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

by Schow, Ryan

  “You shot me. You killed my war model. You blackmailed me and you threatened me. Tell me what is easy about any of that.”

  “You forced my hand?”

  “They say you attract more bees with honey than dynamite.”

  “They do not say that.”

  “In your case, my dear, they should.”

  “Are they at least okay?” I ask. I have to know, I just can’t show him how badly I need to know.

  “Your friends are fine. In fact, they may still be at school here. Like you, neither their looks nor their previous names have carried into this new semester. Then again, they may be somewhere else, too. Who can say for sure?”

  “So all three of them are here?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just said you will not recognize them and their names will not be the same, if they are in fact enrolled here. Which they may or may not be.”

  Just then Nurse Arabelle pops her head in and she can see we’re having words. “I need to leave for a moment,” she says. It’s the first time she actually speaks proper English and there’s a huge part of me that wants to clap for her, but I don’t because I’m trying to tone down all the douchebaggery.

  “You’re leaving, why?” Gerhard asks.

  “Those ugly boys are getting my patience.”

  “We’re just wrapping things up here,” he says.

  Looking at me, Nurse Arabelle smiles, and I smile back and it feels surreal having her be so nice to me. I stand up and to Gerhard I say, “Thank you for the useless clues Dr. Watson.”

  “Three days,” he says, standing up.

  “Two,” I say, resolute, “and I’m going to find my friends.”

  “Good luck with that,” he says, and I can’t tell if he’s taunting me or being sincere. I guess that’s the thing with wannabe-Nazi’s, you just don’t know if there’s a decent drop of blood in them.

  3

  Eating dinner sitting next to Maggie, I imagine, is like eating at a prison camp where the air is filled with the smoke and ash of the incinerated. I want to ask her who stepped on her nuts, but I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t go over so well. Instead, shoulder to shoulder, I say, “Whatever’s got your dick in the dirt, I’m sure you’ve endured worse.”

  She doesn’t look up. Was she anticipating the question?

  Either way, whomever she was before Gerhard’s treatment, life had to be pretty difficult. She was an ugly girl like me and the non-triplets and Kaitlyn, but was she sick? Or mental? Was she dying of some incurable disease? And, of course, who can forget those torturous treatments? Some days I preferred death to anymore change; the transitions were indescribable. Which is to say, I know she’s no stranger to pain.

  “I’ve endured worse,” she finally admits, her voice barely audible above the cafeteria noise.

  “What do you mean?”

  With my fork sitting on my plate, staring at her while she moves her food around, not eating, she opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. Finally she shuts her mouth and says nothing.

  “We’ve all been through pain, Maggie, some of us worse than others. That’s what friends are for. You need people in your life to share that pain with, to hold on to when the world feels like it’s falling apart all around you. And sometimes you need their shoulders to lean on, to cry on.”

  She stops moving, eyes still downcast, the air emptied from her lungs. Tears gather in her eyes, then spill over, dripping directly into her chicken and green beans. She looks lost, defeated, so broken I can’t understand it.

  “This isn’t about Blake is it?”

  She manages to look even lower, her head slumping, her shoulders just sort of going slack.

  The world around us is bustling with gossip, laughter, the movement of eating, getting seconds, throwing food away and leaving. People come and go in this five-star cafeteria, but here we sit, silent, Maggie immoveable yet crumbling.

  “This isn’t about school, or your old life, or the pain of your past, is it? And I know you’ve been hurt before because I see it in your eyes. The way your body bows under the weight of sorrow, I could spot that pain from a mile away because I’ve lived through it.”

  “What do you know about pain?” she mutters. It’s hardly a sound, more like a death rattle, or an accusation. She wipes her eyes, but refuses to look at me. Margaret once asked me the same question.

  “More than you know.’”

  From the corner of my eye, I see bodies approaching. Brayden, Damien and Caden are making their way over, their faces bright and smiling and gorgeous. Strangely, remarkably, Brayden has the most swagger. I make a mental note to grill him about what happened over his winter break because I continue to be amazed at his spectacular, non-Gerhard induced transformation.

  They stop at the sight of my serious expression and my nodding head. Damien looks at Maggie, sees her demeanor and stops the other two. Brayden flashes him a look, then sees me mouthing the words “not now.” Thankfully, they re-route.

  Sliding off my seat, I walk around to the other side of the table, sit next to Maggie and pull her close to me. She lets herself be held. From the shifting and shaking in her body, I know how hard she’s fighting to hold this mysterious pain inside.

  Jeez, what happened to her?

  “So this is what it looks like when lesbians finally come out of the closet?”

  Turning around, I see Blake, Julie and Theresa looking shitty and self-righteous. Maggie sits up straight, stiffens. Knowing how hard it was for Maggie to let go, to trust me, the aggressive side of me, the unpredictable, animalistic side of me, takes over. Maggie’s glass of milk is suddenly in my hand. Within seconds two of the three girls’ faces are splashed with the white liquid. Theresa gets it the worst, however, because she was the one who made the lesbian comment.

  Then there’s a fistful of Maggie’s food in my hands. My body is acting almost on its own as I overhand the mess at Theresa, who’s still in shock and wiping milk from her eyes. A piece of chicken hits her flush on her forehead and if I wasn’t so enraged, so out-of-my-freaking-mind insane, I might have laughed at the spongy, thumping sound it made when it connected with her face.

  There are so many things I want to say, so much pent up rage from last semester, but instead of words, I say nothing my narrowed eyes don’t say first. Somehow this effect seems more menacing. At least, for Theresa and Blake—the two dripping with Maggie’s milk. Not for Julie.

  She is about to speak when I look her square in the eyes and say, “One word from you, Julie, and the whole school will know just how many abortions you’ve really had.”

  Her angry lips clamp shut, the fire in her eyes smoldering.

  Blake takes an aggressive step forward, but Maggie stands up, turns around and slaps her across the face with such force the entire cafeteria goes, “Ohhhh,” then falls to a hush. Blake’s hand finds her reddened cheek and I can’t tell whether she’s frightened, or about to go nuclear. The eye on the side of her face that got hit starts to water. Maggie caught her flush.

  The way the entire building falls silent, even the faintest sounds feel amplified. For a second, I think maybe I heard a cricket sigh.

  “You don’t get to be a bitch anymore,” Maggie snarls, her voice laced with conviction, her tone brutally intense. I don’t know about anyone else, but I for one am startled by Maggie’s outburst. She is usually so quiet, so reserved.

  “Girls, girls, girls!” one of the cafeteria monitors is saying as she hurries over to break up what’s already over. She’s clapping her hands like we’re feral cats, or retards running around naked in public.

  When she gets to us, she has that hesitant look on her face that says she has no clue what to do. Like she’s the last girl cheering at a game that’s already over.

  “We’re simply coming to an understanding,” I say. Looking at Julie, not taking my eyes off her, not even bothering to blink, I tell her, “Aren’t we?”

  “Miss—?” the cafeteria monitor (whose name is Sandy)
says, realizing she doesn’t know my name. She seems like she’s holding her breath, waiting for me to give her my last name so she can get out whatever it is she’s compelled to say.

  For a second my brain is so overheated I can’t remember my new last name, and I panic. Then I spit it out, thankfully.

  “Swann.”

  “She doesn’t even know her name,” Theresa says. There are chicken parts in her hair, along with bits of smashed green beans. “This crazy new girl doesn’t even know her own name!”

  “Miss Swann,” Sandy says, “was it necessary to throw milk in these girls’ faces? And food?”

  “Yes, ma’am, it most certainly was.”

  “I’m going to have to report you then,” she says, firmly.

  “Sandy, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “The last thing this world needs is another freaking tattle-tale. If you’ve been at this school as long as these two girls have been,” I say, singling out Julie and Theresa, “then you know this was provoked.”

  “Regardless.”

  “Not regardless, Sandy. Your job is to monitor the condition of the cooked food, make sure no one gets e-coli poisoning, and arrange for clean up. That’s it. But if you feel you need to inform someone important that Maggie and I were standing up for ourselves, if you feel these three crusty scabs were somehow wronged, then you should do just that.”

  Julie and Theresa start to object, but Sandy silences them with her hand and says, “You three, go back to your tables.” They all start in, but Sandy won’t hear a word of it.

  Finally she looks at me and Maggie and says, “Are you alright?”

  “Thank you for asking, but no, Sandy, we’re not,” I say. “We’re big girls though. We’ll figure it out.”

  When Sandy leaves, I turn and face Maggie and say, “It’s time you told me what the hell is going on.”

  4

  Maggie’s dorm room looks a lot like mine, and a lot like it did almost two months ago when Julie and Cameron attacked me in it. Except messier. Looking around, the place seems trashed. Uncared for.

  “Let me guess,” I say, “the maid’s got the month off?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So, out with it.”

  She lays on the bed, turns over and goes into a fetal position. “This isn’t an ‘out with it’ kind of thing,” she says, half mumbling. “It’s really nothing.”

  No, I want to say, it’s really everything. She’s already changing her mind about telling me the truth. Instead of letting the pressure wreck her all over again, I take the lead.

  “The look in your eyes tells me your secret is deeply personal and you don’t know me well enough to confide in me, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “You know me better than you think.”

  “I do?”

  “What you don’t know is I have a whopper of a secret, too. You have one, and I have one, so—if it makes you feel any better—we’ll confide in each other. Deal?”

  She takes a moment to think about it then says, “No. Whatever you have to tell me is not…on the same level…as…as—”

  The tears hit fast and this time she completely comes apart. Her entire body starts shaking and what starts as silent tears quickly escalates into full-fledged sobbing. I remember crying tears like this when I first saw my topless photo plastered across the fronts of those cockroach tabloid magazines. I cried like this when I tried to cut off my ear but couldn’t. My pain was physical and emotional, and my body chemistry was way off because that’s what not enough love and too many meds does to you.

  I get on bed and start rubbing circles in her back. As I’m caring for her, my brain is churning through possible tragedies. If there were a death in the family, Blake would have said something when she thought we could be friends. So no death. And the prank Blake pulled on Maggie in the cafeteria? Playing an early recording of her singing? Not so big of a deal that it could trump the excruciating pain of Gerhard’s science.

  “Are you physically sick? I mean, is something wrong with your body?” Lord knows I’ve got experience in this category. She shakes her head, her sobbing beginning to wane. “Is it Damien?” She snorts out a shot of air, like that would be the least of her problems. “So it’s not a boy thing?”

  “It’s a man thing,” she says, her voice shaking, her body still alive with tremors. “Just not in…not in a…a good way.”

  Then it hits me. “Oh, sh*t.”

  The crying gets worse again. She turns over and folds into me; I pull her close. If this is a man thing, then it can only mean one thing.

  “Were you…”

  “Over…winter…break.” She’s hiccupping and sobbing at the same time, but that doesn’t matter because all this is code for rape. Pretty soon I’m crying with her. The hurt in my heart cuts so deep, I can’t help it. Every girl I know would say death, or any other pain, is better than the brutal violence of rape. I can’t imagine how she’s feeling right now, but she has to feel terribly alone.

  “Who?” I hear myself ask.

  I hardly even know Maggie, to be honest, but now I’m feeling like I know all I need to know.

  “A…music executive…it’s how…I…finalized my…record contract.” The hiccupping in between her words continues, that empty space behind her eyes filling with a roiling emotion on par with thunderstorms. How she is even coping, especially after everything everyone’s saying about her, seems impossible.

  For a long time we just sit there, holding each other, Maggie going through crying spells, silence, shivering. The way Georgia was my safe harbor last year when I was going through my transformation is the way I will become Maggie’s safe harbor for hers. Except her transformation is not to beauty but to shame, to the sickness of an unforgivable violation, to something dark, ugly and lasting.

  Finally, about half an hour later, she sits up and wipes her eyes. They are raw and swollen, her hair a mess from being smashed into my body. We are both changed. Her for finding a way to trust again, even if it’s just me, and me for being trusted with the details of such a heartbreaking confession.

  “I told you my secret was not on the same level as yours.”

  “At the time I thought you were wrong,” I tell her, “but now I know you were right. I’m glad you told me, that you trust me.”

  “I can’t really talk about it yet, but…I will, maybe when I’m…more ready.”

  “Do your parents know?” I ask. She shakes her head. “Do you have to see this man again?”

  “I’m thinking of abandoning my contract, but he said if I did, he would ruin my entire family line. He said it half-jokingly, but I got the feeling he wasn’t joking at all.”

  Jesus, what is it with powerful men abusing other people that makes them think further abuse is the only solution?

  The sinking pit inside me is a vast and growing thing filled with disgust and hatred and the need to find this pig and heap grievous, physical abuse upon him. Girls like me dream of cutting the penises off men like him. Whomever he is.

  “We can stop him,” I say.

  “I’m not going to the police,” she says, scared. “People will know. When you’re rich and famous, you can’t have secrets without having them used to exploit and ruin you.”

  There is genuine panic in her eyes.

  “There are other ways of stopping him,” I say, low and serious.

  After a long, contemplative moment, she looks into my eyes and says, “What’s your secret?”

  I’m not sure she really feels owed a secret as much as she just needs space from her thoughts. Sometimes, however, there is nothing like listening to the problems of others to give your mind its needed stay.

  “I don’t exactly know how to tell you this,” I say, suddenly struck with nerves of my own. “I thought I did, but now, I honestly don’t.”

  “It’s okay,” she says, lowering her eyes, “you don’t have to tell me.”

  “I know about your treatments,” I
say, my voice barely a whisper. “Dr. Gerhard’s, I mean.”

  She practically crawls away from me, her eyes vibrant with fright. As if this secret was even worse than confessing her rape.

  Holding my hands up, trying to calm her, I say, “I went through the same treatments. Last semester, over winter break. I’m just like you. Well, sort of.”

  The tension drains from her body, and I can see her mind unwinding from panic to uncertainty. Finally the question leaves her mouth. “Who are you?”

  “It’s me, Maggie. It’s Savannah.”

  Yellow Brick Road

  1

  Autumn LeBeau sat at the desk in her bedroom in panties and a tank top, her hair let free of its ponytail, her emotions scattered like a bouquet of balloons released without ties into the sky. Lately she couldn’t seem to still her mind. She couldn’t understand the gaps in time. Blackouts were a normal occurrence for her, but lately she seemed to black out longer than she was awake.

  Focus.

  She stared at the yearbook, skimming student pictures, memorizing their names and faces. She had a copy of the current roster and, with a red pen, she was checking off names. People here last year; people here this year. Crossed off the list. She sipped her soda, felt her mind slipping the way a transmission in a five speed clunker might slip between hard shifting.

  Focus.

  Her memories elicited feelings of despair. Her hand went to her tummy. She looked at it. The word baby appeared in her thoughts. Charles. That’s right. Shouldn’t she be pregnant?

  Flashes of the past shot into her head: her distended belly, her bloodstained face in the mirror, the man on the floor. Who was he? Why was his face…eaten?

  “Did we do that?” she heard her mouth ask.

  “I think we did,” the same mouth answered. Is that you, Natalia?

  She took another sip of her soda. Her eyes looked around while her brain fought to keep up. Autumn hadn’t felt right for a long time. Like she was losing herself. Like she was lost already.