Dissolve

Some people in this world are born right. They were born knowing what love and affection are. They were in caring families that had children out of love, they grew up learning their emotions, and learning that losing control is okay. They know they will always have someone in this world who loves them. Some people in this world are born normal.

And some people are not.

Some people are born wrong. Some people have never felt a thing in all their lives. Some people were not born out of love; they were born out of blackmail. They were born to force another to stay when they should have left. Some people will never know what it feels like to love and be loved in return. Some people have been ingrained with the knowledge that control is power, and the only way to keep it, is to be the best at everything. Some people have never known anything different.

Anthony Dumont and I were the latter. Well, really, Anthony was the only one truly like this. I had been a sort of science experiment gone wrong. I was his creation.

My name is Rosalie and soon, I will be dead.

Before we get to that, let me tell you a story. The story of Anthony Dumont.

As I said, Anthony was born wrong. His mother used him as an excuse to make her husband stay and love her. The child wasn’t even his. You see, Nicole had been having an affair, but her husband didn’t know this. No, her husband wanted to leave her because… Well, she was a psychopath. Nicole used her uncanny abilities of manipulation and made him truly believe the child that would soon be Anthony was his. She made him stay because she thought it was love. It was not. Adam should have left that day, but he was a truly good person, unaware he was being used, so he stayed. Eventually, he left, but that comes into play later.

Anyway, Anthony was most definitely born wrong. Nicole always said that he was such a quiet baby she thought he’d been a miscarriage. Nicole always said things like that, things that would be considered disturbing to any ordinary person.

His mother’s pension for manipulation made him a master manipulator as well. Anthony was taught by her that he couldn’t feel anything. Or at least couldn’t show his emotions, or else he’d lose control, and if he lost control, he’d lose power. The loss of power was utterly unacceptable to her. She never should have been a mother. Adam agreed. He loved her enough to marry her and have a child with her (but not really), and he thought she could change. Adam thought the baby would make her more caring and perhaps loving. It did nothing of the sort.

The day Adam irrevocably learned this and left his wife was a bright and sunny Wednesday. Wednesday is a strange day to decide to leave one’s family, but that was the day Adam chose. Until this point, he thought he could love Anthony (even though he was beginning to question if he was in fact the father). He thought Nicole would love him back. His biggest error was assuming either of them could love. On that Wednesday afternoon, he learned they couldn’t.

Adam found Anthony in the backyard playing with a dead bird. Adam was, as previously mentioned, a good person, so the sight of the bird made him a little sick to his stomach. The sight of Anthony dragging its entrails across the sidewalk with a rainbow pencil, almost made him vomit into the rosebushes. He called for Nicole, hoping she would diffuse the situation without Adam ever having to get near the decimated carcass of the bird.

Nicole simply asked, “Did you kill it yourself, or did you find it this way?”

Anthony replied with five-year-old eagerness, “I found it!”

Nicole examined the bird and the pencil. “Why didn’t you kill it yourself?”

Anthony’s smile collapsed and he said, “Isn’t that cruel?”

“Well of course it is! That’s the point baby, we can never own something if we aren’t willing to do bad things to ensure we can keep it.”

Adam, listening to this absolutely demented conversation, realized then and there, there was no hope for Nicole, and possibly Anthony.

That night, Adam Dumont left Nicole Sinclair and never looked back.

She told Anthony it was because Adam had been weak; he hadn’t been able to handle their strength and knowledge. Both of those things, she’d told him, were the key to control. And Anthony needed if he wanted to survive in this world.

That moment tore the last of whatever childhood innocence remained after the hurricane that was Nicole Sinclair. Anthony dedicated every moment to becoming the best at everything to make his mother proud. He became a genius, the smartest person in his school, his town, maybe the state. He was fourteen. It was never enough for Nicole.

Anthony had no normal relationships with anybody. He didn’t have friends, didn’t have a girlfriend, nobody. Mostly, because they were intimidated by him. Some said he was a genius, a scientist, some said he was a madman, some said he was a magician. And that’s where I come into the story of Anthony Dumont.

Anthony was lonely and wanted someone to “love” him. He didn’t know what it meant, but he was convinced he needed it.

He took a drop of genius, a drop of science, a drop of madness, and a drop of magic, and he ended up with me. I’d asked him, of course, how he’d created something that was not a robot, but not quite human either. I asked him how I could function, considering I wasn’t truly alive, but did have a conscience.

His reply was the same every time, “I made you for beauty, Rosalie, not curiosity.”

And it was true, when he’d first made me, I was “perfect.” I had long blonde hair, pale skin, blue eyes; I was a cookie-cutter girl, the only different thing about me was that I could be rebooted. He could end my life and start me over, with the push of a button. He could even dissolve my body if I got it in my pretty little head to leave him.

For a long time, I was Anthony’s “girlfriend,” I was supposed to teach him what love meant and offer companionship. He was always too rough with me, even though I wasn’t really fragile. If I had normal bones, he would’ve broken them simply by holding my hand. Anthony never learned how to love or be affectionate while we were “together.” He only ever wanted me so he could pretend he knew what emotions were, and sell the world on the fact that he had them, when his mother had flayed that instinct from him years before. The only thing he truly got from me was temporary praise from his mother on my creation. I was so human looking, she’d said. So real. He told her that was what he wanted.

What he did not expect, however, was that I was capable of evolution. The longer I spent among humans, the more like them I became. I cut my hair, I dyed it strange exotic colors, I even changed the way I talked. Eventually, I developed some semblance of emotion. It got to a point where I knew more about emotions and what they felt like than Anthony did. I think he quietly resented me for that. For being capable of something he was not.

The longer I spent around regular people, the more I realized how corrupt Nicole and Anthony were. They were not good people, both of them born wrong. They never felt remorse over anything, never felt pity or anger. It just numbness that lived in both of them. I didn’t want that to be me.

I took a page out of Adam Dumont’s book, and I left on a Wednesday. Immediately, I felt the effects of his fail safe. If I ever left, he’d Dissolve me. When I walked out the door, I felt my skin loosen and threaten to break apart. I didn’t care. I had to leave them, even if it killed me, which it would.

I walked for a day before I saw the leaves. When Anthony said Dissolve, I thought I’d explode into a shower of atoms and be gone in an instant. It wasn’t like that, not at all.

Slowly, my skin started to break off in a shower of golden leaves; they crumbled apart after they blew away from me.

A day later, Anthony found me. He probably had a tracking device in me.

“Rosalie!”

I didn’t turn; I just kept walked away from him. I’d be gone soon. My spine was just a hole with a faint glow emanating from it, now. Soon, I’d just be light in the breeze.

He kept following me, “Rosalie, stop!”

I spun to face him, “What, Anthony, what could you possibly want from me.”

He stared at me for a long moment, “You didn’t come back.”

I laughed, and it was a harsh cold thing. That was why he was here: he was perplexed by me. He thought I’d come back at the first sign of dissolving. “I will die before I go back there willingly.”

“No, Rose, don’t. Please.”

I’d never heard him say that word before. “Why.”

“Because otherwise I’ll have to reboot you, and I don’t want that.”

“Just let me go, Anthony. I don’t want to be with you. I never did.”

“Rose, that’s not true. In the beginning you did, we can go back to that.”

My arms were beginning to dissolve. “That’s because you made me for that. That was years ago, I’m not the same thing I was then.”

“But you can be,” he pulled a syringe out of his pocket. “Let me reboot you, let me start over.”

“I don’t want that, please don’t. I’m not your creature anymore.”

He scoffed, “You’ll always be my creature Rosalie.”

He lunged for me, and I sprinted away from him, desperate to die before he could get to me.

I heard his footsteps pounding behind me, and I felt pain as my arms started to dissolve. Just a little longer, I told myself. Just a little farther.

I kept running and running and running, until my legs disappeared.

I heard his shout. “ROSALIE, DON’T!”

And then I

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