There were two mysteries in my childhood that I thought would never be answered. The first was the marking on my right shoulder, I asked my parents about it, and they told me it’s just a birth mark, but I knew that couldn’t be true, it was too patterned and what kind of birth mark makes a perfect circle? The second was my father’s garage, I wasn’t allowed in, and both my parents would punish me greatly for trying to sneak in.
Despite these two Factors I lived a pretty normal home schooled life.
I didn’t question much else until things started to change or more, they didn’t change. Despite being 13 years old I still had the body of a child I never hit puberty and I was home schooled so there were no other teachers and students to notice this and from what I have read in dads’ textbooks it should have been happening by now.
That night I heard arguing coming from my parents’ room, but there was the sound of crying, and I heard my name at least once. The next morning, I woke up to the sound of my father crying, I ran into their room and saw my mother hanging from the ceiling, my dad quickly turned around.
“GET THE FUCK OUT AND SHUT THE DOOR!” I was so scared I did it without a second thought. My world was spinning, what was happening?
My dad buried my mother in the back yard and didn’t say a word to me the whole day, after that he was more and more distant from me, one night I asked him what happened to mom and he said, “She paid for my mistake.” I asked him what his mistake was, and he just looked at me with a pitiful look. He began to spend more and more time at work on the farm leaving me alone most nights, this cold emptiness went on until the day cancer claimed my father, he didn’t want treatment, he said that he didn’t deserve to be saved; but before he died, he gave me something.
The key to the garage.
The garage door that the car would normally drive through was broken so the door was the only way in or out. “Use that key and go through the door then once you know the truth go to town and tell the authorities that you are 10 years old and all alone.” He grabbed my hand. “I’m sorry for all of it.” Those were his final words, now with the key in hand I made my way downstairs to the garage and unlocked the grand enigmatic door.
What I saw on the other side made me wish my father had burned it all before he died.
It was a laboratory, the Garage door was boarded up with drywall and in the back of the room was a cylinder vat drained of all its water. Next to it was a desk with microscopes, test tubes and books. The books were about biology, more importantly human biology, and through dad’s notes, I saw other things that seemed beyond the realm of science. The book seemed to detail how to move a soul into an artificial body, and the marking next to the description matched the “birth mark” I had since I was a child.
The last book I found was in the drawer, it was a scrape book and when I went through it, I saw my parents, much younger, with another child. The last page was a picture of the child and written below were the words. “I promise to bring you back.” – Dad
I smashed the glass, threw the books, and flipped the table in defiance of the realization that I was just an artificial construct used to replace a real person, then I turned my attention to the closet, I took the key and used it to unlock the door to what I thought would be a tool shed, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
On the other side of the door were bodies of young men and boys. Some large, some small, some had missing limbs with bloodless veins hanging out like exposed wiring. they were failed experiments and if my parents didn’t die when they did, I might have Joined the scrapheap of synthetic corpses that would never decay, only lie in the dark for eternity. My parents always told me that life was sacred and should be treasured and now those words are just more lies that make up my life as a pretender.
I grabbed any flammable liquid I could find and dumped it onto my fallen brothers. Then with a match I put an end to that place and all its horrible creations. I walked away from everything as my home burned. My dad told me that I should go into town and find an adult to take me in, but I don’t think I will do that.
I am done with mankind.