Monster M.D.: A Monster Girl Harem Mystery Thriller (Monster M.D. ) Read online

  Monster M.D.

  Leighton Lawless

  Contents

  Foreword

  1. Monsters in the Grove

  2. Progress

  3. Prime Suspect

  4. The Ruins

  5. Out of the Mouth of Babes

  6. A Secret and Forbidden Love

  7. Death Lurks in the Shadows

  8. Scorched Earth

  9. Glimmer of Hope

  10. Relentless Pursuit

  11. The Underground

  12. The Truth Comes to Light

  13. Behind These Eyes

  14. Infiltration

  15. Shootout in Sheol

  16. Nightmare Scape

  17. The Interrogation

  18. Matthias’s Lair

  19. The Choice

  20. Resistance Begins

  21. The Crypt

  22. Planning the Heist

  23. Gulliver’s Wet Dream

  24. Monster Villa

  25. Extraction

  26. The Magic Trick

  27. The Transhumana Monstrare Riddle

  28. Belief

  29. The Heart of the Enemy

  30. Second Chances

  31. Pincer

  32. Last Breath

  33. Doctor’s Notes

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  Hieronymus ‘Jer’ Bennington isn’t your everyday psychiatrist. His father, William Bennington, discovered and identified a fissure in the genetic code, known as ‘Transhumana Monstrare,’ and altered the already tense relations between monsters and humans. William was subsequently attacked by a monster, leaving Jer an orphan.

  Despite losing his father, Jer embraces the idea that there’s more to a person than the way they look and the horns protruding from their heads. In that vein, he spends his days providing therapy to monsters.

  His nights are filled with misadventures as he unravels the mystery of his best friend’s murder. The search for the truth will lead him deep into a conspiracy that was never meant to see the light of day, unintentionally putting his colleagues, patients, and loved ones in harm’s way.

  Don’t even consider warning him that stirring a hornets’ nest might actually result in human-sized hornets swarming him from all directions. Think monsters can never rise above a base desire to cause violence and provoke fear? Watch Jer prove all the experts wrong!

  Take a front row seat while he roars through the upper echelons of a corporate-run society that has built its empire on the back of monster labor and subjugation. With only a second-tier doctorate, an eye for hidden truth, and an impassioned fortitude, he will do all he can to leave the world in better standing once he’s wreaked havoc on the truly monstrous among us.

  He fights for the betterment of monsters, both inside and out. He fights for and against the monsters among us. He is Monster, M.D.

  Copyright 2018 by Monster Pulp

  MONSTER M.D. Copyright © 2018 by Leighton Lawless. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction and no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without permission in writing from the publisher and copyright owner, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published by Monster Harem, an imprint of Monster Pulp. First edition.

  Created with Vellum

  1

  Monsters in the Grove

  Like his best friend, Arnold Jasper had always loved and been enthralled with monsters, even when all he knew of them was learned from pop culture references from his childhood. Movie posters featuring a wide range of dragons, demonesses, fairies, beastniks (monsters who possessed animalistic features and behaviors), and zombies lined his bedroom walls well into his teen years, despite his favorite characters always being portrayed as villains. Anytime a new game came out that featured monsters, Jasper was the first to get it, no matter the cost. It wasn’t until he was on the verge of adulthood, though, that he devoted his life to them – all thanks to meeting Hieronymus ‘Jer’ Bennington, at an augmented video game meetup full of strangers. Both Jasper and Jer were playing wallflower in separate corners until Jer finally marched over and asked, “You don’t like people, do you?”

  “P-people, I, uh…Why would you s-say that?” Jasper stuttered, pure nerves.

  “You haven’t made eye contact the entire time you’ve been here,” Jer replied. “And it’s all humans, no monsters.” Jer took a moment to compose himself before sharing too much with a person he didn’t know at all. Opening up to get a stranger to open up was tricky as hell, but even as a toddler, Jer loved the thrill of the unknown. “I get it. You wanna play Monsters in the Grove. I do, too. It’s just that these voyeurs want to roleplay as monsters for the gore of it. They’re not here to understand like you are.”

  Jasper took a moment to consider Jer’s words before responding. It was a test, and he knew it. The question was – what counted as passing?

  “And you’re here for a different reason?” Jasper asked.

  Jer made a clicking noise with his tongue. “And so are you.”

  Jasper couldn’t help but chuckle a little, drawing the attention of a few of the voyeurs. He then turned back to Jer and gestured for him to lead the way out of the shitshow.

  “You share first,” Jasper had said.

  “To people-watch,” Jer said with a smirk. “And I think we’re going to become the best of friends.”

  Over the next several weeks, the two of them immersed themselves inside Monsters in the Grove. The game was augmented over the real world with a transparent projection from their cybernetic iris implants, until they’d beaten the game playing as every possible character with every possible skill set. Individually, it would have taken them longer, but together they could combine their powers and overcome their weaknesses.

  Jasper, for instance, had a particular knack for making unexpected alliances and merging skills to come out with a unique combined and far more badass ability, such as when he realized it would be sick as hell to play an enhancer in support of a healer. Not something one thinks of every day. It worked like a charm.

  Jer, on the other hand, had a talent for getting into the heads of other gamers. He was already taking college-level psych courses, so he did have a leg up. He’d pretend to be against the monsters. He’d pretend to be allied with them. He’d play at weakness, only to reveal at the last minute that he had already acquired a monster avatar far more powerful than what the average gamer possessed. He was pretty damn good at talking others into overestimating him and underestimating at will, depending on what he wanted them to feel at the time. He almost always played as a healer, so the scenarios usually ended with Jer and his alliances being underestimated.

  Jasper dominated social influence and creating alliances, and Jer helped others just enough to gain allies and develop his healing skills at a rapid rate. Since most other players were focused on immediate and instant victories and gratification, the dynamic duo rose through the ranks so quickly that Jasper strongly considered giving up his plans to become a genetic researcher in favor of becoming a full-time monster gamer. At the same time, Jer realized helping others in the game was almost as satisfying as helping people in real life.

  There was one thing about their friendship that bugged Jer. Jasper had a way with girls, particularly monster girls. He’d finely tuned his social influence and ability
to get into rapport with anyone through video games, and used his charm to form what he affectionately called a “monster harem.” His growing ability to make connections in games that others would miss drew so many women to him that he had a waiting list of monster girls eager to join his harem. They were fully aware of and supported the other women while remaining exclusive with him. It didn’t hurt that he had blossomed early, with a lush head of red and wavy hair, broad shoulders, piercing blue eyes, and a grin that made chatterboxes speechless. Despite being fully human, Jasper earned the nickname “Cat” because he was always asking, “Cat got your tongue?” It was his catchphrase–both in matters of seduction and as a game player, which to him, perhaps weren’t that different.

  It wasn’t that Jer disapproved. What bothered him was that his ability to enhance other players’ skills through alliance wasn’t as easily transferred into flirting. “Hey, if we hook up, your claws will get a boost during games, making you more powerful,” he’d said once as a pickup line. That didn’t go so well. Subtlety was never his strong suit. On top of that, Jer had inherited his father’s Roman nose, broad forehead, thick black hair, and lanky frame. As a teenager, he looked like a gangly, mismatched Mr. Potato Head whose features were growing out of sync. Put simply, Jer was jealous of his best friend.

  All the same, he loved him like a brother. Jasper was his first real friend and he shared his fascination and affection for monsters.

  That happened before Jer’s world came crashing down, however, and once fate and an imbalanced society, which kept monsters at the bottom of the food chain, intervened, their true paths and purposes took root and led them on an unenviable journey that made escape into a simulated world next to impossible.

  In the year 2037 A.D., affectionately referred to by monsters as 6259 A.M. (after the year the mythological last Monster Emperor Matthias had risen to the throne), tragedy struck. Journalists called it an awakening, which made Jer furious. Academics wrote about the transformative moment when the creatures formerly acquiescing to second-class citizenship were no longer willing to accept lesser status. Idealists referred to it as a fairy tale enlightenment, with the potential to open both monster and human minds to a new world order. The young man himself referred to it as “the day the game died.”

  Only Jasper truly understood his meaning. Jer was referencing a song from the 1970s, a classic rock song that was his favorite. He’d play it on repeat into both of their music feeds during augmented gaming sessions. Over and over it would play – “Bye Bye, Miss American Pie…” The fun and games of role-playing as monsters inside video games was over the moment Jer’s father made a discovery that shifted the balance in society.

  William Bennington, Jer’s father, started as a medical doctor for monsters, and found a prominent difference between monster and human DNA during a lab project meant to determine whether different medical practices were warranted for monsters. Scientists began calling his discovery “Transhumana Monstrare.” Immediately, countless so-called experts warned that the genetic difference was a mutation that was viral. Humans panicked.

  Not surprisingly, the world was upended for a decade with political battles breaking out over whether monsters should be contained to protect humans against a spread of the possible virus and its effects. Who, after all, would want to become a lowly monster, at the bottom of the social food chain? Riots filled the streets on both sides.

  Humans had the upper hand, though physically weaker. They had power on a unified scale. Global corporations had encouraged news outlets to share and repeat the mantra that “all humanity was one and the same,” while monsters were divided among their subspecies. Soon the corporations united and formed into one massive conglomerate, GenAdvance. They moved to take control over critical resources and infrastructure. Put simply, they took financial control over everything that provided real power and control. For centuries, humans had held onto the upper echelons of power just enough to prevent an uprising from the monsters.

  The myth was that monsters had ruled the world until Emperor Matthias rose to power over six thousand years before, and his reign led to an interspecies war. Once the dust settled, humans were able to coalesce while monsters fought among each other. Human leaders argued that monsters were inherently dangerous, and that they had started the war without provocation. No one knew the truth for certain, but fear of what monsters might do to humans if they were to retake control pervaded society and fostered a sense of division that had always bubbled beneath the surface.

  Now that Jer’s father had proven a distinction between monster and human DNA strands, humans who wanted full control finally had their justification for subjugation of monsters worldwide. Doctor William Bennington regretted the outcome and guilt consumed him. It had been his intention to help and possibly uncover a means of improving individual health and well-being. The finding was a breakthrough, and at first it led to different variations of antibiotics and surgical procedures specifically developed for monsters, but his good intentions backfired. The psychological rift between monsters and humans no longer lay dormant, and the damage had been done. Monsters were forced into less desirable sections of cities, specifically boroughs, and signs keeping them out of “better quality” stores and restaurants filled windows.

  On top of it all, Doctor Bennington was the most hated human alive because of his discovery, and unintentionally served as a rallying point for monsters and their allies who were dead-set on fighting against their subjugation.

  Rallies sprung up across the world, a monster advocate, Elizabeth Lavenza, named after the orphan taken in by the Frankenstein family in Mary Shelley’s infamous novel, was their unofficial organizer. She coordinated protests through an underground communications network formed by monster sympathizers.

  When rumors swirled that Matthias had somehow lived or resurrected with a plan to retake control, GenAdvance created the heavily-armed Pharma Bureau with the primary mission of countering potential revolutions and violent actions toward humans. It had no mandate to protect monsters or limit the force used on them.

  Societal change happened so fast and with such precision that it felt as though a secret and unseen cabal had been planning on a hostile takeover for ages and was simply waiting for the right moment and justification.

  The rallies didn’t go so well. To be blunt, they were a disaster. No one expected it, but the Pharma Bureau used deadly force in dispersing the rallies, regardless of whether or not the protestors were armed. Because of the threat of contagion, the general population remained silent, and a potential non-violent movement to free monsters from the boroughs died in its infancy with barely a whimper.

  Lavenza went underground. The rumor was that she planned to reemerge with a better strategy for a second round, but no one heard from her for years.

  The mythical Matthias never appeared, but conspiracy theories about his continued survival became legend and a powerful symbol of hope.

  William Bennington paid the ultimate price for a bill that wasn’t warranted. The authorities chalked it up to a random mugging, and the official statement said that it was a “typical and not unexpected crime to befall a human wandering around in a monster borough without a weapon or police escort.”

  Jer knew better. His father had been targeted. He just didn’t know who’d done it. Contrary to public outrage, Jer felt differently about the tragedy. He didn’t fault monsters if they truly were behind the attack. It was even possible that someone at GenAdvance had set up a monster to assault the doctor. There was no proof of such a conspiracy, Jer just had a gut feeling. Most likely, it really was a monster seeking vengeance against the person thought to be primarily responsible for their ever-worsening living conditions. He didn’t know for certain.

  The desire to understand why such an attack would happen drove Jer to change paths and begin studying monster psychology. Whether monsters and humans really did have different ways of thinking and emotional states wasn’t his focus, though. His mind was
set on understanding how their status in society led to moments such as what happened to his father. He wanted to discover ways to help monsters find peace in a world turned against them, and prevent further tragedies whenever he could.

  As a result of his best friend’s suffering, Jasper also changed courses. He still played video games and flirted with every female monster he got the chance to practice his charms on. Now he also began applying his ability to relate with others to research, specifically, genetic research. His specialty was comparative analysis of DNA behavioral patterns that correlated with psychological self-perceptions and life situations. It was a mouthful, but he loved it, and he got to tell monster girls that he was a scientist, which was an added bonus.

  Jer’s friendship provided an invaluable resource for Jasper. Through the trust each of them built with monsters as new college graduates, they were able to gather large enough sample sizes to feed into Jasper’s research.

  There were hiccups at first. Jasper had decided on his own to take a gig at the main laboratory of GenAdvance’s headquarters on South Brother Island. Jer felt betrayed, but once Jasper started sharing company secrets with Jer in private, their friendship was saved and grew even stronger.

  On the night that Jasper finally made a breakthrough, not unlike the late Doctor Bennington’s discovery, he decided not to share the details with Jer right away. Partially, he did so out of wanting to protect his friend from knowing too much. He also didn’t want to be embarrassed if his theory turned out to be false.