The Electronic Duck
an excerpt

I feel the exquisite tingling of my fingers as my hands are pressed into the stove’s burners. I can no longer scream. My mind has transcended to the mathematical planes beyond my being. My pain is written in numbers, endless unsolvable formulae, and it seems difficult to believe that I was once happy.
...
Every living thing contains circuitry that controls their life functions. The ability to manipulate organic life forms is a recessive trait. Father is able to visualize those circuits and manipulate life for his own purposes. As a veneficus, Father was born a wizard of the technological world. However, magic is a gift to be feared. Frankenstein is not simply a myth born of the war. To every gift, there is a balance, and the poisonous nature of the scale propagates prejudice.
Veneficae have always been shunned by society for their unearthly powers. Before the war, only those who worked for the country’s good in political positions were tolerated. Toleration simply meant safety from the lynch mobs and hereditary profiling in those days.
Father worked as a medic in the national army, reattaching amputees’ legs, regenerating organs, preserving life. It was the only suitable position for a circuit manipulator and how he met mother, a physician’s assistant.
Mother was always fearless, although illogical, and love lead her to marry father. She was a pure mortal, one untainted by magical traits. Papa thought by marrying mama his children would have a chance at a normal life, but it was not to be. Fate laughed cruelly at him and blessed him with twins who carried the gift.
Then, the war began. Suicide bombers decimated the center of the national army’s compound. When the investigations began, the examiners found no shrapnel or trappings of a bomb, only human flesh. The bodies were genetically altered to explode, requiring knowledge of the human body secreted away by the medics.
The carefully suppressed fears of the populace exploded. All veneficae were discharged from the army. It became high treason for pure mortals and veneficae to associate with one another, much less marry. The persecution of the circuit manipulators was just beginning. Luckily, mother died of terminal illness before then.
Thus, papa was left with two small children, my twin, Thaddeus, and myself. No longer fit for civic duty, he opened a toy shop on the outskirts of town hoping to dissolve into obscurity. Toys are purely harmless matter, and the aristocrats of the pure society liked them well enough. Papa received plenty of commissions and raised Thaddeus and myself in relative safety. No one ever questioned our heredity either. It turns out mama was a good luck charm. Besides, neither of us showed any talent in circuitry.
We attended school like all good pure blooded children, played games, and grew. However, like many things in life, it was not to last forever. Thaddeus and I were twelve when it happened.
Down the road from papa’s shop, there was a pond. We fed the ducks our crusty bread while we walked. The sun shone down, reflecting off of Thad’s raven hair. He grinned at the ducklings, freckles covering his nose. They waddled closer to Thad and I. We heard their quacks
carried on the breeze.
“Oh, Thad, they’re so adorable,” I gushed.
“Yeah, they’re alright,” said Thaddeus.
A little duckling waddled closer to Thaddeus sticking its feathered tail in the air to nip the bread at his feet. Thaddeus stroked the duckling’s back. He jerked his hand back.
“Thad, what is it?” I said.
“Nothing, Clarissa.”
He scooped the duckling into his hands, stroking it softly.
I’ll never forget Thad’s eyes. An electric blue fire lit his eyes as he wrenched back the duckling’s neck. I screamed until I tasted blood on my tongue.
I saw blood seething from the little duck’s neck. At that moment, Thaddeus joined the veneficae, but I was unable to see the magic he produced. He entered the intricate wired world of circuitry, while I was left behind. He saw the electricity jolt the duck’s heart, the gears crank as it waddled, and the hinges that controlled its jaw, but I saw a monster.
The shop owners heard my scream and were at the pond within seconds. I watched as Thad rewired the duck, stopping the bleeding while pleading that he could fix it. I believed him, since I had watched papa work his gruesome magic many times before when he thought I wasn’t looking. Thad must be like papa I reasoned, but the crowd didn’t understand that the duckling wasn’t really broken.
They were determined to break Thad. A man held me up by my wrists to keep me from running to Thad’s aid. I cried as Thad became bloodied like the duckling, dark rich color on bright.
Papa came too late as Thad heaved, coughing up blood from his lungs, finally stilling.
“Fix him!” I screamed at Papa.
Papa’s shoulder’s heaved as he shook his head violently. He bowed over Thad’s body unable to do anything but mutter a prayer.
“It’s too late,” he said. “Even I can’t bring back the dead.”
“He’s not dead!”
I threw myself over Thad’s body shaking uncontrollably. My father could do a lot of things with his gift. However, even father couldn’t engineer humans to live. Mortality is the realm of the gods.