I always loved my twin sister Amy. We were the perfect cliché of identical twins doing everything together, finishing each other’s sentences and playing pranks on people. We had a happy childhood and, for good few years, everything went fine.
It was only in the end of our adolescence that it became clear we weren’t going to be two peas in a pod forever. Amy started to hang out with people I didn’t like and became troublesome for our parents. We grew apart; I was in school clubs and dating, she was skipping classes doing God knows what. At only 17 she always smelled of booze and looked tired and stoned. Sometimes the police would bring her home for trespassing or shoplifting.
By then, I realized that she didn’t have a bright future ahead, but I still loved her with all my heart.
The years went by. I went to college, got married and had a somewhat simple and boring, but stable life. Amy was barely able to graduate high school and got by all this time out of our parents’ pity.
She was on and off rehab, on and off temporary jobs, on and off with dangerous looking boyfriends. We didn’t know what to do about her anymore. I tried so hard to be supportive, but I had my own life to take care of. She always found a way back to her addictions.
One day, Amy simply disappeared. She vanished. It was painful and stressful for our family, but we easily accepted that some violent drug dealer got her, and maybe it was for the best to die young instead of keep suffering for long.
I started to get anxious. I had constant nightmares of being stalked, strangled or locked up forever. I felt observed at home. My husband and parents told me I was being paranoid. I was under too much tension. Maybe I should spend a few days on a mental ward.
I’ve been fighting my whole life to avoid falling into the craziness that runs in the family. Not now, I thought. I’m strong. I can handle this alone.
So I agreed with going to therapy and nothing more.
After a few weeks missing, Amy was back. She simply showed up at my house like she was never gone.
She looked healthier than ever and sane, while I looked like a mess, emaciated from worrying too much, and with huge dark circles under my eyes from avoiding sleep because I was too terrified of the nightmares.
“I’ve been stalking you, Alice. I want to start over, but I can’t do that under my own skin. So I need yours”.
In that moment, Amy was more Alice than me. It was astounding. During the few weeks she disappeared, she’s been watching me all the time. I don’t know how. But she had perfectly mimicked my whole demeanor, my usual haircut, my signature. She was able to convince everyone that I was her.
So I was put in a mental asylum for two years.
For 730 entire days, I planned my revenge. I was cautious. I didn’t want to actually become crazy. The medication was so strong. Sometimes I was knocked out for days straight.
But I had a purpose. I used to love my sister, but she ruined her life, then stole mine. So I hated her and she had to pay. She had to pay dearly.
Two years Amy slept with my husband like she was me. Two years she smiled and cackled when she deserved to be miserable. Two years she had our parents’ love all for herself, and they pitied me together.
So I killed her. I strangled my own sister with my bare hands, buried the body in the backyard and made a garden above her corpse.
I took my place back. I took my life back. The fools don’t notice a thing. Nobody knows. They think Amy is gone for good with some outlaws. She is, somehow. It’s all their fault.
Am I going crazy like her? Am I losing it? I’ll tell you a secret.
Now whenever I look at the mirror I see my reflection laughing at me.
***
The above was extracted from the diary of Amy Marshall, a patient suffering from delusions and extreme depersonalization. Amy was never released from our mental ward in the last 5 years, and she screams in panic every time her sister Alice Marshall visits her.
--
Credits
Comments