Flynn woke up breathing heavily and flopped back in his bed in relief, he had just had the most vivid dream. Abducted to another world and monkey’s paw’d into the body of a child for his hubris then chased through a forest by one of his worst nightmares, what a ridiculous dream.

Flynn opened his eyes smiling. That smile froze as he finally became aware of his surroundings, this was not his beautiful bed. Flynn looked around, his body was much smaller than it was supposed to be and he was sitting in a damp, musty tree hollow.

It wasn’t a dream.

Looking out of the hollow, a thick morning mist covered the forest, drenching Flynn in a bone deep chill. Even the tree hollow did not fully protect him from the cold. Flynn began rubbing his limbs together to build up heat, cursing all the while as he did.

Flynn wanted to scream and shout, to unleash his pent up anger and frustration at being stuck in this situation on something, anything. He was a kid again now, it would be perfectly justifiable to have a temper tantrum or two.

He was just about to as well, then stopped. Something was wrong. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing up, something was happening. Then Flynn realized what was wrong, the numerous bird calls that had become part of the background noise had gone silent, the insects had stopped buzzing as well. Something was here.

Flynn held his breath and peaked out of the tree hollow while praying it wasn’t the shambling horror back for another round of tag for keeps. Flynn strained his eyes to peer through the morning mist, trying to get a glimpse of whatever was here without it seeing him. At first he couldn’t see anything, but as a patch of green that Flynn thought was a bush moved, he could finally make out the monster.

Bizarre would be an understatement to describe it. The creature was easily the size of a minivan and covered in leafy green scales that dripped with morning dew. It had the head of a chameleon, but that head was the same size as its torso and connected straight to the creature’s collar. The creature had no neck, reminding Flynn of a sausage or a banana.

Its forelegs were attached to this sausage body’s head around where a human’s ears would be and were very skinny. Meanwhile its back legs were very muscular and shaped almost like a frog’s legs. Most unsettling of all however, were the creature’s eyes. They still swiveled about the place like a chameleon’s eyes, but its pupils were black and lifeless. It was like looking into a gaping void of nothingness and having it look right back at you.

Flynn tried to remain as still as possible, pushing himself into the back of the tree’s hollow. It was a breathless several minutes as the monster continued to walk around the area in front of Flynn’s tree. Eventually however, the monster tired of looking around the area or maybe found what it was looking for and moved on. Flynn only relaxed when the bird calls returned to the foggy forest, slumping back in his hollow.

Mentally, Flynn added yet another monster to his list of things to be scared of in this forest. That list was growing much faster than he would have liked.

As Flynn relaxed, he finally noticed just how exhausted he was. Yesterday he had been running as hard as he could all day and hadn’t had anything to eat or drink. Looking out at the gray skies, mist draped forest, and the light pitter patter of a starting rainfall, Flynn was not concerned about finding clean water. What was more concerning was food.

As Flynn stuck his head out of the hollow and held his mouth open to catch rain and dew, he saw it. Much higher up the tree several branches hung heavy with some kind of teal, rough skinned fruit. Flynn’s stomach growled as he eyed the fruit.

After several minutes of catching the rain, Flynn’s thirst was sated and he moved on to satisfying his appetite. While the rain and mist had made the tree’s trunk very moist, the bark was still rough and uneven enough for Flynn to be confident in his ability to climb up. He had climbed up into this hollow after all, he could do this. Definitely….

Flynn took several deep calming breaths, marking out potential hand and foot holds while he did. Flynn had climbed a couple trees when he was playing with his friends as a kid, but he was never very good at it and had never attempted it after he had entered middle school.

Tentatively putting one hand in front of the other, Flynn began to pull himself up the tree, his small hands fitting in gaps in the bark his fully grown body wouldn’t have been able to grab. Halfway to his destination, Flynn made the mistake of looking down. While he had never been overly afraid of heights, with 15 feet between Flynn and the ground he began to feel the fear of falling. His palms began sweating as the nervousness and fear kicked in. As if to distract himself, Flynn appreciated that even if his body regressed to his childhood some things still stayed the same.

Swallowing his fear, Flynn continued his climb up the tree, finally reaching the thick branches with the teal fruit after another minute of climbing. By the time he made it there he was breathing heavily, having almost lost his grip several times after looking down.

But now his prize lay in front of him, several dozen gourd shaped teal fruits hanging from the branches around him. Flynn plucked one of them off the branch he was sitting on and brought it closer to his face. As much as he wanted to devour it, his paranoia kept worried about poisons and parasites in the fruit.

There didn’t seem to be any kind of worm holes and Flynn wasn’t really sure how to tell if it was poisonous or not. Flynn shrugged to himself and took a big bite out of the fruit. His face immediately scrunched as the taste of the fruit hit him, it was extremely sour.

Now Flynn could see why these fruits were growing in an overabundance, they were so damn sour that nothing wanted to eat them. Well, nothing except a desperate half naked human boy.

Flynn sighed as he took another bite and tried to distract himself from the taste. He would prefer to eat in the shelter of his hollow rather than 19 feet off the ground on a tree branch while being slowly soaked by rain. However getting the fruit in there would be a challenge in and of itself.

Flynn considered several ways he could go about this before deciding that simple was best. He plucked another fruit of the branch, took aim, and lobbed it at his hollow. Flynn had the best accuracy however, and the fruit splattered against the side of the tree before falling to the forest floor.

5 fruits later Flynn finally got one in, after 20 missed shots he eventually landed 3 of the large fruits in the hollow and felt satisfied with his haul. Flynn began carefully walking back down the branch to the trunk of the tree, balancing himself as best he could while also making sure not to look down.

As a result, Flynn didn’t notice the small puddle of water created by a knot of wood, planting his foot in it. Flynn’s foot slipped and for a brief instant he wobbled back and forth on the branch. Flynn uttered every swear he knew as he teetered back and forth, windmilling his arms to keep balance. But it was all for not, as the boy fell backward over the branch.