Celeste's childhood wasn't something she loved talking about. It was filled with nothing but painful memories. Whether they were the ones from when her father, along with her brothers, left, or the ones from her mother's death and her stepfather's a...
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EERIE QUIETUDE engulfed the suffocating air of the basement and gradually crept to each and every corner of its dulled walls, tightly clinging onto their rotting surfaces and swiftly filling the holes scattered across their high figures. The stairs creaked loudly beneath my feet and the rusty railing my hand had grasped onto shook slightly, unstable within my loose grip.
I swallowed harshly, my own saliva burning as it passed through my dry throat, and allowed my gaze to trail warily over the dimmed basement. Sweat drenched my body, my neck craning backwards every other moment to check that my stepfather hadn't arrived yet. That I was still safe.
When I noticed the voidness behind me, I took another step forward.
Jack wouldn't be back anytime soon. I reminded myself, repeating the same words incoherently beneath my breath and embracing them tightly, as though they'd succeed in shielding my body from Jack's beatings in case he returned before Lorenzo—in case he returned while I was still the only one trapped within the dull house.
Marco left a few minutes ago, and my thoughts hadn't stopped racing ever since. I thought that visiting the basement—the place I'd be staying at from now onwards—would be a good source of distraction from the theory that had started to wrap its invisible arms around my mind. But I was wrong.
My action had only caused the invisible arms to tighten around my mind and to creep to my lungs. It only fuelled their power and gave them the strength to suffocate me further. And it only pulled my thoughts back to the question my brother had asked.
"What if Marco's your twin, Celeste?"
Lorenzo could be right. I had no memory of my father or my brothers other than the fact that they existed, and other than the locket I had been gifted by the father who apparently kicked my mother and I out. Every other memory about them was non-existent; far away from my mind's understanding. It felt as though I hadn't lived the first four years of my life. As though a greedy stranger had invaded my body back then.
Marco could be my twin; we both looked so much alike. Dante could be my brother, too; we looked alike in a way or other. But Marco said that he only had two siblings. And a twin—obviously—wasn't one of the people he had mentioned.
What I thought of made no sense. There was no way through which I would be related to people like Marco and Dante. We were so different. Our lives were no where close to similar.
Or that was what I assumed. What my exhausted mind was so desperate to believe.
I let my body drop to the cold floor beneath it, my hammering heart almost skipping a painful beat at the loud thud my action had resulted in. A shaky hand of mine travelled to the lonely wound painted across my abdomen and squeezed it tightly in a futile attempt to stop it from bleeding any further.
