Her second birth was the day the Watcher took her as its host.
CHAPTER 2
Some people have called Monstrous Sea a phenomenon. Articles here and there. A few critics. The fans.
I can’t call it that, because I created it. It’s my story—it’s the one I care about more than anything else, and it’s one that a lot of other people happen to enjoy—but I can’t call it a phenomenon because that is pretentious, and narcissistic, and honestly it makes me queasy to think of it that way.
Is it strange to be nauseated by recognition?
Lots of things about Monstrous Sea nauseate me.
The story is at once very easy and very hard to explain. I’ve never tried to do it in person, but I imagine if I did, I would end up vomiting on someone’s shoes. Explaining something online is as simple as pasting a link and saying, “Here, read this.” They click. Read the intro page. If they like it, they keep reading. If not, oh well, at least I didn’t have to talk.
If I did have to explain the story without the very handy reference of the story itself, I imagine it would sound something like this:
“On distant planet Orcus, a girl and boy fight on opposite sides of a long war between the natives and colonists from Earth. The girl and boy are hosts to parasitic energy creatures whose only weakness is each other. There’s lots of ocean, and there are monsters in that ocean. Stuff happens. Colors are pretty.”
There’s a reason I’m an artist and not a writer.
I began posting Monstrous Sea online three years ago, but it blew up when the origin post appeared on the Masterminds site. People actually saw it. They started reading.
They cared.
That was the weirdest thing. People other than me cared about it. They cared about Amity and Damien and the fate of Orcus. They cared whether the species of sea monsters had names. They cared if I put the pages up on time, and how good they looked. They even cared about me, who I was, though they never got past my username. The fans didn’t, the trolls didn’t, the articles and critics didn’t. Maybe the creator’s anonymity made it more of a phenomenon. It certainly kept me from getting too nauseated to work. I get emails from agents and publishers about putting Monstrous Sea into print, but I delete them right away; traditional publishing is this huge, terrifying thing I have to fend off with a stick every once in a while so I don’t get overwhelmed by the thought of a corporate machine manhandling my baby.
I didn’t make Monstrous Sea to be a phenomenon—I made it because it was the story I wanted. I make it now because there’s something inside of me, crushed around my heart, that says I must do it. This is what I was put on Earth to create, for me and for my fans. This story. This is mine, and it is my duty to bring it into the world.
Does that make me sound pretentious?
I don’t care.
It’s the truth.
MONSTROUS SEA FORUMS
USER PROFILE
LadyConstellation **
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AGE: oo
LOCATION: Nocturne Island
INTERESTS: Riding sea monsters, charting stars, exploring clockwork palaces.
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UPDATES
View earlier updates
Oct 14 2016
Don’t forget, new Monstrous Sea T-shirts are on sale this week! We’ve got Amity and Dallas, Damien and the dread crows, and plenty of sea monsters. Go check them out! monstroussea.com/store
Oct 15 2016
Wow, you really ate up those T-shirts. More on the way! (Plus, don’t forget the next compendium!)
Oct 17 2016
I think you guys are really going to like tonight’s pages.
. . .
Oct 18 2016
Hehehehehe told you you’d like them. >:D
Oct 19 2016
Yes, yes, I know, I’m evil.
Oct 19 2016
You liked the shirts so much, they’re going to be on sale this week too! Hot off the presses!
Oct 20 2016
Excited for Dog Days tonight! Hope to see everyone in the chatroom.
When asked what the rebirth had felt like, Amity could only respond with “Painful.” A creature of pure energy had crawled inside her and rearranged her very genetic structure. How else could it feel? But the people of Nocturne Island were persistent, and deeply spiritual, and the Watcher was one of their great guardians, so eventually she changed her answer to “Enlightening.”
CHAPTER 3
School feels more like a punishment than ever.
I just don’t care. I stand at my locker this fine October morning and stare down the hallway. A homecoming banner decorates the mouth of the hallway, reminding students to buy tickets for the football game this Friday night. Someone put that banner up there. God, someone made that banner. Someone painted it and everything. Students pass me wearing outfits for this particular day of homecoming spirit week, which happens to be hippie day. Lots of peace signs and tie-dye floating around. So much school spirit.
I barely finish my homework every night; how does anyone else have the willpower to care like this? The people having the most fun, dressed in the most ridiculous costumes, are seniors like me. How? Why? These are legitimate questions: I feel like someone told a joke and I missed the punchline, and now everyone’s laughing without me.
I stand by my locker in stretched-out jeans and a baggy sweatshirt, counting the minutes until I have to give up and go to homeroom. A group of boys wearing tie-dye headbands and rose-colored glasses crowd up to the locker beside mine; one of them throws it open so hard it smacks me between the shoulder blades. The boy who did it starts to apologize, then sees that it’s me and loses his voice to a badly concealed snort. I turn away and ignore them until they leave again, when one of the others pulls his hood up and acts like a cave creature, his back hunched and his hands held out in gnarled claws. The other boys laugh, as if they aren’t still within my sight. I yank my own hood down.
I don’t understand this place, but I only have to survive it for seven more months—seven months until graduation, until college. And college, as I have heard it from several respectable sources in the Monstrous Sea fandom, is so much better than high school it’s laughable.
I want to be there. I want to be in the place where high school is the joke, and I don’t have to be near people if I don’t want to, and nobody cares what I wear or look like or do.
When the boys disappear around the corner and all attention fades away from me, I turn back to my locker. Freshman year, I festooned it in graphics and fanmade art for Children of Hypnos, my favorite book series. A few early Monstrous Sea sketches hid in the corners, but that was before Monstrous Sea was even a thing. Now my locker is empty aside from my school stuff. I stuff my stats and history books in my backpack. Wedge my sketchbook under my arm. The backpack gets slung over my shoulders, and my dignity tucked safely away.
On to homeroom.
“Eliza. I need to borrow you for a little while.” Mrs. Grier has a bad habit of grabbing the first student who walks through her door when she needs something, and today I’m the unlucky plebe she gets her happy teacher hands on. She beams at me, looking the picture of joy in an unseasonal yellow sundress and earrings shaped like bananas.
I ease my arm out of her hand so it doesn’t seem like I don’t want her to touch me. I don’t mind Mrs. Grier. Most days I like her. I wish I had her for an actual class instead of just homeroom, because she doesn’t make me talk if I don’t want to, and she counts showing up to class as your entire participation grade.
“We have a transfer student new to the school today,” she says, smiling, and steps sideways. Behind her is a boy a little taller than me, football-player big, wearing jeans and a Westcliff High T-shirt. He hasn’t even been here a day, and he’s already got the school spirit. He scrubs a hand through his short dark hair and glances at me, expression blank, like he doesn’t quite see me there. My stomach turns. He is exactly the kind of person I try to avoid—I like being invisible, not having someone look at me like I should be.
“This is Wallace,” Mrs. Grier says. “I thought you could give him a few tips about the school and help him with his schedule before we leave homeroom.”
I shrug. I’m not going to say no to her. “No” usually makes more problems than it solves. Mrs. Grier smiles.