Flash
I've always wondered if it's true what they say: that when you see yourself about to die, you see your life flash before your eyes. I suppose that now is as good a time as any to test the theory. I'm in an empty parking garage. My eyes are staring down the barrel of a gun. It was obvious from the start that one of us would die today.
I let tears come to my eyes as the mental slideshow begins in front of my eyes.
How did it come to this?
----------
"Hey, daddy's in the news again."
I'm four years old, and I'm sitting in front of the TV with my entire immediate family -- excluding, of course, my father. He's never home.
On the television is footage of him opening his first chain outside of the United States, but at the time, I am much too young to understand such matters. All I know is that my father is on the television, and I know that I should be proud of him.
"That's right, Cecilia. Your daddy is on TV," my mother says in her usual, softer tone that she only reserved for children. She turns to face me, though I am not Cecilia. Cecilia is sitting beside me, but no one can ever tell us apart, not even our own mother. This is rather unfortunate, as she has the obsession - as most mothers of identical twins do - of dressing us identically.
"I'm Cecilia!" my sister declares with a pouty face. She is always the one absolutely insisting that we were separate entities, but I am fine with being confused for her. We're twins, it's natural that such a thing would occur, right? It's what makes us stand out.
"Oh, I'm sorry sweetie," our mother says, though anyone who knows her better than we do would recognize the nonchalance evident in her tone. But at this point in our lives, an adult can do no wrong, and if we believe otherwise, we must be mistaken.
"I wanna be on TV one day," comes the complaint of our only older brother, Mark. He is seven at the time, and filled with more hopes and dreams than one man could ever hope to accomplish within a lifetime.
Our mother offers him a genuine smile. "I'm sure you will one day, honey," she says, ruffling his mousy brown hair with her hand. He pretends not to like it since, even though he is still privately tutored, he is beginning to gather that having a doting mother is supposed to be embarrassing.
----------
"Have fun at school today."
I am eleven, and it is my first day of school. For many other kids, it is also the first day, but not the first day of their school career.
Cecilia and I are introduced into the school system, finally, once we hit sixth grade. After being tutored and homeschooled for the first few years of my life, it comes as something as a shock. I have never been around so many children before.
We both file into homeroom, which I note that we share, due to our last names. I am grateful. We sit down next to each other, and the talk begins.
"Oh, are you two twins?"
"That's so weird. You look identical!"
"How can we tell you apart?"
"Well," Cecilia starts, a clever smile forming on her lips. "My sister usually keeps her hair longer than mine by just a little bit."
A lie. No one can tell us apart. I want to stand up and declare this to everybody in the room, but I have heard how delicate social standings were. I don't want to pull Cecilia down with me, which is inevitable.
She immediately charms the class, which is fine with me. Surely, I think, that attention for her will eventually spill over to me. It always does. We do everything together. We share food, toys, clothes. We will then, by extension, have to share friends. That is how being a twin worked.
The homeroom teacher begins talking, but is ignored by the class as a whole. We are far more interesting. Still, I stay attent. He begins calling out names of students, and they follow by saying "here." I take pride in my figuring this trend out so quickly, but Cecilia continues to talk to our newfound friends. She hasn't noticed
"Dawlin, Cecilia." Finally, he reaches her name on the list. But of course she doesn't hear him over her own voice. He tries again. "Dawlin, Cecilia," he calls, a bit louder this time. I don't want to get my sister in trouble.
"Here," I call. He nods and marks her there, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the same person has said "here" twice in a row.
Even though I have no classes with her for the rest of the day, and though I am unable to contribute much to our collective popularity, I take pride in knowing that I had saved her from getting in trouble.
We were practically interchangeable.
----------
"Come on, mom. You gotta let me go to the party tonight. Everybody's gonna be there!"
I am fifteen, and it is about to be our first big party. Cecilia is, of course, the one to ask our mother to go. She's the better speaker, the better convincer. That's how it works with us. I give us the smarts, she gives us the social skills.
Our mother, who looks about as bored and disinterested as she always has, finally lets her shoulders sag in defeat. "OK, you can go," she says, sounding more tired than irritated. "But you have to bring your sister along with you?"
I ignore the irritated glance that flashes across Cecilia's face at that point. It's obviously towards our mother - not me. There was never any question that I would be going with her.
We do everything together.
Upon arriving at the party, I am immediately dazed. The music is loud and, among the many people there, most of them are taller and older than me. I notice with a shock that there is, in fact, alcohol at the party, despite no one else being over twenty-one. Where are the parents?
I lose Cecilia quickly, and spend the rest of the party trying to find her. Unfortunately, the people there are very ineffective at aiding me in my search, as in their intoxicated frame of mind, they cannot keep the two of us straight. While I usually accept this as an acceptable offense, I do find myself angry that they can't even keep us apart when we're wearing different outfits.
"Are you sure you haven't seen Cecilia?" I ask a brute-ish senior who has just a bit too much facial hair for somebody his age. "She looks exactly like me, only she's wearing red instead of blue." The senior's eyes attempt to focus on me.
"Uh... the rich girl?" he starts, looking as if he's about to fall over. I roll my eyes - this isn't the first time I've heard this comment directed towards us. We aren't rich. Mark is the one slated to inherit the company and, thus, the money. Why doesn't anybody understand that?
I am about to give this line of questioning up before he finishes with, "Check outside. I think she's with a guy out there."
Of course! Outside! I mentally curse myself for not thinking of it sooner. I ignore the senior's comment about the guy - it's certainly not in the way he intended it. I would know if Cecilia had a boyfriend. Half of the people at the party are boys - there's simply a fifty percent chance that she would end up with one.
I wade my way through the crowd - is that cigarette smoke? - and eventually find myself outside. It's actually a rather nice night outside, but there aren't many people out here. Mostly couples, I note.
It doesn't take me long to spot the person I'm looking for, and it takes me even less time to find that the senior inside had been right. She was with a boy. I didn't even recognize him from school - why hadn't she told me about him?
I stare at them in sick fascination for a time - they don't notice me. They don't have the attention span to notice or care if they're being watched. I feel my stomach churn, and I can't place why.
As it turns out, our first party is my last party, and it is certainly the last time that I consider Cecilia and I a team. It might be petty, I think. It might be stupid.
But the stupidest thing is how long it took for me to realize the truth.
Eventually I walk away and sit on the curb outside until our brother comes by to pick us up.
--------
"Hey, you gonna study for that final? Want to help me?"
I roll my eyes. "Maybe if you learnt some independence, you wouldn't need me helping you."
I am nineteen, and I am a freshman in college about to take on my first finals. I already seem to be pegged as the genius, somehow, which is ridiculous. We all got past the same application process. Shouldn't we all be at the same intelligence level? It continues to baffle me.
I am on my way back to my dorm for another night spent studying and writing papers instead of partying and getting drunk. I think to how my sister must be doing right now - surely she's not studying for her calculus final right now. She doesn't even have the credentials to be taking finals.
I smile to myself, adding a mental pat on the back. She always thought she was better than me, and yet who here was the one excelling?
However, before I can continue this pleasing train of thought, my phone rings. I pick it up, puzzled as to who could be calling. Hardly anyone knows my number, and those who do rarely use it. I've blocked the sales calls, so who...
"Mark is dead."
I stop in my tracks. It's my mother's voice - I know that much. But it must be a joke. Mark's getting back from his military duty today. If he was going to die, he would have done it while he was still overseas - not now. It's impossible.
"What?" I say back, honestly too stunned to come up with a more meaningful response.
"Mark is dead. His plane crashed over the Atlantic. There were no survivors." My mother's tone of voice tells me she's serious. My heart stops dead in my chest.
Mark? Dead? It's impossible.
Impossibleimpossibleimpossible.
"What's Dad going to do about the company? Mark can't inherit it if he's..." I find it sick that this is the first concern that leaps to mind, but I can't help myself. Somehow, I feel, I can only come to terms with his death if I know the preparations being made for it.
"Your father is going to split it up evenly between you and your sister, dear."
I flinch at hearing Cecilia mentioned. I'm sharing the company with her now? The thought nearly makes me sick.
"When is the funeral?" I choke out.
"It's in four days. Don't worry about funds, we'll pay for your ticket," she assures me.
"Right." I realize I'm standing in the middle of campus, frozen to my spot. I can hardly breathe.
My mother sniffs on the other end. "I'm so sorry about this, but I need to hang up. Some more of his friends from the military are here now. But feel free to call me back later, Cecilia."
She hangs up, but it doesn't matter, because I've already dropped the phone.
-----
"I am sorry for your loss."
I am still nineteen, and I am at my brother's funeral. I have heard that same phrase about fifty times now.
I am sitting next to my sister, which makes me fidget more than I feel comfortable. Somehow, we've managed to pick the same dress, the same hairstyle. We look like a pair of dolls once again. I stare at her, trying to pick out anything that sets us apart.
Somewhere, in the back of my head, I feel some part of me hoping that we're back to being clones of one another. I shove this part down, and the list begins.
She seems to be ten pounds lighter than me - she might be bulimic.
During the ceremony, she cries, and I do not.
After the ceremony, she is looking at the guys for a potential date, and I am not.
During dinner, she eats the tomatoes in her salad, and I do not.
Her plane leaves at 9:00 AM, mine leaves twelve hours later.
We attempt to catch up during dinner, and I realize that we have grown to be even more different than before. She's gone to some party school in Nevada, which I already knew. She's apparently still undecided on her major - why go to college if you're just going to waste time dabbling here and there? I proudly tell her that I'm already set on the digital media track, but she seems far less impressed than she should be.
She has also added gambling to her vices, as it turns out.
On the plane ride home, I marvel on how my father can possibly allow her to take the same amount of the company as me when it is clear that I am the more capable twin.
------
"So I'm thinking that red would go much better with this logo than blue."
I am twenty-five, and I am employed in an advertising agency as a graphic designer. It's really a temporary engagement - my father is sick, and I predict that I will inherit my half of the company any day now. Still, I really do consider myself a valued asset to the company, considering the competency of some of my co-workers.
"No, the blue is definitely better. The contrast brings out the vibrancy of the company more, see? They wanted a younger image, so you've got to go with contrast." I say this as if it's the most obvious thing in the world which, really, it should be.
My coworker backs off and tries to shrug it off, but they obviously seem to be reeling from my straightforward logic. It's typical. I try to imagine how much more efficiently things around here would run if everyone would just think one in a while.
My thoughts are interrupted, however, by a phone call. I know what the subject matter is before I even pick up the phone.
"Yes?" I ask.
"It's your father." It's my mother, of course. She sounds devastated - it's all too obvious what has happened. I realize I need to inform my boss I'll be quitting soon - she'll probably be sorry to see me go.
"I understand," I answer solemnly, doing my best not to answer "It's about time." I can't say I cared much for my father. He was never really around.
For as long as I can remember, it's just been me and Cecilia. Then, it was just me.
The only thing he's ever really done for me is to further my career.
-----
"You know, it's the first time I've ever been to this office," Cecilia says. I try not to look at her, but it's inevitable. It's clear we're on different tracks in life. The clothes she's wearing are old - I recognize them, and I haven't seen her in years - but they are seemingly the nicest thing she could afford wear to the reading of the will. I remember that she still lives near Las Vegas - gambling hasn't done her well.
I wonder vaguely how much debt she's amassed over the years. She must be looking forward to the money we're about to inherit.
I don't convey these thoughts, however, and simply agree with her statement. We walk inside the building, and I do my best to appear solemn instead of excited. Today is the day my life changes. How could I not be excited? However, just as we're about to board the elevator, Cecilia stops and swears.
"Oh, I forgot something in my car," she tells me. "Here, you go on without me. Oh, do you mind taking my purse? It's heavy, I don't want to lug it all the way back to the car."
I want to say no. I want to tell her that her days of pushing me around and using me are over, but I resist. Now is not the time to tell her this. So, wordlessly, I take the purse and walk into the elevator.
My father's office - where the will is being read - is on the top floor of a 65-floor-tall building. I'm in the elevator alone. It's a long ride.
Almost unconsciously, I begin to dig through Cecilia's purse. We're twins, after all - what does she have to hide? Most of the items are fairly basic. Make-up, an (empty) wallet, what seems to be some hand sanitizer. Nothing that really tells me about her life in Vegas.
However, when I reach the bottom of the purse, my heart stops, and I feel much as I did when I heard news of Mark's death. My fingertips brush up against something metal and cold. I glance up. I still have twenty floors to go, so I pull the mysterious object out.
A gun.
I stare at the weapon for a while before quickly stuffing it back in before the doors open. Still, even without the weapon in front of me, I can see the image of it burned into my retinas. Why would Cecilia have a gun?
My mind whirrs, and quickly comes up with a solution. She's very far into debt. Money is being handed around in the reading of the will. As a child of the deceased, she could end up with some money with the bullet shot in the right direction.
And who could she benefit from more than me?
I sit down at the table, and a few minutes later, Cecilia sits next to me, giving what seemed to be a forced smile. I told myself to remain calm.
The reading goes as expected. My father had few friends, so he left everything to either us or our mother, and then some assorted objects to old college friends, none of whom I recognize. Both Cecilia and I are asked to remain afterwards - some specific instructions for running the business. We oblige, and, much to my dismay, everyone else leaves the building.
That means when we leave, I will be alone with Cecilia.
And that means that she will kill me.
I panic, but manage to conceal it during our briefing. I miss most of the information, but this seems to be a moot point. After all, my sister is going to kill me. What use do I have for it?
However, as we walk out of the room, and no doubt to my death, a miraculous thing happens.
"Hey, I need to use the bathroom. Could you hold my purse for me again? I don't like setting it on the floor." This time, I graciously take the purse from her and, the second the door closes, I dig through her purse, pull out the gun, and stuff it into the inside pocket of my coat.
I let out a sigh of relief.
She takes back her purse minutes later, and suspects nothing is missing. We go down the elevator together, and she suspects nothing is missing. We walk into the now-empty parking garage, and she suspects nothing is missing.
I mentally pat myself on the back. I have thwarted my sister at her own game! What luck that we should be born with similar minds!
I don't even realize how similar we really are until I am already holding the gun to the back of her head. She turns, and her eyes widen.
"What..." she starts, and I can see the fear in her eyes - in my eyes. "How did you..."
"Did you think I wouldn't find out?" I say. She tries to run, but I trip her, and she falls to the concrete. She scrapes her arm, but not that it matters. She won't feel it for long. She backs up to one of the pillars, and it is now that I remember when I last saw the outfit. I gave it to her as a subtle hint for her to be more professional. It used to be mine.
I laugh, despite myself.
"Find out what?" she demands - or maybe it's me asking. I'm not sure anymore. My face, my clothes. How is anyone expected to tell us apart? Even I'm not sure which of us is which anymore!
"Find out that you're trying to take this all for yourself!" one of us says. "But now the tables are turned, aren't they?"
One of us laughs again.
"That was for self-defense."
"Well a load of good it does you now."
I'm staring down the barrel of a gun that I'm holding. I'm crying and laughing at the same time. But we can't help it. We're back to how things should be. We're two parts of a whole as we always have been and have always meant to be.
But one of us broke the whole. It doesn't matter who any more.
It's up to one of us to finish the job.
We're sure that the obituary will read for Cecilia Dawlin. She's the social one. She's the nice one. She's the one that the world cares about. Yes.
But how will they ever know for sure?
BANG.
