“I’m sorry sir. Your son is mute. It seems the shock of losing his mother so violently is the cause.” The doctor announced.

 “Will he ever speak again?” The man asked, his face marred with disgust.

 “I can’t say for certain because each case is different but we’re hopeful.” The doctor replied and excused himself from the room.

How ironic. You threw away one child for being born mute and now you’re stuck with two. It’s not his fault though, he doesn’t know there’s two of us. Make no mistake, he will.

“Why does blood always shadow his footsteps? Was it nature or nurture?”

That was the question my parents asked the therapist they dragged me to at the age of seven when the family dog went to ‘dog heaven and it wasn’t my fault.’  It took me a while, but I know the answer; it’s both. I figured it out at the age of thirteen when my mother passed away-through no fault of my own, honest. My mother ‘was emotionally disturbed and still suffering from postpartum depression’ the new therapist my father dragged me tried to explain to me. I didn’t need the explanation. I know how she died and why.  I knew what sickness ailed her and it wasn’t that; it was arrogance. She thought that I would never find out, they both did but the joke’s on them.

“You look an awful lot like me.” It was met with frightened eyes and trembling arms.

That was how I was first introduced to my twin brother. I thought I was an only child until the day I turned six. He had been living in our family basement since the day he was born as punishment for a sinless crime. He was born mute. We bonded over our mutual hatred for our parents as good siblings should. We switched places without our parents noticing as identical twins did.

 He was my shadow and I was his; he became me and I him. We developed our own system of communication, a schedule and a routine. It was perfect, then it wasn’t. They ruined it. They touched what wasn’t theirs. The morning of my thirteenth birthday, my parents entered the basement as I was waiting to switch back with my brother and I finally understood. I finally understood why he refused to switch on our birthday and we couldn’t meet until days later.

I wanted him to enjoy a birthday party in the same way I had for the last twelve years and he wasn’t going to do it willingly, so I had no choice. As an early birthday present, I gave him a cookie and some milk laced with melatonin and that was the end of that. He slept right through the night and way into the morning. He found me later in the day bleeding and broken but as I watched his frail trembling form and wet face I knew what I had to be done.

‘I’m sorry,’ He signed. It wasn’t his fault. It was mine. I knew something wasn’t right, but I was too happy with our current situation to look into it. I will always be grateful to the therapist for those sleeping pills because without it, I would have never known the answer to her question. My bloody footsteps were a result of nature and nurture. She had to go. They all did.

I wanted to tell him how much I loved him, but I was in too much pain to stop him. The urge to interrupt him before he finished was overwhelming. I didn’t have to however because my brother signed it as he came and sat beside me. I signed back a shaky ‘I love you too’ as his back shook and he continued to cry. 1 week after my thirteenth birthday, on a family trip my mother in a shocked daze stumbled - with a little help from me, into the path of an incoming train and died.

“I liked the present you gave me in the basement. I’ll cherish it.”

That was the last day I used my voice; sacrifices had to be made for our revenge.