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

Eventually my thoughts began to disintegrate and I dissolved into nothingness. There were no dreams, just…nothingness.


I was awoken the following morning, not by the sun, which was quite high in a blue, cloudless sky by the time I became conscious, but by the sound of a girl calling a name.


I opened my eyes as the girl, wearing a simple white dress, decorated with embroidered flowers, and wearing her hair in twin braids, appeared from behind the massive trunk of an ancient tree. I stood up, ready to greet her.


She gasped. “Please don’t hurt me,” she said, her eyes full of fear.


I was a little offended. “I have no intention of hurting you.”


The girl’s expression became friendlier. Her body relaxed, though she kept her distance.


At that moment, Reginald leapt from the branches, flinging half a dozen dead leaves into the air as he landed.


Chapter 7