Together Until The End

They look so pathetic. So scared. Hard to believe I loved them once. Feared them last. Now they are afraid of me. Very afraid. It feels so good to be the one causing them to shake.

"We buried you."

Even their voices cannot stand still, tremulous, thin. They might as well be the ghost.

"I dug that grave. So why shouldn't I be able to dig myself out?"

And that's the part that still hurts, somewhere in my exposed marrow, my rotting insides, my absent soul. Somewhere, somehow, I still feel betrayed by that. But unfortunately for them, I feel the humiliation more. Burning at me, despite there being nothing left to catch fire. I was fooled. No, I was deceived, I was tricked. But I left it happen. I didn't see it coming. Because I trusted them. Because I loved them. They ruined that. They ruined me. And now, I'll ruin them.

"How..."

It's Amanda who speaks first. I didn't expect that. Always the shrinking violet, always the wallflower at the party, always having to be peeled from her own shadow to join the fun. And it was me doing the pulling, her hand in mine, warm and soft, twirling her into the light. Funny that it was that same hand that pushed me into the dark. Cold and rough. So perhaps she never was as shy as she made out to be. Turns out I'm not very good at reading people. Maybe she was just playing a very, very long game. Luckily for her, mine is going to be over very, very quickly.

My hand - broken and sloughing flesh - punched through a pale and tender throat, can hurt just as violently as the blade of a shovel to a spine. She dies right away. I sense it, the absence of life, immediate. I choked to death, my body severed from itself by the instrument I had held only minutes before. I might have thought they assumed the blow killed me outright. If I hadn't heard the words, "look at her eyes. She's bugging out!" as the dirt was shovelled onto that same, weeping stare.

I turn to Marco next. He laughed after that got said. As though the sight of his oldest friend, paralysed, choking, in the grave he tricked her into digging, was something humorous. Men who think they are amusing should always be suspected. But I used to giggle at his jokes. I used to tell him how good he was. Encouraging his dreams, not knowing he was the nightmare. He is not chuckling now. Not even smiling. Such a shame. He has such a pretty smile.

Those pearly whites shatter pretty too. Like dominos, they tumble to the floor. I do not speak. There is nothing left to say to him. And I did not wait for him to try. Now he cannot. His tongue, hot and slimy, sits in my crimson fingers, as a font of blood pulses from his gaping maw. He dies choking on his own life force, or because of it's rapid exit from his veins. Either way, Marco is dead now too.

"Look this isn't-"

"Be quiet."

It turns out incredulous shrieks are no match for the dulcet tranquility of mouldering vocal chords. They go quiet. All of them. All who remain anyhow. I think they stop breathing. It would be better for them if they did. More peaceful. Ah well. They didn't care to make my end easy. I haven't come all this way for some heart failure. Not unless I am the one attacking.

"Shouldn't I be the one asking the questions?" I look, as much as dead eyes can, at my murderers. "Shouldn't I be the one asking why?" They remain silent, either scared silent or still obeying my order. When I then shrug, a moth flies free from under my scapula. "Does it matter now?"

The moth lands on Rodger's face. He does not blink. I remember at my seventh birthday party, when he thought a gummy worm was the real deal and fainted dead away. He split her head open and needed thirteen stitches. I gave him joint custody of my new bike because of it.

"All our fates are sealed regardless." I never used to be good at English. Carrie-Ann never let me hear the end of it. Turns out my bloodless tongue has better chat than I could ever conjure up, even with a live brain. She isn't talking now. Much like Marco. I wonder if she treasured her last kisses with him. Does the tongue, lying limp and pink in the grime, look as appealing now? It did not feel good, the slick flesh in my papery palm, but I used to imagine it would, in my mouth. Perhaps that is why she led me to my death. Over a teenage crush? Have we been reduced to such base stereotypes? I hope my true wrong doing was crueller than that.

I notice that she is crying, her face as red as her true hair colour. She should have kept it. The blonde washes her out. Dynamic Ash I think it was called. It stung my cuticles when I helped her dye it, giggling as we bleached all the towels. We got in so much trouble for that. I didn't even care. It had been so much fun. Even when some of her hair then fell out. Only some. It can't have been that, surely?

A scream tears through the night and my reverie. It is then that I realise I did the tearing first. In my defence, I only meant to scalp her. She must have had a weak spine. Did mine split so easily? When I drop her head, it makes the most gorgeous thud. I wonder if her ghost will have copper hair, or if I have condemned her to an alopeciac afterlife.

Rodger is the one screaming. There is that famed cowardice, thirteen years on. Marisol wants to comfort him, but she chose to stand on the other side of the group. They will never touch again. At least some other lovely couple will get their April weekend wedding date. I had so been looking forward to attending a castle ceremony. I do hope my funeral wasn't in a church. I never lived long enough to set up a will. Who on earth is taking care of my darling Sphinx cat, Golly? I hope it wasn't any of them or he'll get whiplash from moving homes so frequently. Carrie-Ann looks a bit like him now, come to think of it. Her neck stump has stopped oozing at least. If only I could say the same for the bit just under my right hip. If I could still feel pain, I'm sure the agony would be nauseating. On that note, Matt is throwing up. I wonder if I could force it back down his own throat. I wonder what that death would feel like. But Rodger is annoying me more. He just won't be quiet. I did tell them.

When he drops, skull splintered and brain bouncing, Marisol goes too, as though I've slashed her achilles instead of her fiancé's cranium. Perhaps I will. But at least she stays silent. Even when I pull her heart from her chest with the same hand that ended her wedding dreams a moment prior. She didn't say anything when they killed me either. At least she is consistent. Rodger couldn't stop talking now that I think about it. He chimed in after the eyes comment;

"Let's see how the bugs like them in a week or so then!"

Was Marco annoyed that night, that he only provided the laugh and not the joke? If only I hadn't been so quick to kill him, I could have asked. Stirred up just one more moment of drama. Don't I deserve a last bit of a fun, some petty revenge? Killing them isn't petty, it is just. Ah well. Too late. For all of them anyway. I don't know when it actually ends for me.

It's about to end for Matt, when I notice Briar choosing the wise coward's way out, and making a run for it. In all honesty, I had almost forgotten she was there, which is impressive. Tall in stature but thin in substance. A little like my focus at the moment. It is hard to keep track of everything, everyone. Thankfully they are almost all dead now.

It turns out I can move faster than a living person now that I am dead. Briar only gets a few metres away before I am there, and her spirit is no longer. It also turns out, that when a living person meets my non-living form at a decent speed, they almost, dissolve, I would describe it as; into a lurid, scarlet sludge, raining down in gobs and chunks of varying size. She was always the fastest of us, always top of the podium on sports day. Her superlative, when we graduated, was most likely to be an Olympian. There goes that dream I suppose. But she took away all of mine first.

No one else has moved by the time I return to the increasingly bloody site. How kind, a final act of generosity far too late, and far too meaningless. Stopping my murder would have sufficed.

Matt looks me in what he presumes to be the eye - as Rodger so hilariously jested, the insects did indeed feast upon the soft meat of my vitreous bodies - and he shakes his head. If I hadn't commanded them all to not speak, I would ask what it means. Is he sorry? Is he begging? Does it matter? No. But for sheer pluck alone, I move fast enough that I doubt he even sees my already dripping fist as it plunges through his head. Such a sculpted face, now crumpling like an old apple under my hollowing knuckles. His body hangs off my wrist, a beautiful bangle dripping with beads of ruby and ivory. When I shake him off, the way he fold to the ground is almost graceful. I almost feel bad for his boyfriend, toiling away at university for a life they will never build. But he's better off without a killer for a lover.

And now all that is left...

"Please."

Finally.

"Found your courage then?" I almost wish I thought of something wittier to say, more cutting. But I suppose that will come soon enough.

"Don't."

After everything, she's really telling me what to do. Really? Seven minutes younger and still compensating for it. Not that I ever made her feel that she had to. I tried to hard, to let her know that we are equal. Were. Because now I am dead, and she is not. For now.

"Do you regret it?"

She shakes her head. Of course she does. I may even respect her more for it. And I wonder if there is even any point in asking why. I know she was the mastermind. I didn't see who swung the weapon. But I knew the voice that called out my pleading, desperate eyes. She sees them in the mirror everyday.

Did it unnerve her at all, to see her double, buried alive? Did it bother her more or less than the fact that the reason the likeness is so uncanny, is not that I was some chance doppelgänger, but her twin sister.

"Who's looking after my cat then, you bitch."

The name calling is juvenile, sisterly even now, but I hardly have time to regret it, before she begins to laugh. And somehow, despite everything that has happened tonight; all the death, all the betrayal, all the blood, it is this, that disturbs me the most. At first, I think it is just cruelty at it's extreme, a callous reaction to my question. A loss of sanity in the face of impending death. But then, she stops, and looks at me, even more fixated than Matt was.

"I am, obviously."

A ghost shouldn't be able to feel taken aback. It feels wrong, sour in my rotten bones. Nevertheless, it is happening. She hates my cat, always has. Says he looks like a goblin, and acts like one too. Refused to look after him, even when I begged. Even when I offered money. So why on earth would she...

It is hard to describe the way it feels to have an epiphany when you are dead, a grotesque spark in an otherwise dark mind. I almost shiver, like someone has walked over my grave. And in a way, she has. Only it isn't mine. Not really. It doesn't have tears shed into the soil over my loss, flowers picked out to suit my tastes, or even my name on the stone. It has hers.

"I couldn't take the looks anymore. The disappointment."

She shrugs, and no creature escapes from her scapula. Because she is living. Living my life.

"I'm an adult. Why did everyone care what I did with my time? It was all my choice. The drugs, the theft, the jail time. I didn't care. So why did they? Acting as though I'd killed someone!"

The laugh of a corpse, reanimated, is something to behold. It makes even her, take a step back.

"You did! We were all there! And then you did it again! To me!"

The night of the crash will never leave me. Never had a chance to. She killed again only a month later. Did she think I would talk? As if that wouldn't incriminate us all. All of us were in the car, bawdy and loud. But none of us had shot ourselves up with heroin, and taken five shots, before muscling their way into the drivers seat. We should have known she wasn't sober. But we weren't either. We weren't thinking. But we weren't driving. We wouldn't have. He was a farmer, moving some sheep or something, to another field. Someone driving at the speed limit, and with a clear mind would have seen him. But that was never ever going to be her. And she said we would all take the fall for it, so like drunken cowards, we listened. She was better at committing crimes whilst intoxicated anyway, she told us what to do. The body lies at the bottom of McLaren Falls, a mile from the site of the accident, pinned down by the force of the water and many, many rocks.

"I knew someone would cave eventually, dob me in. You'd all been looking for a way to get rid of me for years. So I had to get ahead. And everyone loves you. I figured, steal your phone, set up a meeting, spike the drinks with a little ket, and they'd be just susceptible and paranoid enough to think that killing me was a good idea. If you suggested it."

Another shrug. "After all, if your own twin wants you dead, it has to be alright."

"So when I killed them..."

"They thought you were me. Just being me. As per. Why wouldn't the evil addict come back for more?" When she flips her hair away, I recognise the gesture. I wonder how long she's kept it in, knowing I never moved that way.

"We were going to try and frame it like you'd run away, but then we figured if we crashed your... sorry, my car into the river before the falls, we might get away with everything. If they found the farmer's body, they'd assume I did that when I veered off the road, my own body washed out to sea. And lo and behold, I was right! My name sits on a cheap stone above an empty plot. It's been a bit of a struggle learning all the ins and outs of your friendships, your work, but I've been on bereavement leave anyway, so I have time. And now that everyone here is dead... well, not so much of a struggle anymore. Besides, you're going to kill me anyway, so. I don't have to worry about that."

And at last, the original surge of righteous confidence, or pure rage that was driving me up until a few minutes ago, flickers once more.

"Am I?"

And there it is. Her own flicker of doubt, expertly concealed but. I am her twin. I know her face.

"It seems to me that if you want it. I shouldn't. You made me kill all of my friends. And yes, what they did was... I can't understand it. Can't fathom that they'd think I'd ever want to hurt anyone on purpose. Let alone my sister. But I understand more than I did before. You however... I won't ever get my decaying head around that. But give me some time. I have forever. And you might too. In jail I imagine."

With crooked fingers, still slick with blood, I gesture at my carnage.

"After all, you've gotten away with two deaths now. Let's see you explain seven more."

And it is when her eyes lose that infernal gleam, the one I never quite had, the one thing that truly separated us, that is when I know, that this is why.