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Get Published on Female First
Let me ask you a question.
Do you have any idea what it is like to be an identical twin?
No, of course you don’t, how can you? - Unless you are one too.
Sure you know something about it, because you’re an intelligent person. Someone who likes to read; likes to keep themselves abreast of things, and “in the know”.
So tell me though, do you ever wonder what it would actually be like, to be an identical twin? Growing up with someone who looks exactly the same as you? Someone who is so close to you that she knows what you are going to do or say, even before you do or say it? Someone who doesn’t have to ask how you’re feeling because she already knows, someone who looks so much like you that you can fool even your own parents as to which is which. Can you imagine how great that can be?
You can?
Well, then I’m pleased for you.
But, on the other hand.
What if all the above were true but then, due to one drunken driver, jumping one particular set of traffic lights, at one particular time of one particular day, it all changed? What if, from that moment on, you were an identical twin who was no longer like the other at all? Can you imagine that?
Can you imagine the pain?
What if you’d spent your whole life pushing yourself to be the best athlete in the country, with the potential to be a world champion, only to find yourself bound to a wheelchair hating those same limbs, which once propelled you down the racetrack, for their uselessness, all the while sensing your sister’s pride as her sun-bronzed tennis-coach applauds her skills on and off the court.
And then later finding yourself confined to your bed, urinating and defecating into bags, unable to move, craving even the most mundane of tasks with which to occupy your mind. Knowing all the time that your clone, your doppelganger, is out, busy with her fast-paced, high-pressure, high-paid job; mixing with high-flying executives, dancing in trendy clubs, screwing incredible men.
And how do you think it feels to see your sister's beautiful face every day, a beauty that only highlights your own deformities? To see her go to those men and sense them lying together, their limbs slick with sweat, their breath coming in gasps, their hearts pounding just inches from each other. And to all the while experience it, deep inside, a mocking sensation lingering just beyond your grasp. It is then, at those moments, when the pain is worst.
Can you imagine how that feels, can you really know?
I can.
Yes, I know because I feel what my sister feels every day when she looks at me. But she doesn't show it. Oh no, she holds back her tears until after I leave her, and I hate her for it. She knows that I feel what she feels, so why can’t she be honest with me? I ask her to tell me if she is unhappy, but she smiles her crooked smile and tells me not to be silly, that she is fine with things the way they are.
But she is lying.
She resents me. I feel her all the time, tugging at my mind, eavesdropping on my life, wishing it had been me in the car instead of her, that it was me who was bent and crippled. I don't care what she says, because I sense the truth, it oozes from every pore of my skin. I taste it with every breath that I take. I cannot go on living like this, with this other person inside my body and inside my head.
But I do. I have to.
Sometimes I want to take her pillow and cover that face, which once was mine, and exorcise her from me.
But I don’t. I won’t.
So, let me ask you that question again.
Do you have any idea what it is like to be an identical twin?
Because I do.
Chris lives in Bromley in Kent and has been writing short stories on and off for the last few years.