Conjoined

I sat in class picking through my Afro, something I recently picked up when I’m engaged in my studies. Unfortunately my nerves were physically manifesting themselves again. Now that i thought on it, I felt a bit restless lately. It was likely because I wasn’t working out as much. Oh, well. I’d have to deal with it. I clench my teeth to keep my body from quivering and nestle further in my jacket. It was always freezing in the science department, likely trying to keep all the students awake.

I glance woefully down at the cast starting at the ball of my foot and reaching up my calf. Fuck. 8 weeks. That was a long time to miss swimming. I was going to catch up no matter what. At least it was last period, I could hurry home to mope in peace.

I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“Hey.”

A soft slightly nasally voice called behind me. My posture instantly sags before I could hide it. No use hiding it anymore I guess. I sighed before turning in my seat, looking to my seat neighbor mock inquisitively.

“Demure, you know you’re not supposed to work out when you have a literal broken bone right?”

My eyes rolled automatically. She spoke mocking as if trying to tell a child they couldn’t play in the busy highway. Macy had a reputation for being a smart ass. The doctor in training or whatever. Macy had incredibly dark skin. It may as well have been literally black but somehow freckles still showed up on her face. The white lab coat she always wore was striking against the color, even more so was her gap tooth. I thought she was nerd but most people knew her as the doctor wannabe. She told her little speel to anyone who’d listen, and likely repeated it multiple times to her poor friends.

“I haven’t been doing anything.”

I said irritated, I even had to admit that. I prided myself on how hard I worked for the swim team. I was one of many who got our school to the top ranks. I was just glad we were off season at the moment, but that still meant I had muscle atrophy to deal with once I was finally healed. I was also very glad I wasn’t in my 30′s the effects would likely be doubled. Macy just looked at me with skepticism heavy in her eyes.

“Well that’s obviously a bold faced lie.”

She leaned forward to my unimpressed face, thinking she’d caught me red handed.

“I can tell your back and neck has continued to develop in muscle.”

Before my irritation spiked up, a slow grin grew on my lips. I’d never pass up an opportunity to fuck with this entitled asshat.

“Oh really? Do you like what you see?”

That stopped her in her tracks. I leaned closer as she jolted back in response. Even though she was shades darker than me, I could start to make out the red flush raising in her nose.

“Because if you’re trying to hit on me, maybe you shouldn’t be so stuck up about it and just say you think I’m hot.”

Her mouth twitched before opening it but she was cut off by the ring of the bell. She looked up to the ceiling her glasses sliding down her nose like it had the audacity to interrupt her. Although she clearly lose the battle of this exchange.

I also glanced up to the ceiling speakers slyly and said,

“Oop, saved by the bell.”

I slid my notebook and pens in my open backpack before standing with my crutches and throwing it over my shoulder.

“See ya tomorrow, Mace.”

I wish I could’ve seen the look on her face before I left but I didn’t let her get a word in. Macy desperately needed to be knocked down a peg.

I had to stop in the hall and fiddle with my crutches to switch my backpack to my opposite shoulder so I could scratch at my back. All the talk of it was probably making it itchy. I say a swift goodbye to my class and swim buddies in the hall and leave. I find my car in the school lot. Even with this bullshit incident, I was still pretty psyched to be in senior year. I worked my ass off for the accolades I received during high school. To me, it was miracle that I did. I diagnosed with anxiety and OCD right before I entered high school.

I headed home and longed for my soft bed and teddy bear waiting on me. I made the precarious act of getting out of my car and getting my crutches from the back seat. My buddies offered to drive me and my parents suggested I take their offers but as soon as I was cleared to drive, I wasn’t going to lose that chance to be able to take charge of myself. I was tired of being babied by everyone. The first 2 weeks I broke it were the worst. Everyone around me treated me like porcelains, but this is also the first time I’ve hurt myself so badly...

When I hobbled in, passing the living room and about to go upstairs, I spotted my parents speaking in the kitchen. The tone hushed but with rushed tense urgency. It seemed important. My eyebrows drew together in concern, as I walked across the living room to hear what was being spoken. Talks like that didn’t happen around my house unless something was serious.I poked my head through the doorway and asked.

“Whats wrong?”

Dad finished his whispered thought to dad and looked up at me. My presence didn’t ease the tension in his face, in fact it only seemed to deepen the crease in his forehead. It didn’t help the knot in my stomach. Dad only said,

“Demure, sit down. There’s... some things we have to talk you about.”

I kept eye contact with the both of them as I came up to the island and set my crutches aside to pull out a bar stool. My Dads looked at one another in silence, doing their best trying to figure out how to explain what they were gong to explain to me.

“We’re going to talk about how you were born.”

I nodded slowly looking between the both of them.

“Yeah, Camilla right?”

Our surrogate mother. She’d come over to visit from time to time but I talked to her on the phone more often than I’d seen her. The last time we hung out was a little more than 2 years now.

“Yes, during her pregnancy there were complications.”

I squinted before slowly nodding.

“I...did something happen to me...?”

My Dad winced before squeezing out.

“Its... more like what you did to your brother.”

I blinked.

“Brother...”

I whispered breathless. My head started to spin as my back straightened up. I wish I was siting in an actual chair instead of a stool.

My Dad took a breath before putting his elbows down on the table and clasped his hands together. Did they blame me?

“When she was pregnant, she had two fetuses developing.”

My other Dad nodded but looked pained. Did they blame me?

“But before the two could fully develop, one embryo absorbed the other. It’s....common during gestation. It could have been much worse. When you start to learn all the things that can go wrong.... We were just glad Camilla and you...were, alright.”

My Dads waited for me in silence to process. I tried to blink the tears away but it only roused them up further spilling from me. I’d killed my brother? The sound of my Dads voice faded from my ears. Christ i...

The screech of my own bar stool startled me. A terrible sharp stabbing pain shot up from my toes to my thigh inside my cast. I couldn’t get a hold of myself before I realized I was heading for the marble floor.

...

Dark...

I was going to die.

No, I didn’t want to. I wanted t!!....

...

Sun.

A dizziness filled my senses when I turned my head. It sharped as nausea sliced through my face and ended heavy inside the bottom of my stomach. My reflexes jolted me upright. I tossed my head just in time to puke on the floor, further aggravating the nausea that almost hurt. The force of my own gag reflex and textured chunky vomit made it incredibly hard to breathe. I tried to catch my breath in between stints but as soon as I tried to calm my panic from not being able to breathe, it started coming up my esophagus again. Tears and snot ran from face mixing into the filth on the floor.

As the sharpness of my gag reflex softened and my stomach finally stopped heaving all of the contents in my stomach, I tried to get a hold of myself. I simply...listened to my roaring heart in my ears and steps pounding down the hall. Bum, bum, bum, bum. The steps were strange though. They didn’t seem to be getting quieter down the hall. Maybe the hospital was busy tonight, but the steps still seemed irregular by how consistent they were. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.

They...they started to remind me, of a heartbeat...? But it seemed to-

My train of thought was interrupted by the door opening. A nurse and my Dads, came speed walking in. I tried to place the steps but none of them seemed to match what I’d heard. The nurse checked me out and asked me questions. My parents looked on, wanting desperately to ask their own questions, shifting and fidgeting in their spots, but didn’t want to get in the way of the nurse and her work.

“And you said you passed out right?”

She was a Latino woman writing down in her clipboard. Her glasses slid down her nose and looked up at me over the rims when she asked me something. I was still trying to come to grips of myself as my answers came sluggishly.

“Uh yeah. I uh, usually have a pretty strong stomach.”

I chuckled with no humor laced in the sound.

“I can usually handle things like that, but it- it was strange. This sharp pain shot up my le-”

“Did you step on it?”

I rubbed at my throat, scraped raw with bile and swallowed against the pain. I was going to apologize for the mess but she was speaking quite fast, I could barley keep up.

“Er no i-”

“I’ll be back with some painkillers and cleanup.”

She gave me a tight smile before turning on her heel and walked briskly toward the door, giving the hand sanitizer dispenser a few quick pumps before leaving out of the room closing the door shut behind her.

I had a stray thought that Macy would probably be living for this.

My parents looked toward the door and one of my Dads muttered something I couldn’t quite hear and my Dad gave him a swift swipe to the arm before they both pulled up chairs. One of them started rubbing my back and the other handed me a cup of water, refreshing cool against the burn of my insides. I down the whole cup like a shot.

“Told you we should have brought the whole bottle.”

He simply rolled his eyes and stood to give my eye a kiss before he left me with,

“I’m going to get you get you some more water and maybe a little something to munch on.”

I simply nodded.

After he left, it was just the two of us. Silence heavy in the room.

“I’m so sorry.”

I didn’t say anything but I swallowed, before realizing I was trying to get around a lump in my throat. Tears fall, I started to sob. Everything hit me again and it surprised me that I couldn’t stop. Dad didn’t say anything, he just let me cry as he held me.

It shouldn’t have been a big of a deal as it was. I mean it’s not like I knowingly killed him. I hadn’t met him but something shifted in me, something disturbed. I went quiet again just tired and hungry and in pain and this point.

′I’m Awake.′

“I didn’t know you had a birthmark back here.”

He said curios taking a look at my back. I turned so he could have a better look.

I sniffle and whisper.

“What does it look like?”

“Its lik-”

He stopped talking and I waited for him to respond simply enjoying the silence and the pleasant shift in conversation. Finally, I looked up at him to ask him again, since I didn’t look at my back much.

“Da-”

My heart dropped instantly in my empty stomach.

I froze.

My pupils constricted into pinpricks.

Red.

Blood spilled from my Father’s mouth as he twitched to look down at me.

His confused eyes met my horrified ones.

“Demure...”

My mind struggled to comprehend what I was seeing. I noticed something in my peripheral and stiffly looked down.

It was some kind of thing. A jumbled mass of flesh, pulsating. A damn sorry excuse for an arm-like appendage. It, it was coming from behind me... I think was coming from me... It

It was plunged inside my Father’s stomach.

My voice scratched terribly and renewed tears welled in my eyes. I slowly looked up to my Father.

“Daddy...?”

His hazy eyes tried focusing on me. He looked heart broken through the pain and blood. He flinchingly rose his hand to my face.

“Demure....My sweet boy.....It wasn’t....wasn’t you- ”

My eyes shake toward his hand on my face and my father’s terribly pitiful smile without turning my head. Even now he... I tired to kick myself to say something or do something but i couldn’t.

The appendage digs it’s way all the way through, then violently rips him though the left. Abhorrent sounds of bone and soft flesh echo in the room. I gag and cry through my Father’s screeches. His body hits my bed before slamming on the floor. I still can barely understand what going on and neither can my body. I look frantically for the button. The button to save my suddenly dying Father. That thing. Where did it go? I rip the nightstand drawer open while I slam the help button. I find my phone and shakily make a group call. Someone, anyone.

“Somebody!? Anybody? Please help me!! My dad... Daddy! He- He’s dying, Fuck someone, he needs help.”

I clutch my phone like a life line but my panic fades their voices again and I start sobbing hard, but I don’t mourn for long because the door opens. The nurse sees my Daddy on the ground and back up to me screaming.

“My daddy!! My daddy!!”

She looks as if shes about to turn green and turns her head to scream over my voice to get my help. Before I knew it people pour in the room. They looked at me in my hysterics as if I had hurt him. It wasn’t me. I love him. That thing came back. I looked into the eyes of the doctor trying to hold me down. Only to see red where the whites of his eyes were supposed to be. That thing had wrapped around his neck.

The last thing he saw was my sobbing face and my desperate apologies as the pressure deformed his face so. The other nurses started to scream and I held my arms up to my face curling in on myself like a child I didn’t know what else to do, but the sounds they were the worst. Ripping and cracking and tearing. I realized this was hell. I started gagging again but then the worst came.

Silence.