Imaginary

I knew something was wrong. I just knew. The house was too still, the windows all dark. Hesitating for a moment, I slotted my key in the door. It opened silently. I paused again. The narrow hallway was in total darkness. The lightswitch was just inside the door. A few steps away. And yet, I didn't want to go in. In fact, I wanted nothing more than to turn away, run away as fast as I could. Who knows? Perhaps if I had, things would have gone differently. How could I have predicted that these next few minutes, hours, would be the most defining of my life? That my future would take an insane turn, spinning in a direction I had never imagined...I couldn't. No way. But when I think upon that night, as I often do, I remember the inexplicable dread in the pit of my stomach, the urge to flee.

Anyway, after another minute on the doorstep, I chided myself and stepped inside. Sophie needed me, I reminded myself. There was no-one else. I reached for the switch, desperate for some light. The naked bulb flickered and came to life. It didn't make me feel any better. The dim light served only to underline the depressing shabbiness of the hallway. Peeling, dirty wallpaper. Cold brown linoleum with a greasy sheen. "Sophie?," I called tentatively. She was probably in bed. It was quite late. But, a stubborn voice at the back of my mind nagged, she knew I was coming. We'd talked only an hour before. My own breath seemed indecently loud in this cold, mean space. I pushed forward, stopping at the foot of the stairs. Should I...? I decided to check the kitchen and living room before going upstairs.

I gulped, the taste of fear warm and metallic as I stepped into the living room. It was in total darkness, as I had feared. Somewhat reluctantly, I flicked the lightswitch. The room was crowded with overstuffed armchairs, seemingly scattered at random throughout. Something quivered in my stomach again. I threw a glance around, as if she was crouched behind a chair, waiting to leap out and surprise me. A memory tugged at me suddenly. Just a fragment of something...

"Stop that!" The sun was in my eyes, making them water. I hit out blindly at Sophie. There was a giggle somewhere to my left. "I'm over here!" I wiped my eyes and blinked. She was nearby, sitting on the warm, springy grass. "Why'd you do that?" I ran a hand through my hair, grimacing. "I only washed it last night." "Oh, shut up." She inspected the remains of her lemonade. "You started it!" She grinned at me, and I struggled between outrage and the urge to smile back. My half-sister always had that effect on me. Infuriating and utterly careless, she was my idol. I spent my days hopelessly trying to keep up with her, trying not to care as she sneered at my efforts. She sighed, reclining. "I'm bored now." She picked a blade of grass, twirling it between her fingers. "It's too hot." "Let's go inside," I suggested, glad of the excuse to get out of the sun. My skin, normally very pale, was turning pinker by the second. Sophie grunted, inspecting her own arm. It was perfectly tanned, a deep shade of brown. "No." That was it. She knew there would be no argument. We sat in silence, me feeling my skin begin to burn, glumly anticipating the price I would pay for my obedience. Still, I sat.

"Ugh." Sophie peered at something on the knee of her jeans. "Look at that." A large spider was navigating the dark blue creases. She went to flick it off, but instead picked it up, holding it between finger and thumb. We both stared at it's flailing legs. "Ew." I knew what she was going to do. It was a nasty quirk in her personality, one I steadfastly ignored. Her penchant for torture. Every so often, she would find a small creature, a butterfly or a spider, and methodically take it apart, tear it's legs or wings off slowly. And I watched. I found it unbearable but fascinating, and watched through tears. I wondered which torture she enjoyed more, mine or their's.

I cleared my throat. "Don't." "What?" She smiled wickedly, eyeing the now still spider. I cast about for something to distract her with. "Sophie..." Her pale green eyes regarded me coolly, amused at this attempt to ruin her game. "I'm worried about mum and Roger." I regretted saying it as soon as it was out, knew it was a mistake as I watched her expression change from one of sadistic glee to anger. "What are you talking about?" The question didn't require an answer, even I knew that. "You idiot." She impaled me with her gaze, willing me to say more. And , against every instinct, I did. I could hear my voice, so loud, shaking as I tried to backpeddle. "No, I mean...just, this morning, they were fighting again-" "So?" She stood suddenly, brushing herself down. I saw the spider drop to the ground and skitter off through the grass, unable to believe it's luck. "You don't know anything." She tossed her hair and sidled off towards the house. I could tell by the set of her shoulders that it was an act. I had upset her. Feeling the lump in my throat that had become so familiar over the past few months, I got up to follow.

Ten years ago. I opened my eyes. I was twelve then. Sophie was fifteen. How had that powerful, brilliant girl come to this, I wondered sadly as I surveyed her tiny living room. While the mismatched furniture lent a cluttered air to the place, the surfaces were depressingly bare, the dusty mantlepiece unadorned except for a calender, the kind with a saying for every day. It was several days behind. I updated it, smiling at the new saying ("Time wounds all heels") and left, pulling the door shut behind me. Half-heartedly, I turned for the kitchen. I knew she was upstairs, at the back of my mind, I knew it, but pushed it away because that didn't make sense.

The kitchen was grim. The sink was piled with food-encrusted plates and dishes, the walls stained with something brown and unidentifiable. Turning for the door, I slipped on something (A discarded teabag, I registered as the floor rushed up to meet me) and clipped my forehead on the table on the way down. A million brilliant stars exploded behind my eyes, and I welcomed the darkness that followed. It was alright, I thought numbly. Everything was fine. I could just go to sleep for a while, lay my head down on the filthy tiled floor and allow the nothingness to engulf me. Except I couldn't. Even as I thought this, I pictured Sophie, upstairs, sick or possibly injured and wondering why I wasn't here yet. Alone and cold. I pulled myself up. assessing the damage. Blood, sticky and warm, trickled down my cheek. I hoped I wouldn't need stitches. The light was off in the hallway when I came back out, holding my head. When had that happened? Had I turned it off? Of course I had, I reprimanded myself. I was jumping at shadows. What had started as a tentative seed of doubt had become terror. I paused at the first step of the well-worn stairs, feeling the same urge to go back as I'd felt on the threshold, a horrible knowing that I was about to open a door that I would never close again.

I started up, chewing my bottom lip. She'd had an accident, I decided. Fallen. In the bathroom. Hit her head. Hadn't the same thing just happened to me? Or she was asleep. She had forgotten. It wasn't normal, not for Sophie, but what was normal about this night? This creepy, cold little house had unsettled me. Sophie and I would laugh about this in a few hours. Or a few days. I reached the landing and stood for a moment, clutching the banister. The bathroom was on the right. I walked past it, to the second door. Sophie's room, I knew. I had never been inside. My hand hesitated on the handle. It felt wrong, to go in here. An intrusion on the privacy she had spent the last eight years cultivating. "Sophie?," I croaked, tapping gently on the door. "It's Stacy?" I made it a question. There was no response, just silence punctuated by my pathetic tapping. "Sophie?" I was pleading now. My voice caught on her name. Another memory pushed into my thoughts. A rainy day, a long time ago. There had been a similar silence then too.

"Please say something." I sat on the edge of a cold, upright wooden chair. "It's not as bad as you think." She just glared. "If I could swap-" "You wouldn't." She swooped on the chance of an argument. "You wouldn't swap. Why would you? You get to stay here with mum," She waved a hand at the room, "And I've got to go live in an apartment," She spat the word, "With my dad." "But that was your choice!," I said, "Mum asked if you wanted to stay here." "She didn't mean it. She wants me to go. She doesn't like me." "That's not true." It was, as far as I could tell. Our mother had always treated Sophie with a kind of wary indifference. They were so very different, Sophie, agressive and clever, and mum, timid and always ready to avoid confrontation. "And anyway," Sophie frowned, "Dad won't let me stay. He wants me to live with him." She threw another furious look my way, as if the divorce had been my idea. "Well..." I couldn't think of anything to say. A year ago, the idea of being separated from my half-sister, the person I emulated in every way imaginable, would be unthinkable. Now...I would have liked to think I had changed, matured, become more myself. But really it was her. Those strange traits, once quite easy to ignore, had taken over, eclipsed her personality. She spent days locked away in her room, emerging only for food and only at night.

It happened gradually, so slowly that I was barely aware of my own hours spent alone, and later with other, newly-aqquired friends. My dedication had waned. This made my mother very happy. "Good to see you spending more time outside," She smiled one evening as we sat in the garden. I mumbled a reply, plucking petals off a buttercup. The year was a blur, events which had seemed important at the time half-forgotten now. The only thing I remembered clearly (And would remember, at various points, for the rest of my life) was an argument with mum over something stupid. "Honestly," She'd muttered, examining her hands, "You're getting just like..." She trailed off, rolling her eyes towards Sophie's closed bedroom door. It didn't sound like a compliment. "What's that supposed to mean?," I asked, outraged. "Never mind." She attempted a smile. "Let's have some-" "Mum." I cut her off. "Sophie isn't...bad." It sounded awkward, stilted, like I was reading from a script. "Hmm." The subject, I knew, was closed.

"Sophie!" Roger's voice drifted upstairs. "Look," I started as she got up to leave. "This isn't...I mean, we'll see each other all the time!" Her eyes narrowed. "No we won't." Her voice was a hiss. Without another word, she turned on her heel and walked out. And she was right. That was the last I would see of her for eight years.

The memory was hardly comforting. I stood, the doorhandle slick with sweat under my palm, in the dark hallway. "Are you there?" My voice was low, whisper-like. Steeling myself, I turned the handle, almost wishing it was locked. It wasn't. The door swung open, revealing a room lit only by a sliver of moonlight poking through a crack in the curtains. I ventured in, feeling for a light switch. The silence was suffocating, clawing at my throat. "Sophie?" I walked further in, finding a switch. I would like to say that I felt something then, an indication that this would be the last moment of normality before my life descended into chaos. I wish I had savoured it. I wish I had left that room, turned back and gone home. But, in reality, I felt nothing. I calmly flicked the switch and flooded the room with light.

The first thing I noticed was the pink. Sophie had painted the walls and ceiling a deep shade of fushia, so bright and so un-Sophie that I had to do a double-take. The carpet was a lighter shade of dusty pink. The walls were bare. The room, in fact, was quite empty, with only a bed, a small bedside table and a wardrobe in the way of furniture. These details remain sharp. Strangely, the next few minutes are unclear. I remember screaming, long and loud. Frozen to the spot. Wanting to run to her side, run for help, just run. She was on the floor, halfway between the door and the bed. Her arms spread out to the sides. Her face, made even paler by the bizzarely colourful room. A thin trickle of blood, black under the bright lights, trailing from her slightly open mouth.

I don't remember what happened next. I called the police, I suppose. Or that was a neighbour who heard my screams. Whatever, the next thing I remember is sitting in that shabby kitchen, sipping milky tea as I tried to focus on what the policewoman sitting across from me was saying. "So you and Ms. Clarke aren't sisters?" "Half-sisters," I muttered. "Uh-huh." She looked at her notebook again. There was a gentle tap on the door. We both looked up. "Hello." A tall, sleepy-looking man strode in. "Detective Jim Benjamin." He extended his hand. Without being asked, the policewoman left. "I'm very sorry for your loss." He didn't sound sorry, just very tired. Sitting heavily on the vacated chair, he produced a notebook. An awkward silence descended, broken occasionaly by me slurping tea.

"When exactly were you reunited with your sister?" "Two months ago." My voice was small. "She told you she was ill?" He peered at the notebook. "Yes...she was ill. I didn't know exactly...what was wrong, just that she was sick." "Right..." More silence. "And you visited regularly?" "Well, yes. Sophie doesn't...didn't leave her house. Much." "Much?" He looked at me over the table. I shifted in the chair. "Not...ever, really. Obviously, I only know about the last few months." "Obviously."

He sighed, scribbling something. We were interrupted by the bleeping of his phone. I jumped. "Just a moment." He spent the next ten minutes in the corner, muttering into the phone. I concentrated on my rapidly cooling tea, blinking back tears. He ended the call with a curt "Fine," and sat back down . Something had changed. He looked at me differently. I can say this now because I know what he was thinking. At the time, I was oblivious, more than likely. "Two months?" "Yes." My memory leaped, unbidden, back to that phone call, eight weeks ago.

"Is that really you?" I stood, nervously clutching the receiver, unable to believe what was happening. "Yes, it's me." She chuckled. "Has it been that long?" "Why-How are-But-" She laughed again. It was like the last eight years had never happened. Once more, I was dumb, helpless as she laughed at me. Her voice was almost the same, slightly tinged with something like sadness. She had aged badly, I discovered when we met at her house the next day. She was only twenty-five but looked ten years older. Her green eyes, once vibrant and cruel, had dimmed, their light nearly extinguished. "Where were you?" I burst into tears on her doorstep. "I moved away." That was the only explanation I got for those missing years. I did learn, however, that Sophie was suffering from some unnamed illness which confined her to her house. She was unmarried and lived alone. For the first time, I pitied her. These scraps of her life were gathered over painful weeks. It didn't bother me that she was so reserved. Sophie had always been secretive, and eight years was, I reasoned, a long time. The rest would come in time, I was sure.

We got into a shaky routine of weekly meetings, me doing errands for her, trying to pry more information about her life from her. She always clammed up. It worried me, though not as much as it should have. "I'll need to ask you to come with me." Detective Benjamin's voice snapped me back to reality. "Sorry-what?" I blinked. "It's routine." Something in his demeanour told me it wasn't. A red flag went up. "I can't." I had to call my mum...I wondered how she would react to the news. He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry. I realise you're still in shock." He drew out the last syllable, as if he was being sarcastic. "It's procedure." He stood and opened the door. I sat, mute. "But..." There was nothing for it but to follow him.

We walked out into the night air, the flashing lights of the ambulance casting blue light over the garden, the neighbours gathered to watch despite the late hour. I was led past them. "The sister...didn't know she...estranged or something..." Another blank period followed, a hellish blur of flourescent lights, uncomfortable chairs, a doctor telling me to sit still as he stitched up the long-forgotten cut on my forehead, and coffee drunk from paper cups. I remember the next time I sat with Detective Benjamin. He was questioning me again, but not in the hushed tones of before. "What was the exact date of your first meeting with your sister?" "I told you." I pinched the bridge of my nose. "The tenth." "Of May." "Yes." He continued with the same string of questions for an hour. "Why are you asking me this?," I finally asked. He didn't respond. "Surely you don't think I-"

"We have reason to believe that you poisoned your sister," He deadpanned, his face expressionless. All the air seemed to go out of the room. I only whimpered in response, collapsing onto the cold table. I came to a minute later, praying it had been a dream. Unsympathetic, the detective offered me a cup of water.

"Why-why?," I gasped. "According to your sister's medical records, she became sick on the eleventh of May-the day after she met you." "So?" He said no more. I spent that night in a jail cell. A week later, we sat in the same room, a small black book on the table between us. "What is this?" My voice was hoarse from days of crying. "This," He nudged it towards me, "Is Sophie's diary." "And?" I doubted this was an elaborate way of telling me he knew I was innocent. "In it, she confided that she thought you were making her sick. Poisoning her." "N-no." "Yes." He held my gaze. "On," He leafed through it, "The fifteenth of May, she wrote: "Sick again today. No it's an awful thing 2 say, but Stacy was the one who made dinner last night. Could she be doing it?" ' I reached for it, stunned. "That's not what it says!" He let me pick it up. I scanned the messy page. It was just as he'd read.

"That's-not right." "And on," He picked it up again, "The twentieth, she wrote: "Had a big fight with Stacy-told me she h8s me :( Don't no what to do. Shud I go 2 police? She is trying to kill me!!!" ' "That-never happened!" "You didn't fight with your sister?" "No!" "But you didn't speak for eight years!" "That was before." "Right. Before she called you." "Yes." "Except," He picked the traitorous book up again, "In here, Sophie says that you called her." I shook my head in disbelief. "That's not what happened. She called me. And told me she was sick." "But she wasn't sick until after you met up again!" "But she was!" "No," He sighed, "Sophie's workplace confirm that she didn't miss a day of work until the eleventh, when she first became sick." "Work? Sophie didn't...have a job." "Sophie worked in a pharmacy close to her home. She'd worked there for the last four years." The clock on the wall between us had stopped at eleven a.m. It was actually four p.m. "No, she didn't," I countered lamely. He frowned. "Sophie died of Strychnnine poisoning, done gradually over a period of months. You called Sophie. You arranged a reunion. You began to poison her. The sicker she got, the more control you had over her. You killed her." "No! Why would I do that?" "You tell me." He raised his eyebrows. "Because you hated her, maybe." "I loved my sister!" "Except you went eight years without any contact." He left the room, slamming the door behind him. My own words, from so long ago, echoed in my head. "Sophie isn't...bad."

That was two years ago. I relive it every day. I have a lot of time to do so. Writing it down here helps. Someday, someone else will know the truth. It didn't take me long to unravel the strands of her plot, her final game. It was quite simple. No-one wants to know what really happened, though. I don't care. In a few -Okay, ten if I'm lucky- years, I'll be free. And I can try to forget these years. I know why Sophie hated me so much. I don't understand. I never did, though, and maybe that's why. I'll never know. Like I said, I spend a lot of time staring out my tiny window, thinking of that night, wondering if things would be different now if I had walked away from the door, turned away from Sophie for good. Or if I had never answered the phone that day. If our parents had never got divorced. Maybe I would be staring at these same stars, somewhere else.