My Dead Sister

A Story by SpookyCrayon

Something awful happened to us.

They tell me that I’ve been here for weeks. I don’t believe them; I think it’s been years. I’ve forgotten most things. I think somewhere along the way my drug-muddled brain decided this was preferable to sorting through the fact from the fiction. They tell me that my sister comes to visit me often, but I don’t believe them. She’s been dead since before I arrived at this hospital. I wonder why they’re lying to me. Soon after I arrived at Ward C I was uniformed and kept isolated, with daily doses of medicines, forced confessions, and heartfelt insincerities courtesy of my captors. I’ve heard people call this place a prison, I don’t agree: In a prison you are at least left alone with your faculties intact, with your mind to keep you company. There is still some of you left.

I would never have ended up here if Lena was still with me. She would have found a way to keep me sane, keep me free. She was, in fact, my younger sister, but you never would have guessed it; despite being a year younger she would tower above me both in height and in wits. We ourselves forgot after a time that I was supposed to be the protector, the sister that should be gone now. My parents barely noticed us as we were growing up; having divorced when Lena and I were still very young they never had much time for us. Father had left for some red-headed bimbo with a chest-full of cheap silicone, and mother had taken out her anger by pounding both the drink and her daughters. Especially Lena; she looked the most like my father. But despite the extra struggle, and the extra condemnation, Lena had found a way to raise us both. I loved my sister, I would gladly have taken her fate for myself.

There is one series of events I refuse to forget. I feel that if I were to forget it, I would forget why I’m here. And then I truly would lose my grasp on what is real.

It was early one Tuesday night when Lena and I were trying to improvise through a game of Monopoly with half the pieces missing, when we heard the keys in the front door, and the raucous laughter of drunken adults entering our home. Forgetting our game, we bundled onto the landing to peep at the unwelcome visitors. We had developed a protocol for such evenings when mum would bring home friends: One man; keep as quiet as at all possible until the inevitable bedroom retreat, in which case we were free to roam around. More than one man; we would be going to bed without food, for the downstairs was occupied for the night, and our appearance was never welcome.

“Damn” I said, “I think there’s three or four”

The visitors had retreated through the hallway into the living room before we could get a look. But we were sure we could hear more than one male voice.

“We should have brought food up to the bedroom” said Lena, “I knew it”.

She looked at her cracked phone screen to gauge the time: barely seven o’clock.

“She’s usually back later than this. Do you think she’ll be too angry if we run to the kitchen? I’m starving.”

I slumped against the wall.

“You can if you want. I hate meeting mum’s friends. They stare.”

“Well I ain’t sitting up here all night without any dinner” Lena moaned.

I was annoyed. We had protocol for this; we knew not to go down when mum had friends. We would get such an earful the next day, if not this evening. I think Lena was getting bolder as she grew; at 15 years old, she was as tall as mum, and perhaps a slightly bigger build. I still barely reached her shoulders.

“Let’s just go back to the game. You weren’t even thinking about food until she got home”

“Yeah, I was, I just didn’t say anything” she retorted, angrily.

I shrugged. “I’m staying here”

Lena scowled at me and picked herself up off the landing floor.

“Bring me something, though” I said.

Positioning herself careful on the top step so as not to create a creak, Lena began to descend the stairs. For all her previous demeanour, she looked extremely uneasy. The living room was accessible through a door off the right of the hall, whereas the kitchen was at the far end. It was possible for Lena to run to the fridge and back with no one being the wiser. I stared through the banister, willing her both onwards and back to our bedroom. She reached the hall and swiftly passed the open living room door and into the kitchen. There was no sign from the front room that anyone had been alerted to her. I sighed inwardly, relieved, until I heard what I felt sure was a man’s voice apart from the rest of the laughter, and the higher pitched voice of my sister. I closed my eyes. There was someone in there with her. Hopefully so long as mum didn’t see, she could still just grab some food and be straight back upstairs. I waited. Ten minutes went by, and I began to wonder what could possibly be taking so long.

The voices in the kitchen stopped, but I still did not see Lena tip toeing back through the house. Steeling myself, I knew I would have to go downstairs to see what the problem was. I couldn’t leave my younger sister to mother’s inevitable hysterics if there was some reason she couldn’t get back upstairs. Light footing it down the staircase, as quietly and quickly as I could I made it to the far door at the end of the hall, only to recoil in shock. The man in the kitchen had lifted Lena’s beautiful hair, and was mauling her neck drunkenly, trying to pull her closer to him with his other bare arm. The top of Lena’s head was facing me, her body was rigid, and her left fist was clenched around a carton of cold custard as the man forced himself on her 15-year-old frame.

There was a noise behind me. It was the noise we had been trying to avoid since our evening was interrupted. My mother shrieked. Her guttural, unhealthy voice yelling at her youngest daughter like she hated the ground she walked on.

“S**t!” She screamed, throwing herself into her dingy kitchen and grabbing Lena roughly by the arm.

“I knew it” She said, “I shitting knew it, I knew you were gonna do this to me eventually”

Lena looked terrified, her face contorted pleadingly at her mother.

“I seen the way you look ‘t each other! How long ‘as this been goin’ on, eh?!” her voice was slurring, her words melded into each other as spittle flew in all directions.

“Allison” Said the man, adjusting his grubby vest top while trying to hide an amused smile “You need to calm down”

“Get out!” she spat at him, turning away from her teenage daughter long enough to shoot daggers at this gentleman, who as far as I knew, Lena and I had never met before in our lives.

He shrugged, and grabbed a nearly empty Glenn’s bottle from the counter and sidled out of the door into the night. Mum, roughly holding onto Lena, dragged the girl from where she cowered, through the hall and up the wooden stairs, painfully cracking her shins on the wooden steps as she went. I ran after them, trying to diffuse the situation as curious male heads peered through the living room door at the commotion outside. I could see the fury in my mother’s eyes as I tried to plead with her through the stair banisters to let Lena go. She shoved Lena’s head into one of the wooden poles as she went, cracking the wood slightly and causing blood to pour out of the resulting wound. On reaching the top of the stairs she slammed Lena into the wall, head first, with a horrible smacking noise. Lena crumpled to the floor, crying for her mother to stop; she screamed that she was sorry.

Mum didn’t care, she threw the girl into the bedroom with a strength no overweight middle-aged woman with an alcohol problem should be capable of, and slammed the door. I reached the top of the stairs and stood outside the splintering door with tears rolling down my face, my hand on the door handle. I could hear screams, and crying from inside, I could hear the insults and accusations thrown by my mother, and the pleas and repentance of my sister. I should have gone in. There was no lock. I should have gone in. I was a coward. My sorry self stood outside just listening to my mother all but torture my sister as her anger enveloped her pickled mind until there was nothing left but hate and violence. I backed away, with my back against the wall I slid to the floor, and waited.

In the aftermath the screaming subsided, giving way to quiet sobs. Finally, I turned the handle and peered inside. Lena was curled-up on the floor in the middle of the room, blood streaming from her nose and temples. Her t-shirt was ripped, she was holding the cloth together over her breasts. Mum was sitting on the bed, her head in her hands, breathing heavily, hands shaking. When she heard me enter the bedroom she got up and made her way over to the door without looking at me, and slipped downstairs. I looked at Lena, not knowing what to say. I felt so guilty. Slowly, I kneeled next to the sobbing girl, and tried to lift her head up off the floor. She winced, her injuries clearly causing her a lot of pain.

“Should I call for someone?” I asked.

“How?” Asked Lena “She took my phone”

Lena had bought her own phone, I had never bothered to save up, and mum couldn’t afford one for me as well as the brand-new iPhone for herself.

“I could run to next door’s”

“Like last time?”

They had brought us straight back to mum’s. Mum was so angry she didn’t bring any food into the house for a week.

“You should go to the hospital”

“Mum won’t like that. Anyway, we’ll get reported. You know how messed up those foster kids are”

In recent months, I had honestly started to believe that it couldn’t be any worse than living with mum. But I acquiesced.

“Let’s just get you cleaned up, and see what’s what”

We spent the rest of the night tending to Lena’s injuries. We thought a rib was probably broken, but there wasn’t anything even a doctor could do about that, we rationalised. She would have some nasty bruises, and the cuts on her head, arms and shins would take a while to heal. But from what we could see, we thought " we hoped - that she would be okay.

“I’m still hungry” she said, as she and I drifted off together in each other’s arms.

The next morning, I awoke to the horrible fake laughter that my mum would put on for a man who was doing her a free favour. We didn’t have blinds, so the streaming of the sun into my bedroom momentarily blinded me as I blinked awake. I thought I heard a drilling noise coming from the other side of the door. Shaking my head slightly as I sat up, I could definitely hear the sound of something being drilled into the door frame. Debating whether or not to open the door and risk my mother’s wrath, I grabbed the dressing gown from the floor next to the bed and stood up to throw it on. That was when I noticed two bowls of soggy cereal, two bottles of water, and a bucket sitting on the floor next to the bedroom door. It took me about three seconds to panic.

Running to the door, I grabbed the handle and pulled. As I had feared, it was too late. The door was locked fast from the outside.

“Mum!” I yelled, “What are you doing?!”

“You’re going to stay in there” She said, venomously “I’ve done the best I can for you. You've both left me with no choice.”

“Please, mum!” I cried, “I have school!”

“Yeah, I’ve called the school” she said, “You’re done with it. You will stay in there until I say you can come out. You can blame your w***e sister.”

I heard her make her way back down the hall. What I said next will always haunt me.

“I didn’t even do anything! It was all Lena’s fault! Why are you punishing me?!”

Mum laughed.

“I know as well as you do that you’re as bad as each other. Don’t pretend.”

I could hear a grunting, presumably the man that had imprisoned me had been crouching beside the door. The lock jiggled.

“Not bad for a man with a hangover” he said, and I heard him chatting and mum squealing as they made their way downstairs.

I whipped around.

“Lena, Mum’s"” I stopped. Lena’s eyes were wide open, but she wasn’t looking at me. She wasn’t looking at anything. Her skin was pale, and as I walked towards my poor sister, I could see the light had gone out. The beautiful fire in my sister was no longer there. It was terrifying to see. I dropped to my knees next to her, as my mouth hung open in disbelief. I put my hand to her face, and as I suspected: ice cold. I put my shaking fingers to her neck, which bore lacerations I hadn’t noticed the night before. There was no pulse. Two minutes I stood there; one hundred and twenty seconds, before it truly hit me; before I realised. And then I screamed. Anguish, guilt, regret, grief all washed over me in an instant as I realised what was happening, and my torn voice broke through my gaping mouth in a grief-stricken wail. I screamed for every sorrow in my life, for every sorrow in her life, for the regret that I didn’t step in when I should have, for the remorse that it wasn’t me. It all came crashing over me in less than a second; I wouldn’t even decipher these overpowering emotions until much, much later.

There was a banging on the floor. Mum must have grabbed a broom handle and attacked the ceiling with it. I pounded on the floor with my fists, envisioning the woman who gave me life being palpated beneath my furious appendages. I hated her from that day, and I will hate her until the day I die. Perhaps I should have told her; screamed through the door that she was a murderess. But somewhere through the irrational tears, and heartbroken cries, I knew I didn’t want Lena to be taken away from me. I sat on the bed, and held Lena’s head in my lap. I tried to close her eyelids, but they wouldn’t go down; she simply stared into the abyss as I felt my whole world collapse into it. We stayed that way all day.

My window opened onto the back garden, but I could hear from the small crack in the otherwise non-operational ventilator the children getting onto the school bus around the front of the house, chattering and laughing, ready for another day. Soon, I heard the traffic of the school-run parents, returning from dropping off their darlings. Even though it was over a mile away to the school, my mother had never driven us there, and she certainly wouldn’t give us any bus money. We had to walk. But that was okay; Lena and I would relish in the time we had together. We would make up games, race each other, even give each other piggyback rides if one of us had had an especially grueling P.E. class. Memory after memory cascaded through my thoughts like a waterfall; almost like I was trying to bring her back by sheer force of recollection.

Eventually, I heard the noise of the bus again returning with its precious cargo. By this time, I had been able to get Lena’s eyes to close, but her body had begun to feel stiff in my arms, and heavy on my lap. I suppose I was recovering from the shock as my brain began to clear. What should I do? I had to get mum to take her out of here. I couldn’t be locked up with a body. But what would she do with her? I doubted that she’d alert the authorities and go through the appropriate legal proceedings that would inevitably end with her incarcerated and myself in care for the next two years. What if she just chucked Lena in a ditch in the garden, trying to cover up her crimes? I supposed I could just go to the police, but she’d know that’s something I would be likely to do. What if she killed me, too? Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad?

I crawled out from underneath my sister and made my way to the now completely disintegrated cereal and water bottles. I put the bowl to my lips and drank in the messy, sugary mix of on-the-turn milk and sweet, cardboard-y cereal.

“Better than nothing” I thought, as I took the second bowl and drank that down, too.

Lena sat up. I nearly choked on my dinner.

Part 2: