Chapter One: Tomorrow

Lionel, I can feel you starving. Take a break and eat something, it’s driving me nuts.

Shh, don’t you dare try to stop me now. I’m on a roll.

How the hell can you be on a ‘roll’ while writing a dumb essay?

You wouldn’t understand. It’s a state of mind--when your thoughts all string together and they just make sense.

But would taking a break really derail your train of thought?

Yes.

Hmm. Your train of thought kinda sucks.

Shut up, you have less to focus on and yet you’re still one of the most scatterbrained people I know.

Less to focus on?! What, because I don’t have a body? From what I hear it’s not that distracting. A*****e.

Sorry. But we both know it’s true.

Why’d you stop typing?

It’s hard to focus when I have an unrelenting girl chattering away in my head.

Fine.

…

Come back, I’m lonely.

I thought you were on your delicate ‘roll’.

I can get those whenever I need them.

‘You should be working,’ Lionel.

I should be, but perhaps I will choose the irresponsible path this time around.

Thank GOD, I was getting bored to death.

This is due next week though, I shouldn’t take too long of a break. I don’t have all night.

You do, and all week.

I need to get this done!

You will! Jeez.

Alright sister, we’ll find something else to do.

I discovered the truth on November 10th, 1998.

That was the day I discovered who was really inside me. Whose voice I had been hearing all that time. It was a rainy morning, my mother was driving and my father was in the passenger seat. They were irritable due to a previous fight, and I was occupied with thoughts of an upcoming spelling bee. We really all seemed so normal then.

Then it happened.

A screech, a swear, a sharp turn, a slippery road and a violent forward jerk. Everything got so warm and I could feel my gravity shift as the car did. How could the results have been so extreme, from something as simple as a rushed light and a missed turn? An unfocused eye? How did we end up on the pavement, bleeding and unconscious? Who hit us? Who saved us? How did we get to the hospital? Who called 911? I still don’t know the answer to any of these things. But that doesn’t keep me from staying awake at night. Asking.

The answered questions were only lists of injuries. Added numbers to the bills. My mother obtained a serious concussion by smashing her head into the windshield, the pouring blood causing a hemorrhage. My bulky brute of a father lost an eye to the shattering glass and suffered from something called a sucking lung wound, which is when your lungs begin to fill with blood--once you puncture the exterior of your flesh and into the lung, the air coming in and the blood escaping makes a gurgling, “sucking” noise. I was crushed against the car door, fracturing my skull and breaking my sternum. Those are the technicalities. All six-year old Lionel knew was there was blood everywhere. All over our faces, the car, the glass, the ground. Bright red blood like cranberry sauce--spilt on the floor at a rushed Thanksgiving. Why was I reminded of that? So many things rushing through my adrenaline-pumped young mind, loosing blood by the minute. I remember that silent moment where the whole world seemed to suddenly stop as the ambulance’s mournful wails filled my head to the brim;

Am I going to die?

Not that I remember much else of the wreck. Just the cluttered bits and pieces of a frantic mind. If I were to attempt to describe a clear and unbiased tale of that night I would tell no more than the date. November 10th, 1998. That’s all I really have the right to tell, because anything else would most likely just be some sort of fabrication where memory would be. A biased opinion. A lie.

The hospital seemed so spontaneous, I remember constantly wondering what I was doing there, and yet... it all seemed so peaceful, so calming. The clean white walls, sheets and sterile soft colors passed by like a dream- probably due to my head injury and blood loss but all the same. It was just.. bliss. Sometimes when I feel stressed I close my eyes and picture those clean, white rooms... that half-numb, sleepless calm wave of light.

They had to take a blood test to see my type, so I could have a blood transfusion. I was little and my soft feminine skin was pouring blood like a cracked cup looses tea. What is with these food metaphors? Maybe you’re hungry. A test result of O - followed by a urine test to see what drugs or medication I was on, if any. Because it’s not like anyone was conscious enough to say who was on what. I remember, the lab was not too far from my room, and I drifted into consciousness to see a tall, thin man walk up to my doctor (who was a short, blond woman) with a confused look on his face. He talked to her quietly, an ashamed look on his youthfully round face, as if he’d messed up. She chuckled and walked into the lab, gesturing for him to follow.

After that all I can really remember is being stitched up and full of blood again, laying there and quietly watching with wide, observant eyes. I remember they kept asking for urine samples, over and over again. Then skin samples, and hair. It seemed to go on forever, though my perception of time was not the clearest. It’s all so blurry.

I remember an argument, when the stitches in my chest were out and my father fully recovered- now fitted with a brand new eye patch. My mother was finally healthy enough to go home but they wouldn’t let me out just yet. I recall my father, a big, dark haired man who could be very intimidating when need be; bent over that small, blond woman -my poor undeserving physician- his voice raised in an incoherent blather of frustration. He wanted his son to come home. She kept a cool head though, and started to talk calmly to him, explaining. Then, she said something that seemed so clear and precise through the haze of my drugged state;

“Your son might actually be your sons.”

After more vigorous testing it was confirmed. Allow me to explain: My mother was pregnant with twins, at some point. One was me, the other was my twin sister. We were very close- literally. Practically clinging in an embrace. Too close. We were so intimately..cuddling, that I...absorbed her. I literally pulled her into my un-developed flesh. And we grew together as one person.

But pieces of her still remain- within me, replacing my own original pieces of body.

I have her skin, her blood, her liver, her right eye, her fat. Only my left eye, my stomach, my heart, my digestive system, brain and genitalia are what I can truly refer to as my own. Me. Some say I’m more than a person, double the chromosomes, double the information, twice the person. But in reality, I’m less than a person. I’m only an eye, a stomach and digestive system, a heart, a chest, a brain, I’m only a few fragments of a person. Because the rest belongs to her.

She’s still there. She somehow managed to keep her own part of the brain; her own separate cognitive slice of the organ pie that is my shared brain. She talks to me. She always has, really. But I never acknowledged that she was... so real. When I was younger, I thought that everyone had this. This second voice in your head. As I aged, I came up with many theories;

Some sort of deity, a god,

My imaginary friend,

My conscience,

My insanity.

But aren’t all of those really the same? The same disease? Fact of life? Voice in your head? Either way, I had a name for her long before the doctors did. They call her my “absorbed twin”, “Potential twin”, “second set of DNA”, “other parts” but do they know that she still exists as a person? No. I never told.  They could never know that through her eye I see things differently, different colors, different angles... that she was supposed to be a brunette. I suppose with more research they could have discovered such tiny aspects. Pointless pieces of lost genetic data.

But not all of the genetics in the world could tell you that she loves dictionaries. That she loves to learn new words. No brain-scan could ever inform you that writing was her passion and the piano one of her few, but extremely talented skills.

No DNA test in the word could tell you her name was Lenore Pinnick.

She chose our mother’s last name as opposed to our father’s, which was donned upon my birth certificate. Lionel Soldner.

After I had truly figured it out, I began growing out the hair on my right side to cover the stolen eye. The eye that was hers. It felt wrong to use it, and now I understood why everything always looked so different through it. It all made sense.

I never really told anyone about her. It was never a problem. We coexisted in peace. A perfect physical and mental dichotomy between us. Different ideals and opinions, sure. Of course we will bicker on occasion, we are siblings, after all. But we will always balance out, keeping each other in check. Opposites attract.

Untouched and balanced until now, that is.

Tomorrow morning is the day that someone will try to take her from me.

Tomorrow is the day we will have to fight back.

Author's Note

Edits? Ideas? etc? All help is welcome.
I also often worry about the confusion this first essential chapter might bring on. Opinions?

Reviews

[Astro MacGuffin]

I would not change a word of this. Diving right in to the perspective helps to immediately normalize Lenora's life for the reader. I will also say, as the relationship between Lionel and Lenore was laid out before me, I actually wanted and hoped for the conflict in this story to be a risk of Lenore being excised. Already, you have given me gratification in that hope/expectation.

Also, three words: "my lost Lenore." :-) Just by borrowing such a poetically-charged name, you provide a foreboding sense of sadness and something to be fought, before the conflict is even spelled out for us.

Seriously, I can't find any reason to change one word of this first chapter.

[Ivy Navillus]

Oh my god. This honestly made my day to read. A writer of your merit giving such a beaming review! Thank you so much! I am so thrilled to hear from you!

[C.A. Lucas]

So beautiful. This is a great chapter for me, because me and my brother bicker and fight sooooo much, but this part of a story has spoken to me and I will change my ways.
This is a true love story...

[Ivy Navillus]

Thank you so much! Yeah, I often use my own little brother as inspiration for their fights. Such a common thing, you know? So I decided to put a little twist on it! I'm so glad you like it~

[Ivy Navillus]

O' dear writer, you're talented, I've already seen, sniffed, and felt it through these magnificent details, as "Thanksgiving, Bloodgroup, and wisdom you put in each stanza, of thoughts, to vizialisate it for the reader. I like those imageries
"O" is special, and you know why ;) I like the precise fusion between the "I" person, or the narrator, and his twin-sister. It makes me wonder for your next chapters, if there is a psychological confuse, or just a real medical matter.... extremely intelligent set up here. She merged with her visions and her eye in you, you saw through her, litterally? or the opposite? lovely, anyhow, these questionmarks are like I adore to figure out, the pieces till they fix.

Wonderful chapter dear writer.
I can't wait to read more more and more... ;)

E.L.

[Ivy Navillus]

Aww thank you so much! Even your comments are poetry!
This absolutely made my day. I can't wait to hear more comments from you! :'D

Aw, it is just my point dear writer of vision... I adore the way you wrote it, and your brain is that delightful, to let the reader escape in a several corners of wondering.... I shall read you day by day, when I feel the yearning...

[Ivy Navillus]

Awsdfgh WOW thank you! Dearest reader I can hardly contain my complete excitement at your enthrallment! Thank you!

:) You did the art.... I'm just a lover of intellectuals. :D

[Ivy Navillus]

I know how you feel. Thank you, nonetheless.~
(I also drew all of the preview pictures... XD)

I can see them clearly in my head yes. Thank you.

[Ras Fish]

The Writing is fluent and just gives great visuals, I love it.

[Ivy Navillus]

AWESOME I'm glad! The first chapter is always the one I fret over the most.

[Ras Fish]

don't worry about it though you killed it.