Originally written for Day Three (Horror) of Diddly's Angst Week back in August.

He didn't really realize what had actually happened to him until about a week after the accident. At first, he was hesitant to tell his parents anything as well, but that was before... the symptoms. And he ended up admitting everything to them, in a fitful of tears, holding his stomach in, watching Jazz's apprehensive stare out of the corner of his eye.

He had only wanted to fix his parents' ghost portal, not become the portal.

It had started when his parents' 'greatest work', what was supposed to be the Fenton Ghost portal, hadn't turned on. They were devastated, and no matter how many times they examined the schematics, his parents couldn't figure out what had gone wrong.

"We've opened a portal before!" Dad had grown frustrated at the blueprints. "Why won't it work this time?"

Ah, yes, their infamous college project, that had inspired the construction of the new portal. For years they were satisfied with the tiny portal, which had settled inside the metal frame they'd built for it.

"I think it's gutsy that you're trying to redo the same experiment that killed your best-friend," Jazz had said offhandedly.

"Jazz, sweetie," Mom said, her eyes masked behind her goggles, "I know what we told you, but that's... that's not what happened. Vlad was... we didn't exactly follow the correct safety procedures. He got caught in the start-up, and got put into a coma. But that's not the case this time! We've internalized the portal's start-up so that there's no way it can hurt anybody. Hell, you'd have to be standing inside of it, for it to hurt you!"

"If you've internalized the start-up, then why isn't it working?" Jazz deadpanned. "Hmm, I don't know, maybe because ghosts aren't real, and Vlad died because of eventual radiation poisoning! I don't blame you for his death, but there's no denying it! What you've done to our basement is absolutely crazy-"

"It's perfectly safe, Jazz-"

"No, no," Jazz rolled her eyes. "There's no such thing as ghosts. You two are delusional, and when your silly portal doesn't work, you'll see that I'm right!"

His sister had stomped up the stairs, angrily, leaving him and his parents in the lab with a nonoperational portal. His parents didn't acknowledge his presence and talked to each other.

"Jack..." Mom started, pulling her hood off of her head. "She's really upset. And she... she might be right. I don't see any errors in our work, so for now I think we should probably just take a break."

Dad sighed, "For the day, or for a while?"

"For a while," Mom clarified. "We can revisit the portal after the school year starts. That's just a few weeks from now, and once they're both gone in the daytime, we can start over, from scratch."

"I'm tempted to argue with you," Dad said, "because I've put so much work into this portal, but you make good points. Besides, I wouldn't mind a few days to just breathe."

His parents left the lab, far too engrossed within their own resolves to notice him lingering.

Danny understood what they had said; they were going to start over in a few weeks. And quite honestly, it seemed like the best course of action. Except... this wasn't like Jack and Maddie Fenton, they usually never gave up. He heard the undertones in their voices and recognized it for what it was: depressed content. After all, it still felt a little soon for them to give up. There had to be something they overlooked, right?

Sure, Danny wasn't the smartest kid when it came to engineering or anything, but sometimes looking at something with a different pair of eyes did the trick. And, he'd also feel guilty if he knew that he hadn't even tried to help out his folks.

So, with years of lab safety lectures drilled into his head, Danny had the mind to slip on a spare FentonWorks Hazmat suit. He peeled off the sticker of his Dad's face, and threw it in the trashcan. Next, he stood at the portal's entrance, staring at the back of the wall, where his parents had created a garden of wires, crisscrossing and creating some sort of functional diagram to tear a hole in the fabric between dimensions. The wires filled every available surface in the portal, even the metal floor.

Carefully, Danny put one foot inside the portal, avoiding the wires, and placed his other foot in the portal. He still couldn't see much, so he walked down further, hoping that something out of place would catch his eye. And something did.

It was a small panel, but it was different than the other metal surfaces that intertwined with the wires. It had two buttons on it: a green button ("on") and a red button ("off"). Surely, his parents had known to press the on button, right? Hell, his Mom had a doctorate in engineering! So, with an eager mind to make his parents happy, he put his hand on the green button.

And, for a moment, nothing happened. He frowned, disappointed again, and released the wall.

Then, there was a sudden whirring sound around him. He couldn't see anything happening, until he felt it. There was a fire inside of him, ripping his body apart from the inside. It was burning, evaporating his blood and touching every skin cell, and his eyes felt open but he had gone blind. There was nothing anywhere, no sensation, except for the amplification of pain – everywhere. The pain caressed him, and he could feel the fabric of reality his parents had talked about, and for many moments he was the fabric. Things were being cut where things shouldn't be cut and tearing and shredding and a thousand souls looked into one soul (what did a soul even feel like?).

And through this abstract experience, Danny understood even more what was happening to his body. His mind was overloaded in a way a human shouldn't be overloaded, but he still could feel the sharpness of electricity rattling his bones and how it felt like he'd experienced a million years in a freezer condensed into one second, burnt by cold and heat. He felt the ordinary dryness of his limbs and mouth and how his tongue was trying to stuff itself down his throat because his vocal cords were locked because of the electricity and – there was nothing in his lungs anymore!

Agony. He'd heard that word used before, and this was it's definition. Poets, philosophers, they didn't know a damn about agony. This was true agony, a million different hurts and pains all at once with no end and he couldn't understand why he was dying right now. What had he done wrong? He'd just wanted to help his parents, not to be torn into shards and molded into a four dimensional shape between two literal dimensions.

The brush of death was just out of reach, he could see it. It was so light, so merciful compared to this. He needed it. He needed the fire in his chest to be put out. He didn't care about his life, he just needed an end to this pain.

And death touched him, but it did not embrace. It teased him, and then it left. And he was left, and everything didn't exist in his head anymore. Unconscious.

When Danny awoke, he was still in the portal, and his HAZMAT suit clung tightly to his body. He felt... normal? Maybe a little cold, but pretty much okay. Was that experience before only a vivid dream full of abstract concepts his brain had constructed? Because surely, that level of pain didn't exist, and it wasn't real. Because if it had been real, his body would still be feeling some pain. And all he felt was the discomfort of lumpy wires underneath him, in the same, broken portal.

Still confused, Danny sat up, and staggered out of the portal, far too disoriented to care about stepping on the wires anymore. His throat was dry, and his hair felt wrong, but other than that, he felt more or less the same. Which is what finally convinced him that what he had felt before was just a stupid nightmare.

And since nothing had happened to him, he had to get out of his HAZMAT suit quickly before his parents came down the stairs and started questioning him why he had been inside of the portal. Because, it was clear from his weird nightmare, something bad could've happened inside of the portal. And Mom and Dad knew that, and if they knew he'd been messing around, he'd be in so much trouble!

So, Danny unzipped the white and black suit and relished in the freedom his shirt and jeans gave him. The suit had been so tight on his skin, he was just glad to get out of it. Next, he hung it back up on it's hanger, but something weird happened when he tried. For a moment, everything in the world turned dizzy again and he could feel the remnants of pain from his nightmare (feel... reality?) and the HAZMAT suit turned a transparent blue and he could see the wall through the material.

In a panic, he threw the suit on the floor, and watched as it regained opacity. Danny brought his hand up to his neck to relieve some stress, and was bewildered when he couldn't feel himself touching the back of his neck. He brought his hand in front of his face and let out an audible scream when his hand was also blue and see-through.

What was... why was his hand going through everything! What was going on with his body! He honestly had no idea what to do, so he started shaking his hand frantically, trying to get it back to normal. Please work, I don't know what it is happening! This is wrong, something like this isn't real! Please work! Work!

Without any bravado or significance, his hand turned back to normal. Just – BAM! It was a normal hand again and there was nothing out of the ordinary.

Was his brain still trying to play tricks on him? Was this a concussion or something?

A concussion! That made sense! Everything was a hallucination.

"Danny?" Jazz's voice wafted down into the lab. "I heard a scream? Is everything okay? Why are you down there?"

"I uh – everything's fine, Jazz!" he lied. "I just..." he gulped, "how do you know if you have a concussion?"

"Have a WHAT?" There were footsteps down the stairs in an instant.

They took him to the doctor to test if he had a concussion. He'd told his parents that he'd just slipped on the floor and had fallen unconscious for a few minutes. He didn't dare tell them that it was inside of the portal.

And what the doctor had said, unnerved him. They had done a scan of his brain to see if he had any damage, and there was none.

"These things can be difficult to diagnose," the doctor said. "Your insurance will cover the scans, no worries. It's good that you got him checked anyway, after all, it's better to be safe than be sorry."

That night, Danny tried to go to asleep, and no matter how many blankets he buried himself inside, he still felt cold. The sensation hadn't gone away since he had awoken inside of the portal. His sleep was restless, but he kept waking up, tossing and turning, unable to keep an hour of sleep down at a time. He also somehow kept getting out of his blankets, no matter how tightly he tucked them around himself. It was an eerie night, filled with bits and pieces of sleep not long enough to form a coherent nightmare. That freedom of having no dreams was oddly comforting after his last nightmare.

The next morning, he ate breakfast. But no matter how much food he ate, he still felt a hollow feeling inside his stomach. His stomach rumbled unhappily, urging him to binge more, but after his third bowl of Fruity Pebbles, his Mom put a stifle on the cereal.

"Danny, I have to save some milk for my recipe later. You've eaten enough this morning."

His body argued otherwise, but he knew that she was right. Three bowls was a lot compared to his usual one. So he stopped eating, and immediately felt worse until he was able to stuff himself again at lunch.

But between breakfast and lunch... even though the doctor had confirmed he didn't have a concussion, he had another hallucinogenic experience. He had floated. Or so, it felt like he was floating. He was up in his room, alone, messaging his friends, Sam and Tucker on his phone. He didn't really much else to do since it was summer, and neither of them could hang out because Sam was grounded for sneaking out and Tucker was away at some programming camp.

Sam had texted a funny meme, and Danny had laughed so hard that before he knew it, his bed was five feet below him and his hair was brushing the ceiling. His eyes widened in shock before he felt himself falling and his knees crashed into his mattress.

He knew that it couldn't be real, but it had felt so real.

Throughout the next two days, odd things like that had started happening, and he held his tongue from confiding in his family. He had turned invisible in the bathroom, his eyes had glowed green in the reflection of his phone, objects were falling through his hands left and right, and there were two more isolated instances of levitation. Not to mention the incurable hunger that plagued him, never going away and forming a permanent, empty place in his stomach. There was also the cold that hadn't subsided, and Danny was starting to wonder if he'd ever feel warm again.

And then, there was the final incident that convinced him, that maybe all of this, wasn't just his mind. That maybe, the nightmare he'd had inside of the portal had been real all along.

Talons. They twisted around his internal organs, roughly stabbing him in the lungs and kidneys and so many things he'd never felt individually. He could also hear... not a voice, but some kind of resonance? Something that was outside of his mind, something that was separate to himself, but was trying to come inside of him.

It felt a lot more real than the other experiences he'd had, and he didn't like it.

All of this was happening while he was sitting on the couch, watching TV with his family, and he had a bad feeling something weird was going to happen, so he made an excuse to leave for the bathroom, and ran.

At this point he wasn't oblivious as had been. The things that had been happening to him were not in his head, and he had screwed up, and messed himself up in the portal. The pain that he'd felt that day was real, and there was a ghost dimension, because for a moment, he'd been stuck between it. And now, there was something that was trying to get in his head, or something, and didn't know what to do. He wanted to fight it, but he didn't know how because he didn't know what was happening, and he was still just, so, so confused.

Once he was alone in the bathroom, things got weirder. His eyes started glowing green, again, and the empty feeling in his stomach was expanding throughout his entire body. Everything felt numb and colder and he didn't like this, this was bad. He clung to his hair, and he could feel that even his nervous sweat was freezing, and the talons in his organs and brain were not helping his anxiety!

There was dizziness now, and the room was tilting. (He wasn't floating, right?) And then something snapped, and the emptiness that was in his stomach before turned into another feeling... something indescribable. Something powerful, scary, but it was also him at the same time, which didn't make sense because Danny wasn't powerful or scary.

He turned to the mirror and there was a sharp jet of light that came out of his body, illuminating the bathroom in colors that weren't supposed to be there and then he changed colors, but also changed inside. He watched his reflection, the light flowed over him and took away his clothes, replacing them with a black suit HAZMAT suit that he'd never worn in his life! He gave an involuntary gasp as his hair turned white and his eyes opened up to become glassy pools of green light. His sclera had completely vanished, yet somehow he was seeing with these frighteningly alien, green eyes.

This wasn't natural. This didn't feel good, this was wrong, and what the hell was he?! He didn't want to be doing this, he wanted this to be not real! But he couldn't stop any of this because he didn't know how, and this was going way too fast for him and–

He didn't have any time to question the million things he was questioning about himself and the grim talons scratched him, and he understood what they wanted. They wanted to come through him. They called him a 'gate'.

Below his heart, the previously empty spot ripped open (unzipped?) and the talons were physically inside of him, and it felt so much worse. The talons belonged to some kind of bird, and there was a bird inside of him and this isn't good, get out get out get out geT OUT GET OUT

The bird was squished inside of his body, which he had realized wasn't a human body anymore, because the familiar presence of organs was missing. (Holy shit do I not have organs anymore how am I alive what is-) Then, the bird starting squirming, looking for a way out of him and something else shifted in him and the bird started coming up. By some sort of reflex, his body acted on its own, and his jaw opened up to a wide proportion that wasn't supposed to be physically possible.

And then, there was something familiar. Something that every human knows how to do, and utterly hates. He started vomiting.

The talons scratched his throat as the muscles in his body pushed the bird up in an unpleasant, erratic pattern. He couldn't even breathe while this was happening, and there was nothing he could do to even stop it! Danny wanted to start crying, because he didn't know why any of this was happening and he hadn't done anything. Was throwing up a living bird with some sort of alienated body the price of being torn between realities? Was this this price of disobeying his parents' safety procedures?

Finally, the bird was in his mouth and he could taste it: fowl, slimy, and a weird combination of battery acid and rotten meat. It was still gagging him, but it was almost out, and he could see it in the mirror and this horror was almost done.

Realizing that it had escaped Danny's body, the bird started moving again and had uncondensed itself, stretching out to full size. Now that he could see it, the bird was a dark green, had red eyes, and had flown out of his mouth, but hadn't used its wings. Danny stared at it, terrified, and it squawked at him. They weren't connected anymore, so he couldn't hear the pull of it's demands in his head, as he had been able to hear earlier. Finally, the bird flew up through the ceiling and vanished.

Seconds later, Danny's world came falling down as the light that had changed him returned, bringing him back to plain old Danny Fenton. Normal clothes, normal hair, normal eyes... And he could feel the normal demanding gargle of his stomach and faint pulse again.

He fell to the bathroom floor in shock, defensively pulling his knees to his chest.

It was hard to believe... that he wasn't human. Because after that experience, it was obvious that he wasn't. Humans don't have ghost birds (was that actually a ghost?) appear in their stomach, go all glowy, and then vomit up the ghost!

Danny, in a way, was started to piece together what had happened to him. He'd been able to see it for a moment when the bird passed through him. The bird had called him a 'gate'.

Danny, had been inside the Fenton Portal when it had turned on. But... the portal formed inside of him instead of in the metal structure it was supposed to. Danny had accidentally turned himself into a living, breathing, portal. And from what he had looked like earlier, he was also starting to wonder if he was a ghost, too.

This was all too much for him. He couldn't live like this! He couldn't just... live his life falling through things every few minutes, floating, turning invisible – who knows what else! – and also acting as some sort of humanoid gateway for ghosts to violate whenever they wanted! He couldn't hide this, he couldn't even fully understand this the more he thought about it. He didn't even know what he was! He felt like Danny, but... at the same time, he could feel the presence of something unnatural in his veins. The thing that was a door inside of his stomach, that caused him to turn into that freaky thing!

He was a freaky thing. That freaky thing was entirely him.

The more he tried to deny it, the worse he felt. A few minutes later, Danny was sobbing before he knew what he was doing.

His family was still downstairs, none the wiser to the kind of monster he'd become. He couldn't hide this from them. He wouldn't be able to if he tried – because when the bird passed through him, he felt it's soul for a moment. He felt how happy the bird was to find him, and that others would find him too. It wouldn't be long before other ghosts came for him, there was no preventing it. So that meant, that his parents were going to find out about him eventually, and it'd be a whole lot better for him to tell them rather for them to see it first.

Shakily, he brought himself to stand again, and slowly turned the bathroom's doorknob. Every step down the stairs felt like a burden, but he knew that he had to tell the truth. There was no stopping this confrontation.

"Mom, Dad?" they were still in front of the TV, captivated by whatever show was on. Jazz sat in the corner, lost inside of a textbook.

"Yeah, sweetie?" Mom said absently, eyes still focused on the screen. She didn't notice the look of fear plastered on her son's face, his tear-stained resolve, and the way his hands were shaking.

"I – I," he whispered. "I screwed up. I really screwed up. I didn't... I didn't know that-" he choked, "this would happen."

Both of his parents looked up, and Jazz questioningly abandoned her book to pay attention to her brother. Dad hit pause on the TV.

"What're you talking about, Danny-boy?"

"I... I don't know how to tell you," Danny admitted. "But it's bad. I don't know what I am anymore."

Even that simple confession felt way too personal and invasive. How could he tell them everything else that he had learned?

"What do you mean?" Mom was getting more concerned.

"I'm sure he's talking about psychologically how he feels-"

"Shut up, Jazz!" he snapped. "That's not... that's not it, I... it's something I have to explain. And it's really hard."

"Do you want to sit down and talk about it?" Mom asked.

Danny didn't say anything, but took a seat next to his Mom, directly across from Jazz's chair.

"The other day, when I told you I fell," he started. "I didn't. I went into the portal-"

"You what?" Dad whispered

"-and I accidentally turned it on," he blurted the last part far too quickly.

"Wait, wait, wait," Jazz interrupted. "You're trying to convince me you turned that fake thing on?"

"Wow!" Dad's demeanor changed. "You turned the portal on? That's great! Why didn't you say anything? Why isn't the portal working now?"

Danny was taken aback by his Dad's outburst and bit his tongue. His blood had a weird taste (a little like the bird), and he tried not to think about it.

The next three words came easier than expected, since he forced himself to say them without thinking. But they still sounded bad. "I was electrocuted."

Silence. No one dared a word.

"A – are you okay?" Mom ventured, daringly. "You look fine, though. Electrocution isn't something to joke about."

"I wish I was joking," Danny looked down at his feet. "At first I thought that it was only a nightmare, that's why I lied to you. But... things have been happening and I know it's real."

"Danny, people don't just walk off being electrocuted. You're just confused," she reassured.

"Jazz, will you just stay out of this?" he protested. "You don't... don't know anything."

She rolled her eyes, and he knew that she still thought he was a liar.

"Is it... possible," Danny continued, bracing himself for the hardest confession, "for a portal to bind to a person, instead of the doorway that you built?"

"What?"

"I think the portal opened up inside of me," Danny continued, "and I think it's still there. Since I was inside where the portal was supposed to open, it opened up in me, and it's stuck in me."

"Danny... things don't work like that," Dad tried. "If they did, then-"

"Things have been happening to me ever since the electrocution. And not normal side effects, trust me. I've been going intangible, invisible, floating... and just now, I..." this was the peak of his embarrassment, "a ghost used the portal inside of me to come from the Ghost Zone to our world."

He looked at the wild stares every member of his family was giving him.

"You have to believe me!" both of his parents gasped, and Jazz recoiled away from him in her chair. They looked... afraid?

"Danny... your eyes," Mom's eyes were saucers.

He immediately squeezed his eyes shut. He'd forgotten that they could turn green on demand now.

"I think I might believe you," Dad admitted.

Danny opened his eyes. "Really?"

"I don't really understand how it could work, but green eyes aren't..."

"Normal?" Danny finished, shame washing over him as he finished his Dad's sentence.

Dad nodded.

"If this is all true, then how are we going to fix this? The only time the proto-portal stopped working was after..."

"After what?" Danny asked, scared by her ominous tone.

"After Vlad died," she said, grimly.

Everyone shared a few glances, clearly afraid of the thing that now resided inside of Danny and what it meant for them.

"We'll figure this out," Dad declared. His voice was devoid of it's usual optimism.

By the look in his parent's eyes, Danny knew then that they wouldn't be able to fix his problem. At best, they'd only be able to figure out how to control it. It saddened him that this was permanent, and he didn't have the mental resolve to think of the implications this was going to have on the rest of his life. But, at the moment, any control was better than none.

Especially if he was going to have to get used to throwing up ghosts.