Stories told on short stories: Ripped
So, I finally finally finally finished my inrevelations assignment after a redux of my original story. I will probably destroy the other one because no one would want to look at that thing. Anyway, below is posted my story and do you think I should lock it so that no one can steal it? It's unlikely but just in case. Opinions? For now, it's open for all thy viewing pleasure. Enjoy!
RIPPED
People always tell you that you are special, that you are unique. That no one has quite the same laugh, smile, eye color or taste in pizza. No one else can be you and you can be no one else. No one has the exact same, right down to the last left sided nucleotide of your DNA.
You are you and you either are yourself or you fade away into the shadow of someone else.
But no one else knew Lia and me.
We were the same. More than twins, more like a soul split into half, hanging together by a thread or shred or whatever you call tiny pieces of soul stuck together.
I just never realized that Lia only ever stuck around because I had the body.
***
Tia, age 7
‘Hey, Lia, how long do you think Ma’s going to ignore you?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know, Tia but I know it ain’t gonna be any time soon.’
‘Yeah, but you can’t keep missing school like this. Ma always says we need to study hard if we want to get somewhere in life.’
‘Don’t you worry about me,’ Lia said. ‘I’ll get there sometime soon, Tia. You just enjoy yourself now.’ Lia had this funny look on her face when she said this. Kind of dissatisfaction and patience mashed up. I would call it ‘patisfaction’.
‘Okay,’ I told her. ‘How did you like Ma’s apple pie? I hope I got enough for you. Ma looked at me funny when I told her you wanted a slice.’
Lia was quiet for a bit so I just rolled around on the ground. I stared up at the sun and I wondered if Lia was more special than me. I didn’t sparkle around the edges like Lia did - I wasn’t thin and slender like her and I didn’t even twinkle. I had decided that in this world, God made different people - people who shone and sparkled like Lia and people who didn’t, like me.
It was funny how no one ever paid any attention to Lia. She was so pretty.
‘Lia?’
‘I liked it just fine, Tia,’ she snapped. ‘It was great and shame on you for not finishing your slice.’
‘I’m sorry - I just don’t like apple pie.’
‘Well, you should enjoy it while it lasts!’ she snapped. Her eyes were angry and I felt cold. She turned away and looked at something else.
I shrugged and tugged my bag to my chest. The sounds of my books banging against each other was loud to my ears and Lia’s presence suddenly made my hair stand on end. A cold wind blew right through and I turned to Lia.
She was looking towards the house, about a hundred meters away. I always used to say that it looked like Dorothy’s house and we would all be swept away by a huge twister and find a world different from ours. Lia would tell me I was dreaming things too big to be real but I knew better.
There was an Oz out there somewhere.
I brushed my finger against the scarred skin of my right ankle. The ridge ran up and down my ankle, just a little up my calf. Lia turned and watched me do this and gave a huff.
‘I’m going, Tia,’ Lia said to me. She had this angry look on her face and I could smell rain some ways off. The breeze was stronger - almost a gale wind and if I was truthful, I swear that I could sense a frost coming. ‘I’ll see you tonight.’
‘Bye, Tia. Should I tell Ma you’re going to be back for dinner.’
Lia gave me a withering look and began walking away, still sparkling like she was glass. ‘Don’t bother, Tia. She’ll think you’re crazy or something.’
And she was gone.
***
I was never someone you could accuse of being a sleuth. I hated mystery novels, hated watching mystery movies and could only barely watch a heist movie without wanting to throw up.
Which is why I am here, stuck because I could not figure it out.
I cannot remember the last time I held his hand and yet I am glad that I cannot - I do not think I can stand the next fifty years, watching by her side as she kisses him, warms him, turns her head as he calls her by my name.
As she lives my life.
***
Tia, age 13
It was our birthday and I couldn’t do anything except keep myself from screaming at Lia.
She sat in the corner of the room, smiling at me as if there is nothing wrong. Her hands were folded in her lap, her hair, a touch blonder than mine, are sparkling like the diamonds Lucy wears to school. Lia looked smug and I was fuming, waiting for a moment to run from the room and cry into my pillow.
But Lia would just follow me and laugh at my baby behavior. I would never give her the satisfaction.
I knew my sister well and if there was one thing I learned after so many years of living with her in the same house it’s that she loved taking pleasure in my problems. She laughed when Courtney Callow smashed her bowl of chili into my new dress on picture day, chortled when Michael Ashbury told me he didn’t want to take me to the dance because Opal Trent had promised to kiss him if he took her and had cackled when I was pushed out of the bus door.
I learned a word for that in class: sadism.
That was my sister, Lia, the Sadist.
This time I don’t think that anything could have upset me more than what she did today.
‘It’s your own fault, you know,’ she said matter of factly. She stood and strode over to where the hats and plastic bags and tiny birthday whistles that were scattered all over the floor. She picked up a hat and put it on her head, securing it with the band around her chin. ‘You should have figured out a long time ago that no one else but you could see me. You’re too stupid.’
‘But you didn’t have to do this!’ I cried. I sank deeper into the couch and covered my face with my hands. I could feel the tears coming and held them in. I was glad my voice only shook slightly when I spoke. ‘You’ve never done anything like this before. Why now?’
Lia tilted her head at me so that her blonde hair fell in a perfect wave and she looked like an angel, innocent and ignorant. ‘Why did I do what? Destroy your party? Throw your hats everywhere and tear down the streamers you spent the whole morning putting up? Toss cake at Nathaniel? Make the doors rattle and push your friends around? Why?’
‘Stop playing with me!’ I screamed.
‘You stop playing with me!’ Lia screamed back only unlike mine, hers sounded like someone was running nails up and down and sideways and in circles on a chalkboard. ‘What do I look like? A toy? You can’t want to play with me for one moment and then forget about me the next, Tia. That’s no how it works. You either remember me or forget me.’
‘But Lia -‘
‘No “But Lia”-ing me, Tia,’ she said with a sneer. ‘I am not someone you can forget simply because no one but you can see me. Anyway, this is my birthday as well or did you forget that?’
I felt my face flush and I reached out to slap her. Forgetting, I felt my hand pass through her face, her insubstantial form. Her face swirled like smoke and then reformed itself, back to the perfect cheekbones and eyes that would have made Michael Ashbury beg.
Lia laughed and I felt the tears coming.
‘Oh, it’s okay, baby,’ Lia said tauntingly. ‘It’s only one birthday. No one can do anything to you and besides, now they know you have a ghost on your side. They won’t bother you at all. It’ll be the same - the Lia and Tia show. That’s how it’s always been, right?’
That’s what I was afraid of, why couldn’t she see that? People would call me ghost girl and they would run away from me like I smelled like a skunk pissed on me. Lia just twirled around in her perfect ghost body and still, despite all the shadows I now saw crowding around her, her being sparkled like glass.
‘Happy birthday to you,’ sang Lia as she danced around in the party hat. ‘Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to Tia, happy birthday to you!’ The poppers, lined up on the table in the kitchen all went off at the same time and the tears fell as my sister kept singing the birthday song no one but me could hear.
***
The gypsy lied to me.
She told me that the chains would keep her out and that the smell of incense would drive away any lingering soul. I tucked bags of potpourri under my pillow, burned spices and pretty feathers underneath the oak tree and kept a beeswax candle burning all night.
Lia never understood the significance of me doing this but she always laughed whenever I burst out crying at her arrival. How could I get rid of her? I couldn’t!
I slept every night with the sound of her laughing cackling in my ears, telling me we would be together forever.
***
Tia, age 18
I held my face frozen in a smile as the camera flashed, once, twice, three times. They say that when someone takes your photograph, part of your soul was ripped away. I wasn’t worried about that.
I was just happy Lia wasn’t here.
I hadn’t seen her in four years. Four wonderful years where I always kept the locket full of crushed bone and sweet smelling honeysuckle around my neck. I never took it off, never put it down until the scents of honeysuckle and death became my own smell.
‘Tia!’ I heard. I turned my head and felt my face split into a grin when I saw Liam waving at me from a distance. Our other friends crowded around him - Kale and his girlfriend Lily, Michael, Peyton and Erin - and chatting. I didn’t feel like talking to them very much. It was like all everyone could talk about was what they were going to do after graduation, which college they were going to or which country they were travelling to.
So was it strange for me to want to just stay here?
‘Hey, baby,’ Liam whispered into my ear as he swept me up for a hug. ‘The guys are heading to the lake for a kegger. You in?’ I could see in his eyes that he would follow me if I didn’t want to and I loved him all the more for that. Liam was my forever and while that sounded like something you would hear in the stupid novels and romantic movies, I knew it. Somewhere deep down inside, I just knew.
‘Sure,’ I said, not wanting to disappoint him. ‘I am just going to head home and change, okay? I’ll meet you by the lake.’
‘Okay.’
He kissed me and felt that floating on clouds, absolutely pure happiness that I always feel when he is around me. I felt like a such a girl - the best part? I didn’t feel like the girl who was trapped by her dead ghost twin sister.
I had known for a while what had happened to Lia. When we were born, we were attached by our ankles - her left and my right - and they had to choose who to save. I wondered sometimes how they chose me - by flipping a coin? Scissors, paper, stone? Spinning a bottle?
How did Lia end up being the one left to die?
I forgot about that part of the story as her haunting left me a social outcast and as I hunted for a way to get rid of her. My thoughts drifted to Lia as I drove home, something that didn’t happen very often these days.
The house was empty - mom and dad had taken a liking to driving upstate to their house there during the weekends and I was planning on staying with my cousins this weekend. I had packed a bag and headed upstairs when the coldest wind ever blew through the house.
My skin goose-bumped and the scar on my ankle burned. I gasped at the pain and tripped on the staircase. I wrapped a hand around my ankle and tried to stifle the pain. I lifted my hand to look at the ankle and saw the skin was a bright red. I whimpered and grasped onto my locket, praying to a God I had long lost faith in.
Immediately the flaring stopped and the room warmed up.
I looked around, searched for a sparkling body and a jeering smile but I only saw the familiar contours of my home, the family pictures where I was the star. I breathed easy and, albeit warily, made my way to my room.
I am coming, Tia.
***
I slammed my fists against the barriers I could not break. She had spent years building them and I had no power against it. How had this happened? When did I become so careless?
I howled and outside, my screams were the echoes of hungry ghosts wailing for peace and blood. I was the storm.
***
The lake was where everyone went to. Whenever the holidays started, everyone headed there like some sort of radar called us and we were robots with receptors. I could see some people walking, some of them holding rafts and at one point, a couple of guys carrying huge tankards of beer.
I may have caught sight of a couple of vodka bottles but I would never tell.
I saw Liam first and, as per the norm, everything else faded to blurry shadows that were there and not there. He walked towards me with a smile and hugged me, kissing my neck. I felt myself shiver and smile.
I could taste forever.
‘Come on,’ he said to me, tugging me in the direction of the lake. ‘We’ll get you a drink and then look for the guys.’
I grinned and didn’t pay attention to where I was going. This was all my fault. If I had been a bit more careful maybe it would never have happened but it did. And like someone out there hated me, it all went in slow motion so I could catch everything, every tiny detail to torture myself with later.
My flip flops caught on a tree root, I went flying, Liam shouted and his fingers wrapped around my locket chain, yanked and the sound of metal snapping filled my ears before the cackling did.
The whole world changed and I was in place where fog was everywhere. I could see faintly through the fog the outlines of the party I had just left. I saw Liam’s frozen form hovering over mine, face frozen in shock and my chain hanging by his fingers. I saw the lake, eerie now with the thick blanket of cold air hovering over it.
I smelled death, stronger than the one I wore.
‘Tia, Tia, Tia,’ I heard someone singing.
Lia stepped through the fog. I felt my scream catch in my throat and choke me. She looked like my worst nightmares. So different she looked than the last time I saw her. Her hair was a mess, her dress tattered and streaked in mud in a way that would have been called fashionable by some of the more daring kids in school.
‘Lia,’ I croaked. I pressed my hands into the ground - soft mud, not the easy earth of the lake - and backed up. Her eyes were wild and dark, black from corner to corner. ‘You-you - what did you do?’
The ghost shrugged and stepped forward. Her feet were bare and still she looked so beautiful that she would make a painter cry. Her body didn’t shimmer anymore though. Now, I could see the shadows that darted back and forth around her. ‘I waited for a long time, Tia. How have you enjoyed your life?’
‘What do you want from me?’ I said inching backwards. I could feel the mud soak through my dress and dye it brown. ‘Go away, Lia! Go away!’
She laughed and the sound was chilling. I thought wryly that a horror director needed to take some pointers from Lia when they made their next film. ‘Oh, Tia, you always did make me laugh.’ She stood at my feet and knelt so she was at eye level with me. She reached forward and stroked my cheek. I shook so hard that she chuckled again. In a harsh whisper, she said to me, ‘What makes you think you can control me?’
‘Lia, let me go,’ I whispered. ‘I need to go back.’
Her eyes narrowed and the black-black slits made me go cold. ‘You are never going back, Lia,’ she said. How was it that this terrifying ghost still managed to sound like a beautiful angel? ‘You had your eighteen years.’ She leaned forward and caught my cheek in her hand. She kissed my cheek then my mouth and pulled back. I was dead cold. ‘Now, it’s my turn.’
One nail, long as a scimitar, came up and she ripped my right ankle, where we had been joined so long ago, apart.
***
The dogs came first. They came and they tore at my dress and ripped my soul apart, tore me from my body and tossed me aside to cower behind a tree. Lia had spent many years calling them, taming them to her will and they now came after me.
I could hear Lia laughing, a triumphant banshee wail that made my soul quiver with fear. I could feel her tearing and doing something to me. I could feel her pulling at my body and then nothing.
I looked around my tree and saw the world had begun moving again.
My body, the substantial Tia, was lying on the ground and Liam was trying to revive her. When her eyes opened, I saw the faintest triumphant smile on her face.
‘Tia, are you okay?’
I felt my heart crack.
‘Liam,’ my body said breathily. And I knew. I knew that Lia was there, in the place where my soul should be.
He pulled her up and she dragged him down for a kiss.
My heart broke and I wailed the storms and thunder that no one else could hear.
Liam had a confused look on his face but hugged her, rubbing my head. No. Lia’s head. Over his shoulder, she looked right at me and smirked. I saw her fingering the locket and I knew that now, I was trapped.
***
Lia, age 18
‘Hey, mom,’ I said to the woman who had been anything but. ‘What are you making?’
The smells were overpowering and I felt my hungry soul, so many years hungry, yearn for it all.
‘Hiya, sweetie,’ she greeted. ‘Apple pie for the lady next door. I know you don’t like it so I made cookies.’
I felt my mouth twist into a grin and I knew that now, it was my turn. Goodbye Tia, hello Lia.
‘It’s okay, mom,’ I said to her, sitting down at the breakfast nook and fingering the hair I was planning to dye blonde. ‘I think I might like apple pie.’