Ren Series Boxed Set

by Sarah Noffke

  Thank you to my family. I really feel that I’m in good hands with you all. Thank you to Luke for the love and support. You rock. With a capital K.

  Thank you to Lydia. You’re always my muse. The one I turn to when the plot doesn’t work. One might not think that a four year old should be helping with such things, but I know better. And you just keep getting better and better. Love you.

  One-Twenty-Six Press.

  Ren: The Monster Inside the Monster

  Sarah Noffke

  Copyright © 2016 by Sarah Noffke

  All rights reserved

  Copyeditor: Christine LePorte

  Cover Design: Andrei Bat

  All rights reserved. This was self-published by Sarah Noffke under One-Twenty-Six Press. No parts of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. If you are seeking permission send inquiry at http: www.sarahnoffke.com

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Summary: A bordering psychopath must face the monster inside him before it tears him apart.

  Published in the United States by One-Twenty-Six Press

  ASIN: B01GZ97RVO

  To Melinda, for loving Ren as much as I do and being an amazing supporter.

  REN: THE MONSTER INSIDE THE MONSTER

  Prologue

  Change always gets its praise. If we don’t change we die. That’s what my therapist likes to tell me. John F. Kennedy said, “Change is the law of life.” George Bernard Shaw said, “Progress is impossible without change.” Winston Churchill said, “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”

  Fuck change. Fuck those people who think that a constantly evolving life creates perfection or progress or satisfaction. Nothing changes more than a butterfly. It starts as a larva and changes rapidly during its life. Only a small percentage ever progress to a caterpillar. And the life expectancy of a butterfly is ridiculously short. The male’s is especially short, not surprisingly. Sure a butterfly goes through incredible changes, but at what cost? Is it worth evolving to a beautiful being to only fly for a few days?

  Not all butterflies have such short lives. The ones who seek shelter from the elements or migrate can live several months. So I’ve decided to follow the logical ways of the butterfly, an insect with a tiny brain, and that means I should retreat. Find a place where the winds can’t damage my symbolic wings. Where people can’t pollute me with their incredibly illogical behaviors and wrong ways of thinking.

  I’m Ren Lewis and I fucking hate change.

  Chapter One

  The fluffy strand of garland falls to the ground with zero noise. Adelaide’s feet tangle in it as she makes for the door. I’ve already bucked Dahlia off my lap and shot to a standing position, my mobile close to breaking in my tight grasp. Trey’s words echo in my head from the call I just ended.

  “Ren, what’s going on?” Dahlia says, standing too.

  “Not so fast, Adelaide,” I say just as she reaches the doorway.

  She halts, her body reeking with tension. Her shoulders are pinned up high. Her chin tucked. And even in the oversized sweatshirt she’s swimming in I can still spy the stress she’s holding in every one of her limbs.

  The fucking sweatshirt. Of course. How didn’t I see the clues before? Her constant insistence to wear baggy sweaters although I had fitted button-ups bought for her. The napping, the sickness, the greenish bags under her eyes. I’m a fucking master of strategy and never realized the girl living with me for the last three months was pregnant. The word feels like a firecracker in my head. Pregnant.

  “What the fuck, Adelaide,” I say, five feet from the girl who is visibly shaking now. She turns but the movement is so slow that for a moment she reminds me of a sloth, a terrified one.

  “What is it?” she says, her eyes on the ground.

  “Don’t what is it me. You know bloody well what Trey just told me or otherwise you wouldn’t be rushing for the exit,” I say.

  Her eyes meet mine, a cruel pain in them. A shame I’ve seen there every day I’ve known her but just now completely understand. She’s a girl living a lie, one she’s in over her head with. How many times did she try to tell me her secret, only to fail to say the words? How long was she going to let this go on?

  “I can explain,” she says, her hands knitted into the sleeves of her sweatshirt.

  “I don’t want you to explain,” I say and then pause, shake my head. “Well, I do, but I want…” I trail off, strangely confused. In this scenario I don’t know what I want from her. What the fuck? That’s a first. I do know I don’t want Adelaide to be pregnant. It ruins everything. Everything.

  Dahlia has just come around and accepted that I have a daughter. We’re back together. Adelaide makes sense in my life now. I mean, as much sense as a dog giving birth to kittens. But still I was starting to accept this bizarre fate I’ve been delivered. And now Adelaide has ruined it. Ruined it by breeding. By fucking up her future. Weighing herself down with a burden. She had so much potential. The potential to become an elite agent for the Lucidites. But now, now she has a monster inside of her. One that’s going to fuck up our lives.

  “Ren, what’s going on?” Dahlia repeats at my shoulder.

  “Why don’t you tell her, Adelaide,” I say.

  The girl drops her eyes. “I’ve been meaning to tell you. I was going to when we got back to Dahlia’s house this week. And then also I’ve tried to tell you a thousand times before then and a hundred times since then.”

  “Stop with the lyrical language and fess up, little liar,” I say.

  “Things have been so hard between you and me, Ren,” Adelaide says, and then she looks at Dahlia. “And you, well, we didn’t get along at first. I didn’t want to make it worse.”

  Dahlia tucks her chin to the side. “Adelaide, how I treated you is my burden. You shouldn’t punish yourself with it anymore. We’re past that. Making a fresh start.”

  “Oh yes,” I say, my head burning like my hair is on fire. “So fucking fresh.”

  Adelaide crushes her teeth down on her lip, nods. Tears well in her eyes.

  “Don’t you bloody cry. Spill the news so I can kick you the fuck out,” I say.

  “Ren!” Dahlia says, slapping me on the arm. She then turns to Adelaide. “What’s going on, dear? Tell me so I can help and don’t worry, you’re not going anywhere. Your father just loves making threats. It’s a hobby of his.”

  Adelaide’s mouth pops open, but nothing comes out. It closes and she shakes her head. Loses the ability to keep eye contact with us. Her shaking hands find the hem of the extra-large sweatshirt which would be baggy even on me. She tugs it up in one fluid motion, and to my relief she’s wearing another shirt and not actually stripping. Adelaide can’t say the news, so instead she’s showing Dahlia. Showing me her secret. Her lie.

  The tank top is stretched to a deadly capacity, hugging the bump on her stomach. Trey said six months, but she’s probably a bit underdeveloped at this stage, due to many factors.

  “Oh, dear god,” Dahlia says, her hands clapping to her mouth as she simultaneously takes a step back like she’s afraid Adelaide has a contagious disease.

  “Like I said, I tried to tell you,” Adelaide says and now tears stream down her red freckled cheeks.

  I turn, unable to stomach the sight before me. I’ve never been able to look at a pregnant woman, not since Eloise, the woman I watched murdered during childbirth. The one whose death I am responsible for. Culpable in every way.

  “Adelaide, you’re…” Dahlia says but like me she sounds unwilling to believe it even as we stand face to face with the evidence.

  “Yeah, I was afraid you’d turn me away in the beginning if you knew. Ren kept telling me to
off myself so I figured if I told him I was pregnant he’d—”

  “You’re right, that’s exactly what I would have told you to do. I would have told you to get rid of it straightaway,” I say, my head pinned between my hands.

  “Well, I want it,” Adelaide says. “I don’t know why, but I do.”

  “You’re a child. You’re not responsible enough to take care of yourself. How do you expect to take care of another person?” I say, realizing I understand nothing about the girl in front of me.

  “That’s exactly why I sought you out. I needed to understand what was wrong with me so I could figure out what to do with my baby. And at first I thought I might abort, but then when I learned who I was and how incredible I was, I couldn’t get rid of it,” she says, stalling on the last word.

  “How did this happen?” Dahlia says, stepping forward again, her eyes on the girl’s swollen stomach which Adelaide is now holding with a light affection.

  “Sex,” Adelaide says plainly, an almost laugh in her voice.

  “Right, but when? Who?” Dahlia says

  “I figure I’m five or six months,” she says. “And the boy, well…” And the look of shame deepens on her face.

  “Oh, bloody hell! He wasn’t consenting, was he?” I say, realizing she used mind control to make someone sleep with her.

  “I don’t know, maybe he would have been. I didn’t understand how my powers worked then,” Adelaide says.

  “Wait, what?” Dahlia says, looking back and forth between Adelaide and me.

  “She used her mind control on some innocent boy,” I say, cringing that I’m even having this bloody conversation.

  “He wasn’t innocent. He was the most popular boy in my old school. He had quite the reputation for womanizing,” Adelaide nearly screams, more tears in her throat.

  “So you decided to go back to your old school, did you? And then show this boy by being the one to finally take advantage of him. Is that right?” I say.

  “Don’t you act so innocent, like you’ve never forced someone to be with you using mind control,” Adelaide says.

  “Oh, I’m not innocent. I’ve forced hundreds of women to be with me. Every women I’ve ever been with was forced into the act,” I say. “Well, except for Dahlia. She’s demented though.”

  “I had to force guys as well. You know my record. I was a freak at every school,” she says. And then I spy something new in her. A loneliness. It makes her look so fragile, like a porcelain doll dangling over a marble floor. She’s always been dangling there too, terrified that one day she’ll fall and shatter.

  “So that’s why you did it?” Dahlia says. “To feel close and accepted, didn’t you?”

  Adelaide opens her mouth to answer but I cut her off. “We aren’t diving into the monster’s insufficient reasons for ruining her life,” I say.

  “I didn’t ruin my life. I made a mistake,” Adelaide says and now she looks mad. Good.

  “Adelaide, come here,” Dahlia says, extending a hand to her. “Let’s sit down and discuss this calmly.”

  Dahlia’s cool-as-ever demeanor makes me want to punch a wall. She should be livid that this burden is about to burden us even more. I can’t turn Adelaide away now and I can’t have her in my life. I don’t want a child around. I can barely stomach teenagers. Babies make me want to barf. The thought of a baby brings a long ago memory rushing to the surface. The babies I took to Trey Underwood. They were covered in blood, tiny and squirming. On my way to Trey, I was running for my life, or so I thought. And although that horrific run through Stockholm, Sweden, was riddled with threats there were other things pressing in on my conscience, lamenting itself there. All I could see in my head was their dead mother, her throat slit.

  Babies mean death. Babies mark the mistakes in my life. The ones I thought I’d atoned for but now realize still live in my bones, threatening to break me.

  “No, I can’t sit,” Adelaide says, shaking her head at Dahlia and her offer.

  “Adelaide, you haven’t had medical attention. You and your baby need to see someone pronto,” Dahlia says.

  “Oh fuck!” I say, throwing my hands back to my head. Both women turn to look at me. “You’ve been dream traveling.”

  “Yeah, so?” Adelaide says with a shrug.

  “Well, if you would have told me you were pregnant I would have forbid you from dream traveling. I would have told you that as soon as that monster’s consciousness sparked to life around the fourth to sixth month that dream travel could kill you both. You can’t pull your consciousness into the dreamscape without risking creating a schism when you have another human consciousness within you,” I say, spit flying from my mouth from my rushed words

  “Wait, what?” Dahlia says. “Pregnant women can’t dream travel?”

  “Sometimes they can, but it’s risky. A risk I would have never allowed you to attempt if I knew!” I yell and I do now throw my fist into the wood-paneled walls. My finger, still broken from punching that bloke James in the face, screams when contact is made. And to my frustration the wall stands up to my force, not even denting. What’s the bloody point in hitting something if it doesn’t create damage?

  I cradle my hand to my chest at once, careful to keep my eyes off Dahlia, who is probably giving me a punishing look of disappointment. From my peripheral I see her turn to Adelaide.

  “I’m calling my doctor right now. You and your baby are having a full checkup today,” Dahlia says.

  “It’s really not nec—”

  “No arguments,” Dahlia says, cutting Adelaide off. Then she rushes for the phone on the corner table. She pauses and just then looks at me. I bring my eyes up to look at her. “This is unexpected, Ren, but we will deal with it. Don’t worry and stop hitting things.”

  Chapter Two

  The clock has ticked three hundred and sixty times since the therapist opposite of me has spoken. I had started counting the ticks and hadn’t cared to stop. It was almost soothing now to wait for the gentle click that happened every second and count it.

  “Ren, I’m all too happy to sit here in silence with you if that’s what you need,” Dr. Dave Raydon says. His hands sit in his lap, his eyes resting on me. “I’ve learned in my practice that talking helps, but not always. Sometimes we need time to process our thoughts.”

  Having lost track of my counting I manage a nod.

  “However, if talking about the recent developments will help, if there are thoughts sitting on top of your mind with a desire to be voiced, then I’d like you to express them,” he says.

  Now I shake my head.

  “Ren, for over a month we’ve sat here, sometimes talking but usually in silence. I’m not going to push you. However, I would like to ask you the question that I think we’ve both been thinking but are unwilling to voice. I, for one, didn’t think you were ready to address this question. Maybe you still aren’t, but I’m willing to anger you a bit to ask it now.”

  Usually I’d have a crafty retort or an insult at the ready, but this time I don’t. Not only am I unmotivated to berate a person lately but I have no desire to criticize the man in front of me. I’m a wicked person, but one would have to be a demon to be rude to this man. “Go ahead. Ask your burning question,” I say.

  A smile twitches under his mustache. “Ren, don’t you think it’s obvious what you’re doing? How long are you going to keep hiding?”

  A frustrated breath falls out of my mouth. “That was actually two questions. And I hid for eighteen bloody years. I’m thinking of doubling it this time.”

  The smile reaches up and touches his blue eyes. “Before, you were in danger. Now the circumstances are quite different.”

  I tie my arms in front of my chest. “There’s a deranged lunatic who’s out there, need I remind you,” I say, pointing at the stainless steel wall, but meaning America. “This lunatic, Vivian, is obsessed with me. And she’s instigated the murder of her father and attempted murder on her uncles. She’s seeking to implant devices i
nto homes so she can control people. Vivian Bishop is one of the most cunning and dangerous adversaries I’ve ever encountered and she can disable me with a couple of words. I am in danger, but no, I’m not hiding like you think or for the reasons you think. I’m fucking trying to save humanity. So keep running your judgmental eyes over me but you’ll be thanking my ass when I save this bloody circus we call the Institute.”

  Dr. Raydon tucks his head to the side like he’s just thought of something. “I do believe that’s the most you’ve said in a month. Good progress.”

  “Yeah, and now I’m bloody exhausted,” I say. “Thank you very much.”

  “I do realize your position with the Lucidites is extremely demanding. And I commend you on the commitment you show. However, you haven’t left the Institute in over thirty days,” he says.

  “I’ve been busy. There’s a fucking mole in this place who is giving all our secrets to Vivian. And the only way I’m going to find this dipshit who’s reporting my actions to Vivian is by hanging around this hell hole and investigating,” I say.

  “So,” he says, drawing out the word. “You’re not avoiding your pregnant daughter then?”

  I fake a long yawn. “Oh, I totally forgot the little dumbass got herself knocked up. Thanks again, Doc.”

  Even under his bushy mustache I still spy the purse of the doctor’s lips. And even adorning a skeptical expression, he looks accepting. “Don’t you think that at this time in Adelaide’s life she could use her father?”

  So now the good doctor has decided to play hardball with his questions. I wondered how long he’d allow me to take up a spot in his armchair and only answer his questions with one-word responses.