The Unborn Twin

At twelve years old, I discovered a deep-buried secret in my mother’s medical records when she had a cancer scare. The records showed that I was meant to be a twin, but my brother was stillborn. The doctors never told her, and ultrasounds had only shown a ‘mass’ they dismissed as an extra placenta. My mother had always felt a strange presence, a phantom twin she never knew about.

When I was a child, I slept in my parents’ bed until I was six. In that last year, I saw a girl—a shadowy figure with my face—standing at the foot of the bed, staring at me for hours before slowly walking into the master bathroom. She would vanish through the door, but never close it. My father once saw her in the bathtub, thought it was me, and left, only to find me in the kitchen. When he returned, she was gone. My older brother, who slept in the basement, was once awakened by me shaking him, but I was in another room. It was her.

After a year of this, I moved into my sister’s room, and I never saw her again. But my family continues to see her. She is a silent presence, a ghost of the life I might have had, and now I fear she wants more than just to be remembered. She wants to take my place in this world, and I don’t know how to stop her.