We Are Dead

• Aithan Kirschner, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2022

Reagan, when I look into a mirror it is her face I see; identical. We are twins, we belong with each other; like everyone. Our community revolves around twins, everybody, twin sisters. We are pretty, black hair, thin; everybody the same, same lives, same futures. A vicious circle of repeated events. I’m close with my twin we do everything together; inseparable. Our secrets trapped up inside of us are let out to each other. Our relationship is priceless like gold.

But Reagan, she betrayed me. I told her something no one should know, a secret that is so deep.

A secret that can kill me.

We are pretty, like everyone, but I’m ugly, I’m a monster. I feel emotions no one should. I was sent to the unknown, a dark place with everyone but the typical look of the community. But I escaped, crept to a truck and was put with all the pretty people.

I told my sister this, she thought I was lying, she thought I was crazy. She told commander.

She let out the secret about to kill me. I’m now just a living corpse, dead inside, almost dead outside. Death doesn’t tailor me. I wear it like a borrowed coat; it slips off my shoulders and trails in the dirt. It is Ill-fitting.

I want to shrug it off; to throw it in the cupboard and take some well-tailored clothes, recraft myself. But that is impossible.

I see my sister, right in front of me, tied to a tree. I want to torture her, for her to be abnormal to the rest and feel like me, for her to constantly have something playing in her mind and then an emotion wrapped up with it.

A bad emotion.

So I give her the antibiotic to free the emotions trapped up inside of her, an antibiotic I made myself. I force the pill down her throat. She freezes. Her face turns red and a small tear rolls down her cheek, followed by another and many more until she is bawling her eyes out. It’s not enough for me. nothing will be except for my sister dead.

A siren wails in the distance; their coming.

She must die.

My hand envelops a small gun, I must pull the trigger, to make me happy, to make her dead.

“Stop! Don’t! I didn’t mean to! Please!” Reagan screams, she sounds desperate; for once.

But they’re empty promises.

The tip of a gun presses at my head causing a wave of heat to rise to my head, a clock ticks in my head, every beat forming a new piece of anxiety and without any hesitation I pull the trigger.

I’m floating, in a world of black, I’m happy; finally. But my sister is sad, she can’t explain what she saw, she must live with pain.

Forever.