John Harper could not believe it as he looked at what he could see of himself.
Paws instead of hands. Fur all over his body. A tail happily swishing behind his back.
He was now a weretiger!
"WOW!" he exclaimed, taking it all in.
"I assume you like it?" asked the were who had just initiated him.
"Like it? I love it!" exclaimed John. "Now I—"
But whatever he was going to say was interrupted by someone shouting "THERE'S TWO OF THE ABOMINATIONS NOW!"
Both weres turned and saw an angry mob running toward them. All were normal human beings and appeared like a walking cliche, carrying pitchforks, torches, and weapons; and heading straight toward them.
Of course, the fact that his estranged father was leading the pack just made things worse for John as the other were shouted "RUN!"
John Harper awoke to darkness within the bed of the guest bedroom of the Jenkins home in Moon Lake.
He didn't scream or shout in fear, for this was far from his first nightmare and didn't want to wake anyone up.
John just stared at the ceiling.
While becoming a weretiger within his dreams was more consistent, obviously the influence of his new friend Ginger O'Toole from a few doors down, the fact that he had yet to see who initiated him bothered John.
This blank space in the dreams was obviously because John was totally uncertain of what his personal sexuality and preferences were or should be.
There was no doubt in John's mind that he did like Ginger, but how much he was uncertain.
Was she the one who changed him? Or was something more going on?
The fact that there was tension in the air since the Moon Lake Town Council decided to form a plan to intentionally reveal the existence of were society while they could still present themselves in a positive light was troublesome in and of itself and could not be ignored. His oldest sister and her new husband were both werefoxes, and Ginger...
What made the nightmare even worse was it was his own father leading the anti-were crusade. Of course John's problems with the Harper patriarch dated back to long before his oldest sister Jenny ever set foot in Washington State, let alone Moon Lake.
What was a confused and troubled teenager to do?
Knowing that once again there would be no answers forthcoming, John rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.
It was a beautiful and warm spring day. Eric Anderson and his fiance Julie Stovall were swimming in the crescent shaped body of water that the town took its name from.
The fact that both were UNDER the water in their full were-mer forms with tails and scales went unnoticed until—
Suddenly they were surrounded by a fishing net!
The two struggled valiantly to escape, or at least Eric tried making sure the love of his life did, but they were both unarmed and helpless even after resuming their normal human appearance.
As the net broke the water surface, Eric and Julie saw a fishing vessel that should have been too big to fit in the lake was what caught them.
"There they are men!" one sailor said, while pointing at the were-mers. "That aquarium will pay us big bucks for two such prize specimens!" he added happily.
But it wasn't either were-mer that experienced this nightmare, for both were sleeping peacefully within their own respective beds, happily dreaming of each other.
It was Eric's mother Martha who was having the nightmare, worried about her youngest son.
Sensing something amiss, William Anderson awoke to find his wife trembling in her sleep.
The werefox looked at the werecat he loved and held her in his furry arms.
Martha never actually awoke, but she did stop trembling and fell back asleep nestled next to her husband.
All across Moon Lake, nightmares took prevalence within were dreams.
Every citizen, whether they had a fursona or not, was worried about current events and how things would turn out.
Yet, good or bad, dreams were not confined to just one small corner of the Pacific Coast...
She was driving home from work.
Traffic was bad for a Friday night, but nothing she hadn't seen before or couldn't handle when the bright lights filled her rear view mirror.
At first she had planned just to either flip down her mirror to dim the glare or change lanes to avoid it completely, but suddenly everything stopped and her compact car was quickly becoming much smaller than originally designed.
She felt the steering wheel press against her chest even as the airbags deployed.
JOANNE! she screamed as everything went dark...
"Monitors show the vital signs of the patient in Room 3 spiking," one nurse told the other at the Intensive Care Unit's duty station.
"Yuletide, Monica," the other nurse said, reading the name on the piece of masking tape underneath. "Had a very bad auto accident Friday night. Lucky to still be with us."
"Room camera shows she's still asleep. Must be having a nightmare," the first nurse assumed.
"Flashback?" asked the second.
"Probably. I'll go check on her," said the first, as the nurse rose to physically look in on the patient.