Page 19 of Borrowed

T he rosary lay in pieces behind us.

She didn’t notice.

Her eyes stayed on mine even as I tugged her up by the wrists.

“Come on,” I whispered. “You always said we should be closer to God.”

She stumbled after me. Her heels clicked like guilt across the stone floor, her mouth mumbling some cracked prayer under her breath—familiar and useless.

The altar loomed.

White cloth.

Golden chalice.

Bloodless.

Toby hated that.

I pulled her forward, the edge of the cloth brushing my thighs. My skin was still wet, hair clinging to my cheeks, blood long since dried at my nostril. I must’ve looked like something reborn.

She stood trembling.

“I don’t know what you want from me, T?—”

“Your confession,” I said. “Kneel.”

Toby coiled in my spine, humming.

She hesitated. She looked at me—and for a moment, I saw it.

Recognition.

Not of what I’d done but of what I was.

Still, she obeyed.

She sank to her knees like a child in confession, and I stepped behind her. My fingers gently pushed her hair forward.

Reverent.

Tender.

“I used to watch you from the hallway,” I said. “Loving Toby. Crying after. You never let me interrupt. He said your love is pain.”

She gasped. “But I—you didn’t?—”

“Don’t lie,” I said. “God’s listening.”

Toby pressed his palm to my back. “Now.”

I lifted the cross.

Not to strike her.

Not yet.

Just to remind her where we were.

“You brought me here to save me,” I whispered.

She turned, her eyes wide. “I was trying?—”

“No.” I leaned in, brushing her ear with my breath. “You wanted to erase me. Like you did to Toby.”

She was right where she belonged.

At the altar.

Face to face with her creator.

* * *

She stayed on her knees like a believer. But her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

I stepped around her, slow. The cross dragged against the marble, gentle as a corpse.

Toby moved beside me.

Quiet.

Patient.

He didn’t have to say anything.

I already knew what he wanted.

“You prayed to God when you loved him,” I said. “Will you talk to him with me?”

She sobbed. “Please, you don’t understand. You have to stop…Please, God, save me from this child of mine!”

I waited, letting the silent answer curl around her.

“Sorry, Mother. Just like you ignored our screams,” I leaned down, fingers curling under her chin, forcing her to look at me. “Your God is ignoring you now.”

I gripped the cross so hard it prickled my skin, and Toby smiled.

Toby’s voice purred in my skull.

“Make her feel it. We never belonged to her. She belongs to us. Forever. ”

I pressed the cross against her neck. Her breath hitched. She saw the sharp tip of the metal now. Really saw it. Saw me.

Her hands reached for mine. “No, please—don’t do this. We can fix it, we can?—”

“There’s nothing left to fix,” I said. “I’m. Not. Broken.”

I pressed the metal into her skin, right above her collarbone. “You are.”

Her lips moved in prayer.

Automatic.

Useless.

And then I pushed deeper.

Just enough to pierce. Enough for blood to start its slow descent, baptizing her in the very truth she denied.

She gasped. Reached up. Tried to stop the cross.

Too late.

Toby took my hand in his. Guided it deeper, held her down while the cross slowly disappeared inside her skin.

She collapsed back against the altar, blood pooling around her knees, soaking into the cloth like wine.

I watched her fade, eyes flickering like the candlelight.

Toby watched, too, on top of her. His hands were tangled in her hair. Her mouth hung open, but no words were able to escape. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and Toby licked them clean.

“Let me love you, Mother,” he whispered above her body, ripping her dress into tattered strips of fabric.

He wasn’t gentle. Didn’t touch her like he did me. His hands left bruises on her skin.

Purple and bloody.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it? What you demanded of me every night.”

My twin was as hard as the stone altar, his fist angrily smashing against his dick over and over. He looked over at me, his beautiful face contorted with lines and lines of anger. He looked like Father.

Mother’s body made squishy, wet noises underneath him. Toby grunted, smacking her hard enough to make her whimper.

“Tell me you need my love, Mother. Tell me how good I make you feel. You don’t get to run away now. You demanded this of me every night. Kept going even when it made me burn.”

A gurgle left Mother’s lips, foam-like liquid spilling down her cheeks and onto her chest and stomach.

And then she was still…

Silent.

Dead.

Toby roared like a lion and threw her body toward me. He looked so pretty. He was smiling as he approached me.

“She has never seen me,” he whispered. “Not once.”

I kissed the top of her blood-matted hair, stroking the dark strands through my fingertips.

“It’s okay,” I told him. “She sees you now.”

Toby looked at the blood on the ground, the crimson river seeping into the wooden boards.

“You are so beautiful,” he said, reaching down over our Mother and swiping her blood onto his fingers.

“So sacred,” he continued, parting my legs and pushing me against the cold altar. “You have done what I couldn’t, Sister…now it’s my turn to thank you.”