Violet followed me like a zombie without appetite. Her mind was pinballing; I could feel it feel its vibrations, its immobilizing panic. Our twinness, with a twist, sees to it—that our fates are entwined even more so than normal twins. It’s our shared comfort and tragedy all rolled up in a tight ball of string that defies disentanglement, that seems to have neither beginning nor end.

I pulled out my switchblade and handed it to her.

She stared at it, numbly at first, then incredulously. Her voice was almost a whisper when she asked if it was mine or hers. “It’s both of ours,” I replied. “You’ve been holding it since you came in.” She seemed to sag, a look of utter incomprehension spreading across her face, a face that would have been the spitting image of my own, except for the subtle differences inherent in all twins—that indefinable something nobody notices until you’re around them for a while.

“You know, little sister,” I began, carefully now, “both our birth parents harbored some interesting secrets, but that’s in another box. Right now, we must address the one at hand. Let’s just say our bloodline is… unusual, but still doesn’t explain everything.”

I paused, switched gears. “Anyway, on a more practical and lighter note, you’ve been happy lately. And damned if I want to be the one to throw a big juicy fly into the salve of your first pas de deux. Why, I’ll bet you’re both already having visions of making a couple of mocha babies to replace the one his late wife misplaced.

“As for our genetic heritage, I cannot stress enough how thankful I am that we did not get, through Bianca’s mitochondrial DNA, a tainted injection of beurre blanc into the etouffee. Perish the thought. Bianca, unimaginative as she was, wouldn’t have recognized a truly blood-thirsty and diabolical bitch if she took a chunk out of her big, lazy, luminous ass. They certainly were the perfect pairing, it must be said. High school sweethearts who made it on the periphery of a burgeoning industry with an almost limitless supply of fresh meat at its disposal. Our murdered father provided the seed money, of course, but Dicky and his fleur du mal—she of the gargantuan ass and negative IQ—blew it, and quick. Bad as his taste was, he had no qualms about indulging it. And as much as they were at each other’s throats, each was the keeper of the secrets that ensured the continued coherence of their banal yet satanic union. But is that not true of so many marriages, so many alliances made in hell, and signed in blood?

“Eventually, perhaps, one of our esteemed guardians would have strangled, bludgeoned, or poisoned the other. I mean, after they’d found a way to rid themselves of us, after siphoning off our inheritance. Like most parasites who lack imagination, they never seemed to know when to quit, never knew when the script was veering off into self-parody. In any case, whatever their nefarious plot, I, with you, beat them both to it. The staging was such a nice touch, if I do say so, another chef d’oeuvre, and one I didn’t even conceive of. No less than they deserved and, again, poetic to the nines! The Latin silliness, my calling card, is just amusing lagniappe. Incidentally, that girl in the shower at the end of the ‘Asshole Out of Hell’ script? That was yours truly. It was a little ‘inside joke.’ I showered at the mansion after doing the deed. After all, it wasn’t like anybody was going to drop by.”

Violet, at my urging, had sliced open the tape on the box with the switchblade, then flicked the blade closed. I knelt next to her and touched her face; she almost wept. She still couldn’t make sense of what I was telling her. No surprise there.

She asked if we could take a break, go for a walk; she knew what might be coming, what could no longer be postponed. She needed me to tell her what to do, to tell me that she would do anything to make things right. I nixed the walk—said maybe later, after.

“I know you’ve torched my scenes, but there must still be a mother lode of incriminating stuff back there, I mean incriminating in the parlance of our current system of justice.”

Violet shuddered involuntarily, stared at me. She was afraid to question me; I didn’t expect any rebuttals anyway. Sometimes my graphic scenes surprise even me, but they just reflect reality, nothing more, nor less. There’s a reason why death and sex are so intimately entwined: in both, you’re one with your victim, lost in the act. A kite in the stratosphere. She set the blade down, rummaged in the box until she found them.

“Do you remember seeing these? Maybe you don’t, but the image is buried deep, somewhere beyond recollection. Or perhaps you didn’t understand what you were looking at in the first place. Things have a way of floating to the surface though, as you know, like the contents of a septic tank, like Dick and Bianca’s work. The one you’re holding is the first Doppler, early in our mother’s pregnancy. It is dated 8/14. Just look at us cute little sprogs, with our future foreheads pressed together, already conspiring. Under that touching scene, you’ll find a later one, in another envelope, marked ‘follow-up sonogram, 10/18/64, Oceane DeLoache.’ That one you might have missed, and I never thought it appropriate to bring it to your attention, lest you do something rash.”

With trembling hands, she picked up the image and stared dumbly at it.

“Don’t be afraid, Violet. I would never, in all the time that is, do anything to hurt you, to cause you misery or grief. In fact, I’ve done everything in my power to spare you those useless, debilitating emotions. What we must do, however, is get out of here before your swarthy swain—oh my!—comes back to check on you. Understand, sister, that what I’m about to relate is meant only to bring you, in real time, to what we are facing, existentially: utter and complete obliteration. The mission will be aborted, and lofty aspirations will have been for naught. You—we—will be confined to an institution, and Dick will have made good on his threat, posthumously.”

She held the two sonograms up together, comparing them, until she realized what she was looking at. The first clearly showed us both floating together in the amniotic fluid. The second showed only one.

She stared up at me.

“Now look at your birth certificate, Violet, my sister, my fleur de joie.”

For the first time since our infancy, I felt my center go soft, slide downward, as if I had been tasked with the terrible errand of reporting the death of somebody’s first born. I watched Violet read what was printed on the document from New York Hospital; it was as if she were trying to decipher something written in glyphs, or Aramaic.

Then the print on the birth certificate: March 4, 1965. The name: Violet Jade DeLoache. The official stamp that certified that she, as is everybody born alive, was the property of the state, one in which it would have a lifelong interest—until it had used you up.

“Where is… yours?” she pleaded, her voice cracking.

“Mine does not exist, Violet.”

I felt my heart break, almost as if I had one.