Identical

We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell

The phone kept ringing.

In another room, in another place, the phone was ringing. It was a nauseating, high-pitched, chime that never stopped. One person called, and then the next, and the next, and the next. Each one said the same thing. She couldn't hear it...because the phone was through the door, down the hall, passed the kitchen, hanging on the wall in the living room. She couldn't hear what they said but she knew it was the same. It had been the same for three days, twelve hours, thirty-seven minutes, and nineteen seconds. Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two. It was ringing again.

“I'm so sorry, is there anything I can do?”

She couldn't hear the polite decline of her mother's whispering voice but she knew it followed after. Just like she knew that every neighbour, co-worker, parent of a friend, parent of a stranger, stranger, said the same thing.

The phone kept ringing.

She just sat on the bed. The bed that was pushed out from the window, the duvet pulled down the way it always was in the morning because Jess never remembered to make the bed. Not like her. She always made her bed. She always folded her clothes and organised her belongings and made her bed. Anything else drove her crazy. Anything else was Jess.

The fan was taken down.

She imagined it spinning. Turning over and over and blowing a breeze on her to break up the stale air of the room. Except it was only her imagination. So she just sat on the bed, in the stale air, with her sister’s white dress on. She sat on the side pushed away from the wall and she looked out the window.

Yesterday there were cars.

Lots of different cars pulling in and out, people coming with food and condolences and misunderstanding that they disguised as grief. Yesterday she sat in the same place, all day long because she hadn’t slept. Not in three days, twelve hours, thirty-seven minutes, and thirty seconds. Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three.

There weren’t any pictures on the wall.

There weren’t any pictures at all. That was the first thing she noticed when she came home. Jess was sick that day. She had a stomach ache or a fever or migraine. She couldn’t remember. She just knew Jess was sick. So she went to school alone and their parents went to work. She came home first, with the intention of telling Jess that she aced the midterm.

Except the pictures were gone. All the frames were laying in a pile in the living room. The fire was going in the fireplace. That was where the pictures were. Burning in the flames from the fire. But not just the wall pictures. All of them. Baby pictures, school pictures, birthday pictures, holiday pictures. They were curling away and disintegrating.

She called for Jess.

As loud as she could at first. She screamed over and over. Jess, Jesy, Jessica, Jess! No one answered. So she ran up the stairs and down the hall and the door was closed. She knocked first. Once, twice, her patience ran out. She twisted the lock and the door popped open. Their parents didn't let them have locked doors.

She called for Jess.

Nothing above a whisper, a crack at the end as her eyes watered up and she ran forward. Jessica. Se tried to get her down. There was a chair knocked over on the ground, the sloppy bed moved out from the window. She wasn't strong enough though, she couldn't get her down and Jess just hung there.

Everything else was a blur.

The police and her parents and her grandparents and aunts and uncles and friends and other family. Everyone came one after the other and her mother pretended that it wasn't what it was. She cried because her daughter was gone and she neglected to see the second one, the identical match standing in the corner of the room, disappearing as well.

Jess was gone.

So she sat on the bed, looking out the window, and waiting to be gone too.