Rapture

Cave

My twin sister and I were born in the dark.

Mother called me Elena, and her Alice. Father called us girls.

We lived in a cave we learnt to know by the feeling of the stone walls under our hands. Sunlight came in rare flashes, when father shoved aside the rock at the entrance, and went out to get food.

Only when I could stand and walk on my own feet I got the first glimpse at the sun. Blinding. Burning. Beautiful.

Alice and I learned to be silent. Making a sound at the wrong time got me my father's sweaty hand wrapped around my mouth, or a claw of my mother's bitten nails across the cheek. My sister learned from my mistakes.

As long as we were silent, they were mean to each other, not to us. Though it was impossible to sleep with her wailing screams and his sobbing curses.

Alice always covered my eyes when he started to hit her.

I was always thankful. I hated to see what comes next.

And I always pressed her ears tight with my palms. Because she hated to hear.

We would spend most our time waiting for father to leave to get food. Not because we liked the food, or mother's company any better than his.

We loved the light.

The sun was the best. A glimpse alone would blind me. Make it so dizzy and colorful in my head I would start laughing and crying.

The moon was a mystery that pained me, because I always wanted to look at it more. The glowing shape of it up in the sky stayed long after with me in the dark.

These were short moments, holding Alice's hand and staring through the gap until father put back the rock. To us, these moments were life.

One day, the howls and the growls of wolves turned unceasing. Father would not open the gap anymore. He said he will be eaten if he goes out to get food.

Hunger wasn't a feeling I got used to noticing. Though it started to knot and hurt in my stomach then.

Father yelled almost all the time, and mother ran out of strength to wail. My hands would get numb against Alice's ears, and I would see shapes and colors like the sun's pressing my eyes against her palms.

We could survive, the both of us. Until father grabbed and shoved us apart. His knife was in his hand.

"Who has more meat on her, girls?" He asks, and I understand. So I leap on him with my nails. I scratch him but he grabs my throat, and lifts me up against the wall.

I kick with my legs as hard as I can. I hit his hand and he drops the knife; so he drops me on the stone floor. My breath catches with the fall on my back, but I keep kicking until he manages to get a grip of my thighs.

He stops at the feeling of slick warmth on my skin.

"You turned a woman." He says to my blood trickling down, and let's go of me. He picks up the knife from the floor, and before I can breathe again, he stabs it in Alice.

Her eyes open in surprise as her neck starts gushing with blood. She stares at me helpless as both our parents leap on her. They nibble and bite to get to her flesh through the skin, willing to slurp on anything that will resemble them water.

My hands jerk out of instinct, to cover Alice's ears. But she's over between them now. And there's no one to cover my eyes.

So I watch them tear my twin sister apart and eat the raw meat off her bones. I watch them eat until they're bloated, and they keep engorging more. Crying and cackling with blood dripping teeth and wide-open eyes.

I see the sun and the moon in my head, and I feel Alice's hand taking mine, raising me to my feet.

Her ghost stands not far from her body, pointing at the bloodied knife father left on the floor.

I pick it up, and slam it in his back, between his shoulders, at the start of his neck. I rip it out and slam it in and rip it out and slam it in. His blood spatters my face, and he starts to crumple, but I don't stop. I plunge the knife in his back again and again, screaming and shrieking louder than I knew I could.

When father is a dead slump beneath me, I come for mother. She stumbles back from me and shakes her head. She also learned not to make a sound.

I stab her in the stomach, only once feeling the softness of her tear, then I turn away. To push the rock. To be out in the light.