That Clone

• Elvera Abdel-Messih, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2022

It's been two months now.
No three months.
Yes three months - I distinctly remember, it was the beginning of winter when she was...
Now it is spring, where the flowers on that field she used to run along are now blooming. Reds, blues and golds litter the field. They mock me with those colours. She used to pick them, snip off all of their thorns and weed them into flower crowns. Their stems, beautifully tangled.

Flower crowns for her and I.

Yes, Yes I remember - remember - My breaths came out, shallower, tighter. Restrictive, as if I was being choked, as if I wasn’t allowed to breathe. I suppose it made sense, no mother should ever have to watch their own child die. It shouldn’t happen, shouldn’t be allowed. It's unnatural - so unnatural there is no word for it.
There is a word for a wife who has lost their loved one-widow, and a child who has lost their parents-orphan. But no word for a parent losing their child. Because it's the worst sensation humanly possible to feel. So painful, it doesn’t deserve a name.
Tears began to roll off my cheeks, and dripped off my chin. My eyes stung, red. They’re heat melting away my face into a puddle. My heart pulses back and forth.

Back and forth... Like that swing in the park, that sat in that field.

Where she would run across, giggling. I can still hear her voice, in that wind, can still see her face when I look up at those clouds. It's not so nice on sunny days, because there are no clouds. Her vacancy is like the sky, stretched out over every single thing. Like a beast swallowing me up whole; drowning.

I don’t like sunny days...

“Mother?” a familiar voice threw my train-of-thought right off its tracks.
I sat on her bedside.
“Her clone” I scorned.
Made in a lab, with the rest of them, all of them. A product to be sold. I remember the advertisements that drenched the streets. They made it sound so wonderful, so wonderful to bring back the dead, rotting flesh and all.
Was it wrong to make her? To have those sapphire eyes meet mine once more?
Is it wrong to feel her hands hugging mine?
My heart ached! I couldn’t help myself!
It's like she’s with me again. But that's just it. It's ‘like’ having her here again.
I frown at her, and she stares back. Her eyes, empty and shallow. Her warmth doesn’t radiate off her chest like before. Her hands, icey and faded, just as lifeless as the one lying in the ground.

There's just something off about her...