Second Chances

I felt something like a staple pierce my skin. There was another, then another —five of them total— like impossibly sharp fingernails. I was pulled onto my back; my eyes were still squeezed shut. I was trying to pretend to be asleep, but my whole body was tensed, and I couldn’t make my breathing calm or even, no matter how hard I tried. I had never felt fear like I was feeling now. It coiled around my ankles and slithered upwards, leaving each of my limbs immobile as it passed.

I felt something in front of my face.

The temperature in the room had decreased drastically. The tip of my nose felt frozen. My teeth chattered behind my lips, which were pressed firmly together.

I won’t open my eyes…I won’t open my eyes…

“Romy…” My eyes snapped open immediately at the sound of my dead sister’s voice; she was floating above me. Her limbs were horribly mangled, and they clicked and popped as they twisted this way and that. Her arms were stretched behind her back, too far, and they moved in slow circles, coming forward to almost touch my face, and then jerking away again. Her legs were splayed in the air at impossible angles, and her neck was tilted too far to the right. Her face looked like melted plastic; it was elongated and unnatural, kind of like the mask the killer wore in the Scream movies. Her eyes were white, and looked like they were about to drip out of their sockets. Her jaw was unhinged and stretched downward. She had few teeth. Her skin was grey. But the most prominent, and horrifying deformity was her stomach. She was pregnant, but her belly was…wrong. It was misshapen — oblong instead of round, and it moved.

I couldn’t look away. I saw the outline of a small hand pressed up against the inside of my sister’s stomach. I laid there frozen, my arms by my side, barely breathing. My teeth were clenched together so tightly to stop the chattering that it was a wonder they didn’t splinter.

Wren’s arm popped around, and her hand rested on her stomach, on top of the little hand, “She needs you Romy. She needs you.” My sister’s voice was a chilly, firm whisper, and her words clung to the air, echoing and repeating like the chorus of a song.

A wave of guilt and extreme grief broke over me, and my fear and disbelief dissipated. I didn’t know my sister had been pregnant, and that made the accident, the accident I could have saved her from, that much worse.

Nine months ago Wren and I had been in a car crash. I had been driving us back to our apartment from the college; it was late and I had taken Adderall that I had bought earlier in the week in order to focus on an important project I had due. I remember how hard my fists had clenched the steering wheel, and how I couldn’t stop rubbing the top of my mouth with my tongue.

We were at a red light. I glanced over at Wren; she was asleep, with her head against the passenger door. She was snoring lightly, and her hand rested on her stomach. I remember thinking that was odd, because Wren had always slept with her hands up near her face. I saw the light turn green out of the corner of my eye, and I hit the gas.

That was the last thing I did before my head hit the roof of my car, I lost consciousness for what could only have been a couple of seconds.

When I opened my eyes the world was upside down. I turned towards Wren, my neck screaming in protest. She was clawing at her seatbelt and screaming, but I couldn’t hear her. I couldn’t hear anything. I was trapped in an impenetrable silence. The silence was weighted, however, like it was its own sound.

I pushed the button on my seatbelt, and fell against the roof of the car. The metal was warm. I had looked up then, right as the hood of the car caught fire. My twin reached for me; I saw her mouth forming my name over and over again, and a primal feeling took hold of me.

I crawled out of my shattered window, the glass dug into my skin, ripping and tearing but my pain was being actively shoved to the back of my mind by the adrenaline that was pumping through me. I sprinted, hunched over, to Wren’s side of the car. I yanked on the door handle; it wouldn’t open. In my peripheral vision I watched the flames grow and spread. I pounded on her window, the only window in the car that hadn’t shattered. It wouldn’t break. I reached for her through the back passenger window, and she grabbed my hand. She tugged at her seatbelt, twisting around and bucking furiously. She planted her bare feet on the dash and pushed, and I remember seeing smoke rising from where she had put her feet, and the smell of her burning flesh. I pulled at her arm, trying with everything in me to free her. The flames grew steadily, lighting the inside of the car; even if I couldn’t get my sister out of the car, I had no intention of leaving her.

My mouth was open. I was screaming too, but everything was still silent. That heavy silence was something I never wanted to hear again. Her seatbelt finally released her, and she twisted around. I grabbed both of her arms, and just as I was about to pull, I felt a muscled pair of arms fold around my waist. I smelled tequila and sweat.

The arms yanked. They yanked me back away from the car, and I lost my grip on Wren. I saw her face as my arms were pulled from the window. I saw the wild desperation in her eyes, and I saw her mouthing my name as she burned. The car didn’t explode like they did in the movies, but god I wish it had. I watched Wren pound on her window, still mouthing my name. She reached an arm through the back window but the flames were spreading through the interior of the car and she couldn’t get over or around her seat. I watched her burn to death. I struggled as hard as I could against the man holding me back, but he was massive, and determined in his drunkenness to save me. I had screamed Wren’s name while she burned, reaching and pointing. I imagine he probably slurred something about it being too late, but I still couldn’t hear anything but that thick, awful silence.

I opened my eyes, pushing away the flashback. Tears streamed down my face, and my momentary paralysis was gone. I stood up on my bed and reached out for my sister; I needed to be close to her again. We had shared a bed since we were born, even in college — unless one of us had a date, which was rare.

Wren drifted back, or more accurately up, out of my reach, “Please,” I begged her, “I’m so sorry, Wren. I —” A sob caught in my throat; I felt so desperate. I needed my sister more than anything in that moment. “Take me with you,” I whispered, reaching for her again. I was debating on jumping up and down on the mattress to try and reach her, when her neck started to pop and her head twisted from the right to the left side of her body. I could see the outline of her spine against the side of her neck.

“I need you,” Wren whispered, “She needs you.” She rubbed her stomach softly, and the outline of a foot appeared under her ashen skin.

I didn’t understand what she wanted from me, but I didn’t care. I would do anything for her. My mind had broken after Wren died, so much so that I couldn’t feel shock about my sister’s ghost hovering above me, pregnant.

“Anything for you. I’ll do anything for you…for both of you. Tell me what to do.” I dropped to my knees, my arms fell limp by my side; I could barely see her warped form through my tears.

She moved quickly then, dropping from the ceiling where she had drifted to. She was inches from my face. I didn’t have time to say anything else, or reach for her again. She shoved her hands into my stomach. Blood bubbled up in my throat. It poured from my mouth and nose. My vision went black.

~~

My eyelids felt incredibly heavy. It reminded me of the time Wren and I had gotten into our mother’s makeup; we put so much eye shadow on that we had trouble keeping our eyes open — bright blue eye shadow, just like our eyes…just like Wren’s eyes.

I managed to crack my eyes open. Through the small opening I saw my stomach. It was horrifically stretched and swollen. I looked about nine months pregnant. My stomach was covered with massive purple and yellow bruises; there were stretch marks everywhere, except they looked more like bloody claw marks. My skin was pulled so tightly over my protruding belly that I imagined I could see through it — that I could see a small face. My eyes closed again.

~~

“Wake up. You have to wake up, Romy. She’s hungry.” The harsh whisper seared all of my senses, and before I opened my eyes I thought I smelled decay, tasted rot, and felt the inching of maggots along my palms.

My eyes snapped open.

The first thing I saw was my stomach.

I blinked.

It was normal again except for the long scars that ran from my chest to my pelvis from climbing out of the car window.

“She’s hungry Romy. Don’t you hear her crying?”

I followed the sound of the whisper to the end of my bed. The horrible popping and clicking sounds resumed. Two hands reached up from under the bed. The fingers were mangled and twisted backwards, bones protruding in every direction, but they held a small baby. Wren placed the baby on the bed, and I immediately crawled towards it.

She looked like every other newborn I’d ever seen, except she had a mess of slick black hair, and her eyes were wide open; they were completely white, like they were rolled back in the infant’s head. The baby was opening her mouth as if to scream, but the only sound that came out was silence…a heavy, heavy silence —identical to what I had heard after the car wreck. I picked the baby up, and cradled it in my arms. The infant was freezing; it felt like I was holding an arm full of snow.

“Feed her. You have to feed her. You know what you have to feed her.”

I could no longer see my sister, and her whispers were fading. I was losing her again.

Something in me knew the child wouldn’t eat formula.

~~

I had been awake with the baby for two days and two nights now. She wouldn’t stop her silent wails until I put one of my fingers in her mouth. The baby would then chew and suck, and when I would pull my finger away, almost all of the skin would be gone. All that was left afterwards was a thin layer of bloody muscle, and in some cases small chunks of rotting, yellowish-white skin. The tips of my finger bones protruded through all of this. The pain of having my fingers eaten off by the infant was nothing compared to the child’s silent screaming. I entered in and out of flashbacks so often that I no longer knew what was real.

I wrapped white gauze around my now fleshless thumb. It turned red almost immediately. I had run out of fingers to feed her.

The baby opened its mouth to wail again. I could hear nothing but the silence from the child’s screams. I picked the baby up off of the bed, mostly with my palms. I rocked her back and forth, my eyes shutting and opening again. Every time my eyes closed I saw Wren’s face through the window of the car, her mouth forming my name. Her burning.

My exhaustion was monumental.

I felt a slight vibration through the floor, like someone had opened and closed my apartment door. However, I could still hear nothing. I moved to the bedroom door, it was cracked, and through the slit I saw Max.

Max was an old friend from college who had been doing my grocery shopping for me for the last nine months because I couldn’t make myself leave. I didn’t know how to act out in the world without Wren. The infant squirmed violently in my arms. I gazed down at her; it looked like she was looking at Max too. I was so tired, and I knew the baby was starving. I had to take care of her. Wren had asked me to before she disappeared again. I owed it to her. I couldn’t save her, but I could raise her baby. I nudged the door open with my elbow, and set the baby down on the floor. It stopped crying, and my hearing returned.

“Romy? Is that a baby? Romy…is that a dead baby? What is going—” Max didn’t finish his sentence. He had started screaming. I watched the infant move with otherworldly speed towards Max, and bite his throat out. The screaming turned into gurgling, and the baby started to feast on Max’s face.

I rubbed my hand over my face; the smell of rotted flesh and blood no longer bothered me. I walked over to the futon and laid down; I fell asleep immediately.

I don’t know how much later it was before I woke up. Max had been reduced to a pile of bones, teeth, and various organs. The baby lay on her stomach, not far from the pile, sound asleep in a pool of blood. Her small mouth was open, and bloody salvia stretched from her mouth to the puddle on the floor. I sat up, stood, and walked over to her. I picked her up gently, careful not to wake her. I walked back to my bedroom and laid her in my bed, before crawling in beside her. We’d both need a bath later, and I would definitely be looking into buying new carpet, but for now we slept, and for the first time since my sister’s death, I didn’t have a single nightmare.