I am the Monster

Chapter 1

I killed my sister, and I don't even feel bad about it. I know I should feel terrible, sick with guilt, and haunted by the weight of it. But I don't. In fact, I feel a strange sense of relief, like something inside me that's been twisted for years finally snapped back into place. It's like I can breathe again.

She didn't deserve to die, not in the way people would say she did. She didn't deserve to be erased from everything. I know that. But it felt like the easiest solution. No—scratch that. It wasn't even a solution. It was the first thing that came to my mind. It wasn't a plan or a decision—it just... happened.

I didn't plan this. I didn't wake up and decide today's the day. There was no plotting, no silent countdown in my head. It wasn't like a movie where everything builds up to one final moment of decision. It wasn't even anger. I was just... tired.  Tired of living under her shadow, of having to exist in a space that wasn't even mine anymore.  And in that moment—when it finally happened—I didn't feel rage. I didn't even feel fear. I just felt... relief.

That's what's so messed up about it. I should feel horrible, but all I feel is this emptiness that I thought would swallow me whole. Instead, it feels like I'm floating, like I've stepped outside of myself and the world around me is in a slow-motion blur.

And now...

I don't know what comes next. Part of me expects to feel something eventually. The guilt, the regret—they say it hits you like a wave. That I'll wake up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, with her face haunting me. But it hasn't happened. Not yet. And it makes me wonder if it ever will.

I've been avoiding the mirror, though. I can't look at myself right now—not the way I am. Not after what I've done. I know what people would say if they knew: What kind of monster are you?

But I wasn't always like this. I used to be someone else. I remember the person I was before—before her, before the fights, the endless noise. I was louder, less broken. There was a time when I laughed without it feeling forced, when I could look at myself in the mirror and see something more than just... this. But I don't know how to find that person anymore.

I know people are starting to ask questions. My parents, mainly. I can't look them in the eye either. I've never been good at lying, but the way they look at me... like they're trying to piece things together. It's obvious they know something's off. They just don't know what. They never will, not from me. They'll think it was an accident, that I couldn't have possibly meant it. And I guess, in a way, that's true. I didn't mean it. But I didn't stop it either.

I thought I'd feel more scared. Maybe I thought I'd feel something. But the more I sit with it, the more I realize it wasn't about fear. It wasn't about me being out of control or driven by anger. No, it was more like... like a decision that had already been made, deep inside me, long before that moment. And when it happened, it was just a release. A release from years of her suffocating everything. A release from always being second, always being the other one.

And now? Now I feel like I'm standing on the edge of something. I can hear the world continuing around me, like a distant hum, but I'm not part of it anymore. I don't know where I fit. I don't know where I belong. It's almost like I've stepped into a new version of myself, one I wasn't supposed to know existed. But here I am. And I don't know how to undo it.

I don't know if I want to.

I used to wonder what it would feel like to be free. Not from the world, but from her. From the weight of always having to exist in her shadow. I didn't think it would come like this. There was no struggle. No fight. It happened without effort, almost without thought. It was as if she'd been holding me under water for so long, and the moment she let go, I finally could breathe.

But the truth is—I'm scared.

Scared because part of me doesn't want to go back to the old life. To the old me. Part of me thinks maybe, just maybe, I'm better off this way. No sister to drag me down, no one to make me feel invisible. No one to remind me of what I can never be.

And yet, the other part of me—the part I'm trying to ignore—knows I can't ever go back. I've crossed a line. There's no unseeing this, no pretending it didn't happen.

And now, I have to live with that and I don't really mind.