Better Off Dead

Chapter Twenty: Unsurprising Consequences

It was a complete shock when we learned my mom had some kind of incurable disease.

Losing her was rough, but I suppose that's one good thing about being a kid. It's easier to block things out. It's a lot harder when you're a grownup trying not to be attacked with hammers.

My dad had tried to make some crazy science cure, but he didn't finish it in time. That was never going to work out. Trying to beat death at his own rigged game was a terrible idea, and no matter how great a scientist someone is, such an endeavor is doomed to end in misery.

Whether that end is immediate or fifteen years in the future.

But that's just a classic, right? A brilliant scientist tragically loses his loving wife despite all of his scientific abilities and then just goes mad. Uses those scientific breakthroughs for insane experiments used to recover from loss. Or to stop it entirely.

It's funny to think that in some other story, my dad could have been the villain. He met all the requirements. Amazing ability? Check. Origin story? Check. Crazy experiment motivated by sadness and self-interest? Check. All he was missing was a nemesis. And a major crime, I guess. You kind of need a flashy crime to earn the title of villain, right? No hero is going to go after a super evil person who steals newspapers.

That just makes you a weirdo who gets lost on the sidelines, totally free to commit the crimes no one is going to punish you for. Like turning kids into chimeras.

Given that my dad's discovery was meant to avoid death, it was ironic that it should result in murder. But if we're being honest, it was never about helping others. So maybe the consequences weren't as surprising as they seemed.

I woke up from dreams of an eternity of undead suffering and found myself in complete darkness. I panicked and flailed and hit something. The light came on. I was in my room because I had been sleeping. It was dark because it was nighttime. There was a puddle of slime next to me because I'm made from dripping raw flesh. So everything was completely normal.

Great.