“Petra,” Ella called. “Come out from under the bed. What's wrong?”

I was huddled in the corner of the Monster Under The Bed's room, clutching my knees to my still enormous chest. The Monster was patting my head with her trunk, making cooing sounds trying to calm me down. One of her long, multi-jointed arms took a cookie from a plate on her table and held it up to me. I didn't take it. I barely noticed it.

I was becoming a boy again and I was in the girls dorm. The shadow monsters were going to eat me

I hadn't wanted to be in the stupid dorm. I'd wanted to be in the boys dorm. But no. Stupid Micheal had to turn me into a girl. Then the stupid school had made me come here. I'd just done what I was told, and now I was going to be eaten.

It wasn't fair.

I hadn't even wanted to come to Doom Valley, I'd wanted to go to the School of Righteousness and Honour. And I knew it was a long shot to go there, so I was ready to stay at my nice safe school in the city with all my friends. This was all my parents fault.

“Monster Under the Bed can I come in?” Ella asked.

My host waved her hand and light came in from the space between my bed and the floor. Ella crawled inside. She dusted herself off while looking around the curious little room. “Thank you,” she said to the monster. “Now Petra what's wrong? You raced out of the bathroom so fast it seemed like you were teleporting.”

“Well...” I wasn't sure how to say it. My tongue seemed to swell up in my mouth, keeping me from speaking. I could only clutch my housecoat around me even tighter, as if it would keep the shadow monsters away.

The monster looked at me with one set of blue eyes, and Ella with a second grey pair. Then she poured two cups of tea, handing them to us, along with the plate of cookies. I took mine without a word, still unable to talk. Ella smiled and thanked her.

“Drink your tea and eat a cookie, Petra. Once you're done, you'll feel better,” she said, as if her pronouncing it would make it happen.

Nibbling on the dry, but very tasty cookie, I dipped it in the tea to help get it down. The Monster Under the Bed, grinned a lipless grin and wrapped it's arms around us a few time, giving me an encouraging squeeze. For a mute, eldritch entity that lived in a sub-dimension under young peoples beds, it was surprisingly good at offering encouragement.

When I finished my tea, I was ready to speak. I didn't want to, but at least I could talk. Looking at Ella, I said, “The shadows are going to eat me.”

“Why would they do that?” she asked.

“Because I'm a boy again.”

She looked me up and down and frowned. “Sorry, but you really don't look like a boy. You still look like the lilin demon.”

“I've got my old equipment,” I muttered.

She looked down at my crotch. Her eyes got wide and she whipped her eyes back up, opened her mouth as if to talk, and nothing came out. Looking away, she ran a hand through her hair. “Right. Um, OK. This is a problem. I-I'm... I need to talk to my brother. The one who made the cat girl formula. He should be able to help us. Yes. He'll know what to do.”

At that moment I felt an odd sensation coming from my left ear. It felt like it was stretching. The monster leaned back, unwinding her arm from around me, pointing at my face.

Reaching up, I felt a furry cat ear where a slightly pointed demon ear had been. My other ear was normal. Well, normal by the standards of the last week. Touching my face, I realized my nose had changed, it was the pretty little nose that Micheal given me. What was going on?

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Before I could try to work things out, I leaped to my feet crying in pain. Grabbing my tailbone I realized it was suddenly a lot longer than it should be. I had a tail again. And I was standing in front of Ella with my housecoat wide open.

She looked at me, her eyes going down to just below my waist. A small squeak escaped her lips, her eyes rolled back, and then she went limp, falling down in a faint. The Monster Under The Bed, managed to catch her before she hit the floor and put her on the oddly shaped couch in the corner of the room.

Tightly tying up my housecoat, I went to Ella's side, tapping her cheek to wake her up. “Hey. Are you OK?”

“Ugh. What happened?” Ella asked, keeping her eyes closed and holding her head.

“You fainted.”

She gasped, opening her eyes only to wince and close them again. “Gods, this is embarrassing.”

“Why did you faint?”

“I don't want to talk about it. Give me a minute to make the room stop spinning, then we'll figure out how to go see my brother. Can you get my magic mirror?”

Crawling out from under the bed, I grabbed the mirror from her desk. I considered putting on clothes, but with my body shifting and changing, I wasn't sure what I could wear. The housecoat was at least loose enough it should cover me, no matter what happened.

Going back down, Ella was sitting up and looking better. Handing over the mirror, I carefully sat down on the floor, keeping myself covered.

She tapped the surface and stared at the mirror silently for a few moments.

A boys voice came from the metal frame. “Hey Ella, what's up?”

“It's my friend Petra. She's changing shapes without taking any potions or using spells.”

“What?”

“She's got her cat tail back, a cat ear, her human nose, and, uh, her old male genitalia.”

There was a long moment of silence. “You didn't tell me she used to be male.”

“I didn't think it was important!”

I'd never seen Ella so flustered. There'd been a few times she'd been caught by surprise and didn't know what to do. But I'd never seen her embarrassed for so long, and seemingly out of her depth. I didn't like it.

“All right, the damage is already done. Can you get her to my lab?”

“Not really.”

“Why not?”

“The shadow monsters will eat her.”

“No they won't. The school tells you they eat guys to avoid effective attempts to trick the monsters. They actually just have a list of people who should be in the dorm. You're not on the list, they eat you. As long as Petra is on the list, she'll be fine.”

“Oh. That makes a lot of sense. We'll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“I'll be waiting.”

Closing her mirror, Ella grabbed my hand. “Come on,” she said, leading me out.

We said a quick goodbye to the Monster Under the Bed, who gave us what might have been a thumbs up in return, and crawled back into our room. Putting on shoes, we headed out, Ella leading the way. She took us to a place I'd never been before. It didn't look like much, just a short wooden hallway with a single door at the end.

Biting her lip, Ella gave two short, quick knocks, counted to three, knocked loudly once, then slapped it four times with her palm. The door opened, revealing a small laboratory and a purple skinned teenager with red hair in a white robe.

“Hi. You must be Petra, I'm Kai,” the boy said.

“Yeah. Do you have any idea why I'm changing? I really wasn't expecting this,” I said.

“I've got an idea. Strip and sit on the chair,” he said.

Having had so many clothing malfunctions already, I didn't hesitate taking off my housecoat. At least I had my old male equipment now. Ella gasped and turned around to face the wall. I suddenly felt a lot more self-conscious.

“Don't mind her,” Kai said. “She's always been a bit of a prude.”

“Just because I have some decorum doesn't make me a prude,” Ella said, still looking at the stone wall.

Kai rolled his eyes. “When you traded shapes with the demon, how did she do it?”

“I don't really know. She just said that my shape was loose. She seemed happy about that.”

“Uh-huh, interesting. How many times have you shapeshifted in the last year.”

“Well first I was turned from a boy into a girl. Then Micheal gave me bigger breasts and hips. Then I became a cat girl from your potion, then I turned into a demon.”

"And there was the Rapunzel potion that gave you hair all over your body," Ella said.

Kai looked at me oddly. "How did that one happen?"

"The potion was mislabelled."

“Wow, OK, that's bad luck. And how long between each transformation?”

“About two or three days.”

“TWO OR THREE DAYS!” he shouted. “Are you insane?!”

“What?” I asked in confusion.

“Ella why didn't you tell me that she shifted that many times? No wonder the demon said she's loose. It's a miracle she didn't start transforming sooner.”

“You didn't ask,” Ella retorted.

“I thought it was common knowledge. Don't either of you know anything about transforming?”

“No,” I said. “What exactly are you talking about?”

He took a deep, calming breath, before turning to me. “OK. If you transform too often, your body starts to forget what it should be. It starts shifting by itself, without any real rhyme or reason. It's called Rapid Transformation Syndrome. You've got a really bad case of it.”

“What can I do about it?”

“Well, I hope you haven't gotten the school nurse angry at you.”

Groaning, I cupped my face in my hands. I was doomed.