Abomination

I woke with a start. Temporarily unaware of my surroundings, I looked around the small, dark room that didn't seem familiar at all. A storm raged outside the window next to the bed I woke up on. Thunder and lightning were rampaging through the city below.

I wonder what woke me so fiercely. It was probably the thunder, although it felt like something different. As if someone nudged me. That can't be right, there was no one else in the room when I woke up.

Thunder startled me out of my thoughts. I hate storms. There was a storm when it happened. When…wait what am I talking about, I love storms. I think they are fascinating. But why did I say I hate them? It seemed as if I was speaking but they weren't my thoughts. No that impossible, my imagination is playing tricks on me.

So these are my thoughts, but whose room is this? I thought the feeling would go away, but I still can't place where I am. Maybe if I have a look around, something will jog my memory.

My body must be tired because even standing doesn't even feel right. I walked over to the mirror on the desk next to the door.

Shock filled every inch of my body. How can this be? I'm looking into the mirror and someone else is looking back. That is definitely not me I see. I am light skinned with brown hair and blues eyes. This other person has blond hair with green eyes and a tan.

I stumbled back in my moment of shock and knocked a picture off of a book shelf. I picked up the picture that fell out of the broken frame. In it was the one I saw in the mirror. To his right was a man and to his left was a woman. The person in the middle held some resemblance to the man and the woman, so I'm assuming they are his parents.

Before I could clean up the mess, the door slammed open. A flood of light crashed into the room blinding me. Slowly my vision came back and I saw a man standing in the doorway with tears running down his face. It took me a couple of seconds to realize this was the father from the picture.

He tip-toed his way over to me, as if he made a wrong move I would disappear. When he reached me, he looked into my eyes and tightly embraced me. I wanted to fight, but it seemed the right thing to do. Muffled sobs jumped out of his throat as he muttered something about how it worked. I don't know what it is and I didn't think it the best time to ask.

After a moment, I pushed him away.

"Who are you?" Even my voice sounded wrong.

He looked hurt by the question but wasn't I wasn't going to let that stop me. I waited for an answer as he searched my eyes.

"You really don't know who I am?"

I just shrugged to say without saying that if I knew who you were I wouldn't have asked.

"How can you not remember me!? How can you not remember your own father!?"

"My father!? Your not my father, my father is…"

Like an arrow straight to the skull, a vision came to me. I remember being taken away by a man. He put me in a room with other children. The room was huge with many beds and a big, white cross on the wall farthest from the door. This vision was all to clear, almost like a memory.

I came back to reality when I heard the man speak in a calm, low voice.

"I am your father, son. I have been there for you since the beginning."

My mind still a mile away, "I have a memory of a room. I am a child and there are other children in the room playing. There is a cross on the wall."

Surprised at this random memory, he just lifted his chin in thought. "A cross you say? Was it white and on the wall farthest from the door?"

I nodded.

"That sounds like the orphanage. How can you know that though, you have never been there?"

"I don't know," I said, "this vision just came into my mind."

With a wave of his hand in dismissal, he went on.

"No matter. Now that I have you back, you can start your life all over again. We both can, it has been so hard. First your mother being murdered and then you go into a coma. I was so alone, but I never left your side."

All of a sudden, he fell to his knees and put my hands on his face. I could feel the tears coming from his eyes.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't know what to do. I had so many doctors come and look at you. They all said you were a vegetable. I almost gave up on you. But it worked and everything is better now. You'll see everything will be the same."

I suddenly felt very trapped in the tiny room.

A thought came to me.

"What do you mean it worked?"

Looking like a scared child who didn't want to be punished by his parents, he turned away from me. Silence filled the room except for the drumming of the rain outside.

Maybe if I talk about something else, he will relax and tell me what I want to know.

"I love the sound of the rain. It would always put me to sleep back in the ally."

The alley? Why did I say that?

He seemed to have noticed it as well.

"The alley," he said. "Dear God, it isn't right. It worked it should be right, but it isn't. Dear God what have we done?"

"Who's we?"

Remembering I was standing there, he stood up and ran out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

None of this seemed right. I need to take a look around to see what's going on. I reached for the door and walked out into the light. I was in a long hallway filled with many doors and paintings. To my left are a stairwell and a balcony over looking the living room.

There was a woman, a maid, in the living room dusting. She looked up and smiled at me. I smiled back until I heard shouts coming from a room three doors down. I quietly walked closer and put an ear to the door. I could hear my father argue about something with an older man.

"No I will not allow this to happen," he said.

"Don't you see, it must be done. The abomination doesn't deserve to-"

"NO!" My fathers yell, cut off the other man.

Abruptly the door swung open. My fathers' surprised look quickly changed to a resolute glare as he grabbed my arm. The other man got up and began to chase after us as my father brought me back to my room.

"I have seen that man before," I said.

"That's impossible my son. You have been in a coma, you haven't seen anyone."

My fathers' words hung in the back of my mind. I remember this old man. I remember meeting him in the town square buy the big fountain. He was generous enough to allow me to come to his place and offer me dinner. I remember going into a small empty factory. He said he owned the factory and he lives above it so I went with him inside. I remember him leading me inside and what happened next was not what I expected.

Instead of dinner, I was greeted with a knife in my belly by another man waiting in the shadows. The pain was so excruciating, I fell to the floor and passed out.

When I woke, the old man was standing over me and the body of another person whispering some chants. Then in white hot, blinding pain it ended.

When we reached my room, I ripped my arm from my fathers grip. Pointing an accusing finger at the old man, I began to yell at my father.

"This man has tricked you, he has tricked us both. I am not your son."

As I put the pieces together in my head, I finally gave a face to the one who stabbed me.

"No, you weren't tricked at all. You stabbed me, you killed me. Just like you killed my mother."

The last part startled me as much as it startled the murderer before me. Those weren't my words, but where did they come from.

"You don't understand," my murderer said in his defense. "We needed a soul to fill my sons' body. I needed my son back so desperately that I would do anything for it."

Noticing my baffled look, the older man stepped forward to clarify the situation.

"The boy witnessed the traumatic end of his mother," he looked at the man before him, "by the hands of his father. With the stress of it all, the boys' soul left his body to be with his mother. The body, now an empty shell, went into a coma."

"So you decide to take someone else's soul! You have no right!"

Fire burned in the eyes of my so-called father.

"My son is everything to me. No one would miss one of your kind. And now no one will get in the way of me having my son back."

The look of such anger in his eyes quickly changed. His eyes were no longer full of anger or full of passion. I looked into his eyes, empty voids, as his body crumpled to the ground. Blood gushing from the newly formed cut across his throat.

I yelped as I jumped back and glared from the dead body to the old man holding the bloody knife.

"You side with the abomination, you shall share its fate."

Once the old man finished his final words to my murderer, he came for me.

Before I could get away, he grabbed me by the hair and plunged the knife into my belly. Dread consumed me as the familiar cold worked its way through my insides. I knew I was dying. Its ok I told myself, I already died once. I don't want to live as someone else, so dying a second time isn't so bad.

The last thing I remember is a loud pop and the old man falling to the floor with a bloody hoe in his head. Curious, I followed the sound of the pop. I saw a police officer sitting next to me with his gun lying beside him.

The maid must have called the cops when she heard the yelling.

I wanted to thank her. I want to explain what happened and that now they could never hurt anyone again.

I tried but I was taken over by the darkness and then…

And then there was nothing