Other Twin

A Story by Alexzandria R.

A girl looks over the photos and memories of her sister who committed suicide. At least that's what the police thought. As she looks through the memories, she's far too proud of what really happened.

I was cold when I stepped into the basement and I could see my breath in the freezing air. The light in the room was dim and coming from a single lightbulb hanging above my head. I could tell that the lightbulb didn’t have much longer before it stopped working. Honestly, I had no real reason to be going into the basement. I felt drawn to it, as if something were pulling me down the rotting steps. Something inside me told me that I absolutely needed to go down there.
I began exploring. For the most part, I just found Violet’s stuff. Violet was my sister. Was my sister. She was sixteen years old when she died. That was three years ago. The cops came to the conclusion that it was a suicide. They say she slit her own throat. They found her in the basement, lying on the exact spot where I was standing.
I wandered the room. Everything was packed away in boxes and out of sight. No one in the house could bear to look at any of it. We didn’t even have pictures of her around the house anymore. I still remembered how she looked though. My twin sister. Fiery red hair, paper white skin, striking green eyes. She always wore this blood red lipstick that complimented those eyes. That was one of the only ways that people could tell us apart. I never did like lipstick. It always felt too oily and gooey for me.
Violet was popular. She was friends with ninety percent of the school. The boys adored her and would often fight each other over her. I always told her that she should just put them all into an arena so they could just fight to the death for her hand in marriage. She was an amazing student and always got straight As. Teachers loved her almost as much as the boys did. I envied my sister. Coveted her very existence.
I lifted a picture of her out of one of the boxes. A photo of her with some of her friends and one of her old boyfriends. He was one of the few guys who was lucky enough to be hers. I stared at the photo. At all those friends. I could never have that many friends and it was only because everyone was too infatuated with Violet to notice me. This angered me quite a lot but I always tried to keep it to myself. I was in the photo as well. I was standing next to her. I went unnoticed.
I lifted another picture out of the box. A picture of Violet and I that wasn’t in a frame. I turned it over and read the other side. The words “Violet and Lavender at the beach” were scrawled across the back of the photo in mom’s untidy handwriting. Her name always did come first didn’t it? No one ever said my name before hers if they were talking about both of us in one sentence. I was always the twin in the background. Like she was the real person and I was just her clone.
I kissed the photo of my sister-- vengefully, contemptuously, vindictively, but also as my way of showing respect for the dead-- before putting the picture back into the box, noticing that I’d left a red lipstick print over her face. I glanced at my right wrist. Wrapped around it was a bracelet made from beads and elastic. Some of the beads had letters on them and they spelled out a name. Violet and I both had bracelets like this with our names on them. I stared at the one on my wrist, taking in the letters one by one rather than reading the name all together. V-I-O-L-E-T. She had been buried wearing my bracelet.
I was the beautiful one now. I was the real person and she was the clone. I was the one with all her friends and I was the one who was getting married to her boyfriend in May. I was Violet. My legal name was Lavender but as far as everyone else knew, I was Violet. Lavender had killed herself, according to the police and the newspapers.
I knew that my sister hadn’t really done that to herself. I had. I slit her throat, making sure the angle was just right for it to look like a suicide, removed her lipstick and switched our clothes, switched our bracelets and put the kitchen knife in her cold dead hand and left her there for someone to find. I let out a small giggle that seemed to echo in the empty room. I was proud of my work.
The light in the basement flickered briefly and I thought nothing of it until I heard a loud POP! and the room went dark. I heard shards of glass land on the concrete floor. Had the lightbulb exploded? I could hear shuffling footsteps on the cold concrete floor of the basement. As the footsteps grew louder, the room seemed to grow colder. I thought I heard my name being whispered from across the room. Not the name I had stolen. The name on my birth certificate. Someone was calling me.
“Lavender,” it was a girl’s voice whispering my name in sort of a sing-song way. I felt myself begin to tremble a bit. Since Violet died, no one even suspected me to be myself. To be Lavender. To be the other twin.
The voice grew louder but remained a sing-song whisper. The footsteps sounded closer as if someone were shuffling toward me. Then...they just stopped. The footsteps just stopped and the room was silent aside from my breathing and my heart pounding loudly, threatening to burst through my ribs.
Just as I thought it was over, it happened. I could hear someone breathing in my ear. Ragged, trembling, labored breathing. Someone was standing right there behind me. Whoever it was, his or her breathing sounded like they were about to collapse and die any moment. I could feel warm thick liquid trickle onto my shoulder and down my back. Blood? Who was this?
I heard the breathing get louder and closer to my ear. Whoever was there whispered my name again. That same sing-song whisper. It seemed to echo throughout the room. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness a bit and I gathered all the courage I could before turning around to see who it was that was saying my name.
I turned and my eyes widened. I covered my mouth with one hand to muffle a scream. Standing behind me…was Violet. The real Violet. The one who was dead and buried in the local cemetery with my name on her headstone. She was standing over me with those piercing emerald eyes cutting into my soul and her slit jugular dripping crimson fluid down her body and onto me. She stared at me as if she were studying my soul. Looking into me and hating what she saw.
She put one hand around my throat. Her fingers were bony and cold like ice. Cold like the dead. She choked me roughly so that I couldn’t breathe. She looked into my eyes and smiled as I choked and gasped for oxygen. Then…she disappeared. I coughed loudly. I could still feel that hand, that awful cold dead hand, on my throat. I saw a bright light and for a moment, I thought I was dead. Then I heard mom’s voice coming from behind the light.
“Violet? What are you doing in the basement? I heard a noise.” She paused for a moment and waved the light around, most likely looking for the source of the sound. “Lightbulb must have blown out,” she said. She paused again and aimed the light at me. “Did you come down here to look at the pictures of Lavender? I know you miss her but let’s go upstairs though, ok? It’s cold down here.” The light went away and I could hear her footsteps going back up the stairs as I sat there in shock, still registering what had happened to me. I learned three things that morning. One: the dead have amazing memory and can hold a grudge like it’s their own child. Two: the dead held a grudge against me. Three: this grudge would someday be the death of me.