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Your name was Simon Flores. You were a 21-year old college student at [REDACTED], Colorado, studying for a degree in computer science. You had a healthy interest in sports, mainly soccer and gymnastics, but your true passion was dancing. You had a little sister named Sarah who you’ve been taking care of your whole life. You adore her. She adored you. You two were the only family you each have.
Something has been impersonating your little sister.
You didn’t catch it at first. You thought she was just struggling with her new middle school and all the emotions that came with puberty. You remember your own troubled adolescent days way too clearly, so you expected the long days spent locked in her room and furtive trips to the kitchen. You’d give her the space she needed, you reasoned. Then she started to come out more, to talk to you again, to face life with a smile. You didn’t know what caused this, but you felt nothing but relief. The last thing you wanted was for Sarah to reflect on her middle school years as the roughest periods of her life.
It was when she was rushing to the bus one morning that you saw what had changed. Last summer, when you’d both been going on a camping trip, Sarah had accidentally leaned against the exhaust pipe of your car. She’d taken it like a champ, brushing off the pain, but she’d been left with a nasty scar in the shape of a circle. Even now, it was still red and puffy, making itself known even after attempts to cover it up with barely-matching foundation.
There was no scar on her leg. It was like it hadn’t been marked at all.
You thought you were just being stupid. Who fixates on his sister’s body like that? You’d probably just been distracted that morning with your own schoolwork and had glimpsed the wrong leg. Yet you kept a careful eye, not enough to disturb her but enough to confirm your suspicions. The scar was still gone at dinner, and when you were driving her to the Brown Cow, and when you were picking her up at the mall. In fact, there were a lot of things about her that had vanished. Her nervous shuffle was replaced with a confident stride. She no longer balled her fists to her sides when arguing with her social studies teacher, but kept them neatly folded against her chest. Her days at school grew to include stories about her adventures with the cheerleading squad, who she'd never even expressed an interest in hanging out with before. And over the weeks, her cadence and voice transformed into something more mature. Cultured. It was like she had aged overnight into a college student who had seen more of the world than she’d initially let on.
Except she wasn’t a college student, right? That was your baby sister. She was only in 6th grade. She loved collecting old dolls and fixing them up. She was best friends with the girl down the street who loved to talk about The Spiderwick Chronicles. One time she’d tried to dye her hair on her own, and it had turned out to be an absolute mess, but you’d taken her out to dinner because you reasoned she’d punished herself enough and this might as well be a less painful learning experience. You’d spent the night laughing over boxes of pizza as you reminisced over your own fashion disasters, and she’d gently grabbed your hand and told you she was glad you were her brother.
Were you going mad? Maybe she was just gaining new interests and finding herself, like every teenager did. You tried to tell yourself that every day you spent on your courses, every evening you ate dinner with her, every night you lay on your bed and closed your eyes and forced yourself to sleep. Would it have been easier if you had been going insane? Were you insane? You didn’t think your family had any history of delusions or hallucinations. But that had to be the only reason, because there was no way in hell somebody had actually taken the trouble to impersonate Sarah and tweak her life so slightly, so slowly, so excruciatingly.
You didn’t think she noticed your anguish. You’d gotten pretty good at keeping your less savory emotions under a mask of inoffensive pleasantries, and she didn’t say anything. She treated you the same as she always had, in fact. She always told you about her day, always thanked you for picking her up or dropping her off when she couldn’t take the bus, always wished you goodnight before going up to her room. That was the worst bit about it, really, because in those moments you could pretend that nothing was wrong. You could look at her eyes, the same ones she’d always had, and tease her gently about not bringing the bedbugs in without any trouble.
Maybe you shouldn’t have let yourself fall into complacency so easily. You should’ve done something earlier. Call the police, put out a missing persons sign, institutionalize yourself, scour the internet forums for doppelgangers or changelings or whatever. Except what the hell could you have done? People would’ve thought you were crazy. You already thought you were crazy. And it wasn’t like things were getting worse at this time: no increasing disappearances of kids at school, no dead animals turning up on the lawns, no freak tornadoes or self-imploding houses. Even the freaky pizza place a few blocks down hadn’t experienced any disasters as of recently. There was nothing you could pin your growing paranoia on, no way to externalize the creeping dread that was growing closer with each passing minute.
Maybe, you’d feverishly reason in the small hours of the night, things would just return to normal. You’d wake up and there would be your Sarah again, scarfing down bagels at the breakfast table, asking you why you’d been sleeping for so long. Or maybe you’d wake up in the hospital, and a patient nurse would tell you that you’d been in a coma for the past few months. Hell, you’d take losing a limb over this. Anything over this living nightmare.
You weren’t a religious person by any means, but one night you couldn’t help yourself. You shot a quick prayer to God to stop fucking around and end things. God must’ve had a pretty awful sense of humor, because he did.
You came home from a shopping trip the next day to discover that the garage reeked.
You’d been in places with mice before; you’d learned very quickly how to tell when one of them died. There was always this sickly sweet smell that rose up into the air, a bit like rotting fruit. You could never find out where it was coming from until you plied open all the floorboards and found the mess of gore and bones sinking into the ground. It wasn’t a scent you wanted to ever experience again, and this house should’ve been the place you made good on that promise. But the smell was back. It was strong. And deep in your sinking heart, you knew that the source wasn’t from any mouse or raccoon that could’ve snuck into the foundations.
You remember dropping the bags as you ran, busting the door open with your shoulder. The garage’s clean, you were saying to yourself. The garage’s clean, I took the trash out last night, I didn’t smell anything. Over and over you chanted this to yourself, trying to keep your mind from slipping, and you rushed over to the garbage cans to open them and
they were full. They were full with something and the stench was horrific. There were flies everywhere and you had to wave your hand to get them off the lid and they’d just rise up in clouds and descent again and
somebody had broken into your house and put something in your garbage cans. Unless somebody had already been in the house to put something in your garbage cans. Unless somebody and been there the entire time and
you couldn’t think. You couldn’t think through the stench. You pulled your shirt up to your mouth and tried not to gag and threw the first can open. Nothing but bags. Nothing but bulky, black plastic bags.
This has to be a joke. This has to be a joke. Let the nightmare end now let the nightmare end now let the nightmare end now
One of the bags was already ripped open. You’d never believed in tearing the bandaid off slowly. You grabbed the pencil in your pocket and shoved it into the hole, straining at it to widen it and let the light from outside hit it and see what was inside
oh god.
That was Sarah’s hand.
That was Sarah’s hand.
You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up!
You are on the floor, and something hot and heavy is coming out of your mouth, and your head is full of flies and your eyes are full of water.
You heave until your stomach is as empty and stretched out as your heart is.
There is somebody standing next to you. You left the door open. You don’t care. You cough again, and all the bile is out and on the floor and on your hands and your cheeks are wet and they won’t dry.
“Oh,” a voice says slowly. “You came home early.”
You don’t turn your head. You know who that isn’t. You know who isn’t rifling through the bags, sliding something out of them.
“Sarah,” you mutter dully.
“Yes, she’s in there.” Not-Sarah hums to herself. “And in here. And everywhere. Sorry you had to find out this way. I was hoping to make things easier for you.”
You want to laugh, but your throat feels like it’s closing up. You let out a painful sob instead.
“If it helps,” Not-Sarah continues, “you did a good job of playing along. You really were the best big brother anyone could ask for.” You feet her kneel down next to you, her presence too warm. Too familiar. “But I think we both knew this wasn’t going to last long.”
You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up! You’re never waking up!
“Who-” You swallow, reaching out a hand to your throat. “What the fuck are you. Why did you-”
“Eleanor.” And you sense her smile with Sarah’s face, with Sarah’s eyes. “And it’s nothing personal. I have to feed too. Speaking of-”
Sarah’s hand falls to the floor in front of you. She’s placing a hand on your back. You can’t move. You can’t move. Get your fucking hand off my back you fucking imposter I’m going to fucking kill you-
“-I’ll make this quick as I can. I can only take chunks at a time. Sorry.”
You don’t get to ask what she meant. There’s just a pain in your throat. There’s just the unwinding in your throat.
There’s just everything unwinding.
You are -