DIVINATIONS 
MAGAZINE

I keep my twin sister in a jar in my bedroom. Behind my textbooks and diaries and the framed picture of me and my parents.

We look a lot alike, my twin sister and I. Have the same square teeth and tufts of dark frizzy hair. I bet my insides would be the same slimy shade of pink too, like chewed bubblegum.

They took her out of me only a few weeks before I came to college. The doctors said she was the reason for all my pain. She was eating away at me — making my body weak, swollen, tender. Punishing me for what my body had done to hers in the womb.

I could have let them incinerate her — like she was just waste, garbage. But that fate didn’t seem fair, not after everything she’d done.

I know she doesn’t like being stuffed in there, cramped and starving. I see her resentment in the way she bares her tiny teeth at me, the late afternoon light glinting off their translucent edges.

Sometimes, when my roommate isn’t home, I take my sister from her hiding spot and shake the jar. I like watching her teeth rattle. Her wiry hairs twist around her knotted body like tentacles.

She watches me all day from her perch. Waiting. I know she wants back inside me. I can feel her desperation through the glass when I torment her; it burns into my palms.

So she finds her own way to torment me.

It starts with just vague impressions of some half-forgotten dream that still lingers in my mind after I wake up. Cracked baby teeth, knots of hair. Pus. I forget these images almost as soon as I’ve wiped the sleep from my eyes.

Then one morning I wake in pain. It’s radiating from my scar— the place where they extracted her from me. Glimpses of the same dream flash through my mind, but they’re more vivid this time. Gobs of slimy red hair tangled in my fingertips, spiny chunks of bone — their split insides calcified like coral.

I don’t know what they mean. I look at my sister. She’s huddled against the edge of the jar, her back to me. There’s a smugness in the way her hair brushes against the glass — like she’s teasing me.

The next morning, too, I wake in pain. The skin around my scar is red — deep, frantic lines scraped across its surface. My head swirls with those same images — of tiny teeth and blood and matted hair. I press my fingers against my side, probing my scar. It’s hot to the touch.

The pain reminds me of all those nights she kept me awake, unable to get comfortable, unable to find relief. I know she can’t hurt me in there, but I know she’s somehow responsible for what I’m seeing.

I try not to let her get to me. I smear ointment on my scar to soothe it, take a sleeping pill for good measure. No bad dreams tonight. The pill washes over me almost instantly, sucking me deep into the darkness of sleep.

But late in the night, I’m haunted by a gnawing itch in my scar.

I scratch and scratch and claw at it with my fingernails. I notice the scar tissue has become black and oozes pus.

There’s something bulging beneath my skin, too. It’s making my insides hurt. I need to get beneath my skin. I need to get it out.

I keep scratching at it, frantic. Finally, my fingernails sink into the flesh like it’s softened fruit. Relief. My body shivers from the pleasure of it. Brackish blood pours from me, mixed with gobs of hair and clumps of teeth and gums and bone fragments that I catch in my fingertips. I can breathe. I can breathe again.

I wake with a gasp, my fingers still clawing at my scar. This time, I’ve scratched the skin raw. Blood beads along its seams.

I understand what she’s doing now. She isn’t just tormenting me. She’s trying to carve a way back inside me.

Rage flares deep in my stomach like bile, sharp and hot.

‘I know what you’re trying to do,’ I hiss, wrenching her off the self.

She acts innocent, but I can tell she’s holding back laughter from the way she bares her teeth.

I rattle the jar. She ricochets against the glass. A tiny tooth dislodges itself from her cavity.

‘I don’t know how you’re doing it, but it’s not going to work.’

They shucked her out of my ovary, they rid me of the misery she was causing. But what if some of her had been left behind? Microscopic cells that clung desperately to my tissues, scheming — multiplying uncontrollably?

She’s being so smug, acting so innocent. The anger boiling in my stomach is more intense than the pain radiating from my scar.

I shake the jar again. ‘You will rot in there. I will—’

A light flickers to life behind me. My heart leaps into my throat.

‘Who are you talking to?’

I look over my shoulder. My roommate is sitting up in bed, staring at us.

My sister, I almost say. But I know I can’t tell her that. So I don’t say anything.

‘What is that?’

I can’t tell her the whole truth. So I tell her just part of it.

‘A tumour — parasite.’ I choose my words carefully. ‘The doctors took her out of me.’

I can’t quite see the expression on her face — it’s too dark. But I can hear the disgust curdling the edges of her words. ‘Why would you keep that?’

I don’t say anything. She wouldn’t understand.

‘Put it away, would you? It’s disgusting.’

She switches off her bedside lamp and rolls over, her back to me.

Disgusting. That word hovers in the darkness. It grows. I feel it pressing down on me — on us. Disgusting.

She is disgusting. She’s putrid. She’s vile. She’s an abomination.

And yet — we share the same cells, her and I. Every bit of her is a bit of me that she stole. If she’s disgusting then maybe I am too.

I hold my sister for a long time in that darkness. It’s the first time I’ve touched her and haven’t felt a roiling hatred. My pulse hammers in my palms. I wonder if she can feel it. I wonder, too, if this moment — the darkness, my beating heart — reminds her of when she was inside me. When I finally do put my sister back onto her shelf, I make sure she’ll feel the sunrise as it comes through the curtains.

I don’t dream that night, but my sleep is still unsettled. What my roommate said sits wrong with me. The word has nestled itself deep in my mind.

In the morning, I confront her.

‘Did you really mean what you said last night?’

‘About what?’ She looks confused. Maybe she doesn’t remember.

‘About the tumour.’

‘Oh — that it’s weird to keep it?’

‘That it’s disgusting.’ The word tastes rotten in my mouth.

‘Yeah, it is disgusting.’ I don’t like the way she says it. The way her top lip curls, wrinkling the corners of her nose. Anger rises into my cheeks.

‘But it’s—was — a part of me.’

‘So?’ she shrugs. ‘It’s still a weird thing to keep.’

I dream again that night. But this time it’s different. There are no scars or blood; no gobs of hair or tiny teeth.

I’m in an empty hallway that stretches into a pinprick of darkness. The walls and floors are made of  the same white tiles. It’s too sanitised and unsettling. It reminds me of the corridor I walked down after she was removed from me.

I notice then that someone is walking down the hall, towards that darkness. They’re wearing a hospital gown. Their hair is dark and long and their feet are bare.

They seem to float towards where there’s no light, their feet barely touching the ground between steps. I run after them, calling out between gasps of breath, ‘Wait!’ We’re getting closer to the dark.

My side cramps. I falter, clutching at it. Fresh stitches hold my skin together. When I look up, they’re even farther away from me. I have to keep running. Have to ignore the pain.

‘Wait, please!’

They only stop when they’re at the edge of that void, the place before it swallows them. When I finally catch up, I grab hold of their hand so they can’t go any further.

The figure turns and looks at me. She has the same square teeth as I do, the same tufts of dark frizzy hair. Tears roll down her — our — cheeks.

‘Help me!’ She pleads, her fingers grazing my side.

I try to reach out to her, to wipe away the tears, but I’m suddenly yanked backwards. I’m pulled from that darkness and back through the surface, into the light.

It’s barely dawn when I wake. I’m sweaty and breathless — heart thrashing inside my chest. Tears trail down my cheeks.

I look at my sister. In the pale dark of early morning, I can only see her silhouette. She’s sunk to the bottom of her jar. My heart catches in my throat.

I finally understand what she needs me to do.

I grab a pair of cuticle scissors I keep in my bedside table and gently pad over to my roommate’s bed. Her breathing is steady and deep. I place my sister on the floor beside me.

I hold the scissors tightly. My palms sweat.

A parasite needs to feed. Or else it will die. It just needs a warm body. I remind myself of these things as my blade pierces her skin. My sister watches. Her anticipation is palpable.

Blood immediately rushes through the cut I’ve made, saturating my roommate’s pyjamas and coating my fingers. It’s warm and slick. My hand slips. Her eyes shoot open.

For a moment she stares at me in bewilderment. Then she begins screaming.

‘What the fuck?’

She tries to sit up, but I push her back down onto the bed. ‘It’s alright — I promise it will be alright,’ I say, trying to soothe her as she screams.

My roommate struggles against me. I hold tightly onto her shoulders but she’s wriggling fiercely. She flails — kicking out her legs. One lands right in my chest, knocking me backwards. Her other leg connects with the jar. It hurtles across the room and shatters against the dresser with a sharp crack.

‘You’re fucking insane,’ my roommate screams. She staggers to the door, slamming it shut behind her.

I crawl to my sister and frantically clear the shards of glass away from her body.

It’s the first time I’ve ever seen my sister like this. She is so much smaller than she looked in her jar. So much tougher than I thought, too — her body’s hard as a stone. I can’t believe she ever hurt me. She’s tiny — no bigger than a wisdom tooth.

Tears pour from my eyes. She can’t breathe out here. She’ll die if I don’t find her a home soon.

I pick up the bloodied cuticle scissors from where they’ve fallen. There’s no other option.

My hand shakes as I guide the blades toward my scar.  I hold a deep breath in my stomach as I press the scissors into my pale skin.

‘Promise you won’t hurt me this time,’ I say to my sister. ‘Promise.’

The seams of my scar split easily, as though it’s been waiting for this.