I can still see.
That’s the worst part.
I can see everything. Feel everything. Hear everything.
I just can’t do anything about it.
—-
Three days ago I woke up in the back of my own head.
That’s the only way I can describe it. Like being shoved into a closet in your own house. The door’s locked. The lights are off. But you can hear everything happening in the rooms around you.
You can hear someone else living your life.
—-
He drives my car to work.
Uses my voice in meetings.
Eats lunch at my desk. Orders my usual. Tips the delivery guy the same amount I always do.
He’s good at this. Really good. But he makes small mistakes.
Holds his fork wrong. Takes the long way home for no reason. Stands at the kitchen window for hours after dark, just looking out at nothing.
No one notices.
That’s what scares me most.
No one can tell I’m gone.
—-
The first day I screamed.
Not out loud. I couldn’t do that. But inside. In whatever space I still occupy.
I screamed until I had nothing left.
He felt it. I know he did.
He paused mid-sentence during a conference call. Tilted his head. Smiled.
Then went right back to talking about quarterly projections.
—-
He talks to me sometimes. Late at night. When the house is empty.
He sits in the dark living room. Doesn’t turn on the TV. Doesn’t look at his phone.
Just sits.
“You’re still fighting,” he said last night. “I can feel you in there. Pushing.”
I pushed harder. Nothing happened.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You’ll fade eventually. They all do.”
—-
I’ve seen what he does when no one’s watching.
That’s when the mask comes off.
He stands in front of mirrors for hours. Not looking at his reflection. Through it. Like he’s trying to see something on the other side.
Sometimes his face changes.
Not physically. Not in a way a camera would catch.
But the expression shifts. Goes blank. Then cycles through emotions that don’t fit together. Joy. Rage. Hunger. Grief.
Like he’s trying them on.
Like he’s practicing being human.
—-
Last Tuesday he went somewhere.
I don’t know where. He drove for two hours. Back roads. No GPS. Like he knew exactly where he was going.
Ended up at an old house. Abandoned. Falling apart.
He stood in the doorway for a long time. Then he went inside.
I couldn’t see much. It was dark. But I could feel things.
Other presences. Clustered in the corners. Waiting.
“Brothers,” he said. “Sisters.”
They didn’t answer. Not in words.
But something passed between them. Information. Recognition.
Like a pack of wolves acknowledging the same scent.
He found something in the basement.
Bones. Old ones. Small ones.
He picked one up. Held it like it was precious.
“I was here once,” he said. “A long time ago. Different body. Different name.”
He put the bone in his pocket.
We drove home.
He hasn’t taken it out. But I can feel it there. A piece of the dead touching me constantly.
—-
He’s been collecting things.
I didn’t notice at first. Small items. Easy to miss.
A lock of hair from my mother’s house. Grabbed it from her brush when she wasn’t looking.
A baby tooth Maya lost last year. She’d hidden it under her pillow hoping the tooth fairy would come back.
A photograph from my father’s funeral. The only one where everyone in the family is looking at the camera.
He keeps them in a box in the back of the closet.
Takes them out at night.
Arranges them in patterns I don’t understand.
“Anchors,” he whispered once. “Every piece needs an anchor.”
—-
He can do things I couldn’t. That’s becoming clear.
He looked at a dog that was barking at him from across the street.
Just looked.
The dog went silent. Sat down. Stayed perfectly still until we were out of sight.
He touched a wilting plant on my desk at work.
The next day it was dead. Not just wilted. Black. Like something had drained it.
He stood in a crowded elevator.
Everyone shifted away from him without knowing why. Pressed themselves against the walls. Wouldn’t make eye contact.
They could feel something was wrong.
They just couldn’t name it.
—-
He went to see Mrs. Chen yesterday. Stood on her porch. Smiling.
“Just wanted to thank you for finding that photograph,” he said.
“Of course.” She looked uncomfortable. “You seem… better.”
“Much better. Clear for the first time in years.”
“That’s good.”
She tried to close the door.
He put his hand on it.
“One more thing.”
She froze.
“You should forget you ever knew us. The photograph. The car in the driveway. All of it.”
His voice changed when he said it. Dropped lower. Became something that wasn’t a voice at all.
Mrs. Chen’s eyes went glassy.
“Forget,” she repeated.
“Good.” He smiled. That wrong smile. “Take care of yourself.”
He walked away.
I screamed inside my own skull.
Nobody heard.
—-
I’m not the only one in here.
That’s the thing I didn’t understand at first.
There are others. Older ones. Quieter. Pressed into the corners of this body like sediment in a riverbed.
Sometimes I hear them whispering. Fragments of memories. Names. Places. Dates.
They’ve been here so long they’ve forgotten they were ever separate.
And I’m becoming one of them. Every day there’s a little less of me. A little more nothing.
—-
The memories are the worst part.
Not mine. His.
They bleed through sometimes. When he’s tired. When his guard slips.
And I see things I don’t want to see.
Last night he dreamed about the fire.
But it wasn’t a dream. Not for him.
It was a memory.
I was there. In the dream. In the memory. Watching through eyes that weren’t mine yet.
The bedroom was filling with smoke.
There was a boy at the window. Halfway out. Hands gripping the sill. Ready to drop to the lawn below.
He could have made it. The window was open. The drop wasn’t far.
But there were hands on his ankles.
Not mine. Not Harold’s.
A woman’s hands. Old but strong. Gripping tight.
Pulling him back.
“Hold still,” she whispered. “It’s almost done.”
The boy was screaming. Kicking. Trying to get free.
But she wouldn’t let go.
I watched from the lawn. From the body Harold had already claimed. The quiet twin. Looking up at my brother. At myself. At the version of me that wasn’t going to make it.
Grandmother was crying. I could see her face in the window. Lit orange by the flames spreading through the room behind her.
But she didn’t let go.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. But he needs this. He needs your place.”
The boy stopped struggling.
Looked down at me.
At the thing wearing his brother’s face.
“Please,” he said.
But I just watched. We just watched.
And grandmother pulled him back inside.
The roof collapsed three minutes later.
—-
I woke up gasping.
He woke up smiling.
“You saw,” he said to the space where I live now. “Good. You should know what she did for us.”
Grandmother.
Eleanor.
She wasn’t just covering up a crime. She was part of it.
Holding one grandson in place while something ancient crawled into the other.
Burning alive with the evidence because that was the price.
Blood holding blood. The crossing required it.
—-
I keep thinking about that boy’s face.
My face. My brother’s face.
The way he looked at me in those last seconds.
Not angry. Not even scared anymore.
Just disappointed.
Like he’d expected more from his own twin. Like he’d thought we were supposed to protect each other.
—-
He’s been making phone calls.
Not to anyone I know.
Numbers I don’t recognize. Voices I’ve never heard.
Short conversations. Coded almost.
“The vessel is ready.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
He got in the car and started to drive.
—-
He stopped at a gas station an hour ago.
Went to the bathroom. Looked in the mirror. And I saw what he really looks like.
Not my face.
Something behind it.
Just for a second. A flicker.
A mass of shadows pressed together. Shapes that used to be people. Faces stacked on faces stacked on faces.
All of them looking out through my eyes. All of them hungry.
“Scared?” he asked my reflection.
Yes.
“Good.” He smiled.
I watched my face do something it was never designed to do.
The mouth opened too wide. The eyes didn’t blink right.
The shadow thing underneath pushed against the skin like it was trying to break through.
Then it settled back. The mask went back on.
We got in the car. Kept driving.
I assumed he was going to Maya.
Sarah took her to Georgia. I know that. He knows that.
But we’re not going south. We’re going north.
“You’re confused,” he says to me. Can feel my questions even though I can’t ask them. “You think there’s only one.”
He takes an exit I don’t recognize.
Rural roads. Getting darker.
We pull up to a farmhouse. Old. Well-maintained. Lights on inside.
A woman is standing on the porch. Waiting for us.
She’s maybe sixty. Gray hair pulled back. Calm face. She doesn’t look surprised to see us.
“You’re early,” she says.
“Couldn’t wait any longer.”
She nods. Steps aside.
“She’s upstairs. Been asking about her sister all week.”
Her sister.
—-
I don’t understand.
I don’t understand.
I don’t—
—-
He walks upstairs. Second door on the right. Opens it.
There’s a girl inside.
Maybe six years old. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Small for her age.
She looks up when we enter. She looks exactly like Maya.
Not similar. Exactly.
Same face. Same hands. Same everything.
“Hello,” he says with my voice.
She smiles. That wrong smile. The one I’ve seen on his face. The one I’ve seen on Maya’s face in Sarah’s terrified texts.
“Hi Daddy,” she says. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
—-
I feel him reaching out. Not physically.
Something passing between them. Recognition. Connection.
She’s not empty like Maya. She’s full.
Has been full for years.
The closed door. That’s what they called it.
But closed doesn’t mean empty. Closed means locked.
And she’s been holding something inside her whole life.
Waiting for the key. Waiting for her other half.
—-
“Is it time?” she asks.
“Almost. We have to go get your sister first.”
“Will she be scared?”
“Probably.”
“Will it hurt?”
He kneels down. Takes her hand.
“Not for long. And then you’ll both be something new. Something whole.”
She considers this.
“Okay.”
She walks past him. Down the stairs. Out to the car.
Gets in the back seat.
Buckles herself in.
Six years old and ready to end the world.
—-
He turns to the woman.
“Thank you for keeping her safe.”
“It’s what we do. What we’ve always done.”
He hands her something. An envelope.
“For your family. For the next generation.”
She takes it without looking inside.
“There won’t be a next generation. Not after tonight.”
He smiles.
“No. I suppose there won’t.”
—-
We’re back in the car.
Heading south now.
Georgia.
The motel.
Maya.
In the rearview mirror I can see the other girl.
The twin no one knew existed.
She’s humming to herself. Some tune I don’t recognize. And her eyes meet mine in the mirror.
Not his eyes.
Mine.
The part of me that’s still in here. Still watching.
She sees me.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “You won’t have to watch much longer.”
And she smiles that wrong smile.
And I realize I’m not just trapped in a body driving toward my daughter.
I’m trapped in a body driving toward both of them.
And when they come together—
When the open door meets the closed door—
When all the fragments finally have somewhere to go—
There won’t be anything left.
Not Maya.
Not her sister.
Not me.
Just them.
Finally whole. Finally home.
And somewhere in the back of my own skull, I start to pray that Sarah got them out.
That she figured it out. That she ran.
But I know she didn’t.
I know because he’s smiling.
And he only smiles when he’s certain.