Koren died. She sat down to dinner, speared her food with a fork, stuck it in her mouth and choked on her inadequately-chewed meat. It was that simple... for everyone but her twin sister, Samantha.
Samantha and Koren were twins - identical twins - and although they looked alike, they could not have been more different. Everything, from their taste in men to their taste in food, was the opposite.
That was why Samantha was struggling to cope with her sister's death. The meal served up to her sister was meant to be for her.
"I should be dead, Marcus - not her!" Samantha shouted at her husband. "We invited Koren over for dinner; and that meal, the meal that killed her - that was supposed to be mine!"
Marcus took his wife in his arms and squeezed her gently.
"Samantha..." he said softly. "I've laid Koren down in the spare bedroom upstairs. I need to go summon the coroner. Try to get some sleep; I am sure you will feel better after a good rest."
Samantha nodded, and Marcus left the house. The surviving twin made her way upstairs, to the bedroom she shared with her husband, and tried to fall asleep - but sleep would not come. Every time she closed her eyes her mind was filled with images of herself in her sister's place; being carried away, being cremated.
After an hour Samantha resolved to try something else. She knew that her husband had been taking sleeping pills to help with his own insomnia, pills which he kept beside the bed. She found them, swallowed two, and lay back down.
Sleep finally came. Solid, silent sleep - sleep which separated Samantha from the world, so that she did not hear even the loud voices of the two men in black suits ascending the stairs of her own home.
"Is this the one?" one of the men asked as he stood in the bedroom doorway.
"The man said she was upstairs on the bed," the other man replied. "And this one sure ain't movin'."
Slowly, the two men carried the unmoving body downstairs and placed her in the back of a long black car. They drove away, and even as the car rocked, passing over all the bumps and rivets in the road, the woman remained dead to the world.
She did not stir as they moved her from the car and placed her inside a thick, mahogany coffin. She did not wake as they loudly nailed the coffin shut. It was only when the heavy door of the funeral parlour slammed shut behind the two men that Samantha finally awoke.
"Oh my god!" she gasped. "I'm... I'm in a coffin! They must... they must think I'm dead! I... I'll suffocate! HELP! SOMEONE... PLEASE HELP ME!"
But there was no-one there to hear her.
It was hours before Marcus returned home and slowly, silently climbed the stairs and looked into his empty bedroom. The death of his sister-in-law had been hard on him, too, and he had decided to have a few drinks before returning to his distraught wife.
She's not in our bed, he thought.
He walked along the hallway to the spare bedroom, and there he saw an inert figure laying atop the bedclothes. It looked like his wife.
Poor thing, he thought. She missed her sister so much...
"I'll let you sleep, honey," he whispered. "You've had a long, hard day." He turned away from the spare bedroom and returned to his own.
The next morning, Marcus slept in - but when he did finally awaken, he realised his wife had still not risen. He moved quickly to check on her; the female form on the bed in the spare bedroom had not moved.
"Oh, no!" he shrieked. "Oh, God, no!"
The figure on the bed was not that of his sleeping wife. Marcus realised that, in his alcohol-induced stupour, he had mistaken his dead sister-in-law for her identical twin.
"Then that means... they took Samantha last night!"
Marcus rushed to the phone and called the funeral parlour. Angrily, loudly, desperately, he informed them of their mistake. The man who answered threw down the phone and checked the coffin he had personally filled the night before. He pried off the nails sealing it shut one-by-one, letting air, then light, into the dark box.
The woman inside was dead. She had suffocated.
"I will sue you for this!" Marcus shouted as he heard the news. "Do you hear me?! I will ruin you!"
He slammed down the phone and returned to the bedside of his dead sister-in-law, but he could not help but wonder - Samantha was sure the meal that caused her sister to choke, to suffocate, was meant for her. Maybe the undertaker was not at fault? Perhaps, like everything else, a twins' final fate is meant to be shared...
Despite his morbid thoughts, Marcus soon fell asleep, but not for long. An hour later, he woke up to the sensation of soft, delicate fingers running through his hair. It was a sensation he was all too familiar with - something his wife often did as he pretended to be asleep.
"Marcus, dear...?" he heard his wife's voice. He looked up; Koren - or was it Samantha? - was sitting up.
"Samantha!" he shouted.
The woman nodded, kissed Marcus on the forehead, and fell back onto the bed as her husband climbed over and embraced her. He leaned forward, his lips touched hers... but, oddly, Marcus felt that his wife did not taste quite the same. There was something... meaty?... on her lips. Like the pork they had eaten for dinner the night before...
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Sunday, April 20, 2008