The Twins

Writing

From what you have read so far, you may think that the reason Abby and Abigail were inseparable was because they loved each other so much. They may have seemed like best friends, but actually, they hated each other and resented how strong the bond was between them. The proof was in their diary entries.

Abigail wrote terrible things about Abby, "We have become fatal enemies in each other's eyes. We feel the irritating deadly rays come out of our bodies, stinging each other's skin. I say to myself, can I get rid of my own shadow, impossible or not possible? Without my shadow, would I die? Without my shadow, would I gain life, be free or left to die?"

Abby also wrote terrible things about Abigail in response, "Nobody suffers the way I do, not with a sister; with a husband, yes; with a wife, yes; with a child, yes, but this sister of mine, a dark shadow robbing me of sunlight, is my one and only torment." With such dark words toward each other, it's difficult to imagine what sort of bizarre relationship these two had.

But, they continued writing other things as well -- such as entire books. In addition to writing in their diaries, they also authored books with elaborate and imaginative plot lines. The content of the books contained very dark kinds of materials of situations the girls hadn't been exposed to, written descriptions of faraway places the two had never been, and other disturbing content. How did such isolated people write so extensively about things they'd never experienced?

Abigail wrote a book called Disco-Trauma about horrible things happening at a disco. In the plot, a young woman goes to a disco (very popular around the time that Abby and Abigail were teenagers) and finds that for whatever reason, the atmosphere of the place led people to do terrible and obsessive things.

One of hers, called Pepsi-Cola Nightmares, was about a teen, who was addicted to Pepsi Cola, being kidnapped by a teacher, and then being sent away to a military school where her parents forgot about her and never acknowledged her existence. Such content was highly terrifying and intense, but so was the effort that both girls put into it.

They'd even sent away for an at-home writing course and everything. They didn't just write novels and diaries, but short stories, poems, articles, plays, and more. They self-published their books after researching how to do so, but they didn't make any money. They also tried to sell their other stories to magazines, but failed to do so.