Title: The Sickness
Identical twins, the most startling of births, a moment when two lives are begun, two simultaneous, synchronized struggles.
How would you feel if it at one moment, one instant you turned a street corner and found yourself staring face to face with a mirror image of yourself. How would your family react if this newly discovered "clone," was to return in your place and assume your identity? Would they be able to tell the difference, would they be able to figure out that you no longer existed, and that the enemy lurked amongst them?
Eating their food and breathing their air, living right next to them without any of them knowing. Take a moment to think about it, does this frighten you? Knowing that something like this could happen to you? Knowing that one day, you might not come home but someone who looks and sounds just like you would. How could they tell the difference? Could they tell from the imposter's attitude? Would they really notice the change in a teen, in someone whose moods are even more unpredictable than the wind.
Could they tell such a thing? Could you? The Norwell's couldn't, and it cost them more than just a cold breath on the backs of their neck, or a tingling shiver down their spine. It cost them; well I'll let you see what it cost them.
Austin Norwell walked five times a week to his summer job at the local fast food joint. Every morning he walked the same path and nodded to the same people, the police officer that regulated traffic, the crossing guard that helped small batches of children cross the street, the mailman that zipped by in his mail truck; hat askew the first letters to be delivered that day clenched between curled fingers and the steering wheel.
Austin didn't think those people, whoever they were had ever gotten a straight piece of mail all year. He was seventeen, and did what any other seventeen year old boy would do when the cute girl in the tight short shorts walked by. He stared, it was during his staring that he rounded the corner and bumped into, well, himself. Except it wasn't himself, well to everyone else it was, but to him it wasn't. There was a difference in the eyes. Where as Austin's own eyes were carefree with a slight hint of a semblance of responsibility. His were strict, threaded with the kind of stuff that takes your innocence away and a slight hint of, something that just wasn't quite right.
His shock didn't last long, it couldn't this mirror image didn't let it. The twin grabbed him by the arm and pulled him down into the alley. Nobody noticed the twins vanish, as far as anyone knew Austin, the seventeen year old only child rounded a corner and just never showed up on the other side. But the alley cats, they know, they know how Austin pulled a Houdini and escaped the concrete jungle. They know, because on that day they had an extra special dinner, old fish bones as the appetizer, human meat as the main course, and of course Austin's innards for desert.
Now this new guy, this twin, he knew what he had to do and he was determined to do it right. Grabbing Austin's wallet he checked over his new identity, remembered important dates as a precaution, dressed himself in Austin's cloths, and covered up the evidence as best he could. The smell, not a problem, it was an alley where stenches that make your stomach turn and remind you of that strange mushy stuff nana used to cook for you was what you expected. And that's exactly what Austin was to Steve, trash filled with the strange mushy stuff, something to be disposed of, along with the parents that shipped him halfway across the country.
All under the pretext that he was going to spend time with his aunt and uncle. The truth, Steve thought, the truth is that they shipped me off to an orphanage with a whole new identity. They didn't want me, the extra fingered, supposedly slow learning twin, to taint their precious first born. Well they don't have to worry about him or anyone else anymore. I've watched them for a year; I know all of their secrets. Wiping the blood from his knife onto a newspaper he slipped the weapon into a deep pocket and stepped out of the alley.
Steve behaved just like Austin had, he nodded to the right people, stared at the right girl's, he did everything Austin would do, even down to the pep in his step. When asked why he wasn't at work, he escaped under the pretense of not feeling well and worrying about upcoming finals. The truth was, Steve felt great, he'd never felt better the sky seemed bluer today than it had yesterday in the murky yellow fog, and the air less polluted. The moans and groans of the bums on the ground and in niches were his Mozart, the shuddering stuttering crack addicts his Broadway actors. Yes it was a wonderful day in Steve's world, a day that he believed would only get better.
He arrived at the house half an hour later, just as he had seen dozens of times before. Mom, - or as he liked to think of her Mrs. Norwell- pulled up the kitchen window of the suburban home and the fresh welcoming spicy fragrance of fresh baked apple pie wafted toward him. He walked up the driveway making his face and demeanor look as sick as he could. The door swung open, his mother reached out to him placed a hand on his head and pulled him into the house.
"Oh Austin, honey what's wrong? You look ill, are you okay? Do you want to lie down?" She asked leading him into the living room.
"Yes," he said his voice a perfect match to what Austin would sound like if he was sick.
"Come, let mommy help you up to your room. Do you want me to call in work for you, or have you already talked to them?"
"Call them," he said, a weak sigh slipping out when they reached the top of the stairs and pushed open the bedroom door.
"Here honey go ahead and lie down, and let mommy take good care of you. I'll go get some medicine and call them up okay?" He wondered if it wouldn't be better to kill her then, to pull out the gun he had stolen and decorate the red and black walls with bits and pieces of her brain, hair, skin, and skull. It'd be interesting to see what pattern it makes; he thought, a full blown smile parting his lips when she closed the door. So easy to make people think you're sick, he mused looking around the room.
A room that after taking in made him begin to feel sick, a nasty something that started deep down in his gut and squirmed into the rest of his body. A sick that he knew was living in the bed, in the very house, oozing out of the walls and seeping through the floors. This sickness seeped into him, squirmed about inside him and made his insides burn as everywhere he looked he saw it, and with each inhale of breath he would take it into his lungs and blood stream. It was a sickness that he knew no medicine could cure.
Steps resounded in an ever rising tempo as Mrs. Norwell climbed back up the stairs, the pat of her feet on the soft carpet reached him just as, with a squeak, the door swung open and she stepped in with a spoon and a bottle of green liquid. "Here honey, try this it'll make you feel better in no time." She said, filling the spoon to the brim with the green liquid and leaning over to feed it to him.
He knew the time to strike had come, and he would strike her where it all began for him. His fingers curled around the cold pulsing handle of the knife, the red hot blade begged for a shower, his lips parted to take in the spoon and the blanket slid off of his hand closets to her. Steve's lips closed around the spoon and his hand shot up, the blade was given its shower and it rejoiced as it furrowed itself deep into her womb.
She gasped a gasp of shock and pain and he sprayed the medicine into her face and eyes. She stumbled back, falling to the floor and crying out in pain as she clawed at her searing, bleeding eyes. Steve kicked and nudged her out of the bedroom, blinded and delirious with pain, she could do nothing more than try to escape the assaulting foot, bringing her closer and closer to the steep staircase.
The backs of her hand reached it first, they felt the sudden lack of ground, and what Steve would always remember as the most beautiful look of horrified terror etched itself onto his mother's face. His foot raised, the muscles coiled like a spring, tense and powerful burning to be released. He granted the wish and his foot shot forward, burying itself into the unsuspecting woman's face, smashing her nose and breaking the fingers of a hand that had risen to rub her eyes.
He watched her tumble down the stairs, bouncing against the railing and walls with gleeful crack after crack and sweet thump after thump. She landed on her stomach pushing the blade in deeper; she remained unmoving as blood seeped into the plush yellow living room carpet, a blood red sun in a golden sky.
Father is in the cellar with the neighbor's wife, Steve thought, taking his time descending the steps wanting to drink in every detail of his mother's fresh corpse. Walking onto her, he paused on her back, grinding his foot into the bone with a self satisfied smirk he waited until he heard the distinct crack of a snapping spine.
Content with his work so far, he frowned at the sickness that oozed and dripped onto him from the ceiling above and floor below. Pulling open the cellar door he stepped in and shut it behind him, the stairs descended into a deep abyss of inky blackness where the murky yellow glare of an outdated overhead lamp glowed. There was only a mild case of sickness within the cellar compared to the rest of the house making it easier for him, and others to breathe. Yes there were other's breathing, two to be exact. Their breath came hard and fast but died out on the strong stone walls.
Steve withdrew his gun and slowed his descent; he knew that surprise was key to his success. Low enough he crouched down and took aim, waiting until he had a clear shot of his target. He knew the bullet had gone where he wanted it to when his father screamed out in pain and clenched between his legs, the startled scared neighbor's wife ran from him and toward the stairs where Steve waited.
Catching her by the throat he slammed her against the stone wall streaks of blood squirted out from behind her head. Releasing her body and letting it tumble to the floor he aimed at his writhing sobbing father and placed the last bullet into his skull where it exploded, splashing his brains across the room in a horrific display of abstract art.
With his job done he sat down on the steps and breathed a sigh even as a wracking cough tore through him. The sickness was beginning to take effect and he knew he wouldn't last long; it was a sickness whose only cure was death. A sickness that he knew he would encounter upon entering the house, a sickness he knew would claim his heart. It was the sickness of a house full of love, a place where a bringer of death and hate has no place and would either become the sickness or be consumed by it.
He never was one to conform…
A/N: A challenge to the readers, this story has an alternate meaning to it and I wonder which one of you will be able to figure it out.