by Sarah Noffke
Keep Reading for the Next Installment in the Ren Series!
Acknowledgements:
Thank you so much to all of my readers. I cannot do this without your support. I’ve had so many of you make preorders or have standing orders for paperbacks and I can’t even express how great that is. Being an author is the hardest profession I’ve ever had, but you all make it so much easier than it would be. Well, I wouldn’t last at all if there weren’t people who wanted to read my books, now would I?
Thank you to my beta readers. The list is long for this book, but each one of you made this book better. A colossal thank you to Heidi, Heidi, Kelly, Melinda, Colleen and Kim. Thanks to Kelly for recruiting more beta readers and for the idea to write this book in the first place. Thanks to Colleen for putting up with me. You have the hard job of reading the rawest manuscript and I’m sorry that I still refuse to use commas in first drafts…well not really, but I want to be sorry about it. Does that count? Thank you to Heidi for being such a wonderful supporter. I love you all. XOXOOX
Thank you to Katie for beta reading this book to check that my use of the British vernacular was correct. Being spot on was extremely important to me. As a native Texan, I could have bodged this whole thing up, but knowing and having a blighty like you to proof the book sure saved me from looking like a git. You’re the bee’s knees. Thanks for helping me not sound like a tosser when I really want to be regarded as wicked. Bob’s your uncle and other things that I didn’t get the chance to say in this book.
Thank you Christine LePorte, my editor. As I said to Colleen, sorry about the refusal to use commas. I do know what they are. As an English professor, I even know how to use them…kind of. I think it’s just better for everyone if you handle commas. Anyway, thanks for answering all my assorted questions. This book especially threw me for a loop. There was so many concerns, but you are my objective party and I really trust your judgment.
Thank you to Andrei Bat, my cover designer. This has been the most important cover we’ve done so far, because people have such a specific idea of what Ren looks like. And you nailed it. Forever and ever I will have those eyes burned into my memory. And you took my idea and really made it ten times better. Ren, my darling beautiful man, actually looks like a monster, while also being handsome. Thank you!
Thank you to Diane Holmes for being a super fan. The lovely support means to so much and I love hearing the connections you’ve made to my books. Also, another thank you to Alicia, Wendy, Maria, Sarah, Elizabeth, and a whole lot of other fans who make my job fun.
Thank you to ARC readers: Nicole, Nicole, Anna, Susie, Tiffany, Marie, Kariny, Christine, Chelsea, Lesley and Katy. Your early reviews really help. Not only that but I love having you all to share with.
Thank you to Dominic and Maja for running the fan group on Goodreads. A huge thank you for the fan art and the quizzes. They really mean so much to me and I love having a place to interact with readers. Thank you to everyone in the group. You all are the coolest. No seriously, like way cooler than other people not in the fan group. Hint hint to “other people.”
Thank you to Band of Dystopian Authors and Fans on Facebook for all the continuous support. I love you all and really love sharing my books and reading yours. Best Facebook group ever. Thank you to Katy for running the launch parties. I really look forward to those with each book and you do such a fantastic job! Thank you!
Thank you to the musical artist who inspired the sound track for this book. The first thank you goes to a band whose music I listened to a great deal while writing this book: Above and Beyond. Thank you to The Neighbourhood and Radiohead for offering the angst I needed. Thank you to Kari Kimmel, James Blunt and Snow Patrol for offering the love inspirations. And thank you to Stateless, Poe, and The Head and The Heart for helping me keep the tone riddled with a poetic darkness.
Thank you to my family and friends. You all continue to amaze me with your love and support. I’m not sure where I’d be without your encouragement.
Thank you to Luke, my husband, for believing in me. You’re actually the first person to know when my ranking changes on Amazon, because you’re watching it. I can’t imagine a more supportive husband. And after reading this book and realizing that for me channeling a perverted middle-aged man was actually super easy, you weren’t grossed out. Thank you for your love.
Thank you to my daughter. You keep me laughing and inspired with your wit and your imagination. The other day you said to me, “Ren is real, right, Mommy?” I didn’t know what else to say but, “I sure hope so.” You continue to amaze me with your passion for life and that infects me with new stories. Thank you, my muse.
Thank you to everyone reading my books!
Love,
Sarah
One-Twenty-Six Press.
Ren: God’s Little 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: The unexpected can break a man. The unwanted can make him revolt. And both might just be his saving grace.
Published in the United States by One-Twenty-Six Press
ASN: B01DEB8TXG
To Heidi Hudson, for being a super fan and a wonderful supporter.
REN: GOD’S LITTLE MONSTER
Prologue
Nothing is more beautiful than human stupidity. It continues to spread although we erect millions of institutions that are meant to eradicate it. With all the thousands of years of scientific study foolishness is one of the few diseases that we can prevent and yet persist relentlessly. There’s no vaccine for stupidity. No drug to cure it and yet we know how to rid our world of it. How fucking beautiful. Few things on God’s green Earth have the tenacity of stupidity.
You want to know what else is beautiful? Volcanos. Tsunamis. Hurricanes. And guess what they do? They kill.
Chapter One
I probably wouldn’t have a job if it wasn’t for stupid people. They fill up my schedule with their erroneous decisions, which I have to fix or prevent. If it wasn’t for them I’d be sitting on the beaches of Maldives frying my freckled skin. I’d also be wasting money on five-star hotels with sheets they pretend to change and a wait staff which resents the patrons who fund their wage. Thank fucking God for stupid people. I hate vacations. And thanks to stupid people it doesn’t look like I’ll get a vacation in the next millennium.
I’ve been working as an agent for the Lucidites, intervening in hundreds of potential disastrous scenarios. Unfortunately for me, saving stupid people is effortless and growing quite boring. I get that since I’m the special race of Dream Traveler, it’s not likely I’ll ever find a real challenge saving my people, or the non-gifted race of Middlings. But hell, I’d settle for a slight high.
I stop in an empty corridor in the Underground. The slick glass surface covering the advertisement on the wall shows my image, made visible by the bright lights on the ceiling.
Why do I have to be so fucking hard to please? I think as I look at my image. I have Dahlia, the woman I’ve wanted all my life. And I have a job I can be proud of and still the monster in me isn’t happy. It’s relentless in its perpetual state of frustration. I blame stupid people for that though. I raise my hand and stroke my chin, which is freshly shaven. I miss the red goatee I’d adorned for the better part of a decade. However, when the lady you’re shagging t
ells you it has to go, it has to go. I miss facial hair a lot less than I’d miss Dahlia. In my reflection I catch the small smile I’ve released, albeit it’s laced with a cunning glint in my eyes. Not really a smile, but rather the rehearsed look I give myself. It’s how I tell myself I’m in charge and not the monster who lives within me. I tilt my head to the side to take in the angle of my chin, which I didn’t see for a long time thanks to that lovely goatee. My chin is pointy because apparently God was hoping it would complement my Dracula bicuspids and spiky red hair. I narrow my eyes at the image. Damn Dahlia is one lucky lady. And the Lucidites too.
I leave myself with a cold look before continuing my trek to the custodial closet. It’s locked, as it should be since most humans love to steal, even if it’s only cleaning chemicals meant to keep public places tidy. Humans aren’t just stupid, but greedy too. I slide the unlocking device out of the breast pocket of my forest green suit. The stupid piece of technology is about half the size of my palm and as promised it adheres to the outside of the lock when slid into place, like a robot finding a mate. Three seconds later the lock releases and I pull the door back, wishing I was stepping into this closet to disable a bomb. Hell, I’d settle for releasing a snotty teenager from the space. Instead I grab the plastic standup sign from the corner. Plastered across the front of the bright yellow sign are the words “Caution. Wet surface.”
This is not what will rescue the person that I came to save. It’s just a courtesy for the rest of the dumbasses who can’t use their eyes to see a slick surface. Trey’s orders. The Head Official for the Lucidites really cares about people. I absolutely don’t get him.
In the Charing Cross tube station I find the fine sheet of slippery liquid in the exact place where the news reporter said I would. What incompetent goon thought it was a great idea to leave mop water just outside the entrance to a tube? Stupid people seem to have jobs where they can do the most harm. I prop up the sign in the middle of the puddle, which indeed makes the concrete platform slippery. I note this when I step to my spot. My loafer hydroplanes but only briefly before I pause in my station.
The tube has just come to a halt, the doors about to bounce open. Overhead the recorded voice sings, “Mind the gap.” And then three people file through the door, all eyes darting to the plastic sign and then carefully stepping forward after that. The person I came to save can’t read that sign. Not anymore. I reach out my arm just as she steps forward. Her flat slips on the first step, but thanks to the position of my arm she grabs on to it. Her hands had begun to flail through the air, as they tend to do when one is about to fall, when her fingers found my support. The old woman’s other foot slips too, but she’s firmly grasped onto me. I lift her up, her crooked fingers now digging into me like her life is in my hands, and it is. I spy the fear in her eyes as I pull her up to a steady position. She has that look, the one of a person who is repeatedly on the verge of slipping. They keep finding their footing only to lose it again. I’m the only thing actually keeping her from landing her tailbone on the concrete, and she knows it.
“This way,” I say with zero inflection and pull her to the side where the platform is dry. The old woman is shaking when I finally note that she’s on steady feet. I yank my arm out of her tight grasp. Then I wipe my hands off on my trousers, although she didn’t touch me, only my arm dressed in a suit jacket. Thank god. I have no interest in hearing her thoughts.
The woman’s eyes, which have loose skin weighing them down, look up at me. “Sonny, I do believe you just saved me from breaking my hip.”
“That’s exactly what I did,” I say, not giving her another glance as I walk off. “Now go off and do something worth my efforts to save you,” I sing over my shoulder, aware she’s standing frozen, her chest still buzzing from the adrenaline of the near fall.
The news reporters saw a future where that woman fell, broke a hip, and withered away from the pain and then pneumonia. Worst of all she was an awful waste on our health care system. Not to mention the accident created quite the delay on the Underground. Now all these blokes hurrying past me will catch their train so they can sod off to their repugnant jobs. Kudos for me. I just saved an elderly Middling and a bunch of people from a minor inconvenience. Hurr-freaking-yah! Leave it to the Lucidites and their new incompetent Head Strategist to waste my God-given powers. I wasn’t even approved to use mind control on the old bag so she took a different exit out of the tube. Mind control is apparently “an invasion and should be reserved only for extreme circumstances,” Trey Underwood, the Lucidites Head Official, informed me. Sometimes I hate working for a goody-goody.
My mobile buzzes in my pocket. I retrieve it and check the screen. Oh good, another worthless assignment.
Chapter Two
My second assignment for the day involved stopping a distracted bloke in Chicago from stepping out in front of traffic. The news reporters saw that he was taken out by a bus that ran a red light. And like most apes these days, the guy’s eyes were glued to his mobile, which is why the git didn’t see the bus before it smashed his head in. Trey had recommended that I gain the guy’s attention by asking him a question, or if that didn’t work, grab him like I did the old woman. I decided to trip the guy when he was ten feet from the intersection. However, he was so obsessed with his wounded hands which were scuffed trying to soften his fall that he wasn’t paying attention. The chap was also so busy giving me nasty looks over his shoulder that he still ended up careening with the bus he was supposed to avoid. Some people can’t be saved.
“Ren, you tripped him?” Trey says, throwing down the report on his orderly desk. His voice is even although I sense the impatience in him. It’s the effect I continuously have on the usually Zen Trey Underwood. I switch my gaze to the Buddha statue that rests on his intricately carved desk. This furniture in his office has always looked out of place inside the stainless steel Institute which has motorized doors and enough technology to launch the Earth out of the Galaxy.
“You asked me to implement a stall technique,” I say, looking directly at Trey. He wears his hair similar to mine, but his is full of silver and some remaining blond, whereas I hardly have any gray. I can’t boast since I gave Trey most of those silver hairs.
“I said to get his attention, like strike up a conversation,” he says.
“Trey, you know I don’t do conversation. It’s in my contract.”
Trey rests both his hands on the table as he pulls in a breath. “Well, you failed that mission,” he says, shaking his head.
“Tell me, when the fuck did I become some traffic warden?” I say.
“Ren—” Trey says, his voice calm, probably in an effort to disarm me.
“No, in the last three months you’ve given me shit cases. Saving little girls from busting their knees and helping blokes to get jobs inside of private corporations. I get that you’ve employed a lemur in my old position but this is getting ridiculous,” I say, spit flicking out of my mouth from my growing temper.
John Something-or-Another was given my old position as the Head Strategist when I asked for a demotion. Now he decides how interventions happen when we receive the news reports from the clairvoyants. He uses the resources at his disposal to prevent accidents or major tragedies, or to create huge wins for all of humankind. The jobs are tiny, creating small ripples, and also huge, creating major tsunamis. The Head Strategist has to have a holistic view to be successful. However, Mr. What’s-His-Face is a fucking idiot. He thinks a shiny degree means he can give me orders which are wrong and a huge waste of my abilities. And he does all this while pushing up his glasses on the bony ridge of his nose and making snorting sounds. I quit taking orders from him on my second case. Now I receive my reports from his boss who is also my old friend, Trey Underwood. Well, my only friend really. I also listen to his recommendations on how to proceed, but I rarely take the advice. That was the agreement or otherwise I’d quit, and Trey was as likely to allow that as to give the Lucidite Institute back over to its origin
al owners, the U.S. Government.
“Ren, you may not see this, but the people you help are important. The work you’re doing matters. The guy you helped get that position in that corporation was a better option than the reality foretold. He’s going to instigate change. And the people you save are cared about by others,” Trey says. I’ve heard this speech before. It’s past getting boring. Now it’s downright irritating. Yeah, yeah, people matter. I recently reluctantly admitted this when a bomb in the Underground blew up a bunch of people. One of them was my only other friend, Jane. God likes to take out friends of mine though. It’s a wonder Trey’s heart is still beating. And I do get what he’s going on about, that a person matters to another and that should be reason enough to save them. But I want to save a bloody lot of them, not just some old grandmum who is past her expiration date.
I impatiently tap my perfectly manicured nails on the surface of the desk. “I get that I didn’t handle the Group X case like you wanted, but enough is enough. Stop punishing me with lousy cases,” I finally say.
“Ren, you had Antonio’s soldiers shoot him in the head. That was directly against my orders,” Trey says and now his mouth is tight. He’s almost angry with me.
I shrug, like we’re discussing paint swatches. “You told me to stop him from another terrorist attack.”