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

Duchess was now walking, lowering her head every now and again to sniff the grass as if she were remembering how sweet and juicy it tasted.


On the far side of the field was an almost vertical slope, the top of which was capped with snow. As we drew nearer I could see the figure of girl doing what appeared to be calisthenics.


“Is that Rosamond?” I asked, ready to be shocked if the answer was in the affirmative.


“No, that’s not Rosamond,” Reginald replied. “That’s something other than a girl.”


I looked again, straining my eyes. It sure looked like a girl, or more correctly, a young woman, for as Duchess took us nearer I could see that she was naked. As she bent backwards onto the palms of her hands, I could see ribs. Her breasts almost disappeared as she bent back, but reappeared once again after she was standing upright again.


Duchess snorted, capturing the woman’s attention.


“Let me do the talking,” Reginald whispered.


Chapter 8