The Debt

Do not ever, ever betray your siblings, no matter what. Or death awaits you.

The Debt(part one)

I always thought there was something between my twin brother and my little sister, something weird that I couldn’t quite catch and that my parents ignored completely. At first, I thought it was just brotherhood, that Jim was particularly tender and loving towards Maya, considering normally he was just a big junk. But as time fled, I began to doubt. For sure, they were nice to me too, loved me, just as normal siblings around my village. Yet there was just something that surrounded them when they were together. It made them distant, impenetrable as they were in their own world, only the two of them.

And years passed like this.

I grew up, became a teenager, then a young woman, then a woman, then I entered my forties. I never found out what was happening between my two siblings, nor why they had left home so suddenly, after that night, after that intense fighting with my parents. And I had never heard from them ever since.

I asked my parents about it, but they refused to tell me and forbade me to mention it again. I tried to contact Jim and Maya, but it was always dead silent at the other end of the line, except mechanical beepings. I even tried the police, but not one, not even once trace, could be found. So I gave up.

During that time, I was married twice, first to a bank manager and the second, to a business counselor. I had three beautiful, magnificent children, two girls, and a boy. They were the greatest accomplishment of my life and my greatest gift from God. I thought it was only by coincidence that they often remembered me of when I was young, with Maya and Jim, for everything between them, from age gap to order, was the same as me. But I should have known more.

When I hit my fiftieth, my second husband died. He had passed away from a crisis. That was what the doctors told me, but I didn’t believe a word. I knew, I knew there was something strange, unnatural about it, about his strange stiff face to his black tongue. Yet I chose to keep my questions. Again, I should have known more.

As my children left one by one, I chose to return to my native hometown, to where all started. I bought a house near my old one, which was now owned by a young couple. Every morning I would walk to fetch the milk, then I would return to sit on my front porch, where I would spend the rest of my day reading a book or sipping tea. And life went on like this for a long time. I had a few friend, and even a lover. I considered myself lucky, to be able to pass away in peace, happiness after all the turbulence that had occurred when I was younger. How naive I was.

Eventually, I became old, and I couldn’t move like before. All day long, I sat on my little sofa and watched the birds fly by. I accepted that fact that I was aging, even though I hated it. Overall, all must come to an end. But what I did not accept, was something far more terrifying, and...strange. Mole, in size of eggs, started to grow on my skin. They were not those normal ones, smooth almost as the skin itself. No. They were like pimples that broke apart easily and smelled like rotten eggs. They crawled all over my face, my body like nightmare monsters, suffocating me from inside out.

I started to hate myself, hate my incapacity, hate my bony fingers, and hate my aged, mole filled skin. My friend, my lover and even my children drove themselves away from me. They thought I was a demon, working for the Satan in the change of dignity. I compelled, believing it was the punishment of God for giving up on my siblings. I even asked my carer, a young girl who did nothing that deepened my pain and mocked me, to remove all the mirrors in the house. I became obsessed.

Even When I died, I still did not find out why it happened to me. I died in the most pitiful manner, along, poor and unloved. Maybe I should have taken the hint of what was about to come. But I didn’t, and I paid the price.