Twins

The twins, they were almost identical, they dressed so nonchalantly but still ended up picking the same clothing out of their piles. Nobody ever asked why they had two of everything, we must have assumed that was how twins came. Physically, they never seemed to notice they looked the same. They hardly interacted beyond shared whispers but it was understood in the House that they were two different people, and to somehow happen to mistake one for another could have grave consequences.

Marabel was a tormented girl, scarred in such a way as to encourage her unbridled id to inflict terrible injuries upon the other children. Like a preteen De Sade she would lure a confused little cousin up the stairs to the attic, at the very top of the House, and there she would come upon them. There would be her favorite pair of restraints hidden in the corner, and there in the faint shadow cast from the small window, with a view of heaven, there were a pair of scissors. Once ensnared, she toyed with her prey, and soon becoming bored she began to cut; first clothing, and then, their flesh. She held them down and cut them to pieces, defenseless children who thought that she was Selene, her sister.

Selene was gentle, a graceful girl whom the children seemed to flock to, like a mother hen. Selene would make sure they were well fed and that they would take their baths and be in bed by nine. She helped them with homework and changed diapers when she had to; and in her quieter moments there was almost always a pleasant interruption by an adorable toddler. She would find them a rag doll toy and send them along. When she wasn't tending to her flock, Selene seemed to hover in place, like a non-transparent apparition locked in a looping pattern of slowing fading in and out of reality. If no one was watching she sometimes looked like the static on the television screen. Her eyes were blue like the babble box showing the aux channel, never-ending and bottomless.

I don't know who raised her. I do know Selene looked after Marabel for a time, which always kind of mystified me because Marabel was 7 minutes older than her. I also did overhear a conversation in the kitchen once when someone said Marabel killed their mother with a knife from the kitchen, when they were little. No one said an age, and I had to go before I got caught eavesdropping.

Someone said once he could see a resemblance in me and the twins, one of my drunk uncles holding on to the stair bannister. I gave him a scowl and ran down the hallway. I don't want to look like either one of them.

Grandma said there had been a curse laid upon the house the night the twins were born. She said their Ma wasn't supposed to be having twins, but she delivered them in the kitchen, during a really bad thunderstorm, blood dripping through the partition in the table. Grandma said she had to help their Ma during the delivery, because the girls came out fighting, with the cord wrapped around one's neck. That baby came out blue, but once Grandma slashed the cord she started breathing and everything seemed fine. After that no one was sure which baby had been almost stillborn, they looked so much alike. I have my suspicions.

I was born in a hospital, like a normal child should be. I ain't nothing like those two.

I hate finding Marabel's victims one she's through with them. I never know what to do. I found Emma in the third floor bathroom, crumpled in the tub. I tried to ignore her and back my way out of the intrusion but I could hear her struggling to get my attention, and I couldn't ignore her. I closed the door behind me and looked at the damage. Her eye makeup had streaked to her ears, dragged by tears, and there was something wrong with her eyes and the way she stared at me. Marabel had removed her eyelids, but left the rings of eye shadow, not knowing how much was makeup and how much was caked blood from the sloppy wounds. Marabel had covered her body with a dirty old blanket that she must have found in the attic, in one of the old boxes.

I asked Emma what she wanted me to do, since I'm just some dumb kid who found her. She shook her head back and forth. She didn't say anything, but she was crying. I cracked the door open a tiny bit when I heard footsteps down the hall coming. It was Selene, but I wasn't completely sure it wasn't Marabel, so I didn't move, and I prayed she wouldn't come in, but my heart just about stopped when she pushed the door in and found me and Emma, who started kicking the sides of the tub, scared it was Marabel coming back to hurt her more. But the thin frail girl stood in the doorway, looking at the two of us that was in a way unreadable, so distant that it seemed she was watching us through a telescope. It seemed there was blood coming down the inside of her leg, running down to her slipper, staining the white cotton, and she smoothed my hair in a way that I knew it was Selene, and she eased me from the room so gently, told me there was stew ready in the kitchen, and so I walked away, knowing Selene would take care of everything. I noticed the sound of the door locking, I couldn't help not feeling it reverberate through the hallway.

I never saw Emma again.