Brian jerked awake, eyes wide and heart pounding. Damn, what a weird dream! Turning into horse manure? It had been so, intense, so real. He could clearly remember the sensation of his body falling apart, the dull warmth and then numbness, the stink of animal waste. He wrinkled his nose - in fact, he could still smell it. It took a moment for him to realize there was a wide yellowish stain on the Spiderman bedsheet. Huh?
He flipped the sheet back and gasped. The skinny boy's body he was staring at looked to be 11 or 12 years old, with a very small bump visible beneath damp Spiderman underoos. The bottom sheet was also soaked, but he realized there was plastic under it to protect the mattress. Brian stared at himself a minute, then looked around the room. He was in his bedroom - sort of. The room itself was the same, most of the furniture was right. But where were his CDs, his laptop computer, the entertainment center with the flatscreen TV? Instead, he saw a cheap-looking desktop computer, another twin bed matching the one he was in, and a small combo DVD-TV with kids movies scattered on the floor around it.
"Welcome home." He was startled as Tye suddenly appeared at the foot of the bed, grinning at him. "You're out of the game."
"But..." Brian was confused. "This isn't right! I'm not a little kid!"
Tye shrugged. "Well, I can undo one major thing when I bring you guys back. You were an elf disguised as a kid when your buddy Mike turned you into horse shit. I figured you'd rather be a kid than a grown-up pile of manure. But if that's not right..."
"No, no, no!" Brian scrambled out of bed. "I don't want to be manure. But.. it was a stableboy."
"Mike was the stableboy. Long story." Tye shrugged. "He got a little more into the character than I expected. Gonna make things interesting for the others." He grinned. "But that's no worry for you. You just have to worry about passing your 5th grade English test today."
"But I'm not really a kid! What about my parents, all our friends? I'll be a media freak!"
Tye laughed and shook his head. "Nah. You're really 11 years old. Eeveryobody, everything has changed so that is the truth. You have freinds your own age, your parents just had a kid a little later in life. You'll remember being older, but don't count on getting much use out of it. Like your English test today - you have the school stuff you had when you were 11, and you'll have to study and relearn everyting from now on."
Brian sat on the edge of the bed. "Man, that sucks. And why the bedwetting? I wasn't a bed wetter before."
Tye grinned. "Something to remember your near-shit experience by. I could have made you unable to control your bowels, but I figured I'd be nice and make it bedwetting. You'll grow out of it before you graduate high school."
"Graduate! But..." Brian stopped, staring at the place Tye had been standing. He was alone in the room. He sighed and got up to start pulling the damp sheets off his bed. Mom would be in soon to collect them... how did he know that? Like he knew he always got into the shower early to wash off the piss stink. And that he needed to take another look at the punctuation section in his English textbook - Ms. Parker was tough and he needed a good grade to pass for the year.
Eleven year-old Brian got busy with his daily routine, only dimly aware that it was actually the first day he'd ever done any of this. But it sure wouldn't be the last.