The Dark Light

The Start and End Of It All

Friday 4/21/2025

First, I would like to apologize for whoever reads this, I've never written for this purpose before. Yesterday, I killed my sister. I didn't want to, but my actions aren't my own anymore. As we get older, the world becomes smaller and smaller. I have felt myself suffocating with the pressure of our future, hoping that it wouldn't be my responsibility. Nothing ever works out the way you think it will anyway, not anymore. When our ancestors found this planet, they thought they would find the haven they have always searched for. It was barren and they were too tired to see that it was too good to be true. We needed an entire planet to ourselves because when someone has a child, it is always two. Twins were all we could have, there has never been a case where a mother just has one child. This empty planet full of resources seemed perfect, they named it Nebesa. My mother has warned us since we were small not to get too close to each other, but it wasn't like she understood how we felt. She was lucky, her twin died almost immediately after being born. She was always alone, always appreciated, and never had to fight for her place in this world.

This is something that I have always known to exist, yet still I feel like an outsider in my own world. Once, I asked my mother why our planet is called heaven if there are so many ugly parts. She slapped me and told me that it wasn't to be brought up again. I think I was twelve. Ever since then, I haven't said what I really thought about anything and my mom has never looked at me the same. We were never close after that, a mutual distrust developed leaving me isolated. When I look around, I see brainwashed robots. Will I become one of them?

1 day prior to smrt: I woke up before the sound of a whimsical song that was supposed to be uplifting and encouraging but was rather my alarm. Smrt was fast approaching and they knew that we would need to be raised up by the false excitement that the event brought us. I found myself staring at my ceiling, pretending that it was just another day. In some respects, it was. I turned my head to the left and found that Obět was already looking at me with eyes that looked a little too much like mine. This had become a tradition of sorts, us looking at each other like one of us held the answer to anything. I would stare at her face, trying to find something there that separated us, made us two different people. I never look for too long, however, because I never find anything. Sometimes, she would try to start conversation about our daily plans or something she was excited about. She never listened to mom; she had always wanted to be close to me. I'm just not strong enough to feel the same way.

We both got up and dressed into our uniforms in silence, her shirt had a red pin and mine had a blue one. People could tell us apart this way, but only if they looked close enough. We walked downstairs just in time to hear our alarms go off, finding our plates of breakfast pills waiting for us at the kitchen table. The usual three pills: red, green, and blue. I didn't realize my hands were shaking while reaching for them until Obět grabbed my right hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. She always did gestures like this and it made me sick how she could be so kind to me when she knew we would be at each other's throats in the next day. "Sama, are you alright? Maybe you should stay home today." She has always been like this and in the back of my mind I know she is the one my mother wants to survive. I made eye contact with her as I swiftly pulled my hand away from her, swallowing my pills before heading out the door to wait for the school bus.

Wednesday 4/19/2025

I don't know why, but I want to write about Smrt today. I have been able to pretend like it wasn't real, but not that it's two days away, I am starting to realize what I must do. It happens every year unless there is someone who isn't 17. It is the day of cleansing as they tell us, I imagine that means the day of cleaning the blood of the deceased. Almost anything is fair game, but there are still some boundaries. Both participants must be awake, poison is out of the question, and it must be done with a weapon that was government ordered. Other than that, you can do whatever you want. It just must be done. For some reason, I have always thought that she would die prior to this so that I wouldn't have to do anything. She has always been so frail, our one difference. Her frailty stems from her emotional nature, it's easier to kill something if you feel no connection to it. I don't hate my sister and my life would be much easier if we could both just live here together. We have done everything together up until this point, there is hardly any way to even tell us apart besides her lack of strength. It feels as though I am cheating, by having such an incompetent competitor for Smrt. I will obviously win, but I'm not sure how I'm going to do it yet.