Flash Fiction by Linda M. Crate

Chimera

The real monsters aren't vampires, werewolves, things that go bump in the night, or things with claws--the real monsters are like you and me.  Sometimes they are you and me.

I don't think anyone really plans on becoming a murderer.  It isn't something that you discuss over cornflakes with your parents or something that you think about when you're pouring yourself a glass of orange juice.  At least, not if you're me.

For me, it was an impulse.  Once I couldn't ignore.

I was a chimera so I knew that I wouldn't easily be caught.  Chimeras are rare, if you have any idea what I'm talking about.  You probably don't so let me enlighten you--I have two different sets of DNA coursing through my veins.  It makes getting away with murder all the more easier.  Especially when your DNA doesn't match what they have at the crime scene.

I think my parents knew--how could they not?  But they didn't say anything.  Almost as if it were an unspoken agreement between the three of us.  It wasn't something to be conversed about.  I can't exactly think of a good way to bring about the topic:  "Hey, son, did you kill that girl on the subway yesterday?  Oh, by the way you have a message on the answering machine."  Yes, that was never going to happen and we all knew it.

Yet one day our unspoken agreement was broken.

"You can't keep going on like this."

"Like what, dad?"

"You think we don't know?"

"I never said that you didn't."

"You do know what I'm talking about don't you?"

"Of course, I do.  I thought we had an agreement.  Not to talk about it."

"We did, of course, but you've taken it too far.  We never should have let it get to this point."

Let it?  He thought that he had any control over me, at all?  Now that was funny.  "I'm not going to stop. I can't."

"Then let me help you."

"You can't."  Yet he wouldn't relent.  Finally, I sliced through his abdomen.  I watched with relish as the blood spilled all over the floor like red wine.  The acrid taste of salt filled my mouth when I licked the knife clean.  "I told you that you couldn't help me.  But, no, you had to insist.  See what good that did?"

Then, of course, my mother threatening to call the cops on me was another brilliant idea.  So I had to kill her as well.  She went down a lot harder than dad, ended up scratching me several times.  I slapped her hard across the face, broke her nose and her ribs, and then I stabbed her forty seven times.  Yes, I kept track.  I'm neurotic like that.

I incinerated the bodies in my parents creator so no one would come sniffing around for them, cleaned up the blood and went to school like any other day.  You may call me a monster, and you would be right.  I'm a chimera.