That's Dad. Casual and blunt, all in the same tone. It amazes me how he does it, so easily.

"Theodore!" Mom puts her hands over my ears to cover them from the word that is now hanging in the room. Murderer. As if it's a bad word. "Apologize, right now to your daughter!"

"Is she, still?" He muses, rubbing his beard. He scans me up and down, then shakes his head disgustedly. As he does, I move Mom's hands from my ears. "Because I don't see her as my daughter."

"I'm really feeling the love in this room." I give a bright smile to him. "Let me catch a seat... right here." I take a seat opposite my father. Interlace my fingers and place my chin right in the center. "Come on, Mom. Sit down so we can all catch up." I put on my best happy voice. It scares her.

When it came to me and Dad butting horns against each other, Mom always wanted to hide from us. She was always the one to steer from confrontation, a trait I did not possess in the slightest. I have to face the elephant in the room, the elephant being my dad's hostility to me ever since my arrest.

Mom sighs, knowing she can't get her way out of this. It's going to happen in this room, being monitored, no less. This whole family conversation.

"Katrina, why don't you sit next to me." The way Dad says it makes imaginary bugs crawl on my skin. It's an order, a hidden message underneath. Your daughter could attack you. He's trying to make her come to his ways. To hate me when it's his fault I am in this.

I am vicariously living his nightmare.

"No, Mom. Sit with me. Your daughter." I pat the table space around me.

Mom's eyes dart between me and Dad, nervous to make the wrong decision and damage a relationship with the other party.

"I.... I'm going to get a glass of water." she immediately blurts, and leaves the room with a pace too fast for a calm demeanor. Right after the door shuts, my father coughs. A deep, guttural sound; a signal for him to make the first move. I shift my weight in the chair, and we both listen to the tick of the clock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick Tock tick tock tick tock tick tock

Tick

Tock

Tick

Tock.

"Well. A shame this happened."

I arch a eyebrow. Where is he getting at? This isn't going to end well. I have to have the upper hand here. I glance to the clock and to him.

The beard on him is no less than five days old, as dark as his hair secured in a cornrow bun. His eyes are the same as Mom's. A deep, rich brown. I've wondered why I was the one born with green. How I received my name. Eyes so green and pretty they said I make moss look like a shit crayon drawing.

"What's a shame?"

"A shame that this is the first and last father-daughter talk we'll have." He gives me a crooked smile. "I missed out on so much."

"Oh, you're now calling me daughter?" I lean back in the chair, hands folded. "Not going to call me Kolian carrier, or an abomination?" I smirk over at him as he bristles. "I was about to start calling you sperm donor."

"Prison turned you into something else, killer."

"Sorry I'm not the sweet little girl you knew before my diagnosis." I look down to check my nails. There's dried blood under them, coating the nail beds. "Being in prison is not like how Orange is the New Black have it made. But, well, that show was years old."

"Did you know they gave me a bucket to go do my business in? And a metal bed with a pillow that hasn't been fluffed in over a month? It's like being inside a 5 star hotel!"

I laugh dryly, watching his face turn darker and darker, something the Kolian would be happy to take. "Come on, I'm trying to make you laugh, Dad." I put a smile on my face. I like it, watching him squirm.

"It feels ugly coming out your mouth." He says with disgust. He turns his head to look at the door. Mom still hasn't come back.

I give a eyeroll in response. "If I'll ever see soap again." I look up at him. His eyes burn themselves into my flesh, creating craters of fire that bloom on my hands, my neck. "I'm curious, why did you come here?"

He grunts in response.

"I just find it odd. You wouldn't give me the time of day when I was diagnosed. And then, when I get arrested for such a gruesome murder, you come running? Do you want to patch things up?"

Dad's hands clench into fists, and a vein slowly becomes visible at the corner of his head. Then it fades, and he relaxes. A warm smile on his face makes me shiver. He still has his playing card.

"We were going to tell you when you came home from school, but since you had to ruin it for us..." He starts, digging inside his shirt pocket. "Perhaps we can start anew. We won't mess up this time."

This time. What? I blink at him, confused. "I... I don't understand."

He pulls out two thick pieces of paper, and with a loud slam! I see what he means. My blood runs c o l d.

I can't breathe as I look down.

My fingers press against the black and white grains of the photo. The shape of the head, the feet and the body, sitting in the amniotic sac.

Perhaps we can start anew.

We won't mess up this time.

I am having a sibling--no, a replacement--to make up for the failure I have brought to this family by being born.

"Surprise, killer."

I snatch the photo from the table and inspect it more closely. I turn the photo over, and see a list of the fetus' health and gestational period.

Gender- not determined as of yet.

Gestational Period -- 12.5 weeks.

Heart rate - normal.

Carrier of Duoanimo virus-Negative.

Due Date: December 17, 2097.

Negative.

Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative. Negative.

N E G A T I V E

For once, I'm speechless. I can't think of what to say. Mom is pregnant, I'm in jail, and him... I lift my head from the picture to see Sperm Donor sit across from me, smug as can fuck ever.

"Katrina wanted to make your bail, but I told her no. All of that college money and emergency savings will go towards our new and better child. Our first." His finger taps against the ultrasound picture.

Are you going to let him talk to you like that? He's having a replacement baby with your mother. That creature is going to get the love you wanted. He's going to erase your existence from the home you've lived in.

My collar starts to tickle my throat, and I fight the reaction.

"Aw, am I making you angry?" He leans forward so his face is inches from mine. His breath reeks of coffee and those expensive Cuban cigars. My stomach twists. "Angry that you will never be welcomed home, into society?" I feel my hands shake. Nesryn wants me to shove the picture down his throat so he can choke. I want him to feel my fists rain down like hail.

"Fuck you." I whisper.

"Or are you angry that this baby will be better than you ever will be? While you rot, that child will be healthy, not infected. Living a normal, happy life--"

I chuckle.

"A normal, happy life?" I can't stop myself from laughing between sentences. He's delusional. "Never will their life be normal, not with you for a father, at least. You completely shut me out because you're the one with the faulty genes that gave me Nesryn. You don't have a loving bone in your body." His face twists to something cold, inhumane.

"You're happy because the child isn't going to be a killer, but you know, genes can always mutate. They may turn positive. You never know."

"When they look around the house they're living in, they'll wonder, who is that girl with pictures on the fireplace? Who is this Jade Mommy talks about?" I press harder. "My room has imprints of me there. You can't possible eradicate me."

I smirk, feeling heat rise and rise higher from him.

"I will haunt that place, and you can't do a damn thing about it." I finish. "Sorry, donor."

His hands slam on the table so hard his coffee cup trembles. A few drops fly and land near the photos.

"Ohh, I hope they give you the worst death penalty there is. Perhaps electrocution would work for you? Or lethal injection?" He chuckles. "You would be the worst thing for your mother to see before she sleeps--"

I leap out of the chair to go for his throat. A loud crash falls as my hands take the shape into fists, going for his eye, his mouth, anything, to make him shut up, shut up.

"H-help! G-guards! GUARDS!" He howls in fear.

"You're so full of shit." I say through a airy laugh. "You once said you can beat me in a fight, but here I am stronger than you. I can--"

An shock so powerful ripples through my body so bad that I fall off of my father. My body is trembling so bad that the intense electric current makes my teeth shatter.

"She's down. Take her away." a guard says, distortion coloring his voice.

"What's happened here?" Mom's voice barely cuts through the fog. "Jade, Darren, what's going on?"

As I'm dragged out of the room, three images burn themselves into my memory. My mother, tears over her face. Donor, blood streaming from his nose and mouth. And the image of my new sibling. My replacement.

The coffee stains the photo, blurring the image.