Page 22 of Borrowed
T he sirens were there now.
Like they finally remembered us.
I could hear the gravel crackle beneath their tires and distant voices barking commands through radios.
But none of it mattered.
Not here.
Not with him.
Toby still had his arms around me, our bodies twisted together on the blackened floor of the old house. The air was thick with ash and rot and something holy.
He looked down at me and kissed my lips.
I reached up and touched the bandages that wrapped around his head, soft now with age, stained with soot, damp from sweat and blood. He flinched beneath my fingers.
“I need to see you,” I whispered.
He shook his head slowly. “You can’t turn back.”
“No.” My voice broke like glass. “I want to see you. Please.”
The black butterfly that had always hovered nearby drifted low, the mist billowing around us.
Something inside me twisted, and I leaned up, reaching for the strands. He grabbed my wrist like before, the bandages soaking with blood and singing with fire that didn’t burn.
“Toby,” I breathed. “Please.”
The butterfly fell lower, unable to keep flight, landing on the broken shards of glass across from us. Its wings fluttering, stuttering, dying.
Toby let go of my wrists.
And I pulled the knot loose.
He didn’t stop me as the blood spilled from the fabric, dripping over his body and warping his image.
The bandages unraveled like an old lie, strip by strip, breath by breath until they fell into my lap like a discarded skin.
I braced myself to see him.
But it wasn’t his face beneath the cloth.
It was…
Delicate lips.
Hollow, pale eyes.
A face I knew better than anyone. The dark strands of hair fell like smoke around the body, blurring into something too familiar.
“Tabby…” the voice wasn’t in my mind. It wasn’t spoken to me.
I shook my head, not understanding. My hands trembled. “No…this—this can’t be…I can’t be…”
I was staring at a reflection of myself, but…
The room spun.
The image touched my cheek with reverence, her eyes shining, a soft smile trembling on her lips.
“You kept me,” she whispered, the voice I always knew a soft whisper in the undertone. “Even when I burned. Even when you couldn’t save me, you brought me back.”
My skin went cold. My mouth opened, but no words came out.
In the shards of stained glass across the floor, I saw a reflection.
A man.
Pale, naked…
Blood drying in streaks down his thighs, mouth parted in horror.
Not Tabitha.
Toby.
I stared at the man.
He stared back.
The black butterfly was so slow now, the wings unable to flap any longer, the body still.
I turned away, burying my face into the image’s chest because I couldn’t look any longer. Because I didn’t want to know.
“Don’t leave me,” I said, voice muffled. “Please. I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to!”
Outside, I could hear the police. They were screaming a name…my name.
My true name.
“Tobias Crowley! You’re under arrest for the murder of Beatrice Crowley, Mila Bastion, Father?—”
“I won’t,” my sister’s image promised, kissing my forehead and wrapping her arms around me like a coffin. “I told…you. I don’t exist…without…you.”
She was fading. Leaving me again, like in the flames.
I watched the cops get closer, my tears blurring the flashing lights that painted us in war colors.
Tabby was nearly gone as the mist of the fire consumed her.
“Please.” I cried. “You can’t leave me, my twin. I love you. I’m nothing without you!”
But the truth was always there, just below the surface. She burned and…I broke. In the silence after, I borrowed her name.
Her face.
Her warmth.
So I could forget…forget the pain, the abuse, the fire.
I couldn’t save her.
I couldn’t save myself.
Without her, I would be forgotten.
Because…
I could never be whole again.
The End