Storymania - The Girl Without A Soul by Hannah Brumfield

The Girl Without A Soul
Hannah Brumfield

October 17 was the best day of my life. It wasn’t Christmas or my wedding day. It was, in a sense, my birthday, but not in reality since I happen to be born a few months from October. It was the day I was reborn.
I was raised by my mother and father. I had no siblings, a perfect spoiled little girl. At fourteen years, my life was perfect besides the occasional boyfriend breakups, puberty, and friendship hardships. But on October 17, all that was forgotten as friends and family members alike filed into the small church to watch my baptism.
That’s the other thing about my, I’m into all this “faith stuff” as some of my friends call it. My parents were Christians, my grandparents were Christians, my great grandparents were Christians, everybody in my family were Christians, even long lost Great Auntie P, who smelled worse than her name allowed. Now it was my turn.
As I look at photographs of that happy day, one of my last, I can’t help but believe I am still a part of it, though I know I’m not. I hate everyone for letting it get this far, yet I know I shouldn’t.
On October 23 I was at home watching my favorite television shows when I heard a sharp knock on the wooden front door. My mother, sitting on the chair beside me, asked me to pen it. Thinking it was either one of my friends coming over or someone who wished to congratulate me, I cheerfully jumped up and hurried over to open the door. Standing before me was not one of my friends or someone shouting “Congratulations!” at the top of their voice in my face, but two strangers standing side by side, glaring at me.
I could tell one of the men by what he wore, at least his occupation. He was a police officer, completely decked out, his chest puffed out and his hazel eyes transfixed upon me, a frown shone across his lips and into the features of his face, clearly saying that he did not want to be here. The other man was a little shorter, dressed in a brown suit that matched his cold brown eyes perfectly. His suit hated me with the same passion as his eyes did.
Seeing this sight before me, I shrank back behind the door and into the wall, hastily shutting the door until the police officer grabbed it, abruptly stopping it’s movement across the tile floor.
“Is the Hendricks here?” he asked, his voice sweeping before me like a mighty wave sent to kill.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Luckily, my mom heard him and called out “Who’s there? Who wants to see me?”
The tow men pushed the door open farther, shoving me against the wall further. Whether they heard my cry or not, they strode past me into the living room as if they lived there and not me.
I shut the door as soon as my mother saw them, because she gasped.
“ What are you doing here? You have no business here. Go, you can’t have her!”
Her? What was my mother talking about? Hopefully not me, I didn’t want to go anywhere with these men.
“Jean Hendricks, I have every right to take her. You did not hold up you side of the agreement. She must come with us.”
“She is my daughter! And I held up my part of it. I couldn’t stop her! It was entirely her choice!” My mother was in hysterics, and becoming more so with every word she said. I had never seen her like this, yet I was silently cheering her on now that I knew a little of what was going on. These men had some sort of and agreement with my mother about me, and they thought she broke it and was threatening to take me.
I paused a second in my thoughts. This didn’t match up. I was their child, the daughter of Jean and Adam Hendricks. These men had no right to take me. Exhilarated at these thought of safety, I rushed into the living room ready to give these two men a lecture on the rights of an American citizen, no matter how miner. That was one of the biggest mistakes I’ll ever make.
As soon as I entered the room I was grabbed from behind by the man in the horrible brown suit. I tried squirming away, but he kept a tight grip on my arm.
“She’s coming with us,” he growled. It was the first time I had heard him speak and I recoiled instantly. This was a man I did not want anywhere near me, much less holding my arm telling my mother he was going to take me with him. His voice was frostier than ice and harder than steel. While the policeman’s voice was rough and tough sounding, his was unpleasant no matter how optimistic you tried to look at it. In other words, this man was evil.
I silently prayed to God to help my mother and I while the two men made more threats and my mother defended me. After my prayer was finished, I decided I wouldn’t take any more of this. I yelled out, trying to make my voice hard among the two men and my mother, “I’m not going with you! This is my mother and my home! I’m not leaving it!”
The room grew suddenly silent as everyone stopped and turned to stare at me. The man in the brown suit asked my mother in a deadly whisper, breaking the silence, “She doesn’t know?” He never took his eyes off me.
My mother shook her head, tears brimming her large big blue eyes. I was very scared and confused. What could have possibly been kept from me? Was I adopted? Was I from a foreign country?
“Well then, she must be informed.”
My mother was shaking her head, silently begging in vain for the two men to leave, leave and never explain what had been kept hidden about me. For the first time since they had walked in, I didn’t want them to leave, which was exactly what they were planning.
“Cecile, you are experiment A7108. Scientists trying to find out more about the world and the human body constructed you fourteen years ago. You are a piece of this new technology. You’re part here has been fulfilled. You must return with us now.”
My thoughts tangled itself with this turn of events.
“I’m an experiment? What type?” I managed to sputter out.
“Simply put, you’re a clone. There are nineteen others exactly like you and we are in the process of rounding everyone up. We placed ten clones in various houses and five of them were places in different religious houses. We kept the rest. It was to see how each of you would grow up in different places and to see if you were any different from living a normal life until you found out and the clones at the lab that have known the truth all their lives. You happened to be placed in a Christian home.”
None of this sank in, but by this time I was so overwhelmed I fell onto the couch, not realizing or caring that my arm was now free.
“Who are you?” I asked shakily. “ Is this some sort of crazy hoax?”
The brown suit man shook his head.
“No,” he replied. “Every bit of it is true. My name is Dr. Entrift.”
I gave and animal like noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob. He should have been the clone, with a name like that.
“And my companion is Officer Gary. He has the legal documents and is here to make sure peace is withheld. I, of course, am here to take you with me.
We just found out that the man your cells were taken from has many heart and skin problems, which, we fear, might affect you. Also, you parental mother did not follow through with what she promised. You were not to be baptized until you had been told the truth.”
I was about to ask why when my mother, who had been silent this whole time, burst out, “She has a soul, I swear!” She’s got to! It’s there somewhere, I know it!”
This statement struck me harder than anything I had heard. I might not have a soul? But that can’t be! I’m a Christian; I was baptized less than a week ago! Was I lower than a human, a mere animal who just live out their lives until they die, and then, that’s it? I might not go to heaven? I couldn’t take it anymore, I broke down and bawled.
I didn’t see the glare that my mother received. Emotions raced throughout my body, anger, hatred, loneliness, insignificance. I didn’t realize Dr. Entrift had knelt down beside me.
“We don’t have a clue about your soul. We are scientists, not Christians, yet I must admit that we have discovered something, a beating, like a heart, inside everyone, almost too faint to hear on machines or record and study. But we haven’t’ heard it in a clone’s body. It might be there, just too faint to hear or study, or it might not. Your soul might be connected to the other man, the one you were built off of. Don’t be discouraged. I’ll tell you how you were made.”
I barely listened to my story of my birth. There was still some hope! Who cares that I through some unknown scientific way became a girl and they choose me to put in this house. I had a chance still to go to Heaven!
Dr. Entrift suddenly paused. “We knew you might have some trouble believing us, so we brought two of the other nineteen with us. They’re in the car waiting. Officer Gary, would you be so kind as to fetch them please.”
Officer Gary left, and silence filled the room. I was too busy with my thought about my life, my mother was crying softly, and Dr. Entrift was looking around our living room.
Time passed in two different ways. At times it passed slowly, seconds became eternities, as I dreaded this meeting. Then, suddenly, the seconds flew by faster than I could think. I was locked in a world where time had it’s own mind, time became Rumplestilskin playing tricks on me.
I heard the door squeak open distantly, footsteps pounding the floor as they came closer. I forced my eyes to look at them, to see the truth before me. I looked, and felt shivers race up and down my body.
There before me stood two children exactly my age, staring at me. One was a boy and the other a girl. If you’ve ever have been in public and seen someone who looks something like you, you feel a bit shaky and weird, like something’s not right. I was feeling the same way, only a hundred times more because I was staring at my mirror image! Up till this moment I couldn’t really believe what I was being told, but now I had to, because the evidence was staring me in the eye, from two different people.
Can you imagine waking up, looking in your mirror and seeing the opposite sex and another girl dressed completely different looking right back at you? And if you raise your hand to see if it’s just a mirror image, they don’t do it also, they only stare at you? That’s what was happening to me, and I didn’t like it.
“Cecile, this is Paula and Jonas. Paula was in a Muslim society and Jonas came from a non-religious family. As you can see, they are exactly like you, different personalities yet clones, looking just like you, just in slightly different forms. When we get to the lab, you’ll see all the others. There are seventeen more.”
Seventeen! Seventeen others! I’m not just a twin, I’m a twentyluplit!
And I was made of the same materials as this Muslim and non-religious skater boy dude? It’s inhuman! To know that my cells are the exact same as this boy’s and this girl that I don’t even know!
I didn’t understand it, but I had a strange impulse to go. I wanted to find out more about this, and most of all more about my soul. I had to find out what would happen if the guy’s cells I’m borrowing were falling apart. I loved my family, my home, I really didn’t want to leave, yet I knew I had to.
I still remember my mother’s cries as I got into the car, Paula and Jonas’s silence of hatred for the five hour drive, seeing nineteen other children exactly like me eating and drinking and living their lives in the science lab, my mother and father’s visits, the tests, everything.
I spent four years there making friends with people who, though they looked exactly like me in every way possible, had various personalities. Paula ended up becoming my best friend; Jonas never really became friendly because he was always trying to pick a fight with somebody. Every time the man we were made from got sick from skin cancer or any problems, we all got sick too. We were teenagers living in a fifty something year old body. No matter how many tests they ran, the scientists could never separate our cells from his so we could be healthy when he’s sick. Nor did they discover a faint beating of the soul. Paula and I both believe its there, we just have to wait till we die.
When we turned eighteen we were finally released. I look just like any other person, but I’m not. I’m a clone, one of twenty others. Life is the same, yet it is so different. I write this down now in the hospital for major skin cancer. All twenty-one of us, twenty clones, one old man, are stuck here with the same disease. I don’t really care though. I spend most of the days sleeping and all of the nights listening for my soul always talking to God. According to the doctors, we don’t have too much longer to live, which means I’ll find out soon about my soul. Soon I’ll go to heaven. I’ll find out the truth and I’ll be free from this. Jesus said it when He said, “ For you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”