AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story is a sequel to my earlier Swamp Thing story, Swamp Thing: Reversal of Fortune. It's been ten years since I wrote that story, which broke up Swamp Thing and Abby Cable, and I've had a change of heart since then. This is my attempt to set things right. A third story will follow this one.
by Doc Quantum of the Time Trust
The late afternoon sun shone hotly through the kitchen windows as a radiantly beautiful woman put the finishing touches on a birthday cake. It was a triple-layer chocolate cake that she had elaborately decorated with icing in different shades of green. She wore a content smile upon her face as she finished writing a message on the cake, which read, To my darling husband Matthew, happy birthday!
The young woman casually brushed an errant lock of platinum-blonde hair from her face, tucking it around her right ear. Matthew would be home soon, and she wanted everything to be perfect. Everything had to be perfect, because everything was always perfect.
She smiled and sighed as she looked at the cake she had baked and decorated. It was indeed a fine piece of work.
But a frown creased her brow. Was something troubling her? Was there something wrong with the cake? She peered at it more closely now. No, she could see nothing wrong with it, but still something disturbed her. Was it the way the light of the alien sun shone upon it? Was it the words she had chosen? Or the crumbs that had fallen from it before she'd placed icing upon it? No, she decided; it was the color of the icing. That shade of green wasn't right; it should have been bright and lively, almost glowing, but instead it looked earthy, like a weed she could have pulled from her garden back on Earth. It looked like the shade of a particular plant she'd once seen in the swamps.
The swamps? When had she ever been in the swamps? A look of confusion and panic suddenly overtook her face. Why couldn't she remember? It was important to her, very important, but now she'd forgotten.
As Abigail Arcane Cable began to sink to her knees, lost in the kind of despair known only to Alzheimer's patients, the front door opened.
"Honey, I'm home!" called Lieutenant Matt Cable. "What's for dinner?"
Abby frowned in confusion and brushed a tear from her eye, then rose and shook her head. A contented smile slowly crept back on her face as she cleared her throat. "I-it's a surprise, dear," she finally managed to say, her voice croaking on the words.
"What's that, honey?" called Matt. "Are you all right? You don't sound well."
"It's nothing," said Abby. "Just me being silly again." There was nothing wrong with the cake, she finally decided. She was just in one of her moods, she knew, and it would soon pass. She put it out of her mind as she always did and said, "Say, darling, why don't we go eat out on the deck tonight? It looks to be a beautiful evening."
"I don't know," replied Matt from the other room. He made a few shuffling noises as he changed out of his work clothes. "The Psirens were spotted twenty miles from here this morning. They're more likely to head inland if they see anyone outside this evening. I've asked Prince Toscos to issue a curfew across his lands until we've been able to track them down."
"Oh, you won't hurt them, will you, Matthew?" asked Abby.
"No, not at all, my dear," replied Matt. "But we do need to relocate them back to their own lands across the sea before they manage to bring any more sailors under their power. It's too dangerous to let them pass through these lands like any other traveler. And don't worry - I have no intention of letting them control me with their telepathic song, either. I'll be wearing a psi-helmet I brought with me from Dimension 42. Spent all day building replicas for the Prince's men."
"Well, you go and make yourself comfortable in the living room, dear," called Abby. "Dinner's not quite ready, and I want it to be a surprise."
"A surprise?" said Matt, chuckling. "All right, but don't go all out on my expense, honey."
"Only the best for my darling," said Abby.
As the young woman opened the oven and pulled out a roast ham, she had a strange sense of déjà vu, as if she'd done all this before. But that was impossible, of course; they had only arrived on this world in this dimension, house and all, mere weeks ago. Before that, she and Matt had been forced to travel on foot and stay wherever they could find shelter as they traversed the dimensions using Matt's ability to warp reality. But now that their family was about to grow by one, Matt had built a house for her that could travel with them wherever they went. It would be a permanent shelter and was protected from any number of forces that might attack.
Abby ran her hand over her belly. She had just barely begun to show, now that she was nearing the end of her first trimester, but she had learned she was pregnant many weeks ago now.
She couldn't imagine why she had ever wanted anything else. But as she recalled the time before she was pregnant, she found it hard to remember anything except their constant quarrelling. They'd been married for years, but they'd also been separated by his illness for much of that time. Though she couldn't remember why, it had not been easy for her to take him back when he recovered. Their first few weeks together had been very difficult, and she had even wanted to leave at one point.
That was when Abby became pregnant. The fact that they were having a baby together had changed everything. She put the past out of her mind and concentrated on being a good homemaker, wife, and expecting mother. Now the past was so firmly out of her mind that she couldn't imagine living a different life than she had now.
Life with Lieutenant Matthew Cable was exciting. Thanks to the incredible abilities that had once been more of a curse than a blessing when he was ill, the young couple were able to travel beyond the known world into other realities populated by many lifeforms both familiar and strange. They'd visited some of the extremely bizarre worlds, but Abby preferred the ones that were more familiar, like variations on the fairy tales that her father had read to her when she was young. And now Abby was the princess in a tall castle for real, only the castle was an otherwise modest suburban house on a hill that could move through dimensions at will.
While most women became moody during pregnancy, Abby found herself becoming blissfully content. Only there were times when a kind of madness set in, when she would remember things from her past and forget where she was in the present. Dim memories of a former lover sometimes plagued her mind, accompanied by guilt for leaving him and the terrible loss of a deep love she had never known with anyone else.
But all of that was impossible, wasn't it? She was Mrs. Matthew Cable, wasn't she? And wasn't she happy and content with her life?
The thought that disturbed her most was that she never knew how she really felt, except when Matthew was around. His presence always reassured her that she was where she needed to be, especially now that she was bearing his child.
Abby Holland pounded against the wall, striking it until her fists were bloody. She screamed at the top of her lungs, but as always, she couldn't make a single sound.
It was impossible to break through. Oh, she'd managed to get through to her conscious mind several times, but only in short intervals that had always left her too exhausted to keep up. She saw glimpses of the world around her on occasion, but for the most part she lived in darkness, shielded from the real world.
She felt as if she lived in a doll's house, a simulation of reality where she was a happy homemaker, barefoot and pregnant and living someone else's dream.
Abby's own dreams were always the same, a variation on a moment in reality that had slipped from her grasp. She had no concept of time any longer, but it seemed like more than a decade had passed since then, since the moment she had lost control over herself and had said goodbye to her true love, Alec Holland.
This was no mere hyperbole for Abby. She'd become the bride of the Swamp Thing on that fateful day back in 1985 when they'd declared their love for one another. She began calling herself Abby Holland as a testament to their wedding in spirit, if not in law, and she had vowed to one day make that name change permanent and legal.
But cruel fate had other ideas for her.
Matthew Cable came out of the coma he'd been in for two years after the hell he'd put her through, first through his alcoholism and then through the living nightmares that plagued them. And then, though it was not his fault, he had become possessed by the foul spirit of the most evil man Abigail had ever known - her uncle, Anton Arcane. In Matt's body, he had killed Abby, sending her soul to Hell. And it was only through the intervention of the Swamp Thing that she was finally rescued.
It was Alec Holland that she loved, that she had been waiting for ever since he was taken away from her by Matt's old boss, Dwight Wicker of the DDI, a top-secret division of Army Intelligence. She had waited for him, pining for him even as she knew he would come back for her someday soon. Until then, she kept herself busy, first by working in a retirement home in Houma, and then for a brief tenure as a schoolteacher on an island in the South Pacific at the Grimoire Academy of Applied Knowledge. But she had left all that behind to be there for Alec upon his return.
Matthew's recovery had been the perfect time for her to tell him that she had moved on, that she had fallen in love with someone else. The only kind thing would have been to grant him a divorce and let him begin his life anew, just as she had planned to do with Alec upon his return.
Instead, she had listened to him, and something happened to her.
She found herself reacting to her first husband in ways that had inwardly shocked her even as they happened. She found herself having feelings for him once more, consciously allowing herself to open those doors again despite her avowed faithfulness to Alec.
But that had not been all. Finally, she had told Alec goodbye. She told him that Matt needed her now, that he had was a new man, and that she needed to give her marriage a try once more. She looked into his eyes and told him that, while she still loved him, she also loved Matt. And inwardly she had been screaming the whole time, watching as her worst nightmare played itself out.
Alec had hidden his pain well, but she knew that she'd broken his heart. Abby had done exactly the opposite of what she had wanted to do when he returned, and she found herself leaving Alec to go away with Matt Cable.
That was when she realized she no longer had control over her own body or her conscious mind. She was no longer able to fully see everything that was going on around her, and she only caught glimpses of life through her body's eyes. That was when Abby began fighting back.
It was extremely difficult to influence her conscious mind at first, and in the early days all she could manage to do was to cause a rift between the conscious Abby and Matthew Cable. Over several weeks, though, she began breaking through. She was sure that the rift between them had grown enough that she could finally pry her apart. Once free of Matt, she was sure that her true self could break out of this cage of the mind and take over her body once more.
But her first husband gained control over her once more through an old ploy - he got her pregnant. Now it was more difficult than ever, if not impossible, to influence her conscious mind. Could Abby Holland ever break free of Matthew Cable's control?
That night, Lieutenant Matthew Cable stood on the deck at the back of his house, looking up at the three moons in the night sky. His wife was asleep in bed, tossing and turning as she slept. Her sleep was fitful on most nights, but this night was especially bad. It was heartbreaking.
He didn't want to control her, he assured himself. He wanted her to love him for who he was, but until that day came, he had no other choice. When they had a child together, she would have to love him, wouldn't she?
"You cannot keep her, you know."
Matt jumped out of his seat, startled at the voice. Turning, he looked and saw who it was. "Oh, it's you. Come to nag me again, have you?"
"I've come merely to remind you that you've violated your own rules."
"Rules?" Matt laughed. "Rules are for men of flesh and blood, not for those like you and I. Tell me, Stranger, if you were in my position, wouldn't you do the same? No, don't tell me. I know there's no heart beating beneath that dark cloak. You couldn't understand what it is to love as I do."
"I understand more than you know. And I know that possession is not love."
"She's not possessed!" retorted Matthew. "I just... can't have her feeling everything she used to feel, or remembering unpleasant things. Not now, at least. Perhaps not ever."
"You cannot control her forever. Choose wisely before that time comes, or you may find that she will not look with favor upon you when your day of judgment is at hand."
Matthew Cable trembled in anger, trying to hold himself back, even as the planks of wood beneath his feet began to vibrate and ripple. There was no use in fighting this being; many others had tried over the years, and all had failed. Closing his eyes, he manage to calm himself down before this escalated. He wasn't about to lose everything by risking a battle with the Phantom Stranger.
"I'll win her over," said Matt. "You'll see. I-"
But as he turned back to face his visitor, the rest of his words caught in his throat as he noticed that the Phantom Stranger had already disappeared.
Abby Cable awoke the next morning. Rushing out of bed to run to the bathroom, she rubbed her eyes as she tried to see the room more clearly. Matthew wasn't in bed, as usual, probably off to join Prince Toscos on the hunt for the Psirens traveling through the Daylands. As she sat herself down on the toilet seat, holding her ample belly in place, she couldn't help but notice how much larger she was now.
But of course she was larger; she was six months pregnant, wasn't she? There were only three more months to go before she and her darling Matthew would usher a new life into this world. Already the Prince had agreed to be the child's godfather. Perhaps she and Matthew would even stay in this dimension for a while longer than they'd originally planned. After all, it would be much more difficult to raise a child while acclimating to strange new worlds every few weeks.
It felt like she'd hardly gotten a wink of sleep last night. All she remembered was tossing and turning as her dreams tormented her. She'd seen visions of a horrible-looking, disfigured, monstrous man with spider-legs; he was chasing her, planning to kill her, she knew, until she was saved by someone else. She should have been terrified by her savior, given that he was himself a monster. But she only felt safe in his arms.
She'd been reading too many romance novels, she decided. Where was her husband in all of this? She wished, just once, that she would have a romantic dream about Matthew, but the only time she ever dreamed of him, he wasn't himself. Strangely enough, he was always a raven who spoke with Matt's voice. Matthew the raven - what a silly concept.
It made her think of Eve back on Grimoire Island, and that raven she always had with her. Everyone had told her that the raven could talk, and that it liked to talk quite a bit, but whenever she was around, she'd never heard one peep out of that thing. It was creepy, anyway. All it did whenever she was around was sit on Eve's shoulder and just stare at Abby. She'd once asked Eve about her raven, and what its name was, but Eve had never given her a straight answer. All she'd said was that she used to have a raven named Edgar Allen - that was a cute name - but that he'd finally passed on to his reward. She never did get around to mentioning her new raven's name, and something else had always come up.
Eve was a strange one, anyway. Most of the time she appeared to be nothing more than an attractive young woman with raven-black locks of wavy hair, and all the male teenage students doted on the bosomy teacher's every word. But there were times when, out of the corner of Abby's eye, that Eve seemed to look like an old crone. Of course, given the supernatural qualities of Grim Island, Abby knew that she couldn't always trust her own eyes when she'd lived there. That place was practically awash with magic.
Abby frowned, realizing how weird it was that she was thinking about Grimoire Academy. She hadn't given a moment's thought to that place, its one-eyed headmaster, and her fellow teachers there for a very long time. She hoped that Rose Psychic, Adam Frankenstein, and young Timothy Hunter and all the rest were all right, and she even wished Headmaster Gallowglass to someday find a lasting peace in his troubled soul. It was for her sake that he'd left the island for the first time in nearly forty years, after all. He'd finally helped her to return to her old home just in time. If not for Gareth Gallowglass, she never would have been reunited with Alec.
"Alec?" she said aloud. No, surely she meant Matthew. "Who's Alec?"
She winced in pain as the baby kicked, causing her to lose her train of thought. It would be another two months of this before she could finally give birth. Being seven months pregnant wasn't exactly a walk in the park.
Lieutenant Matthew Cable sat on a high ridge overlooking a meadow. Next to him was Prince Toscos, a blue-skinned, white-haired, regal-looking man with pointed ears, two small eyes, catlike teeth, and an old scar running from just below his left eye down to the left side of his mouth. Instead of the usual horned crown he wore, a strange-looking, out-of-place, computerized helmet was atop his head. The two men were looking down at a group of seven scantily clad green-skinned women, Psirens all, who were as yet unaware their presence.
"They don't look all that dangerous to me," said the Prince.
"Looks are deceiving," said Matt. "You let one of those girls into your mind, and you'll never be free again."
"And you're sure these odd helms will make them powerless against us?" asked the Prince.
"Don't worry, Your Highness," said Matt. "Just stick with me, and we'll have these Psirens out of the Daylands before you can say Jack Rabbit."
"Your expressions are strange, but your intent is clear," said Prince Toscos. "On your word, I and my men will follow you into the bowels of Hell itself to free our land."
"Hopefully it won't come to that," said Matt, chuckling.
Abby Cable swooned as the pain in her belly became more pronounced. She'd been carrying her child for eight months now, but it felt like an eternity. When was all this going to end?
She needed something strong to dull the pain, but she didn't want to risk hurting the baby. If Matthew were here, he'd know what to do. But she didn't expect him home until dinnertime. He was too busy hunting Psirens, anyway, and she wouldn't want him hanging around all day with her. Matt had always been a man of action, and after such a long time of inaction and illness, he was finally himself once again, except now they were having fantastic adventures they'd only ever dreamed about before.
Matt had given her a sedative once before, one that had put her under and relieved the pain within moments. It had been quite recently, too, if she recalled correctly, so it must have been after she'd become pregnant. He wouldn't have given her anything that would harm the baby, she reasoned, so it wouldn't do any harm if she took another one now. But where did he keep them?
Searching through the bathroom, the bedroom, and finally the kitchen, she was unable to turn up anything, not even a Tylenol. Unless he'd taken them with him, the sedatives had to be in the house somewhere. She decided to look for them in his workshop.
She knew Matthew didn't like her going in there alone, since he had collected several trophies from the various dimensions and worlds they'd visited, and some of those trophies could be dangerous in the wrong hands. But the pain was too great.
Looking through his messy work desk and the various drawers full of all kinds of mechanical and technological parts, she came up with nothing. It was obvious that he wasn't hiding anything from her in here, either. There were no sedatives in the house, she realized. They must have used them up and thrown away the bottle. It was the only explanation she could come up with.
But the pain only got worse. Being nine months pregnant, she knew she was still a few days away from her due date, but she knew the baby could be born almost any day now. It was time for some creative thinking.
Several of Matthew's trophies could do wonderful things. Maybe one of those trophies could also bring her relief in a way that would be safer than pills. She began looking through them, trying to remember if he'd told her about anything that might help.
Then she saw one trophy case that was empty and open. She frowned for a moment until she realized why, and looked over at the work table. It was the psi-helmet from Dimension 42. It wasn't a sedative, but since it had the ability of giving its user total freedom over their mind, it just might be able to help her control her body's pain responses as well. A sly smile formed on her lips as she walked toward it and picked it up.
Matt Cable and Prince Toscos had led the charge of the royal guard toward the Psirens in the meadow. At first the green-skinned women had done nothing except appear as alluring as possible as they began singing their telepathic song for the newcomers, not knowing that the men were all protected from their control via the other-dimensional psi-helmets they wore.
It was only after the first man had placed one of them in chains that the Psirens all realized it had been for naught, and they began to fight back.
The Psirens began screeching and leaped around like wildcats, scratching at the blue-skinned men trying to apprehend them. They put up the fight of their lives, but in the end they were much too small to stand up to the royal guard, despite the gallantry evident in the way that the men tried to be as delicate as possible.
After the Psirens had been subdued, the translator spoke to them in their own language, informing them that they would be deported back to their own lands. None of the green-skinned women looked happy to hear that, but they still looked relieved that they wouldn't be put to the sword, or worse, by their captors.
Matt slapped Prince Toscos on the back as the two men congratulated each other on a successful hunt.
"You must tell me someday how you came to be in possession of such a wondrous helm," said the Prince.
"Perhaps later," agreed Matt. "I have to get back home soon. Abby gets a bit stir-crazy when she's alone for too long, and I have a feeling we'll have another mouth to feed by tonight."
Prince Toscos laughed. "We must have you both over for a royal feast to celebrate the birth of your heir! Though I must admit, it still amazes me how your women are able to carry a child to term so quickly. Why, it was only two days ago that you told me she was with child! You must teach the women of our land your secret."
Matt grinned. "If that were possible, I would. Believe me."
"Honey, I'm home!" called Matt as he opened the front door and walked in. He waited for a moment to hear her reply, but there was none. "Hmm... must be sleeping," he guessed.
Taking off his coat, he walked toward the bedroom, looking around as he went. "Honey?" he called. "Baby, you in here?" There was no one in the bedroom, and the adjoining bathroom was empty as well.
Walking back down the hallway, he noticed that the door to his workshop was ajar. A cold sweat suddenly ran down his back. She wouldn't have gone in there without his permission, would she? Hadn't he made that perfectly clear many times before?
Quickly opening the workshop door, he sighed in relief as he found it empty. There was nothing in there but his work desk and all his trophies. So where was she?
He smiled as he guessed where she must be - the deck. She loved being under the sun, even the alien one above this world. That was where he'd find her.
Opening the door to the deck, he saw her sitting on a chair, overlooking the view. Her back was to him. Abby was wearing a towel on her head, and she was dressed in a bathrobe. "Hey, honey. I was wondering where you were. Did you have a shower?"
"No," she finally said, but her tone of voice was different, somehow. "No, I didn't have a shower."
"Then why are you wearing that...?" He stopped speaking as a thought occurred to him. The desk in his workshop - there was something missing, something he had been working on and had left behind by mistake this morning.
Panic set in once more, and he placed one hand on his shoulders and pulled her around, none too gently. Now facing him, her eyes were full of none of the tenderness he was used to seeing there. No, she was looking at him with what could only be described as fierce determination.
"Wh-what's going on?" asked Matt. "Are you feeling all right, Abby? You don't look well."
"I'm fine," she said in a flat tone. "In fact, I've never felt better in my life."
At that, she unwrapped the towel from her head. Matt's eyes widened as he saw his worst fears realized. She was wearing the psi-helmet from Dimension 42. "Oh, baby, you shouldn't be wearing that. Here, let me take that off you." He began reaching forward, but Abby recoiled back. Then she held up one hand. In it was a laser pistol, another other-dimensional trophy she'd found in his workroom.
Before he could say another word, she armed the laser pistol and pointed it right at him. "Who are you?" she demanded.
"Wh-what?" Matt said, feigning confusion. "It's me - your husband, Matt!"
"Nice try," she said, then shot a blast at the railing just behind him, evaporating it. "My next shot will be right at your head. I'm done being lied to. You can't control me any longer. Can't use me. My eyes are finally open, and I know you're not my former husband. He might not have been the best husband, but he would never have done what you've done to me."
"'Former husband'?" said Matt in an offended tone. But Abby merely raised the pistol threateningly, and he backed off once more, noticing for the first time that all signs of her pregnancy had long since disappeared. "All right, all right. Please don't shoot, Abby. Just... just put the pistol down, and I'll tell you the truth."
"You can talk just as easily with a gun in your face," said Abby pitilessly. "Now just who the hell are you? Don't make me repeat myself again."
"I am your husband... at least in a way," said Matt. "It's a long story."
"We've got plenty of time," said Abby.
"I figured this day would come eventually," said Matt. "I just wished it had been after the baby was born."
"There was never any baby," Abby growled, placing her left hand over her flat stomach. "That was just another of your ploys to keep me here. But you overplayed your hand."
Matt sighed. "All right, all right. You've got me. Well, as I was saying, I am your husband in a way, but in another way I'm not. It all started back when you were on the run from the DDI."
Lieutenant Matthew Cable was a wreck of a man. This once-proud soldier and extremely capable secret agent had been reduced to his current state by men working for his former boss, Dwight Wicker of the top-secret military intelligence branch known as the DDI.
The failure of Wicker's department to capture the Swamp Thing as part of Project Leviathan had been a blight on the military-man's career, especially now that they had lost track of the creature. Unknown to Cable or his fellow agents in the field, Wicker had secretly hired Sunderland Corporation to get rid of any evidence connecting him to the Swamp Thing debacle, and nothing was out of the question. Some individuals were outright assassinated, while others were taken care of in other ways, all in the name of the Holland Project.
Because having him killed would lead to more questions, Matt Cable had been selected for extensive electroshock therapy at a special clinic run by Sunderland Corporation. When his bosses at DDI sent Matt on a mission to South Dakota, he was instead ambushed and sent to the Barclay Clinic, supposedly for his own good. Placed in a straitjacket, Matt was subjected to repeated electroshock therapy, reducing him to a quivering mass unable to recall much of anything, let alone any details that could incriminate DDI.
While still in the clinic, Matt was visited by another DDI agent who explained that it had all been a terrible mistake. But Matt knew that he was merely being pumped for information, to see if the treatments had erased his memory. Playing dumb, Matt managed to get himself released from the clinic, even though he still remembered much.
Thankfully, Matt had managed to keep his wife Abigail Arcane Cable out of it completely. The two settled down to a more sedate married life in Houma, but Matt's brains had been scrambled, and he was no longer the man he'd once been. He had already been discharged from the DDI without compensation, and all he could manage to do for work was labor, since he was unable to concentrate for long enough to do anything else. Even so, he was unable to keep even one in a series of low-paying, menial jobs. And if that were not bad enough, the two were still being closely watched by DDI agents.
Seeing no more options left to him, Matt Cable gave up trying to fight. Instead, he began drinking to dull the pain and in a matter of time became a full-blown alcoholic. Abby tried to remain supportive of him and encourage him, but there was only so much she could do. He was a broken man, and there was no use denying it.
But fate took a turn then. Unknown to either Matt or Abby, a strange being from the cosmos entered their lives one day when Matt was at his lowest. This creature was invisible to the naked eye, except in some circumstances when it appeared to be some kind of green-tinted mist. It had come to Earth in 1964 and had affected many lives since then, usually for the better. This was the Green Glob.
"The Green Glob?" interrupted Abby disbelievingly.
"That's what it's called," explained Matt with a shrug.
One day while Abby was at work and Matt was at home, drinking away his sorrows over the want ads in the newspaper, he drifted off to sleep as The Price Is Right played on the TV in the background. Ever since the Barclay Clinic had scrambled his mind, changing him forever, Matt had become well-acquainted with despair. His only escape was sleep, but it was always a gamble whether he would have pleasant dreams or nightmares. These days it was usually nightmares.
The kinds of nightmares Matt had become almost used to now were uniquely horrifying. He had seen a lot of strange stuff during his earlier days with the Swamp Thing, but everything he had seen paled in comparison to the monstrosities he saw in his mind's eye.
Unbeknownst to Matthew Cable, those nightmares would soon become real, when the Green Glob entered his body and possessed his fevered brain.
And now, as Matt slept, psychic projections of his own self-loathing formed in the air around him, tentacled creatures with sharp teeth and a great hunger to kill and devour all life around them. Yet while they seemed fierce, none of them actually harmed Matt himself. Sadly, the same could not be said for those around him.
Abby Cable chose that moment to return home from work. But as she approached her front door, she felt a chill pass through her. Looking around, she could see no reason to be afraid, but she felt that something was out there in the darkness, waiting to get her.
Several days passed before either of them saw these nightmares made real. When Abby finally saw one that looked like a lizard with numerous tentacled eyes, she screamed, and it vanished into thin air. A few more days passed, and she saw another apparition.
She told Matt about them, of course, but he thought they were just her imagination. When he saw one himself, he merely dismissed it as his own fevered mind playing tricks on him. After all, none of them had done any physical harm just yet, only scaring them.
Although Matt did not realize it at first, the creatures manifested themselves in various forms based on whatever strong emotions he was feeling at the time. Since most of those emotions were self-loathing and other negative feelings, the manifestations looked like the embodiments of those emotions.
Had things gone as the Green Glob had planned, the nightmares made real would have scared Matt Cable straight and caused him to give up booze and seek the help he so desperately needed to get his life together. But things did not go as planned. Matt was a more difficult case than most, so it took several weeks to make any headway at all, while Matt continually relapsed into alcoholism.
Finally, after Matt and Abby were reunited with the Swamp Thing, as well as the creature's new allies Dr. Dennis Barclay and Liz Tremayne. Ironically, Dr. Barclay was the man who had been hired by Sunderland to fry Matt's brains through electroshock. Consequently, the nightmare creatures went after Barclay as Matt slept.
When Abby herself was injured by the nightmares, Matt had a wake-up call and sought help. But that was when Anton Arcane arrived and changed the game entirely.
Arcane had seemingly died twice before, but he had been resurrected twice since then as a monstrous creature, leader of the Un-Men. In his current form, he had a grotesque torso upon a spidery body that allowed him quick movement. He also possessed a ship built by both science and sorcery.
While Arcane attacked the Swamp Thing and kept him busy, Matt Cable found himself on the receiving end of a beam of unknown composition from the ship, one that creased his skull and knocked him out, allowing Arcane to abduct his niece, Abigail. Arcane sought to take over the Swamp Thing's body and make it his own. But he had not reckoned on the betrayal of one of his own Un-Men. And Arcane died a second time before he could possess Swamp Thing's body.
Matt was unable to play the hero as he once did. The role of hero was played by the Swamp Thing, the former Dr. Alec Holland, who rescued Abby Cable from the clutches of the vengeful Un-Men after the death of their creator.
When he finally awoke, Matt finally faced the fact that his subconscious mind had been creating the nightmare creatures, and he realized that he was the only one who could stop them. If they were manifestations of his worst nature, then he would become a better man. If they were his self-loathing made real, he would regain his self-confidence. If they were his fears and horror at his past, then he would forge a new future for himself through an act of courage, one step at a time.
Matt faced the nightmare creatures, his fears made manifest, and he overcame them. They vanished. For the first time in a long time, Matthew finally felt a great calmness inside him. He knew that he'd beaten it, and with it all the negativity in his life. With enough time, he knew that he would be able to restore himself to normal once more. And with his loving wife Abby at his side, he was sure he would do so.
Despite the fact that its job was done, the Green Glob remained within the body of Matthew Cable. It was, in fact, unable to leave because of the occult beam that Arcane's ship had shot at Matt. Thus it would remain until an opportunity came for it to leave.
But great power leads to temptation, and Matt was still not strong enough to avoid it. With the power of the Green Glob within him, he began to try to control the psychic manifestations that had previously only erupted from his subconscious. With a little practice, he found that he could make his fantasies turn into reality.
When Abby returned to check on him, Matt told her almost everything. He hoped that they could begin their marriage anew, that everything could be as it once had been when they were first married. But Abby had been living with a drunkard in a lousy marriage for too long; it would take a lot of time for her to allow herself to have those old feelings for Matt once more, if ever.
So Matt turned back to the bottle, and to his new ability. If she wasn't going to play wife for him, then he would create a manifestation in her likeness to do so himself. And with the smallest amount of effort, he succeeded in creating a blue-skinned, scantily clad version of Abigail Cable. It would do for now, at least until Abby came around. And Matt's soul became just a little bit darker that day.
Meanwhile, unknown to Swamp Thing and his allies, they were all being targeted at once by Sunderland Corporation's special forces. By sheer luck, Matt and Abby had left their house just moments before it was firebombed by a Sunderland helicopter.
On the run once more, but this time believed to be dead, Abby led the search for Swamp Thing, and Matt followed her. This was an ironic twist on the time when they had first met, when Matt would do the leading, and Abby would follow. When they found him, they found a despondent Swamp Thing who had lost all faith. He had been taught through an anatomy lesson that he was nothing more than a plant that believed itself to be a man, not a man who had turned into a plant as he'd once believed.
And while Abby Cable began getting to know the new Swamp Thing, slowly falling for him, Matt Cable allowed himself to slide deeper and deeper into a fantasy world of his own making. This was the flip-side of the Green Glob's power, the end result of that power untapped and made available to a man who lacked the discipline and self-control he'd once possessed.
Abby began to grow afraid of her husband as she caught glimpses of the new manifestations that Matt seemed to be creating now at will. It scared her even more that he was hiding this side of himself from her. Meanwhile, Matt would hold in his growing resentment for her whenever he was in her presence, then create manifestations of Abby to do the apologizing for her. He began an affair with the psychic creatures from his mind, neglecting his wife in every way. His soul continued to rot as he allowed himself to wallow in the power at his beck and call.
But a small part of him was aware of what he was doing, even if he wasn't willing to face it. While in an alcohol-induced haze, Matt finally determined to step out of his fantasy world and go get his wife. He grabbed the car keys and stepped out the door.
And he got into a serious car accident.
No amount of fantasies could help him now as he found himself lying upside down in a wrecked car on the side of the road. He was drunk, and he was dying.
That was when Arcane stepped back into his life.
Although Anton Arcane had indeed died, his soul sent to Hell itself, he had escaped through supernatural means back into the real world. Since his Un-Men body was broken and beyond repair, he transferred his soul into an insect until he could find a more suitable form. It was while in that form that Arcane approached the battered and broken Matthew Cable, and he made a proposal.
Without Arcane's help, Matthew Cable would bleed to death within the hour. He would never see his darling wife again. So Matt made a deal with the devil.
In the days that followed, Abby Cable saw a new man in her husband. Like he had earlier promised, he finally shaped himself up and turned over a new leaf. Getting a brand-new job and buying a large colonial era home for her, Matt finally became everything Abby had wanted him to be months earlier. He would win Abby's affection back from the Swamp Thing and live happily ever after.
But as Abby soon learned to her horror, this was not her husband. This was her evil uncle, Anton Arcane, in possession of Matt's body as well as the reality-warping power of the Green Glob within him. In fact, that had been why Arcane had chosen Matt in the first place; a mystical probe had discovered the trapped Green Glob in Matt's body, and Arcane knew that Matt had barely even tapped the smallest amount of its power so far.
Indeed, Arcane had been watching Matt for some time and had even orchestrated his car accident in order to take possession of the power within him. And with the Green Glob's cosmic supernatural power at Arcane's disposal, he truly became a force to be reckoned with. Only Swamp Thing was able to challenge the godlike occult being that his oldest enemy had become, and by the time he did, Arcane had already murdered Abigail Arcane Cable.
Then Matthew Cable still had one act of heroism left to him. While in battle against Swamp Thing, Arcane was attacked from within by Matt himself, wielding the power of the Green Glob to take back control of his body and cast Arcane's soul back to Hell.
But Matt was truly dying now. With his last breath of life, he used his reality-warping ability to return life to Abby Cable's body, though he was unable to retrieve her soul; that job would be left to the Swamp Thing. And then Lieutenant Matthew Cable died, his body left in the same broken state it had been when he'd had his car accident.
The police found him later on, and though he still breathed, Matt himself was long gone. Only the humbled Green Glob remained to keep life going in his body. He was hospitalized and believed to be brain-dead. But unbeknownst to anyone else, within him the Green Glob was slowly regaining its strength, waiting for the day when Matt Cable would finally awake.
"And so you see, in a sense I am Matt Cable - or at least his body - though with a different soul," explained Matt. "The real Matthew Cable that you knew was killed shortly after he ousted Anton Arcane from his body. As for Matt's own soul, it was destined for a different and much more unique purpose."
"Are you telling me that you're this Green Glob?" asked Abby Holland, her laser pistol still trained on him.
"Essentially, yes," said Matt. "Your husband's body was vacated by both its original soul and by your uncle's soul, leaving it catatonic. But because of Arcane's interference, the Green Glob was also trapped within this body long after its mission would have been over."
"Did you ever try to escape?"
"Oh, yes," said Matt. "Repeatedly. But it was no use. Nothing I could do would separate me from this body; all I could do was try to heal it from within, and do so without the vast reality-altering powers of the Green Glob."
"Is all this-" Abby waved her laser pistol in a small arc to indicate the surroundings. "-is any of this real?"
"Most of it is," explained Matt. "This dimension, and the others we've visited, are most certainly real. My powers allow me to create solid psychic manifestations, but not on the scale of an entire world like this one."
"So if you're supposedly some cosmic force for good, here to teach people lessons, why did you use your powers to control me?" demanded Abby. "Not even the most twisted logic can justify what you did to me."
"It was my fault, I admit it," said Matt, sighing. "This - being in this body, experiencing what it's like to be a husband - was completely new to me. In all my prior existence, I'd never been so close to a sentient's emotions. This body changed me, infected me, made me human - I could no longer think coldly and rationally or follow the purpose for the Green Glob's existence, which had been ordained by the wise immortals of the planet Oa many thousands of centuries ago. I essentially became Matt Cable, adopting his personality and his full gamut of feeling, including the most powerful emotions of all. It was overwhelming. I admit that I - I fell in love with you."
Abby raised her laser pistol a bit higher. "If you think you can somehow salvage this, you're wrong. Skip the 'love' part and tell me why."
"Why did I do what I did?" asked Matt. "I guess it had something to do with timing. If the Swamp Thing had never been shot into space, if you'd stayed with him, then I wouldn't have tried anything. But he was gone for so long - a year and a half - that I thought I might have a chance with you. It was ironic that I recovered in this body at the same time he returned, but it certainly wasn't planned that way.
"We talked, and yes, I wanted to convince you to love me, to give me another chance," continued Matt. "But I never realized that my reality-altering powers - or those of the Green Glob, to be precise - had slowly begun to return to their original levels. Unconsciously, I caused you to ignore your love for him, Alec, and to concentrate on the feelings you'd had when you were first married to me."
"You manipulated me," said Abby flatly.
"Yes, but I wasn't aware to what extent I was until it was too late," continued Matt. "It wasn't until weeks later into our second honeymoon that I realized the Abby Cable I knew was not the real one. The real Abby - you - were buried somewhere beneath her consciousness."
"So you made sure that I'd never be in control again," concluded Abby.
"No!" said Matt. "I wanted you in control of yourself. I desperately wanted that. But I couldn't afford to lose you. I needed to make sure that the real you would fall in love with me just as much as the surface you had seemed to do. But then we started arguing all the time, and you kept on dredging up the past. I knew that I was starting to lose you again. I had to do something drastic."
"Like getting me pregnant?"
"Like making you think you were pregnant," explained Matt. "Despite all my powers, I couldn't risk giving you the gift of life for real. So, two days ago, I created a child within you that would seem like the real thing. You'd carry the child in a matter of days, yet believe that nine months have passed, and I made sure that nothing else could cloud your mind during this time. I needed you to fall in love with the baby, and through him fall back in love with me. I couldn't risk losing you again."
"You never had me," said Abby. "You're not my husband. You're not even Matt Cable. I never loved you. All our conversations, all that you've heard me say since we've been together, was scripted. This life we had together here? Nothing but play-acting in a doll's house."
"But you once loved Matthew Cable," he said.
"Yes," agreed Abby. "Once."
"Then you could love me," insisted Matt. "I am everything Matt once was, and more. Why can't you appreciate what you have? I love you, Abby! I want nothing more than to be with you and make you happy."
"I don't love you, and I could never love you," said Abby. "You controlled me. You used me. God, you raped me. None of what we had was consensual. You made my body a puppet for your lust."
"That's not true!" said Matt. "What I feel for you is so much more than-"
"You want to make me happy?" said Abby. "Let me go."
"But-"
"Let me go," repeated Abby, pushing the laser pistol toward him.
"Abby, listen to me. I-"
"LET ME GO!" she screamed.
Matt Cable's next words were caught in his throat. She was serious. He closed his mouth and gulped, then nodded and looked down, resigned to his fate. But as Abby began to lower her guard, he thrust his hand out and pushed the pistol away, even as he grabbed it from her and tossed it over the balcony into the valley below.
Abby began screaming as he approached her.
"I'm doing this for your own good, Abby!" he yelled, grabbing the psi-helmet from her head and yanking it away.
She stopped in her tracks as his reality-warping powers began making their way back into her mind once more in an attempt to take control of her once more. But she was on to him this time; it wouldn't be as easy at it had been when she first allowed him in. Then she'd had her guard down, but now she was fully aware of his capabilities, and she resisted.
Matt pushed harder, trying to suffocate her subconscious once again, but Abby refused to give in that easily. As he kept pushing, the house around them began to rattle and shake, vibrating terribly.
Finally, the doll's house they had shared began to crumble around them, and the Dayworld disappeared as they entered a misty realm, surrounded only by the debris from the destroyed house they had shared.
"Stop!" cried a voice in the darkness.
"Help... me...!" cried Abby, seeing the form of the Phantom Stranger appear before her.
"Go away!" shouted Matt. "This is none of your business, Stranger!"
"It was not before," agreed the Phantom Stranger, "but it is now. Cease your attack upon this woman immediately!" And the Stranger punctuated his words with a mystical attack of his own upon the form of Matthew Cable.
"AARGH!" cried Matt, finding himself the victim of his own mental attack, thanks to the Stranger's mystic blast and Abby's strong resistance.
It was too much for his frail human form, which began to dissolve into a greenish mist.
The Green Glob, his true form naked to the others, hovered in place as the body of Matthew Cable crumbled into dust, joining the fate of his long-deceased soul. Gone was the passion and lust for life that had embodied Matt Cable. Gone was his love for Abby and his desire to live. All that was left was the inscrutable Green Glob, its mission to right wrongs and teach lessons to those receptive to them finally set right again, its purpose finally restored. Remaining just a moment more in the presence of both Abby Holland and the Phantom Stranger, it then flew off and disappeared into the darkness. And all those who would encounter it in the days and years ahead would benefit from its interference once more, in one way or another.
"Is it gone?" said Abby. "Is it finally over?"
"You are free once more," said the Phantom Stranger. "Let me take you home."
"I'm not sure where home is any longer," Abby said, her voice choked up. "I'd always believed my home was with Alec. But after all those things I said to him, I can't imagine he'd ever want to see me again."
"Let him decide that for himself," said the Stranger. "If your love is as true as you believe it to be, then nothing will be able to keep you apart."
"Thank you," said Abby. "Please take me back to Houma. I'll... figure things out from there."
"As you wish."
Opening up a portal in the darkness, the Phantom Stranger took Abby Holland's hand and walked her through it into her new destiny.
The Erl-King had left the land of his birth to travel the world, to visit his domain and meet his subjects. But as usual, horror and tragedy often followed in his wake. Most who saw him coming, and there were very few, thought him to be nothing more than a shambling monster. And so he spent his days alone as he often did in his early years, wandering and trying to find some sense in the world.
The Parliament of Trees had told him that he would find a queen one day, but none of the creatures he had met could even compare with the love he'd once known and lost. The only one he had felt a connection with was Woodrue's daughter, the one called Blossom. But his relationship with her was like that of an uncle with his niece. In a short amount of time they did become close, almost like family, but their destinies were decidedly different.
As the Swamp Thing sat at the edge of the Yalu River in China, gazing up at the stars, he wondered where Abby was now, and if she was happy. He was a long way from Houma, Louisiana.
The End