Shorts

Copied - written at 12am

I woke up on the 24th of September in a dark but sterile basement, lying on a table. The first thing I saw was a woman in a long white coat positively beaming with glee.
"Magnificent!" She kept repeating. "Simply magnificent!"

Eventually, she stopped jumping around in excitement long enough to explain that I was a clone. Not only that, but my 'source material' as she called it, was dead.
"Luckily I've saved all her memories for you so you can be my perfect woman. Try not to get attached to the people you see, they're all dead too"
As she said this she pulled me into a sitting position and opened a panel in my arm, sticking a microchip inside the network of wires. My newly-awakened e-nervous system cried out at the new sensation and I felt my toes curl. All at once a stream of data came rushing into my head, I was a 30 year old German woman called Ana Glorbach, I had two kids, a loving husband and a cat. I was a wrestler-turned-scientist working in an illegal cloning lab and this mad woman infront of me was my longtime friend and coworker, Dana Wilsburrow. I made a huge breakthrough in combining electronics with stem cells to create a robot with DNA. I didn't hesitate to tell her and as soon as she understood how it worked, she grabbed a gun.

I felt rage pour through my veins as I looked at her in horror.
"You've killed them all? You killed me? We were friends."
My voice was barely above a whisper, but it was stone cold, my anger was white hot.
"I told you not to get attached! I didn't kill you, I killed Ana. You're not Ana, you just look like her and have her memories..."

I felt my muscles connect to my memories of years of fighting as I slid off the table and slowly walked towards Dana.
"Why did you go through the effort of killing me if you were just going to recreate me perfectly?"
I was louder now.

"I just figured that if you were alive, I wouldn't be able to get rid of your family. You were always empathetic to others like that. So I killed you, then them. Now we can finally be together!"

Her smile faltered as I continued to glare. I was directly infront of her now.
"Did you really think that I was with them out of empathy?! I LOVED them!"
My arm shot out to punch her in the stomach as I grabbed her throat with my other hand and lifted her off the ground.

"If you wanted a perfect wife, you should've cloned yourself, since that's who you always think of first."
I tightened my grip as I repeatedly punched her in the face.

Her consciousness slowly began to fade as the light in her eyes dimmed.
"I guess... I should've.. removed some of those memories" she rasped.
"Definitely "
She went limp and I dropped her bloodied corpse to the floor. Looking around, I grabbed a nearby pistol, the same one she'd shot me with and put two bullets in her head to make sure she wouldn't be coming back. I wiped a few tears away that were threatening to fall and began to pack anything useful into a backpack I'd found in the corner.

Everyone I knew was dead, and I was a clone. If 'my' original body was discovered, they'd know I was fake. I found the corpse in a freezer, maybe Dana had been planning to make more clones?

I carried the body into the large fume closet we'd made after working in the illegal markets for several years and dumped it into the fire pit. Finding the gasoline and lighters in their usual cupboard, I turned on the fans to remove the smell and covered the body in the flammable liquid. After finding the forged ID and documents I'd used for all illegal activity and adding them to the pile, I tossed an open lighter on it and left the room.

Returning to Dana's corpse, I wiped all the blood that didn't look like it was from the bullet wounds off of her face and the fingerprints off of the gun. I placed it in her hands using gloves and angled it to look as though she'd fallen.

I grabbed my real ID and the backpack and swiftly made my way up to the warehouse above. Luckily, it was nightime so it wasn't hard to leave. I crept through the empty fields surrounding the large building and made my way to the parking lot. If i wanted to be free, I'd have to make it far away from that godforsaken basement. I drove in the opposite direction from my house. I drove until the sun came up and I had gone past enough turnoffs that I could've come from anywhere. I made it to a town, now far away from the crime scene and booked a hotel. Now all I had to do was find a job.