Forever the Same

I held my breath against the copper smell saturating the air. That's what happens when you shoot someone. The bullet goes so fast that the blood turns into mist. Light as air and drifting until I breathe in the evidence of my actions. Only it wasn't over.

She laid on the floor, gasping as the hole in her chest gurgled and foamed blood. I knew I should feel something. Guilt or regret. A sadness that the person I knew almost as well as myself would be gone in a few minutes. But I didn't. I felt nothing. Not even a rush from the gun kicking back in my hands and the ringing in my ears. And there was no satisfaction in the shock on my sister's face when I pulled the gun on her and she saw I would squeeze the trigger.

I sighed, and in the intake of breath the taste of pennies filled my mouth, all the way to the back of my tongue. My sister gasped while I stood watching. The gun was still in my hand and I wasn't yet sure what I would do with it. But as my best friend of fourteen years looked at me with pleading eyes I knew what I had to do. I raised the gun and fired again. A new plume of copper and gunpowder scented air engulfed the room. My sister was dead. The bullet just over her left eyebrow.

I stroked the spot on my own face. It looked just like hers. Exactly like hers in fact. That's how it works with identical twins after all. But now there was a difference. A hole streaming blood although her heart had already stopped. I couldn't leave her like that. From birth we were indistinguishable. In death we had to be the same. I put the gun to my left eyebrow, staring down at my twins lifeless face. In a moment my own face would be dead and expressionless. I made sure it was in the right spot and pulled the trigger. Heat exploded in my head and then it was over. I collapsed next to my sister bleeding from the head. "Forever the same," I whispered as blackness swept me away.