Between Hands

The pain was finally gone. Stella was feeling so much better that day. After months of misery, lethargy, drowsiness, and that quiet hopelessness that settles in when strength has long since left your body, she couldn’t believe how the world had suddenly turned beautiful. That light sensation of recovering was so much more dazzling than she had dared to hope for. She could breathe deeply, move gently, stretch her limbs without aching. All she could think of was how ungrateful the well, the unbroken are, taking their bodies for granted as if they were permanent.

When she opened her eyes at six o’ clock in the morning, she found herself staring at her own hands. She had never realised it before, but they were truly beautiful — delicate, long-fingered, like the hands of a pianist. She kept staring at them, almost as if they belonged to someone else. She turned her palms up, she turned them back down. It is fascinating how our perspective of things changes just by looking at them for a longer period of time. Our perception of reality shifts. Things, colours, people, places…they all seem to ripple with subtle strangeness. A strangeness that distorts them. This is how her body was feeling, renewed, yet foreign.

No matter how strange it felt, she was grateful. She was finally present. She was free from the prison of her illness. She wasn’t trapped in her own body. What was that shell anyway? What was that envelope that wrapped her being? She had always wondered, without finding an answer.

Slowly, Stella rose from her bed. The house was quiet, as always, in the early morning. Moon was probably still in bed; her sister had always been a heavy sleeper, unlike her. A faint scent of detergent lingered in the air — the sort used in hospitals, sharp and sterile. Stella blinked. Perhaps a trace left from her treatment the day before. Or maybe Moon had another late-night shift at the lab.

A pleasant, tingling sensation coursed through her body. She felt flimsy, almost weightless, as though the boundary between herself, with her fragile body, and the outside world, had gone thinner. When her feet touched the floor, she shook slightly. She could sense the warmth radiating up from the wood to her cold feet. As she pressed her hands against the bed, she rose without faltering. She was standing almost effortlessly. She had regained her strength. Yet, this strange feeling of lightness and calm — this almost magical ease of being — left her staring at everything with a new, unsteady awe.

She gazed around the house, flooded with sunlight, full of warmth, full of memories. Where do memories go? Do they just fade into an endless pit? How dark is that pit? Is there light at the end of it? And if so, what is that light?

She walked. Her long gown delicately brushed against her skin. She placed one foot before the other, grateful with each step. She approached Moon’s bedroom and knocked gently.

She wanted so badly to show her sister how she could walk again on that bright morning. But there was no answer. Stella thought she might have a lie-in on a Sunday, especially after a night shift at the lab. But to her surprise, when she opened the door, she found a messy, empty bed. “Where did she go?” Stella whispered to herself.

She called her name. She walked around the house. No sign of her. Just silence.

Until the front door creaked slightly.

Stella’s pulse jumped. She hurried towards the sound, the ghost of a smile flickering faintly on her face, fragile and brief, before unfamiliar whispers drifted through the air. Stella froze, her expression dissolving into a quiet dread. The voices beyond the door were low, intense, and unfamiliar. They were murmuring words she could not understand. Even though she couldn’t grasp the conversation, the tone carried urgency, something clinical, precise, almost rehearsed. She walked backwards. Her breath became heavier again, though it was a different kind of heavy. It was fear pressing against her chest.

She backed into the kitchen, hiding behind the wooden door.

A man’s voice rumbled on the other side — deep, muted, as if wrapped in the walls themselves. Who were they? Were they coming for her? Where was her sister?

Her heart was pounding. She could feel the blood pumping through her veins. She was alive! Yet every pulse felt like a warning.

After what sounded like keys in a lock, the door opened slowly. A chilling silence fell, heavy and expectant, as if the house were listening too. Through the reflection of the glass window, she saw two men coming in. That couldn’t be real. Right on that morning, when everything was so bright, calm and beautiful. Was she awake? Was she dreaming? Was she still miserably lying in bed? They walked in slowly. Their shoes made soft clacks on the wooden floor. They seemed to be carrying something metallic, making a clanking sound.

Holding her breath, she sneaked further into the kitchen. She quietly opened a drawer to grab a knife.

The men moved towards her bedroom. They were holding something she couldn’t quite make out. All she could think about was the precious star-shaped necklace her father had given her years before. Another one of the indelible memories. Everything else could be replaced.

She slowly approached her bedroom. Where was Moon? Was she still at work?

About halfway down the long corridor, the back door rattled. “Who’s there?” she heard herself mutter, too softly to be heard.

Her sister suddenly stepped in, like a wraith from sleepless nights. Her hair was messy, her clothes rumpled, her eyes wide. “Moon!” Stella gasped. “What is going on?”

Moon opened her eyes even wider. Her expression was a mix of surprise and terror. Her skin turned pale.

“It’s me! Look! I am walking!” Stella continued, wishing she weren’t paralyzed with fear. A few seconds later, something behind Moon started moving. The back door opened an inch more. Another cracking sound, and a woman stepped in the living room. Stella froze. Her hand opened up involuntarily, the knife dropped, just like her jaw.

She couldn’t believe her eyes. What she saw was her own face staring back at her. Her own body making slow, clumsy movements. Whatever that was, it seemed to be a soulless version of herself. It was a hollow, precise, almost cynical version that made her chest tighten. They stood and mirrored each other, without saying a word.

Moon broke the silence: “Stella…I would have never… thought…”

The two men came back from the bedroom. “She is not on the…”

Their jaws dropped, too, at that sight, lab tools slipping from their nervous hands. Stainless steel clattered against the floor. What they were experiencing could not be real.

“Hello… Stella. I am doctor Sanchez,” one of them said, his voice hesitant. “And this is Dr. Klein. We are very… pleased the treatment is working. We just didn’t expect this…” He cleared his throat, “… Side effect. You — you’re standing!”

“What side effect? What on earth IS GOING ON?” Stella gathered her breath to shout, but her voice broke into a whisper, her knees trembling.

Moon stepped closer, her hand gently brushing the double’s shoulder with a tremor that betrayed her fear. “Stella… I couldn’t bear it,” she swallowed, her eyes wet. “I couldn’t watch you go. So I paid them — I hired them to…” she paused, letting out a long sigh. She pointed at the men with a shivering hand. “The treatments, Stella… they helped me to extract… pieces of you. We took tissues, to make… to try to save you.” Her voice cracked. “And this… this is the result. THIS IS YOU.” She looked at the doppelganger with a strange, sorrowful pride.

Hollow-Stella tilted her head, studying Stella with something faintly human: curiosity, recognition. But no fear.

Stella, the real one, the one with a soul, the one with the light, with the memories, with a history and a past, but perhaps no future, was stunned. Astonished. The room was flooded with sunlight, but it felt too bright, too sterile. She had returned to living, to life — and yet, not the one she expected. And she was not alone in it.

Moon’s lips trembled. “I couldn’t bear watching you fade… day after day. I just… wanted to keep you here, with me. You understand, right? I… I love you…”

What happened to Moon? Is her obsession for science getting to her head? Is it the fear of losing me forever? Is it her ego? Or all of those things together?

She looked at her hands, once again. Was that actually happening?

Then she looked at herself on the other side. To her surprise, Hollow-Stella also started looking at her own hands. It was as if she had seen them for the first time. Palms up, palms down, with a new flicker in her eyes. Just like Real-Stella on that morning, when she opened her eyes, in painless freedom.

The empty shell kept moving her hands, staring at them, as if learning the motion anew. Her expression began to unravel — first the soft disbelief, then a faint curl of the lips, then something else entirely. It wasn’t rage, nor joy, but a quiet corruption spreading across her features. It was as if the act of looking at herself had peeled away a layer of innocence, revealing something patient and cruel beneath. Then — a smile. Or maybe not a smile. A smirk. Her eyes rose slowly to meet Stella’s, while her head remained slightly bowed, the movement small, deliberate. An unfathomable expression, unreadable, yet magnetic. And then a glimmer caught the light at her neck—the star-shaped necklace, Stella’s own, was shining faintly against her chest.

A sudden, chilling breeze sighed through the room, ruffling her gown and a strand of her hair, sending a shiver down her spine. For a moment, it was as if the house itself had exhaled, warning her that nothing here was as it seemed.

Stella looked down at the floor. The knife lay in a pool of morning light, the blade shining bright, a strip of cold silver — an eerie omen that waited without judgement. The pain, the frustration, the anger, the injustice of a young life confined under stiff blankets while the world was moving on, indifferent — it was all there, etched in that light. She could almost read that on the blade, like an unfinished book waiting to be completed.

Was that really what her sister had been working on, all those months? A cure… or a replacement?

She bent to lift the knife, fingers curling around the handle. She saw herself in the blade — and in that reflection there was a look she did not own. A cold, mellow cruelty that did not belong to a memory.

The room held its breath. The air was taut, alive.

Stella understood, in a sudden, crystal clarity, that no choice would leave her unscathed — not in this house, not in this life.

And so she paused, knife in hand, her mind spinning between horror, awe, and the impossible thought: I am here, but I am not alone.

“No, Moon. This is not me.”

The morning light shimmered across the floor, but instead of warmth, it cast a cold, unsettling clarity. The knife lay heavy in her hand with its faint metallic scent. Stella stared at the other version of herself, then at Moon, then at the strangers. And realised the world she had returned to was not the one she remembered— and she could not yet tell which of them belonged to her. Memories fade… or become corrupted.

Now, Stella had a choice. She looked at her hands, which this time were holding a weapon. Were they really hers?

Between her hands, between herself and this haunting mirror of her life, the choice waited.

Was she once again going to be dependent on someone else, to be alive?

For once, it was all in her hands.

Then, two questions crossed her mind:

Should I use it?

If so, against whom?

And then she noticed it: the reflection in the knife shifted, ever so slightly, on its own. Stella’s breath caught. She had not moved. The eyes staring back at her—hers, and yet not hers—held an intent that made her skin crawl. Something alive lingered in that steel, waiting, aware. And she knew, with a chill certainty, that what she had returned to was no longer merely her home.