Doro

This is the beginning of an alternative ending to Octavia Butler's novel Wild Seed.

Doro was racked with physical pain, sobbing on Anyanwu's breast. She was dying. She was purposefully leaving this world to get away from him. The pain was so unbearable that he knew he would slip and enter a new body, but he was too distracted to care.

When he opened his eyes, he was Anyanwu. His previous body was slumped on top of him with a terrified look on its face.

* * *

Leah was preparing dinner, trying to keep her mind off of what she knew was happening upstairs in Anyanwu's bedroom. She was praying silently, tears running down her cheeks, that somehow Doro could convince Anyanwu not to die. Her husband Kane was sitting on a wooden chair in the corner with a sour look on his face. Leah suddenly started screaming, and he thought that she was being overcome with grief.

"No! I didn't kill her! I didn't kill her!"

"Of course you didn't, Leah!", Kane was bewildered. "What are you talking about. . . Doro?"

"No!", Doro threw the knife that Leah was using for preparing dinner at Kane, cutting him badly, and slipped out of the body.

Doro was in a blind rage. He had killed Anyanwu. She was still alive when he jumped, which means she still could have been saved. But he threw it all away with his childish lack of self-control. He loathed himself in that moment, and again could not prevent himself from jumping out of Anyanwu's body to the nearest conscience, Leah.

As Kane he again screamed, this time with rage overtaking grief. He would go on to kill Anyanwu's entire village. His next victim happened to be Anyanwu's new son, and he immediately left that body. When he landed in Frank's, he vomited, but did not wait to expunge his stomach before jumping again.

He continued this feeding frenzy. Helen died. Frank died. All of Anyanwu's children, lovers, and friends. Even those that Doro favored, he killed without consideration. He did eventually destroy everyone in the village, but he did not stop when he had killed them all. He killed the neighbors, and did not stop there. He killed the neighbors' neighbors, and did not stop there. He killed dozens, and hundreds, and did not stop there. Doro was moving so quickly that he no longer felt like a single consciousness; he was in so many places at once that he was a wave of death across the land. Thousands fell in massive swathes, wherever they were during the instant that Doro entered them and immediately left. People who were in company or crowds barely had time to notice that those around them were suddenly dropping before they were killed as well.

Doro no longer wanted his people. He did not want anybody at all, least of all himself.