PARTNERS IN CRIME

There was no doubt about it: I loved my sister deeply. My identical twin, Laura, had always been by my side, ever since we were born–two screaming infants, holding hands in the womb and squirming, dirty and wet, next to each other in the doctors’ hands. I never had to experience loneliness–even the deepest of my thoughts were shared with the other side of me. During our first years of life we were so attached, people often wondered whether we were, by some whimsical accident, one whole soul, split between two bodies. There have been times when I’ve asked myself the same question, if perhaps my flesh eerily held a piece of her psyche and vice versa. However, our personalities were profoundly different. I was in a way very sociable, while Laura was dark, introverted, even antisocial at times. Despite this, we got along excellently and were always inseparable.

But happiness did not last long. Our mother said she was worried our morbid attachment might “scare people off” and compromise our learning abilities, so she got us a private teacher and forbade us to leave the house. Ever. We were never sure about why she had made that decision–our mother limited her contact with us to a minimum. We haven’t seen the outside world since. Our house is very big, with many rooms and stairs. It is lonely and dark, even scary, but as kids we found our own ways to have fun. Good thing I was never alone. One small detail always bothered us, though–there was one corridor we were absolutely not allowed into, especially at night. We were curious about it, but also scared, so we never asked questions. And in this fashion, years went by.

One night, I was suddenly woken up. It was Laura. She was holding a candle in her left hand and she was lightly but firmly shaking me by the shoulder. As my eyes began to adjust to the small flicker of the candle in the dark, I noticed she had an unusual, unsettling grin on her face, which looked even more ominous in the reflection of the light on her skin.

«I want to show you something. Come with me», she whispered. Her voice was unnaturally low.

«Laura… is everything okay?», I asked. She was beginning to scare me. I addressed her but she did not answer. Instead, she grabbed my hand and slowly started walking out of the room. I followed her not without resistance. She never let go of my hand while she was leading me through the house. She was wearing a white night robe, and I could see her slim figure in front of me almost gliding across the rooms and halls, which didn’t look very different from the day–silent, creepy, completely devoid of any sign of life. Her footsteps were barely audible, and her long, pitch-black hair was flowing loose, similar to a raven smoothing its feathers. Even if it was dark, I knew every nook and cranny of my home, but I could tell something was wrong. My heart started to beat faster as I realized where she was taking me–the forbidden corridor. I always wondered what lay behind that mysterious door, but until then, my curiosity had never overcome my fear. Chills went down my spine when she stopped right in front of the entrance. I saw her pale hand reaching for the doorknob, but before entering, she turned towards me.

«Are you coming in or not? It is about time», she asked. She seemed to know what she was doing.

I was terrified, but something stronger than me was telling me I had to do this. The little voice inside my head, which had bugged me my entire life, wondering why our mother kept us from going there, told me it was finally time to unravel the mystery. So I nodded, and she opened the door, being extremely careful to be totally silent. She went in and I followed her, with my chest about to explode.

The corridor was very poorly lit. A few candles on the walls were not sufficient to guide us through that tenebrous walk. Although we could not see anything, a tiny square of light glimmering at the other end hinted that there was a room many meters ahead. Laura kept on leading the way, and all of a sudden, it hit me–she had already been there. She knew what was coming, and she wanted to show it to me. At times, she moved the light, revealing what was on the walls. I felt my hands shaking as I saw what kind of paintings were hung there: people screaming, their faces deformed by agonizing pain, scarlet blood dripping down their bodies. I was drawn to it–it looked so real… I reached out to touch it, but the moment my hand made contact with the canvas, I felt something wet. I immediately withdrew, as I realized, with horror, there was blood on my fingertips. Was I dreaming? Was it just a crazy hallucination, brought on by fear?

Laura pulled me away. She was determined to take me to the final room. We kept on walking. I had to suppress a shriek, due to a sudden rustle. «It’s just mice», Laura reassured me. How long had it been since someone besides my mother–and my sister–entered this place?

We finally reached the room, and I peeped inside. To my great surprise, nothing horrific or tremendous was there–it was just our mother’s bedroom, where she was, indeed, sleeping. Confused, I looked at Laura.

«What does this mean?»

She still had that slight grin, but her expression was shifting from resolution to rage. Sheer rage that I had never seen on her face before. Then, she started speaking:

«It’s not about what’s in here, it’s about who’s in here. Think for a second–this woman has terrorized us our entire lives. She forbade us from ever leaving the house. She kept us segregated here, deprived of any contact with the world. For God’s sake, she even tried to separate us forever. Who knows what else might happen if we keep letting her do what she wants. I’m telling you, she’s the devil! But this is going to stop right now. We are no longer going to stand for the tyranny of this woman we call mother!»

«Laura… what are you doing?» My voice was weak, I started to panic, and Laura began walking towards the bed. I tried to stop her, whispering her name and frantically pulling her by the sleeve of her gown. When I grabbed her arm, I felt something hard and cold under the linen fabric. She turned around for a second, with an unrecognizable look in her eyes–it had become psychotic, a deranged madness had taken control over her. Things escalated quickly–she wriggled out of my grasp, and extracted the knife from her sleeve. How could I not notice she had been carrying it all along? She turned her back on me and with a quick move she stabbed our mother in the middle of her chest, right above the heart. I screamed at the top of my lungs in terror as she stabbed her again and again, repeatedly. I kept yelling hysterically, louder every second, piercing my ears with my own screeches. Blood was splattering all over the room, staining all Laura’s white gown with crimson, and a good part of mine, too. I was crying desperately, watching her murder our mother right before my eyes, not being able to move a muscle to stop her.

Seconds later, it was done. The bed was soaking in blood. The poor woman was still gurgling, but she was going to pass away any second. I was so panic-stricken, I blacked out. I fell on the ground. All was dark and quiet.

I don’t know how long I was in there. Minutes. Maybe hours. When I opened my eyes again, I began to remember everything. The police were in the room. My eyes shifted from my mother’s corpse onto my own body. I saw myself, kneeling in a pool of blood, clutching a knife in my hand and no sign of my twin.

I didn’t even have the time to realize what had really happened, when two officers grabbed me by the arms.

«Wait! There’s been a mistake! It wasn’t me! It wasn’t me! It was my sister, she has run away!»

The policemen began carrying me out of the room, as they laughed at me, saying there was no record of a sister of mine. I kept struggling and screaming that it wasn’t my fault, but they dragged me out of the house relentlessly and pushed me into the back of their van, not taking any notice of what I was saying.

They put me in a straitjacket, and the van doors closed on my shouts.

Ludovica Fusaroli
Liceo M. Minghetti, II D