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Wednesday, May 11, 2011 3:48 AM

The light from my computer screen blinds me, so when I look at my surroundings the darkness seems to have encroached around me. Shapes become unrecognizable, total strangers that my 19 year old eyes once knew so well. However, I am not alarmed, not anymore.

I've only been back for a little over a week and this world is already no longer a comfortable haven. Is it because I've been away at college? Or perhaps, the environmental terrain at that place was the complete from here? It could be the lack of people, people I once cursed the existence of for their nightly romps and bumps up and down halls that never seem to be silent except for in the dead of noon. And now, I find myself missing it, the sound of...of...of youth. Dare I say more? The sound of those around my age, made me realize just how different I am.

Thinking on that, I re-evaluate myself, I look into the mirror. Aside from my darker (Or is it lighter? I can't tell some times.) twin, the next closest in age is nearly twice that of my own. The next after that is almost triple. The final is only a spit-take away. And yet...always, always, I feel the oldest. One who has their life together and is comfortably pursuing their dream career. Another is having a mid-life crisis, and frankly, I'm getting tired of dealing with the childish bull they're always dishing. (Aren't I supposed to be the rebellious one here? Guess not.) The third is on menopause, yet surprisingly, hasn't driven me to my wits end as much as the previous. Lastly, my twin...I can't quite read what she's thinking anymore, but often times I see her gazing, almost lovingly, at my metal bat, picking it up and doing practice swings, before swiftly returning it as if I won't be able to notice she had it. (The worrisome part being that she's not interested in baseball or softball whatsoever.) Lastly, there is me, the lost one, the responsible one in a crowd of irresponsibility and the irresponsible one when in a situation that everyone else seems to subconsciously understand without needing to be told anything.

My can is empty. Not half full nor half empty. It is completely empty save for a few drops that refuse to spill past the aluminum lip and onto my tongue, which is somewhere between feeling coarse and raspy. This is my second can of soda toda-... No, it is my first of today, as yesterday was another. But as only twelve of these things come in a box, I'm limited to four per and the 'Mid-life' takes the eight. The food is always chicken. (I'm not kidding.) Season it, bread it, grill it, marinade it, shred it, blow it up, crisp it, melt it, bait it, kill it. I don't care anymore, I'm sick of it. Put another plate of it in front of me and I swear, I will eat the rabbit that is constantly digging up my root vegetables. Carrots more often than beets. (And I hate beets.)

Don't touch my tomatoes, I need those for throwing. Ah-ah! Not the green peppers or the onions. I need them for tacos, unless you want me to stuff you with them, you horrid little thing, and serve you up instead for a break in the monotonous pattern of equally disgusting chicken. And I must say, I do look forward to pumpkin corpse that I've... Wait. Something isn't right here. Oh, I know, I've gotten off track again. Sorry.

Everyone is sleeping, there is only me...and my darker twin. She...or is it 'he' today? I never know when I'll wake up and find myself the other. It's not like we're even related, but the mind is strange like that, always changing it's mind before you can change your own. One moment you're wearing boxers and sitting through another session of 70s-80s sitcoms... Next thing you know, you're suffering from a sweat-and-heat-induced pantie-wedgie fighting through an hour-long battle with a Hellwyrm in the mixed-feelings-inducer Final Fantasy XII. And don't bother asking me details as I can't explain the phenomenon no more than my twin can and she...he... No. Wait. (And yes, I must bother to ask every time I'm unsure for she possesses Lack Of Awareness a.k.a. LOA. Also yes, it bothers me much more than it should bother her.) Definitely she so I'm still the 'he'. Again I am off track. Focus. Just for a little longer. I am not yet tired nor am I lacking in sleep.

4:23 AM

My darker twin, she is the only one other than myself who sits in this darkness, kept at bay only by the illumination of my laptop's screen. I can't see her too well since I sit before it and she sits behind it. She's staring into the mirror again. I worry, because I believe in It as much as she. If one stares into the mirror while engulfed in the dark of solitude and night, if your reflection looks back at you, then you've been pulled into the next Realm. I don't want her to leave me here, alone. If she must disappear off to some strange place Beyond the Looking Glass (and I am in no way referring to Alice, that crazy little psychopath ) I want her to take me along. It's not because I'll get lonely without her...I don't want to be eaten. At night, just beyond the glow of this computer, there is a...a presence. It wants to devour me, and I fear it's beyond my control.

4:28 AM

We are human. Yes? Or at least...a humanoid. A head: two eyes, two ears, a mouth, a nose, two nostrils. An abdomen: two arms, a chest, two shoulders, a neck (does that count here?). A torso: two legs, a butt, and other things I rather not technically label. These make up your average living body of a two legged creature, animal, or humanoid. And then there are the organs that most two and four-legged creatures posses. Skin. Two lungs. Two kidneys. Small intestine. Large intestine. Liver. Gallbladder. Bladder. (What's the difference between those two? One of them isn't an official organ, is it? I'm not that medical...) Pancreas. Stomach. So this is what makes up bodies?

What do you mean I'm missing one? No I'm not. I listed everything I have that everyone else has. If it's missing, it's because I don't possess it.

You heard me right.

I don't have one of those.

Yes. Don't worry. I will explain.

I will explain...how it is that I don't have one of those.

In the next chapter.

---

4:37 AM

If I waited that long, I would forget. I'll just say it now. I don't have a heart. There is no one to blame. And don't freak out like that. See how calm my darker twin is? Ah, then again, she doesn't have one either. That's right. We're not connected like that. It's not impossible to not have a heart. It's not hard at all to understand. Physically, it is there, it beats, it beats, it stutters, it breaths, it is there. But it is incomplete. A third of it is missing.

The heart is made of three parts. Yes it is. Forget what the doctor said. What I'm saying makes sense, too. The heart is made of three, and without all of them you can't begin to live, and thus, you might as well admit you don't have it. The first part of the heart is the physical third. It forms in your mother's womb and allows your physical, your solid form to exist. The second third is your soul .Without it you can not be judged, you can not wield spiritual powers, without it you can never claim a religion. The final third is what both my my darker twin and I are missing, the most important part of all: your emotional heart. It is shaped and created through life experiences. Family, social status, lineage, school, neighborhood, environment, friends, and interaction with other living beings. Any which that can have an impact on how you grow and such is accumulated here. Children express them with an almost volatile behavior. Grade school brats learn to wield it. Tweens mold it into their insecurities, and teenagers wield it with a venomous nature that could kill. (And does every day according to the global obituaries... I apologize if that is offensive, but can you really say that I am wrong?)

My darker twin and were never given the chance to shape ours. We spread ourselves too thin at an age where such a thing should have been impossible. But it happened. We tried to excel to far and ended up ostracized and rejected by our environment. Our second and third learned languages were called curses and hexes and why the hell did those adults listen to them and believe those stupid idiotic fools. We were avoided and not allowed in. Not even the more unpopular groups would have us. So it was just us two. A pair of twins and the phantom that became our emotional hearts.

In manga, all the exciting stuff happens in high school. Love. Adventure. Friendship. Career interests. Shaping one's identity. We were denied that train. And it's not like we didn't try to buy our tickets, we were not lacking in fares at the time. The machine took our wares and spit empty promises into our faces. We had the requirements from the moment we could talk and toddle about. But somehow, without us knowing it, they all slipped away without us knowing.

Positive feelings that sprout and appear during times of joy, we no longer have them, only emulating what we've seen on other's faces and from what we once had in the past. We smile to the point where it's perfect, but they are empty and fake. Everyone is so self-absorbed and obsessed with only good times that no one bothers to notice the suffering pair whose walls have grown too strong.
We don't cry in front of others. Never, not even in times of true sadness. What is sadness? Do we know it? We most certainly should, and yet, when asked to recall it...we can only smile and think about the things we want to do that no human ever should.

Are we broken? Who broke us? Society? God?

If someone we know is sad, we're more inclined to say 'suck it up' or 'quit being such a [insert what you like here for I'm sure we've said it all in our minds before]'. But we know that others will not like this (how do we know if we never said it/) and choose to say nothing and leave most of the time.

It's not fair. Why do others get to cry over the simplest things, and then we can only cry when emulating a fictional character whose life we wish we had no matter how tragic because we crave to feel what we no longer remember to feel? Why is it that there are those who find cheer in the simple matters of life when we feel like killing ourselves every time we give a 'perfect' smile to a scenario we don't find happy or joyful in the least?

5:00 AM

{I've wandered into the darkness of our house (I refuse to call it home anymore) in order to do a task upon which I was asked to do some time ago. But when I attempted to do so shortly before starting this whole thing, it was too hot still for my hands to touch. Definitely not good for the refrigerator.}

5:04 AM

I did the task. It was warm to touch but I didn't look inside. I know it is chicken and I hate it hate it hate it so much I'd rather snort squash (something I'm highly allergic to). Why must 'Menopause' keep making dishes that I absolutely hate? What? Because chicken is Mid-Life's favorite? I don't give a- Look. I understand that and all, but there is a reason my fat genes haven't kicked in yet and it has a LOT to do with the fact I hate chicken and that you're practically starving me to death when you consistently make it week after week. I dislike the gumbo only because you like to put okra (another thing I despise) in because Mid-Life likes it. The chili is fine, but Mid-Life is always eating the tortilla chips as if they're potato chips and... Stop doing that! It pisses me off! If you want to eat salty chips, go buy yourself some Lays!!!! If tortillas were meant for direct consumption, then it should be perfectly reasonable for all Doritos to taste good with sour cream and onion dip. (Which they DON'T!!!) Is that so much to ask for!? You devour 80% of everything in this place and that includes the foodstuffs that were bought specifically to satisfy me and keep me from dying of starvation since I hate what you like and yet you persist in eating what is mine anyway even thought most of everything else is for you. WHY MUST YOU TORTURE ME!?!?

5:15 AM

I got off track again. What was I... Emotions. Yes. Anger. We can definitely feel it. Anger...and madness. They're intertwined with each other as much as my twin and myself are. Ever since we were refused in forging our identities during our excel saga (and I'm not making a pun there), we have been forced to learn how to bottle up our anger, bite our tongue, and expel it through our eyes. The last time we got angry we dyed everything a lovely red. The only way it could have been better if we had someone who bled our favorite blue. Blue is the best color it is and lets us feel secure. Mostly everything in both our rooms are blue with a dash of earthen tones since we were born during harvest season.

Either way, we were rapidly losing our ability to feel. And even if we asked for help, who could help us? If this were a manga, a new and mysterious character would appear and drag us off into either an adventure of love or danger that would reawaken within ourselves what was lost. But this never happened. the tenth year was spent focusing on everyone else and we stood in the background. The 11th year revolved around strange changes, all so subtle that we didn't notice a thing because we were in the background. (Our smiles and eyes were calling for help, hoping that someone who could help us would see and save us before it was too late. The final year and the bomb dropped. Suddenly, as if an earthquake created a great chasm, we separated from everyone else completely. Those whom we thought were friends started to part from us without another word. Games and routine conversations that were once were a part of we no longer had a place at. Two newcomers took it from us and worser yet...because they were all the same and we one up we felt the difference even more. If only someone told us that that was the case, everything might have been easier to accept. We would have moved on. But no one did and thus we couldn't. We felt abandoned, tossed away. Our calling was now cries of desperation and our perfect smiles became perfect enough to fool ourselves. (Savin' Me comes to mind as background noise, but I hate the song it is so depressing so no one dare play it.)

5:29 AM

I swiftly turn my head to a nonexistent noise to my left. My eyes widen in a minute scare as my eyes quickly adjust to the acute darkness that has suddenly accumulated next to me. I just did a major renovation job on my room. No longer did I wish to see the past, so I boxed up everything K-12 and filed it away in the attic. I put it all away except for one thing: (And don't you dare laugh at me for this. It's not funny, it's serious. This is a problem for me.) my memories. They take on the form of various stuffed animals I received over the years. Starting from the one I first received as a toddler and ending with last Valentine's Day (not this current year but the prior). Strange. Even though it was supposed to be a promise gift from one male to another, I could not throw it away. Despite how much I despised him for his stalker-like, over-friendly presence that persisted that final year of twelfth, he made an impart upon me that my darker twin feared, yes, feared. Now that I think back on it, that WAS my high school love adventure with a DON. (And I don't mean that mafia-wise.) But don't get me started, for this isn't about that guy just yet. Though, I will say, he was the first and last person to have celebrated MY birthday without calling it OUR (my twin and I). He's gone now, back to college out of the country. (Do I wonder if we'll meet again? Who am I kidding? I'm a plain Joe in case you haven't noticed.)

5: 38 AM

I was startled just now. When did she move? And why there? I didn't here a thing. I may have ear buds in my ear, but there is no music playing, blaring away into my ears like normal. Everyone is asleep so the echoes are not there to stir my senses and scramble me mad. And so, she just grabbed a chair of her own and sat like Ryuuzaki within right in front (or in back) of my computer. It wasn't until I looked up to peer over the top of my laptop did I take notice of her so, so dark eyes staring at... Was it at me or through me or beyond me? She blinked when I looked up, eyes equally widening. This exchange passed for a few seconds, then I looked back down at my computer screen and she... She's still there, but now it seems she is paying attention to me. More so to my fingers as they 'dance' across the keyboard. I don't type that fast, just faster than others since it seems that I am able to convey my nonexistent emotions through the the computer better than I ever could in real life. Guess that would make me the type to text an an answer to my life partner's verbal questions whenever asked. (Not romantic at all, but then again, I'm not a romantic to begin with.)

I look at her again and once again proceed to describe her in color, the features of my darker twin that I know from existing alongside her for so long. I start with her hair. She hates it, for starters. It looks black, but it is not. It is so brown, such a dark brown, it looks black. She wishes it were read, or blue-black like certain Asians. She hates her natural hair...she prefers to hide it under a hat. But I like it. Whatever you do to it, her hair remembers it and molds into it after a few ours on its own. And even when it's dry, it feels comforting to touch. But don't get me wrong, I do not perceive her in the twisted sort at all. I am an artist, and her brother, and her twin. She? The best way to describe is an old dog who can enjoy, no more, the pleasures of life. When I pat her head, she looks up at me just as a dog would look up at you from such an action. To pat her head like that...it calms her, reminds her that I'm here. Even this current moment, I reach one hand out to remind her that I'm still awake and typing at my computer. She looks at me and stares again. She says nothing and moves not an inch. She looks so sad. Like an abandoned pet. But...I guess that makes two of us.

Her eyes are just like her hair...and more. Her eyes, they scare me like when I peer-

5:54 AM

That was a bit disturbing. Both of us reacted to it at the same time. For the longest time, we had a second fan blowing a cross-wind to keep the air in our room circulating. But then, the air turned stale and hot, as if we were breathing air from an ashen city birthed from a volcano. We looked at the mirror and nothing was there. I went into the hall and found the air crisp and cool. Why is it that only my room is so hot no matter the weather? Is this room... No, I will not think on it.

Her head is starting to droop. Her eyes are becoming heavy. Those terrifying eyes of hers. Why are they scary? Because they look exactly like mine. From the center, it is black as the void of a black hole. Everything seems to disappear into it. Outside that is the colored iris...such a deep and dark brown, but not quite as dark as the black center. Then, the outer ring of the iris, about an eighth of a inch wide, there is a navy and royal blue ring. It's weird to me though, because... If you start from the center out and then gaze back at the center...I feel as if I can see into her soul. When I look into them, when I look into what I believe is her soul...I see nothing.

6:01 AM

I am finally getting tired. This is the third time I've had to rub and massage my cranium. Sis is going to... No point in telling her to go to her room. She knows me too well. She won't budge until I've gone to bed myself. We share our sleepless nights together so that we can wait on the mirror. Usually, I or she play games while we wait, on our PS2. Play games, that is.

I've prolonged this long enough. My bed is calling me, and she most definitely needs to get to hers. I just hope I don't have to carry her this time. Mind over matter and all that, but when she's unconscious, that feather which she is turns into a ton. She's not heavy at all, it's mind over matter, controlling your weight through your own mental responses. ...Yeah. I'm gonna have to carry her. Again.

Your know who I am so no sappy farewells. and no, I am not smiling right now. From start to end, I've had a casual frown upon my face from...everything. It's time that I nod off.

6:19 AM

Good night. Oyasumi. Bon nuit.