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

by Schow, Ryan

  I am Kate Moss. I am Sarah Jessica Parker. I am every Ethiopian girl not on the front cover of National Geographic, and I am gosh damn starving!

  The entire time I’m trying to hang on, to not fall apart, to not start bawling again as I wonder the havoc being reeked inside me right now. I’m clueless, I’m scared and I don’t know what to do.

  My appetite neutralized when Gerhard gave me the shots, which of course, took me from a barnyard sloth to the kind of girl some guys just might go to blows over. But at this very moment I could eat lobster out of a distended corpse. The way my belly looks and feels so empty, I’m reminded of those Holocaust victims you see standing in line with all their protruding ribs. Of course, now I’m sounding like a deranged drama queen. Now I’m sounding like Margaret.

  Speaking of the monster, where the hell is she anyway?

  3

  The new Bentley pulls into the driveway as I’m rifling through the fridge. A quick glance out the window and I’m groaning. It’s freaking Satan herself. Emaciated, empty handed and more hungry than ever, I hurry upstairs to my room, slam the door and lock it. Downstairs the front door opens, then closes.

  “Savannah?” the monster says. My mouth stays closed. It refuses to answer. A few minutes later, the beast’s knuckles are rapping on my bedroom door and this makes the pounding in my head feel worse. “Savannah?”

  “Go away.”

  “I want to see you.”

  “I’m fat again. And ugly. I’m your normal pathetic child, so go away. My treatments failed. I’m not beautiful.”

  “You were always beautiful.”

  “Oh my God, are you drinking again?” My feet are moving to the insanity of my mind. Caged animals aren’t this uptight. All this hostility…I’m my own personal weapon of mass destruction.

  “I’m not drinking,” she insists.

  There’s a pleading in her voice I don’t recognize, a sincerity that could ring false. A ruse? Now I’m totally confused. Who is this person?

  “Drugs?”

  “Absolutely not!”

  I’ll believe that when I see it. “Look Margaret, let’s just go back to business as usual where you go off to the country club and pretend I’m my father’s daughter and not yours. Besides, I don’t feel well.”

  “You don’t sound like yourself.”

  “Who do I sound like?”

  “The purple-eyed girl I saw in rehab.”

  “She’s gone. I told you, I’m a sloth again. A Sloppasauras Rex.”

  The soft jiggling sounds of the she-beast picking the rudimentary lock on my door sets my skin on fire. Steam lifts off my eyeballs.

  The door opens and Margaret gets my narrowed Amethyst eyes, my most disapproving glare. She looks me over, unable to stifle the amazement in her face.

  “Your father told me what he did. How he…helped you with science, or whatever. Genetics.” Ignoring the daggers in my eyes—and maybe because my transformation truly is that amazing—she continues on, almost unaffected. “Anyway, I wish I could’ve done this when I was your age. Looked the way you do without all the cutting and implanting and liposucking. It’s so incredible my heart actually hurts.”

  “You can do the procedure anytime you want,” I tell her, monotone.

  “But I’m in love with myself exactly the way I am, and if I did something like this now, it would mean everything else I’d done was for naught.”

  “Whatever.”

  Margaret winces, then says, “How did you get your eyes that color? Are those contacts?”

  I look at Margaret and she looks different, too. Her face is just full enough to conceal all the angled edges that used to protrude when she ate almost nothing and looked like a strung out runway model. Her more natural appearance is stunning actually, though I’m not about to grace her with the compliment.

  Wow, when did I get so mean?

  “I asked for my eyes to be like this. They’re not contacts. You look good, too, but don’t take that the wrong way,” I say. “All the love I had for you, it could fit on the surface of an atom with room to spare. Maybe it was never love at all. Just the desire to feel love from you.”

  “Don’t say that,” she says, the hurt slipping into her voice. For a second, it looks like she might cry and I’m dumbfounded.

  I sear my curiosity with hatred, turning it on her without hesitation or remorse. “Now you know the truth. I hope it rots inside of you. Get out, please.”

  “So polite,” she says, the pain in her voice flattening out to a sharper, more bitter plane. “So cutting.” She wipes her shimmering eyes, looking upset that they betrayed her. “Look at the little princess who used to be a toad. Straddling the shit out of our high horse, aren’t we?”

  “I knew the real you was lurking in there somewhere.”

  Her once human eyes are bottomless pits of distaste. “Beauty is everything, isn’t it? Look how confident you are. How judgmental you’ve become. All because you got better tits, a skinnier body, the kind of face neither me nor your father could give you on our own.”

  “Beauty isn’t everything. It never was.” I’m not exactly lying here, but inside, I’m so grateful for my new looks, my gratitude cannot be measured in words alone.

  “The most beautiful girls,” Margaret says, “only wish their insides matched their outsides. We kill ourselves to be beautiful on the outside, because that’s the best way to mask the ugliness or the loneliness inside. There’s ugliness inside of you, just like everyone else. And don’t you dare forget it.”

  Livid, the words hiss from my lips, serpent-like and almost on their own. “You’ve got enough ugly inside that plastic shell of a head for us all.”

  Okay, I admit, I shouldn’t have said that, and somewhere deep inside, I feel sad our relationship has come to this. The truth is, I hate that I hate her so much.

  “You’re right,” she agrees.

  Wait a minute…what? If Dr. Suess crawled out of my vagina right now, I wouldn’t be this surprised. Margaret isn’t one to admit fault. Like, ever. I’m witnessing a miracle just short of the second coming of Christ.

  The hard edges of her gaze fall to sorrow; her pinched features lapse into a weakness that could only be described as…human.

  “This is the real me, Vannie. I’m disappointed. Disappointed with myself, with who I’ve been to you, and sad with who I’ve become to your father. I can’t change anytime soon. I know that. And I know I’m going to lose you when you see that rehab and therapy gave me my sobriety, but it failed to make me a better, more stable person. I’m broken inside, Savannah. Broken.”

  “At least you’re being honest. And on that note, you lost me years ago, so don’t be so hard on yourself.”

  Margaret looks down, tears now dripping from her eyes. She finally lays that big doe-eyed gaze on me and says, “Will you help me with a few things?”

  “No.”

  “I’m moving out.”

  “Well in that case, I’d be delighted.”

  I wait for Margaret’s lead, but she stands there a moment too long. What the hell does she want? A hug or something? Finally she says, “I did something bad. That’s why your father’s divorcing me.”

  My entire left side aching, my brain soggy with fatigue, I look at her with the darkest of zombie eyes and say, “You know, Margaret, I would have been more surprised if you said you did something good.”

  4

  After haphazardly tossing a load of Margaret’s clothes into the back seat of her new silver Bentley (“Good God, Vannie, what did my clothes ever do to you?”), Margaret slides on her big, dark sunglasses, gets in the car and shuts the door.

  She starts the engine, rolls down the window and says, “You don’t look the same anymore.” She says this like I’m freaking retarded and somehow I don’t have the IQ to grasp the obvious. She says, “The way we get photographed and interviewed, how the paparazzi are always lurking, you know you have to be careful.”

  “Thanks for the obviosity.” />
  “I’m just saying, technically you don’t exist. The old you, she’ll never be seen again. Do you realize this?”

  I let my rolling eyeballs answer her question. Finally, when she huffs out a sigh—the kind that says I can’t win with you—I say, “Dad says we can handle it. He has a plan. He’s supposed to come home tonight, or maybe tomorrow night. He wasn’t specific.”

  At this point, everything hurts so bad, I just want to lay down.

  “Yeah, well in the mean time you can’t be seen driving your Range Rover. Not this you, anyway.”

  “I’m practically humbled by your sudden flash of preparation.”

  She gives me one long last look then says, “Will I see you again?”

  “No. Maybe.” Pause. “I don’t know.” Do I even want to see her again? Uh, no.

  “I hope I can.”

  “What did you do that was so bad dad would want a divorce?”

  “It’s a long story, my version, anyway. His is probably shorter. Let’s talk later.”

  A sort of creeping rage sizzles like cooking meat inside me. I hate having my emotions manipulated like this, especially when this afternoon’s attack has me feeling like a super-sized PMS turbo-bitch.

  “So you’re going to bait me with that to see me later?”

  “Still so smart,” Margaret says, her Hollywood smile nearly mesmerizing. She backs down the driveway, her window still rolled all the way down.

  “Still so manipulative,” I yell loud enough for her and the neighbors to hear.

  Best Science Ever

  1

  Upstairs, in my room, I ease onto the bed, lie down on my back and stare at the ceiling. A sigh escapes me. The weight of these last few months, of these last few hours, has all but razed me with exhaustion. The strain of my emotions is nothing short of devastating. My eyes shut on their own for a second. That’s all it takes for me to fall asleep.

  I’m sleeping perfectly sound when the shriek of my iPhone ringing startles me awake. Rolling over, the phone’s screen is lit with the caller ID. It’s my best friend, Netty.

  In typical Netty fashion, she doesn’t wait for me to say hello before she starts speaking. She just blurts out, “I want to see you.”

  “That might not be such a good idea,” I reply. Is this what it’s like to feel hung over? Trying to sound awake, I say, “I’m tired as hell and suffering the acid squirts. It’s disgusting. I was practically an athletic sprinter running for the toilet earlier.”

  “That’s nasty.”

  “Yeah, I know. So what else is new?”

  After a minute, Netty says, “You sound different.” Her Russian accent is thick and slow, almost contemplative. “It’s, I don’t know, kinda sexy. What’s up with your voice?”

  There is a lot of silence while my brain scrambles for an explanation. I knew this time would come, when I’d have to tell her I’ve become someone different, something different. I just didn’t think it would be right now.

  “Uh, hello? Savannah?”

  “I’m here,” I say. “Listen, can I text you later? I’m still not feeling so hot.”

  “Sure, but don’t make me wait too long. I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you, too. And there’s so much I have to tell you, I just need to figure out how.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Realizing I’m doing to Netty what Margaret did to me makes me cringe. So I’m mean and I’m a hypocrite. Great. “I’ll tell you later. Promise.”

  2

  Around seven o’clock that night, some man I’ve never seen in my life strolls into the house late—right into my living room where I’m watching TV—and the first thing I think is: Holy shit I’m about to be raped. Or killed. I back up fast on the couch and, in a panic, shout at him, “Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my house?” Except I don’t say hell. The word I use, well, I’m embarrassed to say it rhymes with truck.

  The extremely handsome stranger stops dead in his tracks and says, “First off, don’t be dropping f-bombs in our house. And second, it’s me, sweetheart. It’s dad.”

  He smiles, but it isn’t him. With the vision in my left eye giving me problems since this afternoon, I have to really look because, oh my God, he’s a completely different person! A completely good looking person.

  This perfection, it’s like me.

  He’s like me.

  “What do you think?” he says, hands open wide, palms up like he’s presenting himself. “Best science ever, right?”

  Not only does he look ten years younger, he resembles Pierce Brosnan in his early James Bond years: black hair, blue eyes, handsome face and a lean but muscular build. He’s at least six feet tall, but his presence is so astonishing, I would put him at no less than six foot two. The way he commands the room, it’s nothing like before. Before, he was a powerful person, but you could tell there was that inner insecurity. Not now.

  Not anymore.

  Standing almost hypnotically, my good eye racing over the surface of his face and body, I study him the way you would study a work of art, or a new piece of furniture. What I’m searching for is some semblance of my father. Proof not all of him was erased.

  For the next few minutes he tells me about his treatment, how painful it was, and how he almost quit twice while white-knuckling his way through it. The fact that he did it in half the time I did means his pain was probably twice as bad. I hate spoiling the moment, or souring his delight, but I’m irritable, and for this reason alone I can’t stop from asking the question burning like a dozen suns inside me.

  I say, “Did you see your…donor?”

  “Donors, and yes. They were hand-picked.”

  Breathless, I say, “How did you feel, seeing them like that? In stasis.”

  “What was I supposed to feel?”

  I’m sort of taken back by the question. My temper nearly getting away from me, I say, “I don’t know, something other than indifference.” My left eye is threatening to water from not being focused the same as my right eye. What the hell? Is my eye damaged? Is this a permanent thing?

  “Our donors are a bi-product of our science. My dreams realized. I felt triumphant seeing them, but scared. Anxious because it was officially my turn to pick and choose, to decide who I was going to be for the rest of my life. I felt a lot of things, Savannah, but indifference? No, I didn’t feel that at all.”

  “I will always appreciate what you did for me,” I say. The last thing I want is to sound ungrateful. What I really want to do is tell him to acknowledge his moral center was skewed when he used me as his guinea pig.

  “I know you’re struggling with the morality of this, Savannah. When we last spoke at my office, before I left, I was excited seeing you, and I was hopeful for what this science could accomplish. So much so that I didn’t give you time to speak. I read between the lines, though, and it left me with a lot to think about. But looking at them, these people who’ve given you and me so very, very much, were you not in awe?”

  “I suppose.”

  “I know I was. And were you not supremely grateful for their sacrifice? Because you’d be crazy to feel otherwise.”

  “I am grateful. I said that. But—”

  “Nothing’s wrong, Savannah. We finally got it right. Don’t you see? Science stepped in where God, or nature left off. And it continues to evolve. The next round of patients, they won’t go through the transformation the same way we did. For them it will be easier.”

  He plops down on the couch. Crossing my arms over my chest, I turn away from him. A sharp ticking starts in my brain, little angry soldiers beginning their march. Discretely I feel my head and the lump where Cameron hit me is gone. Interesting. After a long moment, I turn sideways and say, “If I would have known what your company was doing to me…that you were using those people…why did you keep me in the dark, dad? Why couldn’t you have just told me and let me make my own decision?”

  “Before you pass judgment, try to understand I liv
ed nearly all of my adult life in an emotional coma,” he softly admits.

  On the other end of the couch, I sit down and lay a fluffy pillow over my lap, fully refusing to look directly at him. I’m still getting used to the fact that this man beside me is my father.

  “I was in love with your mother. But being forced to watch an endless parade of egomaniacs vying for her attention like I wasn’t even there, like I counted for nothing, was one thing. Having her flirt back was another. The only way to keep from cracking under the strain was to make myself feel nothing. I gave you two everything I could, only to have the media spotlight your insecurities and your mother’s addictions. So, again, I forced myself to feel nothing. Then, when your mother started sleeping with that arrogant prick writer from the country club, what else could I do to survive this insufferable betrayal but feel absolutely nothing?”

  The ticking stops. The angry soldiers stand in silent attention. A sweep of something—empathy perhaps, or sympathy?—flows through me, sad and breathy, like the vulnerable parts of my soul embody his suffering as deeply as if it were my own.

  “Wait a minute, that’s why you’re getting a divorce? Because she cheated?”

  “She said it was a one-time thing, but now she’s moving into her own place, and already he’s been there twice.”

  “How do you know this?” I say, stiffening. “You just got back. She just got out of rehab.”

  “I have people keeping an eye on you and your mother.”

  “You’re spying on us?”

  He raises his hands in a defensive measure. “Not spying. Protecting. With our money, with the scientific advances we’ve made, we tend to draw a certain, unsavory crowd. Savannah, darling, I hate to break it to you, but there are people who want us dead for what we’re doing.”