Ren: The Monster Inside the Monster Read online

  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

  Praise for Previous Works:

  “There are so many layers, so many twists and turns, betrayals and reveals. Loves and losses. And they are orchestrated beautifully, coming when you least expected and yet in just the right place. Leaving you a little breathless and a lot anxious. There were quite a few moments throughout where I found myself thinking that was not what I was expecting at all. And loving that.”

  -Mike, Amazon

  “The writing in this story was some of the best I've read in a long time because the story was so well-crafted, all the little pieces fitting together perfectly.”

  -The Tale Temptress

  “There are no words. Like literally. NO WORDS.

  This book killed me and then revived me and then killed me some more. But in the end I was born anew, better.”

  -Catalina, Goodreads

  “Love this series! Perfect ending to an incredible series! The author has done this series right.”

  -Kelly at Nerd Girl

  “What has really made these books stand out is how much emotion they evoke from me as a reader, and I love how it comes from a combination of both characters and plot together. Everything is so intricately woven that I have to commend Sarah Noffke on her skills as a writer.”

  -Anna at Enchanted by YA

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

  Table of Contents

  Reading Guide

  Get your free book here

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty- Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Reading Guide

  Get your free book here

  Reading Guide

  Sarah crafted the Dream Traveler universe and has 5 series that take place there. Characters from different series bounce between the books. The reading guide below offers a suggested order for consumption to decrease spoilers and stay on the timeline. The last three series listed can be read in any order.

  For more information please visit Sarah’s website at www.sarahnoffke.com or email her at [email protected]

  Join the mailing list here for freebies, updates and more! http://www.sarahnoffke.com/connect/

  A Dream Traveler Series: The Lucidites Series

  Awoken, #1:

  Stunned, #2

  Revived, #3

  A Dream Travelers Series: The Reverians

  Defects, #1:

  Rebels, #2

  Warriors, #3

  A Dream Traveler Series: Ren

  Ren: The Man Behind the Monster, #1:

  Ren: God’s Little Monster, #2

  Ren: The Monster Inside the Monster, #3

  Ren: The Monster’s Adventure, #3.5

  Ren: The Monster’s Death

  A Dream Traveler Series: Olento Research

  Alpha Wolf, #1:

  Lone Wolf, #2

  Rabid Wolf, #3

  Bad Wolf, #4

  A Dream Travelers Series: Vagabond Circus

  Suspended, #1:

  Paralyzed, #2

  Released, #3

  Soul Stone Mage Series: An Urban Fantasy Witch Adventure

  House of Enchanted, #1:

  Dark Forest, #2

  Mountain of Truth, #3

  Land of Terran, #4

  New Egypt, #5

  Lancothy, #6

  Ghost Squadron Series: A Military Space Opera Adventure

  Formation, #1

  Exploration, #2

  Evolution, #3

  Degeneration, #4

  Impersonation, #5

  Get your free book here

  Click here to get started:

  http://www.sarahnoffke.com/free-book/

  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 s
o 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?