most important of which is a revelation indeed.

Stranger Things

“Night,” I called back and closed my eyes.


Sleep was a long time coming, but when I finally nodded off my dreams were vivid and more than a little disturbing.


I was awakened the following morning by the burnt orange and gold light of dawn that filtered through the darkness. With both my mind and body unenthusiastic about rising at such an ungodly hour, I remained recumbent in the long grass and was soon rewarded with my first ever sunrise.


“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said Reginald from his perch above me.


I shook my head in awe. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”


The light was unlike anything I had witnessed before, so fresh and clean. It dusted everything it touched with a fine, powdery luminosity, which gave it a magical quality. It was as if every tree and every blade of grass had been created during the night and was, that morning, making its debut.


Chapter 4