Steven Universe Future I Am My Monster Novels & Stories

Chloe, the maid I share a room with, is dead. I watched the head housekeeper and another maid pin her to the floor. I watched them as the housekeeper vomited up a slimy, black web of fungus and forced it down Chloe's throat. I should have screamed. I wanted to. But my selective mutism took over, trapping the sound in my throat. It probably saved my life. The next day, Chloe was alive again. She walked into the young miss’s room to brush her hair, just like always. I was so scared I dropped the water basin I was holding. As I stood there, frozen, the young miss leaned in close, her voice a whisper only I could hear. "You've noticed it too, haven't you? They're not themselves anymore."

Rowan Nightshade slapped me in front of his friends, his guards, and the girl he had been protecting for months. The room went dead silent. Then someone whispered, “She deserved it.” For nine years, I had loved Rowan like he was my fate. I endured his coldness, his broken promises, and every time he left me standing alone because another girl needed him more. I kept telling myself it would get better. Rowan was my promised mate. Sooner or later, he would choose me first. But when his palm landed across my face, something inside me finally broke. Rowan thought I would cry, apologize, and forgive him like I always did. Instead, I walked out of the hall, deleted every way to contact him, and told both our packs the promised-mate agreement was over before sunrise. No one believed I would really leave. Until Rowan came to my dorm that night, his eyes red and his voice shaking. “Why, Serena? Just because of one slap?” I looked at the boy I had loved since childhood. Then I smiled. “Yes,” I said. “Because of that slap.”

Today is the sixth time my girlfriend, Shirley Lake, is supposed to meet my parents. My parents and I wait at the restaurant for four whole hours. I call her over and over again, but she never picks up. Just as I'm about to try one last time, I see Shirley's childhood sweetheart, Joshua Solomon, post a picture on his Instagram, with the location tagged at a suburban hotel. The picture shows a woman's pale back, one shoulder bare, with a striking red spider lily tattoo visible on her skin. Underneath the picture was the caption, "We'll make it from 18 to 80." A mutual friend comments, "First-love couples are the sweetest!" I silently hit the like button, then comment, "Make sure to get buried together when you die. And don't come back to haunt anyone else."

In the seventh year of my marriage to Simon Heath, I finally walk away from him after his 32nd mistress shows up at my door. I join a classified government program and disappear from his world. Now he's falling apart and calling me non-stop. "Lily, I was wrong. Please come back." In the past, a single word of apology from him would have been enough to make me stay. But not this time. This time, he's bound to be disappointed.

Thanks to an accident, I'm somehow able to get on a phone call with the past version of me from seven years ago. Upon hearing that I will be getting engaged to Edward Herring soon, Younger Me is so excited that she keeps rolling around in bed. She also claims that she will be the happiest woman in the world seven years later. Am I happy, though? I can only smile bitterly without saying anything. Then, I silently show Younger Me the old scars of the suffering and pain I've gone through in the past. The gentle Edward is no longer here. Now, the Edward I'm with is the type who allows others to call me a manipulative bitch repeatedly and demands that I grovel to his first love, Madison Scott, and her family in a form of apology before our engagement. "So, do you still want a future like this?" The sparkle in Younger Me's eyes fades away instantly. After that, my past has been rewritten. Let's never see each other from the start, Edward Herring.

I was the stand-in who looked most like my husband's first love. He put me through countless plastic surgeries, both major and minor ones, until I became her exact likeness. But then, she came back from the dead. All it took was her saying, "I don't like anyone looking like me," and he sent me right back to the operating table once more. I begged him, telling him that my body couldn't handle it anymore. Alas, he only looked at me with irritation. "Seeing that cheap imitation of her face just disgusts me," he sneered. "No matter how close you come, you'll never be her." In the end, I died on that operating table. Yet, he went mad, trying desperately to recall what I once looked like.

After falling head over heels for Joe Smith for three years, I finally got the proposal I had been waiting for. However, on the day of our wedding, he did not show up until the wee hours of the morning. When I found him, Joe was drinking happily with a young girl in his arms. “I’m already tired of her clinginess. She’s a joke. Who else would want her?” Much later, he made me a wedding ring and proposed with my favorite jasmine flowers. But a muscular man opened the door instead. The man had two scratch marks on his neck and smirked at the disheveled Joe. “Isn’t it a bit too shameless of you to propose to a married woman?”

In the ninth year after I married Charlie Lockwood, he brings his first love, Cecilia Moore, back home. She is gentle, beautiful, and understanding. Everyone treasures her like she is some precious gem. Right under my nose, Charlie begins to develop feelings for her. The household gradually comes under her control. Even my two children, whom I cherish dearly, would rather have Cecilia as their mother. Just when I am completely disheartened, I discover my true identity. With how things are in the Lockwood household now, there is no longer anything here that is worth staying back for. Without hesitation, I file for divorce and return home to take over my family business.

"Mr. Dawson, about that farmhouse construction project in Hattensburg… I've decided that I'm willing to go there." Gary Dawson, on the other end of the line, sounds fairly surprised. "I've been asking you to go there for ages, yet you refused every time because you said you wanted to be with your boyfriend, Timothy. Why the sudden change of mind?" Madeline Carlton lowers her reddened eyes and pretends to chuckle nonchalantly. "I guess I hit one too many walls and just decided to come to my senses afterward." Hearing this, Gary sighs and says sternly, "This is a highly classified mission. You will be assuming a whole new identity when you start working on this project. Before the mission ends, you will not be allowed to have any contact with the rest of the world. "Madeline, are you sure that you've thought things through?" "Yes. I just want to escape this place as soon as I can." There is a long silence on the phone. However, Gary answers right after the pause. "Alright. I'll send the classified contract to you in a while. It should take about a month for the paperwork to be finalized. Use that opportunity to say goodbye to your friends and family." The call disconnects. An email pops up in Madeline's inbox. Right after reading through the classified contract, she signed her name with a flourish and submitted the file with a click. At the same time, Bloomberg Group's new product launch plays on the television. Timothy Bloomberg, wearing a tailored white suit, slowly leads Lacey Houston up the catwalk stage.

At the company's gathering, everyone has the right to order for themselves. When it's my turn, however, the new intern, Hayden Belmont, snatches the menu from me. "The order's complete, so there's no need to order anything else." I merely ignore Hayden as I tell the server, "I'd like some continental herb-baked snails, please." But Hayden slams the menu at my face while glaring at me angrily. "I said you're not allowed to order! Who do you think you are, huh?" The hard edge of the menu leaves a scratch on my face. Blazing pain is all I feel at the moment, which fuels my temper even more. So, I pick up the menu and throw it back at Hayden's face. He's quick to shriek and yell at me in fury. "Do you have any idea who I am? My mom is Natasha Belmont, the biggest client of this company! Even the CEO has to show some respect to me, and yet you have the nerve to lay a finger on me? "I'll have your 800-thousand-dollar bonus canceled right away! Soon, the entire industry will blacklist you!" I'm stunned, to say the least. My biological aunt, Natasha Belmont, has been single for 40 years. Since when does she have a grown-up son?