Title: Incorporation
Author: Unanon
Rating PG. One swear word.
~~~~~
We're meant to be survivors, to live, fuck and die sometime after producing viable offspring for the next generation. We're meant to pass on our genetic information, to leave a portion of ourselves behind; to harness a bit of immortality, if only for part of our DNA.
Growing up, the youngest remaining child in a once-large family that become scattered, holidays were full of cheek-pinching, lap sitting and smothering hugs accompanied by remarks that left me feeling like the proverbial patchwork quilt.
"Oh look, she has her grandmother's chin! And Uncle Louis' nose!" or "You look more and more like your mother everyday."
When the hubbub had died down and everyone had settled in front of the television to digest the turkey dinner, I'd sneak away to a bedroom for a little measure of peace. I'd stand before great-aunt Gertrude's full- length mirror and analyze my features, comparing them in my memory to the faces frozen forever in the countless photographs lining the hallway walls. The people behind the faces in those frames were long dead, strangers to me. I'd check my face from every possible angle, tilt my body to check if my backside was beginning to develop the shape of Aunt Francine's.
The more I looked, the more I realized that what they said was true; I did have these characteristics, these physical features from long-dead relatives. I'd run horrified through the gauntlet of the hallway on my way back downstairs; the blank eyes of the photographs seemed mocking, knowing. Parts of my body were scattered among those strangers until I felt that there was nothing left for me. No part of myself that was uniquely my own.
After great-aunt Gertrude died, family holidays were quieter; no one seemed to want to travel far to spend the holiday with gawky Southern relations. We'd share a small bird between the three of us, my parents and I, and after Mother passed on Pop and I ate frozen turkey dinners. I was even glad, for a while, of a passing resemblance to my mother around the eyes; it strengthened my memories of her.
Some of the family photographs ended up at our house; we put them in the attic when Pop remarried. As I grew older, my memory of them became dimmed, eclipsed by new interests: boys, travel, graduation. I started to flesh out bits of an identity that were purely my own, and that overshadowed any lingering fear that I was nothing more than a Frankenstein creature, cobbled together by cruel nature from the body parts of my ancestors.
But those doubts returned when my mutation kicked in, flooding my consciousness with that of another. Every touch changed who I was. Every contact of flesh altered my mental landscape; eroding and quaking the fabric of my identity until the tiny part of myself that remained was nearly obscured by the Mountains of Magneto, the Cody River, the Grand Canyon of Logan.
I fought their personalities for a very long time, clinging to what little remained of my ego, but eventually I had to give in.
Survival is adaptation. Incorporation. Change.
We all want to survive.
~fin~
We're meant to be survivors, to live, fuck and die sometime after producing viable offspring for the next generation. We're meant to pass on our genetic information, to leave a portion of ourselves behind; to harness a bit of immortality, if only for part of our DNA.
Growing up, the youngest remaining child in a once-large family that become scattered, holidays were full of cheek-pinching, lap sitting and smothering hugs accompanied by remarks that left me feeling like the proverbial patchwork quilt.
"Oh look, she has her grandmother's chin! And Uncle Louis' nose!" or "You look more and more like your mother everyday."
When the hubbub had died down and everyone had settled in front of the television to digest the turkey dinner, I'd sneak away to a bedroom for a little measure of peace. I'd stand before great-aunt Gertrude's full- length mirror and analyze my features, comparing them in my memory to the faces frozen forever in the countless photographs lining the hallway walls. The people behind the faces in those frames were long dead, strangers to me. I'd check my face from every possible angle, tilt my body to check if my backside was beginning to develop the shape of Aunt Francine's.
The more I looked, the more I realized that what they said was true; I did have these characteristics, these physical features from long-dead relatives. I'd run horrified through the gauntlet of the hallway on my way back downstairs; the blank eyes of the photographs seemed mocking, knowing. Parts of my body were scattered among those strangers until I felt that there was nothing left for me. No part of myself that was uniquely my own.
After great-aunt Gertrude died, family holidays were quieter; no one seemed to want to travel far to spend the holiday with gawky Southern relations. We'd share a small bird between the three of us, my parents and I, and after Mother passed on Pop and I ate frozen turkey dinners. I was even glad, for a while, of a passing resemblance to my mother around the eyes; it strengthened my memories of her.
Some of the family photographs ended up at our house; we put them in the attic when Pop remarried. As I grew older, my memory of them became dimmed, eclipsed by new interests: boys, travel, graduation. I started to flesh out bits of an identity that were purely my own, and that overshadowed any lingering fear that I was nothing more than a Frankenstein creature, cobbled together by cruel nature from the body parts of my ancestors.
But those doubts returned when my mutation kicked in, flooding my consciousness with that of another. Every touch changed who I was. Every contact of flesh altered my mental landscape; eroding and quaking the fabric of my identity until the tiny part of myself that remained was nearly obscured by the Mountains of Magneto, the Cody River, the Grand Canyon of Logan.
I fought their personalities for a very long time, clinging to what little remained of my ego, but eventually I had to give in.
Survival is adaptation. Incorporation. Change.
We all want to survive.
~fin~