Monstrous Dreams
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Danny sometimes had strange dreams.
Not the kind of strange you would expect. He rarely dreamed of the accident, or of fighting ghosts, or of running from ghost hunters. His dreams weren't nightmares.
He dreamed of transformation. But not the transformation he was used to, the transformation he carried out with a thought during his waking hours. Becoming a ghost was not the subject of his dreams, nor was the reclamation of life. He did not dream about the shapes he could twist himself into when he was a ghost.
His dreams, more often than not, concerned the transformation of his human body. Gentle warpings that would have been horrific and painful under the the harsh realism of the waking world felt pleasant, felt like stretching, felt like a comfortable strain, felt like crushing a pillow in a hug, felt like pushing against a wall, felt like fingers running over grass.
One time, he dreamt of standing in front of a mirror and watching his teeth grow. First, his canines grew into small fangs that were easy to hide and almost cute. But they didn't stop there, and the rest of his teeth followed suit, lengthening and lengthening until they spilled over his lips and forced his mouth open at a strange angle. They angled into tusks, then, curving lengths of ivory that Danny ran his fingers over. When he held them, they fit neatly in his hands, like they were meant to be handles.
He spent the next few days checking his teeth, running his tongue over them, looking for unexpected sharpness. He wasn't disappointed to not find any. He didn't want fangs or tusks. They seemed inconvenient at best. But the phantom sensations that came with them lingered, like the memory of a memory.
He didn't want them, but not having them felt as unsettling as the thought of having them.
Another dream featured him reading a comic book in bed while his legs merged together into a serpent's tail over three times as long as his usual height. Scales crawled up his spine like shivers as the rest of him coiled. His dream-tail had been entirely unlike his ghostly one, weighty, muscular, and tangible in a way he couldn't put his finger on while awake.
He asked Jazz if the dreams meant anything.
She tilted her head. "Are you comfortable with your body?" she asked. "They might be your mind's way of dealing with discomfort about the way you look."
"I'm not uncomfortable with my body," said Danny.
"Then they might just be dreams," said Jazz with a shrug. "Sometimes they don't mean anything at all."
That night he dreamed of a pool full of viscous, silvery liquid. It glittered pale under moonlight and steamed with cold. He stepped into it and watched himself bleed from his pores where it touched him. He knew that for every drop of blood he shed, a drop of liquid silver took its place. When he walked out of the pool again, his movements were slow, almost heavy, but smooth and full of fluid grace he would never have been able to accomplish with red blood in his veins.
He was woken up by the Box Ghost trying to cause trouble again, and Danny dutifully chased after him, but the moonlight was cold on his skin and when he got back to his room he wrapped himself in layers of blankets. His pulse felt loud and warm.
When he had a headache, he dreamed of horns erupting from his throbbing head. Huge, curved, and slightly segmented, like a ram's. In his dream, he went through a day almost identical to the one he'd just lived, except for the horns. They grew with pain. The more he felt, the bigger they got. They arced behind his head, then back, around his ears, caressing his cheeks as the tips grew ever closer to his eyes. His dream self accepted this, accepted his imminent blindness.
Danny himself woke before it could happen. It was the closest the dreams had come to a nightmare.
He asked Frostbite if something was causing the dreams.
"You mean an outside influence beyond your subconscious?" asked Frostbite as he peered at Danny's charts.
"Sure," said Danny. "Something that isn't just, well, me."
"Not that I can detect," said Frostbite. "It is normal for people to have recurring patterns in their dreams, especially for ghosts. We are creatures of habit. Speaking of habits, you need to floss more."
Danny dreamed of hands pushing out from his ribcage. Each one strained against elastic skin until his sides were festooned with new arms. He rubbed his hands against each other, then down his new arms. The lowest joined his torso just above the hip, and touching the skin where it bunched up and creased made his stomach do strange things.
It reminded him of his duplication accidents, and he tried to replicate the feeling while awake to no avail.
He dreamed he reclined, blindfolded, on a couch while someone sunk their hands into his throat like clay. Deft fingers kneaded and sculpted his esophagus, his trachea, his vocal cords. They reached into his mouth to tug on his tongue and caress his palate. When Danny removed the blindfold and sat up, they were nowhere to be found. He went to the dining room and ate dinner with his family. They asked how his day had gone, and he answered with a sound that was utterly inhuman but not quite animal. It was quiet, as if too much volume would destroy it, oddly tame, and it tickled at the back of his brain.
"Is there anything weird about my hands?" Danny asked his friends. "Or my voice?"
"Other than the person they're attached to? No," said Sam. "Why? Did something happen with one of your powers?"
"No," said Danny. "Just… they feel weird, a little bit."
Tucker wrinkled his nose a little. "Are you high?" he asked, his tone making it clear he was teasing.
"No," said Danny, teasing back. "I've just been having strange dreams, lately."
Tucker patted him on the back. "I feel you, man."
Danny sat very still, a dream forest blooming all around him. Branches sprouted from his temples like antlers, reaching up and twining with the surrounding trees. They were beautiful, full of flowers and buzzing with bees, but he could not move without locking his branches against those of the trees. So, he sat still and watched his branches multiply with his peripheral vision, becoming ever more entangled. The flowers fell away, petals drifting with the wind, and Danny's branches grew heavy with fruit. He tried to reach up to pick one, but his arms weren't long enough.
He woke up hungry.
Later, he dreamed of walking through the city, pressure compacting him on all sides. It pressed patterns into his skin, stripes and spots and swirls. They were words, he knew, but he could not fathom them. He traced them, over and over, and as his fingers narrowed into needle-sharp points they became more clear.
"It is because you are a monster," said Clockwork.
"What?" Danny hadn't asked a question, yet.
"Your dreams," clarified Clockwork. "They are the way they are because you are a monster."
"Because I'm a ghost?" asked Danny, trying to feel his way around the concept. It didn't sound right.
"No. A ghost can be a monster, much as a human may, but it is not necessary, and as Phantom you are monstrous enough. But a simple human form is not enough for what you are. The dreams are a way of reminding yourself."
"I don't understand."
"You are a monster," repeated Clockwork. "A divine omen. A portent. A sign of the calamities to come."
"Does that mean my dreams will happen?"
"Perhaps. Perhaps not. It may be that all of them will come to pass. Or only a few. Or one. Or none. It will not change what you are."
"An omen."
"Yes."
"An omen of what?"
Clockwork took Danny's wrist and raised it, turning it over so that his palm faced upwards. "Calamities," he said. "You will feel them coming."
"How do I stop them?" demanded Danny. Something stirred inside him. His palm tickled.
"You have been stopping them," said Clockwork. "That is why you linger like this. You erase the need for yourself. But you cannot do that forever."
Danny knew that. He'd known it. He felt like he was drowning in it, air turned to liquid in his lungs.
"I have to try," said Danny, the words dripping from between his lips.
"Of course," said Clockwork, soothingly. "But there will come a time when all you can be is a warning, and all you can do is hope you are heeded."
The tickling sensation had spread to the rest of Danny's skin. It was more of a prickling, now, like something trying to get out. A whine built in the back of his throat, but he cut it off.
"What's coming?" he asked.
"Many things," said Clockwork. "Many things."
"And how," asked Danny, "how do I warn them? How do I warn everyone?"
"Any way you can," said Clockwork. "It is already inside you." Clockwork let go of Danny's wrist and patted him on the shoulder before walking away to continue his work.
The pressure on the inside of Danny's skin eased. Not yet, it seemed to say.
Not yet.
But soon.
He'd be ready for it.