A Death in After World: Terry

by Eric Johnson

ride to California and back. I will be back in plenty of time to transfer to her my memories.

  “I still don’t like it.” I argued.

  “Oh well.” She said and left it at that. “I am going to pack some clothes and food.”

  She left. Shortly after the younger me left out of the lab quietly.

  I sighed deeply and went back to preparing my sample.

  It would take the program some hours to do a cursory search of the DNA strands so I went to the kitchen to find something to eat. It smelled as though something had just been cooked here, some kind of meat, but I could not quite identify it. It just made me hungrier.

  I dug around and found some jerky and some rice. I cut up the meat and threw it in to some simmering water and after a few minutes I added the rice. It would not be as good as when Sylvia made it, but it would be good enough.

  My clone came into the kitchen and went straight to the fridge without looking at me.

  “I think I have narrowed down the string of genes that when expressed the animal will have fur instead of hair.

  The other me slammed the door on the fridge.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked him.

  “What do you mean what is wrong?” He frothed. “Why did you even bother telling me about the fur genes?”

  ”I was just trying to make conversation.” I said weakly.

  “I know about the fur gene! I can remember when you thought of it months ago!” He yelled. “I have all your memories and yet you speak down to me like I am some kind of child!”

  “It is actually a gene sequence, not just one gene.” I offered.

  He exploded yelling and swinging wildly at me. I held up my hands and attempted to block his blows. We both made ineffectual fighters though. I pushed him away from me and he tumbled backwards into the kitchen counter.

  I turned and tried to get out of the kitchen but pain rained down on me as he slammed a chair across my back. My face slammed into the floor and while painful also felt numb in places. I pushed myself up only my hands and knees and the chair came down on me again. He did not swing as well and it glanced off of me. I fought my way to my feet.

  I tasted blood now, somewhere I bled on my face or head. I put up my arms just in time to catch the chair as he swung it down on me again. I braced and pushed backwards and my clone fell over backwards. The chair clattered to the floor.

  I stood over him wiping some blood from my face.

  “Why?” I asked him.

  “You treat me like I am nothing!” He answered back as he stood back up.

  “But you are me.” I said. I realized I shook from the excitement.

  “Then why do you treat me like I don’t know anything?” He coughed slightly. He turned from me and put some of his weight on the kitchen counter and looked at his hands.

  “How am treating you bad? I just talk to you, I want to make conversation.” I tried.

  His head hung down. He shook it a little.

  “You are me; we should be able to get along.”

  “I am not you!” He turned away from me. “I can never be you…”

  He turned. He had a chef’s knife from the scullery in his right hand and started to advance on me.

  “I can never be you as long as you are alive.” He said in a low growl.

  I backed away with my hands up blocking my face.

  He leapt at me and swung. At first I did not feel anything but a stinging sensation bit across my palms a moment later. I saw blood dripping from my hands.

  He saw it too and it only seemed to fan the flames of his violent desire.

  “You treat me as nothing!” He shouted at me. “And I am nothing until I become you!”

  He slashed again and again.

  He cut me both times, I am not sure where but I turned to run and get away.

  “I will become you!” He shouted again and he tackled me from behind.

  We both went down in his attack and his knife skittered away across the floor.

  He landed on top of me and knocked the air from my lungs.

  I fought to gain control of my body and elbowed backwards. I hit him ineffectually.

  He responded by hitting me in the back of the head which caused my face to slam into the floor again.

  Pain streaked like lightning across my face and head.

  He did it again, and again. I bled badly from my nose and the felt at least one tooth moving around loosely in my mouth.

  Suddenly I felt the pressure off of my back.

  I groaned in pain, and tried to roll over. I lacked the strength to make it.

  He grabbed my arm and pulled to roll me onto my back.

  I attempted to spit one of my teeth at him. It just dribbled out of the side of my mouth.

  He knelt down over my chest. He held the knife in his hands once again.

  He leaned down and in an almost whisper he said in my ear, “I will become you.”

  He leaned back up and wielded the knife in both hands and stabbed down at my chest. Pressure and pain both hit me at once and I tried to bow my body to escape from him. He raised the blade again and this time with one hand stuck down into me.

  I tried to scream out but my lungs could not draw the air needed.

  He stabbed me again. I heard an audible gush of blood this time.

  He laughed down at me. I could see squirts of my blood spraying in time with my heartbeat spraying up and staining his clothes.

  The knife came down again and again. Each time the pain rocked my body and then did not go away when he pulled back on the knife.

  The whole time he stabbed me he kept shouting, “I will become you!”

  The pain so overwhelmed me that I no longer felt the individual stabs, they just mixed together into more and more agony. Then, even though he still attacked me, the pain started to subside. It faded. My vision turned red and faded into black. I felt only a release now.

  “Terry?” Sylvia said as she walked in on the murder. She wore a shocked expression.

  “Terry is dead.” My clone said simply. He still wielded the blade and kneeled across my body. My blood covered him.

  “I am Tenicrasious.” He said.

  “What happened to Terry?” Sylvia asked slowly.

  “Suicide.” He told her.