content warning for attempted sexual assault & incest

***

PHILIPPA TOYS WITH her food, idly stabbing her chicken and brussel sprouts. Hadley, unconsciously, mimics her, as he sticks his fork into the little mountain of mashed potato on his plate. Hadley's father swishes around wine in his glass, looking a little tipsy. Marzia wanders in and out of the kitchen, fidgeting with the strings of her apron.

            When Hadley's mother finally joins them all, Hadley sits straight. Philippa stops slouching in her chair. Hadley's father sets his wine glass down. Marzia stops fidgeting.

            "We have a guest," says Catherine Hadley. She turns her head ever so slightly towards the door. "Please come in."

            The door creaks open. Hadley slumps back into his seat, now that his mother's attention is diverted. He crushes his mountain of mashed potato with the curved side of his spoon. He isn't particularly hungry. He can't remember what he had breakfast. Or lunch.

            "Hello," says the guest. "I do hope you'll enjoy my company."

            Hadley stops playing with his food. He stops moving. He goes so still, his blood might as well be slowing down in his veins. He knows that voice; he knows it better than any other voice.

It belongs to him.

            The thing that is not Hadley seats itself next to him. It pulls out a seat, scraping the chair on the marbled floor, and it's such a harsh sound that Hadley winces. Hadley can't look at it. He can't look at himself.

            "Pleasure to meet you," says the thing, and out of his peripheral vision, Hadley can see it holding out its hand for Hadley to shake. "I don't believe we've met."

            He can hear the suggestion of bared teeth in its voice. Sharp and filed to a point. Something he's incapable of sounding like.

            When Hadley looks at the thing, he looks at it for a long time.

            Its face is blank. There are no features on the smooth plane of its head. But Hadley recognizes the slope of the things shoulders, the light shade of its hair, the body it wears—he doesn't need a face to know that all of these features are his own.

            Hadley doesn't shake its hand. He turns his head away, and looks at his plate. He scoops up the mashed potato with the spoon and takes in a mouthful of it.

            It tastes of nothing.

            Hadley glances up to find that Philippa's no longer there. Instead, she's been replaced by a little boy with green eyes and the exact shade of golden-brown hair Hadley had when he was seven.

            "Hello," says James, dangling his legs from his chair. "It's been too long since we've seen each other."

            "This isn't real," Hadley says. "You're not real." He sets his spoon and fork down. "None of this is real."

            "Whatever makes you feel better," says James. He daintily slices off a piece of chicken and puts it into his mouth with his fingers. He chews it, thoughtfully, apparently savoring its flavor. "This is excellent, wouldn't you say so, Hadley?"

            It isn't Hadley who answers, but the thing sitting next to him. "I'd agree." It raises a fork and stabs itself in its thigh. The thing embeds the fork deeper into its flesh, and drags it down the length of its thigh, ripping through cloth and skin. It doesn't bleed. "It's excellent."

            Hadley's mother and father have disappeared. Marzia's gone. In here, the only people are just James Bishop Hadley and James Bishop Hadley and the thing that is not James Bishop Hadley.

"This is a dream," Hadley says. He shifts his seat away from the thing-that-is-not-Hadley, who is blithely tearing out its own flesh with nothing but a fork and knife. Hadley knows that this is supposed to make him feel uneasy, to see his own body being carved up like a chunk of meat, but he's more entranced by it, rather than disgusted.

            "Dreams are real," James says. He's forgone all manners now, and has started eating with his fingers. He rips off a piece of chicken, and dangles it between his fingers. "You should know, right?"

            "Why'd you come back?" Hadley asks, turning away from thing-that-is-not-Hadley.

            "I didn't come back," says James, puzzled. "I was always here."

            Hadley hears a wet squelch. The sound of metal teeth piercing flesh. Hadley doesn't look at the thing.

            "What do you want from me?" Hadley asks James.

            "What do I want from you? Nothing. All I want is to help you, and help myself." James smiles, showing the smallest sliver of teeth between his lips. "I'd say that's the same, though, wouldn't you?"

            The thing's stopped stabbing itself. It pushes itself back and gets up from the chair.

            "How are you going to help me?" Hadley asks.

            "I'm going to drag you back to where you came from, you ingrate," says James. "I'm going to take back what's rightfully mine."

            The thing wraps its arms around Hadley's shoulders. It leans forward and Hadley feels the brush of a mouth on the shell of his ear, and it whispers—in a voice that isn't Hadley's but someone else's, feminine and sultry and familiar, and he can feel the soft pressure of a bosom on his back—

            "Wake up."

            He wakes up.

            His throat is dry. His fingers are tingling with something akin to electricity. Hadley's been re-fitted into his body all wrong. He stares at the ceiling for a long while, till the only thing he's aware of is the blood beating through his heart and the unseasonable warmth of the room. He'd turned up the heater too high before going to sleep. He swallows, and it hurts his throat.

            "I need a glass of water," he says out loud, if only to hear his own voice. "I need a glass of water, because my throat is dry," he says, to the ceiling. 

            The ceiling doesn't answer back. He pushes himself off the bed, and slips into a bathrobe he picks up from the ground. He heads down to the kitchen, in the half-dark, where he can't make out anything. The only thing that keeps him from stumbling is habit—he's walked down these hallways so many times he can do it in the dark.

            When he reaches the kitchen, he doesn't bother to turn on the lights. His eyes are too used to the dark, at this point. The sink light is turned on, and in the dim, bare light, he sees a figure, barely illuminated.

            At first, he thinks of turning right on his heel and walking away, but then he recognizes the curves of his sister's body. He shuffles forward.

            Philippa is sitting on one of the countertops in the middle of the kitchen. She's wearing a nightdress that's several inches too short for her, and even in the dark, Hadley can see that's it's barely opaque.

            "Hey," Hadley says, slowly walking towards her. "Why're you up so early? And what are you wearing?"

            Philippa shrugs. The strap of her dress slips down her shoulder.

            "Aren't you freezing?"

            As if in answer, Philippa lifts up the hem of her too small dress.

            She's not wearing any underwear.

            "Why don't you warm me up?" she says, her voice unnaturally shrill.

            Hadley's been staring too long.

            He glances up back at Philippa's face, and it horrifies him, how close to his sister this thing that isn't his sister looks like. For a moment; he thinks it might actually be her. The thought makes him physically recoil.

            He takes a step back. His chest feels too tight. With one hand, Philippa holds up the hem of her too-small dress. With the other, her hand travels down her abdomen, down to her thigh, and inches slowly to the place between her legs. Hadley doesn't want to watch, he wants to look away, but he can't. It's impossible.

            "Does this turn you on, you sick freak?" Philippa asks, sweetly. She hops off of the counter, still hiking up her dress. Her hand is perilously close to the apex of her thighs. "Can't look away, can you?"

            Hadley squeezes his eyes shut. He takes a step backward. "No," he says. He takes another step back. His back hits the wall. "Go away."

            "You don't want me to go away," Philippa says, and she must've closed the distance between her and Hadley in a second because her hot breath hits Hadley's face. Her hand presses onto his abdomen. "You want me, you perverted little prick."

            "I don't." Hadley's too afraid to open his eyes, to look down and see his sister's hand sliding down, slowly, slowly towards his groin. He can feel it. He wants to push her away, but he's frozen, stuck in his own body.

            "Look at me," Philippa says, and suddenly her voice is warbled and terrifying. "Look at me, or I'll kill you." She digs her fingers into Hadley's abdomen. He can feel her nails biting at his skin. This is real, he realizes.

            Hadley looks at her. Philippa's hand grips his neck, crushing his windpipe. What's he going to do? What's he supposed to fucking do? He can't fight back. This is his sister—his bird-boned sister, his sister with her shoulder length brown hair, his sister with her own set of brilliantly green eyes, his sister, his sister, his sister closing the distance between her body and his.

            She's real. This is real. This isn't a dream, nor a nightmare. Philippa is too close, too warm, too present for this to be anything but real. What's wrong with her? What's wrong with Hadley? Why can't he—why isn't he—fighting back? He wants to. Lift an arm and push her off. Shove her away. Kick her. Punch her. He can't.

            Then, Philippa leans in and says what Hadley fears is the reason he can't fight back, why all of this is happening.

            "You've always wanted this," she says, and—while still half strangling Hadley—she puts her mouth onto his.

            And just as quickly as she kisses him, Philippa lurches away, shrieking. She pushes herself off of Hadley, unpins him from the wall, shrieking and shrieking, her voice suddenly not Philippa's anymore. Warbled and ear-splitting and not Philippa's.

            The thing that is not Philippa crumples to the floor, still screaming. He feels an irrational pang of sympathy—some part of him still believes that this is his twin sister—before her entire body shudders, and collapses onto the floor. She writhes and she twists, contorting her body in odd angles. Not human; not animal; something else entirely. He can't stop watching even when she tears her hair out of her head, wrenching out chunks of her scalp. He can't stop watching as she claws at herself, making inhuman sounds, tearing her flesh off. There is no blood. Only something black and viscous, bubbling out of her mouth, out of the wounds she inflicts on herself.

            She retches, once, twice.

            She stops. Through her wild hair, she looks at Hadley. Hadley looks at her. Then looks away. Then looks again. Gone are the brilliant green of her eyes. Her eyes are white all over.

            She stretches open her mouth and her teeth are like glaciers jostling about in her mouth. Nothing about her makes sense, Hadley thinks. Not the way she's twisting, or stretching, or coming apart. This thing isn't supposed to exist.

            It snaps its jaws shut. The thing is Philippa again. Half-crazed and covered in blood that is too dark to be blood, but still Philippa.

            She shrieks one more time. She spits out her teeth. She howls, and it sounds like a laugh.

            He wakes up, for the second time.

            This time, there's no staring at the ceiling. There's no lying in bed. Everything's still new, fresh, terrible. Philippa lifting up her dress. Philippa clawing at Hadley's body. Philippa crushing his mouth with hers. Philippa not being Philippa.

            He doesn't waste a second.

            Hadley stumbles out of bed, to the bathroom and retches into the toilet. Nothing comes out, but he can taste bile on the back of his tongue. A single strand of saliva, almost silvery, dangles from his mouth, and he watches it sway to and fro, hypnotized. He dry heaves again. His stomach pushes its way to his throat, and Hadley thinks, this is how I'm going to die. I'm going to puke out all my insides.

            He swallows back his breath. He takes in a gasp, and then another, until he gets his breathing under control. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and it becomes slick with spit.

            I'm here. I'm alive. I'm not dreaming.

            He's not so sure. Nausea rises in him like a serpent. He's going to throw up again, if he stares too hard at the tiled floor of the bathroom. He looks at the mirror, instead. Looks at the ghost of a boy he is. His face is deathly white. His hands are shaking.

            I'm not dreaming.

            He grips the edge of the sink, trying to hold onto something. This is real. This is real. Reality isn't fraying at the edges. He turns on the tap and listens to the water flow. If he pretends hard enough, he's far away, listening to the rush of water in a creek. He's not here. He closes his eyes and pretends. He puts a finger to his Adam's apple, and flinches at the flare of pain that hits him.

            When he looks at himself in the mirror again, he sees fresh bruises blooming on the soft skin of his throat. Red and angry, shaped like fingers curling around his neck.

            This is real.

            He doesn't sleep for the rest of the night.

***

a/n: haha god glad i got this out of th way. god i liked this story way back in chapter one