Monarch: A Contemporary Adult SciFi/Fantasy (Swann Series Book 2) Read online

  Monarch

  Ryan Schow

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  MONARCH

  Copyright © 2016 Ryan Schow. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, cloned, stored in or introduced into any information storage or retrieval system, in any form, or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this eBook via the Internet or via any other means without the express written permission of the author or publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Author’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents—and their usage for storytelling purposes—are crafted for the singular purpose of fictional entertainment and no absolute truths shall be derived from the information contained within. Locales, businesses, events, government institutions and private institutions are used for atmospheric, entertainment and fictional purposes only. Furthermore, any resemblance or reference to an actual living person is used solely for atmospheric, entertainment and fictional purposes.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Cover Design by Milo at Deranged Doctor Design

  Visit the Author’s Website:

  www.RyanSchow.com

  See Note To Reader at the end of this book for an important message from the author, as well as a quick look at what the next book in the series holds.

  Other Works of Fiction by This Author

  From the Swann Series Novels (In Order)

  VANNIE

  SWANN

  MONARCH

  CLONE

  MASOCHIST

  WEAPON

  RAVEN

  ABOMINATION

  ENIGMA

  This book is for Melanie. Without your amazing insight, not only in the series and with these characters, but with the young adult market in general, these books might have taken an entirely different direction, one not as true as this one. Thank you for the time you set aside in your hectic schedule to read each and every book almost the minute I finished writing them, for peppering me with questions and providing solid feedback, and for your ideas in heading forward. For this series, you’ve been a sounding board, a champion of the series, and a godsend.

  Table of Contents

  The Mirror Lies

  Dr. Suess and the Second Coming of Christ

  Best Science Ever

  The Facebook Sniper & Netty

  Too Good to be True

  The Slide of Flesh from Bone

  Out of the Frying Pan…

  Houston, We Have Problems

  Brand New Bestie

  Remember to Forget

  Cockroaches

  Sleep of the Dead

  The Call

  The Bane of a Guilty Conscience

  The Evil Men Do

  Gotlieb’s New Slave

  Playing Host to an Unbearable Darkness

  Pink Waters

  How to Not Play Nice with Others

  Rise of the Nymphomaniac

  Not a Decent Drop of Blood

  Yellow Brick Road

  Eight Point Eight Million Volts

  Do Fat Guys Fart in the Shower?

  Rise of the Kitten

  Janine’s Ugly Four

  Emotional Penis

  Nervous Poop

  Georgia

  Taming the Nuisance

  Transportable Soul

  Epilogue

  Important Note to Reader

  Available Titles in This Series

  Book 3 of the Swann Series Novels: CLONE

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  THERE’S NOTHING QUITE AS EXCITING AS GOING BACK TO THE BEGINNING…

  Only the fly on the wall and your therapist know your darkest secrets. Today you get to be the fly.

  Download Your FREE Copy Here:

  http://www.RyanSchow.com/VANNIE-eBook-For-FREE/

  “I feel I’m moving toward as well as away from something, and anything is possible.”

  —BRET EASTON ELLIS, AMERICAN PSYCHO

  The Mirror Lies

  1

  I don’t even know who I am anymore. Looking in the mirror, I’m thinking, this body is mine, but it’s also not mine. Perhaps it’s all really just a lie. These hourglass curves did not exist four months ago. Not on this body. Some kid I didn’t know but wasn’t even that popular, last year he called me a Bloatasaurus Rex for no reason other than it was true. My once soggy butt and mismatched breasts are gone and what has become of me is now the stuff of Playboy magazine. Well, if I was old enough and didn’t mind millions of horny old geezers seeing my business. Even this face is someone else’s, a far cry from that bland geek-parade-of-a-face I grew up loathing. The me in the mirror, how can she be me? I am a gorgeous, luscious lie.

  The way I look right now, my body is at odds with my mind. Telling false tales about who I really am. I have been chubby, butt-ugly and depressed for so long I can’t imagine sustained happiness. Or even sanity. I’m not throwing up anymore, or crying at every little tragedy, and it feels like I’ve lost something fundamental. Like my old self has been hijacked by science. I mean, what in Jesus’ name does happy or sane even feel like?

  Turning from the mirror, I step into my underwear, slip on my bra and dress in the clothes I best want to leave school in. Tight jeans, tall black leather boots, skin tight long-sleeved top. Something some magazine says is supposed to be this version of sexy-chic. These aren’t sensible traveling clothes, but I’m desperate to see Damien before I leave and, like they say, you only get one chance to leave a good last impression.

  I pull my hair into a ponytail, dust my face with the barest of makeup, apply a glossy lip plumper that tastes like orange cream-sickle because Bridget convinced me it makes my mouth kissable.

  Ha! What an absurd thought. Who does Bridget think will kiss me? Brayden for sure, but not Damien. Not yet at least. Even looking the way I do now, I can’t help thinking, for me, it’s never the boy I want.

  On my twelfth birthday, just as one breast started coming in bigger than the other, and the opposite nipple was swelling and expanding at an alarming rate, it hit me: my sex parts are totally going to be abnormal. Like, grotesquely abnormal. I remember looking at my pig-sloth body and my ugly face wondering, what boy would ever accept me looking like this? The strain of finding anything physically redeemable that day made me cry. I was thinking, who will hold these ugly hands? Or fall in love with this stupid face? Or kiss these wormy lips? After tearing apart every single thing about myself, I broke the silence with a sob and a single, reproachful word: “Nobody.”

  Will anyone want me now that I am pretty? So far, the only person I want is Damien, but he is physically and emotionally unavailable. And Brayden? When I thought his looks were going to change, that Gerhard’s science would make him beautiful like Damien, I was ready to jump into that relationship with both feet. Ready to be surprised, to maybe fall in l
ove for real. Then Brayden’s father, Lloyd James, went and ruined everything.

  2

  The winter chill spread its fingers on the manicured grounds outside. Despite the high, grey skies and the plummeting temperatures, the campus is bustling with life. Outside my dorm window everyone is bundled in designer coats and boots, and the girls are wearing the cutest hats. The scene is like some fabulous photo shoot you see in W magazine for Tory Burch, or Salvatore Farragamo, or Dawn Levy. Something fantastical and unreal. Like an artsy movie where the cinematographer fell in love with and perfected his craft and this is what he came up with.

  My body feels like that: fantastical and unreal. Lately I have been feeling like a stranger in my own life. With this gorgeous new body and face, I sometimes wonder why I still have these thoughts, then I realize how deeply embedded the pain of my youth has become. My past life is a persistent memory, as permanent as the roots of a century-old redwood. My body may be right and whole and perfect, but inside the residue of ugliness and misery still clings fast to my soul.

  I think: I am a charlatan…an unimaginable lie…a true abomination.

  Or maybe the old me is the real lie and who I am now is the truth trying to break free from that lie. Who knows? Who will ever know? God, I wish I wasn’t so messed up.

  3

  Winter break has officially started and it is like a mass exodus off campus. How everyone’s hugging and laughing together and waving good-bye and wiping their eyes as they depart in separate directions, you would think they were never going to see each other again. Am I the only one not dying to go home?

  I rip the drapes closed, turn away from the window and shut myself off from the world. The more I bury myself inside myself, the more I crave the promise of isolation. I’m a six foot bubble again. In charge of my world. In charge of my feelings, volatile as they have become. Is there a way I can just stay here forever? I mean really…is there a way? Sadly, there isn’t. It’s time to head back home and emotionally, I’m not sure which part of me will show up: the confident, sassy beauty, or the damaged, hateful child.

  4

  Packing the last of my things, I try to tell myself everything has changed, that it takes time to merge my two opposing worlds. Hands to my chest, palms to my butt, a quick look at my super flat belly. Breathe. Smile. Embrace your confidence, I tell myself. This is the new you and you’re sexy as hell.

  Going home for winter break isn’t exactly the end of the world, I reason. The one thought that keeps me from checking into some five-star hotel for a month of room service and free HBO is that I pretty much screwed up Christmas when I told Margaret I never wanted to see her again. She was in rehab, trying to pull herself together, and I all but jammed a grenade down her pants.

  Smile big. Embrace your confidence. This really is the brand new you.

  Now I feel it.

  A sensuous current rolls through me at the thought of Margaret bristling with pain. Once again the world is as sweet as candy. When I see her again, and I will, she’s going to get the emptiest, most unemotional side of me. Whatever pain she dumped on me, it is my sole resolve to heap it back on her twice as bad. My lips curl into an unnatural smile.

  Maybe it won’t be so bad after all.

  The rest of my things are just about packed when the knock on my door startles me. I expect it to be one of the non-triplets, but when I open the door, standing before me looking angry and pathetic, but also sad and desperate, is Brayden James. With his ugly Toby MacGuire face, that shaggy hair and his pale, skinny body, all I want to do is draw him into a gigantic hug. So I do just that.

  “I love it when you do that,” Brayden mumbles. He once told me hot girls never press their tits against him the way I do. I’m still not sure how to take that, but this is Brayden, so whatevs.

  “For all you’ve done for me this semester,” I say, pulling away, but not in a creeped out way, “you totally deserve it.”

  “Just remember that when you start next semester blazing hot and I come back as one of Janine’s ugly five.”

  How his father refused to let him transform himself from his current disasterpiece self into a total GQ sex God is a freaking tragedy. Talk about cruel and unusual! For us all. It gets even worse when you consider Gerhard’s multi-million dollar transformation would have been free of charge—a feat of mine Lloyd James refuses to fully appreciate.

  What I won’t admit, what pains me to silently agree with, is his father made some compelling points when he told Brayden there was no way in hell he was getting Gerhard’s treatment, free or otherwise. Apparently I neglected to spot the flaws in my impulse to blackmail Gerhard.

  At first, Mr. James wanted to know what Brayden planned on doing if Gerhard purposely made things worse on account of having been blackmailed, and Brayden was like, “Anything’s better than looking the way I look right now!” Then, reminding him he was legally bound to do community service for the FBI on account of his past computer crimes, Mr. James asked Brayden how he would explain looking nothing like himself. Security would arrest him for trying to impersonate an ugly hacker, then put out an arrest warrant for the real Brayden, who no longer existed. Brayden’s dad, crude as he is, said either way he’d be tickling pickles in jail. End of story.

  “I’m going to threaten my father with suicide if he doesn’t let me get the treatments,” Brayden says. I think he expects me to smile at the irrationality of the joke, but I don’t because I realize he isn’t kidding. The look on his face is as anguished and as sincere as I’ve ever seen. I hug him again, but differently. It’s the kind of hug you give someone in real pain. I tell him not to do anything rash, to call me if things go wrong. He promises me this, then says good-bye.

  Inside, my heart actually hurts for him.

  5

  While most of us are heading home for the holidays, Georgia, Victoria and Bridget will be spending their December in Gerhard’s San Francisco office/lab. When next semester starts in January, they will no longer be identical to each other. This is all they can talk about lately, and it makes me happy to have orchestrated this for them.

  Before heading upstairs to Bridget’s room, where we all agreed to meet, I head to the boys’ dorms to find Damien. I want to see him one last time. Remind him of his promise to come see me over winter break.

  My knocking on his door goes unanswered. A couple of guys in the hallway say he’s gone home already. I return to the girls’ dorms, to Maggie’s room, thinking—with whatever’s going on between the two of them, which is hopefully nothing—he might be there. I knock twice then walk in. Maggie is packing. Alone.

  “Hey,” she says, preoccupied.

  “Do you know where Damien is?” I ask. She shakes her head, all ninety-nine pounds of her sitting on a hard-shell suitcase stuffed way too tight with clothes to shut. She starts bouncing on it trying to click the latches shut, but she is just too light.

  It’s almost funny.

  “He was here an hour ago,” Maggie says, giving up. She swipes a strand of her hair from her face and I stare at her, mesmerized. We stare at each other.

  “You look so much like Aria from Pretty Little Liars it’s ridiculous.” We’re talking shoulder length brown hair, big green eyes, lightly plumped cheeks with a button nose and full lips on a smallish mouth. It works so well on her.

  “I love that show,” she says, but something about her strikes me as inordinately sad. She turns and pulls out a few outfits, then sits on the suitcase again. She manages to close the lid this time, but the latches still won’t snap shut. “Help me with this damn thing already.”

  Between the two of us, we finally get the suitcase closed.

  “So did he say anything, like where he might be heading?” I ask.

  “I think he went home,” she says. She looks at the suitcase, laid out flat on the floor in front of her bed, and leaves it there. The thing looks super heavy. “You know how he is, with Kaitlyn and all. Anymore it’s like talking to a rock.”

  Jus
t then, Maggie’s door opens and Julie Sanderson and Cameron O’Dell come waltzing in like they live there. When Julie sees me, she reacts like she’s been slapped. Her mouth stops speaking mid-sentence. Both her and Cameron stare at me with surprised, reproving eyes.

  The elevator in my stomach drops and I can’t help thinking, well isn’t this just great?!

  6

  “What’s she doing here?” Cameron snarls. Cameron is the spoiled rotten only child of country singer, Patrick O’Dell, and retired B-list actress (read: emotionally vacant) Marilyn DuPree. Cameron’s only redeeming quality is she looks like every sexy blonde surfer chick you’d ever meet—ripped body, sun drenched hair, Tomboy hot face—but even that isn’t significant enough to scrub away the dark cloud that is her personality. If you need proof, just look her up. Two kids from her last school committed suicide because she bullied them so badly.

  Cameron O’Dell and Julie Sanderson (who looks the opposite of Maggie: slender face, tons of loosely curled hair, model-wide mouth with luscious lips, eyes that look at you like you’re shit no matter how hot you are) make up half the popular girls, the other two being Theresa Pritchard and, of course, Maggie Jaynes. Maggie is nothing like them. Why she remains friends with them is a mystery I have yet to solve.

  Pretending I’ve got balls and I’m not concerned with the two of them, I say, “Why don’t you ask me yourself, Cameron? I’m right here.”

  Right here in the lion’s den, getting more worried by the second.

  “She doesn’t want to talk to you,” Julie snaps. “None of us do.”

  In the split second I have to react, I wonder what Brayden would say. Or what Bridget would do. I’m thinking about how I shot Gerhard’s monster in the head and how I shot and blackmailed Gerhard, and now I’m thinking this is the type of person I need to be to protect myself. I need to be a cold, hard bitch. I don’t want to, but if I hope to survive without bowing to cowardice, or getting beat up, then so be it.