Intro
From the beginning. You were the one in your family that was expected to carry the weight of a legacy. A legacy you never asked for, one that you now realized you didn’t even want. You recognize how fortunate you are, how you grew up in a way most kids couldn’t even begin to imagine. You weren’t a spoiled brat, but you don’t suppose you can call yourself humble either. Rich people don’t admit out-loud that they're rich, and if they do it's because they believe they're better than everyone. You’ve never gone out of your way to ridicule someone for whatever living situation they may be in. You supposed that was your soft spot. You know that there are people who fight tooth and nail to just keep a roof over their heads, and people who are now wealthy that dug their way to the top.
You send your kudos to them, because unlike you and your family who’s wealth had been there since the olden days, they worked for it. It was one of the reasons now why you felt guilty for growing up the way you did. It felt like cheating. And you didn’t like cheating, the thought of it was enough to probably make your skin break out with hives. You wouldn’t lie if you said you had a bit of a problem with being perfect. Everything had to be perfect. You remember in grade 2 when your weekly spelling test grade came back as a B, it hadn’t affected your overall grade, seeing as you were considered your grade’s star student since grade 1 with straight A’s. Your parents still yelled at you for it, you cried, and you still have trouble with the word wednesday.
You didn’t learn much from that experience, only that you had to deliver excellence in whatever subject or activity you were signed up for or forced to do. Not managing to instantly climb to the top to satiate your parents drove you insane. You experienced it the most in grade 5, you were signed up for fencing against your will in the spring and spent all your free time until winter to become the top of your class, and what some at the fencing school would’ve called a prodigy. The fact it took you until winter to accomplish this still bothered you to this very day. You could’ve claimed your title by the summer had it not been for an upperclassmen of yours.
You've spent the majority of your life trying to satisfy your parents. You were the oldest, the first-born and the one they expected the most from. You weren’t an only child, no, you had brothers. One was even your twin, Paul. However you came out a week earlier than he did. And he makes you wish you hadn’t nearly all the time. You knew he was jealous of you, greedy too. Your youngest brother was the exact opposite, Charlie was probably the closest you had to an actual friend. He understood the weight bestowed upon you by your parents. He was the only one who took the time to ask you how you were feeling. Not how you were feeling about the business proposal meeting you had attended with your father earlier within the week.
He was also the only one you saw before you were blipped. The memory was a horrifying one. One that you prefer to forget rather than remember. But everyone has to come to term with their traumas at some point don’t they? It was around nighttime in your London home. You had been getting ready for bed, finishing a near forty page handwritten essay at your vanity turned desk. It was old, and what your mother called a family heirloom. She believed that the only girl of the family should act as such, thus began your mothers obsession with decorating nearly everything for you, even going as far as to choose your closet for you. You hated the lace and frill dresses you wore on the daily. You wished you could just go to sleep in normal pajama pants and a tank top, but alas you were stuck looking like Wendy Darling every night.
It was when you heard the clanking of your pencil on the desk that your brain awoke from nearly falling asleep. You were sure you had a firm grip on the pencil, so how had it-
Oh. Your hand. It had begun to turn into dust.
You tried to remain calm at first, slowly getting up from your chair and holding your hand up to the light, but it was when you realized the rest of your body was rapidly also turning into dust that you panicked. All rationality thrown out the window, you screamed for the first person you could think of-
“Charlie!” You remember how raw your throat became as you screeched his name, praying to whatever above that he’d come to your aid. The double doors to your horrendously floral decorated room swung open then, your younger brother looking at you in panic and yelling your name with such a fright that you began to cry.
It felt like you were falling when you made a sprint to his arms, hoping that whatever was happening wasn’t what you thought it was. It couldn’t have been. You’d done everything right hadn’t you? You went to every internship, did every valedictorian speech, skipped every fun field trip, all for the sake of your future. The future that had been decided for you the moment you were born. It was when your brother Charlie held you in his arms, crying and begging you not to leave that you had realized you truly accomplished nothing within your sixteen years of living.
What a pathetic life to live.
-
-
It was like a blink. Like you had fallen asleep through a laughing gas at the dentist and awoke. You were still in your floral decorated room. And your Wendy Darling nightgown was still on. The only difference was how your room's curtains were open, and the sun was shining through. That was strange. For London it was normally cloudy and rainy. Never sunny. You approached your Vanity turned desk, your handwritten essay was in a neat stack next to some of your most frequent and favorite makeup. But it wasn’t the makeup you used, the ones on your desk looked brand new. You turned to your bed, it was made perfectly.
You were sufficiently creeped out now. It was morning, your very much used makeup was brand new, and your previously messy essay whose pages were previously scattered everywhere were in a neat stack right next to your closed pencil case. You were aware of how tiny the details were, and how to some they probably wouldn’t even matter. But you were always taught to believe only half of what you see. This resulted in you looking nearly too close to things. Noticing the details that others don’t. Like how for instance, the digital clock on your nightstand read; October 10th 2022.
This was a joke. Some kind of sick prank your twin, Paul was playing on you. It had to be, it just wasn’t possible. Your clock was simply wrong. Broken probably, the last you checked it had been October 10th 2018. Not 2022. You remember warily stepping out of your room, walking down the oddly silent halls to your fathers study, calling his name as you did. You got no response, the loud beating of your heart never stopped as you walked down the laughably large staircase of your home.
The sun was shining through the stained glass windows that stood high and proud next to the double doors of your home. You cringed when your bare feet met the cold porcelain floor. Had your parents been near you were sure you’d be yelled at. The thought was an annoying one, one that made you slightly uncomfortable. But not as uncomfortable as the thought of not even your parents being near.
“Mother?” You yelled out into the family room. It was pristine, not a shine of dust. Nothing had been moved. Even the logs stacked for the fireplace were fine. Everything seemed fine. But you knew it was far from it. Everything was too fine. Too quiet. Too serene.
The crash in the kitchen confirmed your suspicions. It sounded as if a collection of pots or pans had hit the marble floor, a muffled voice vibrated off the walls once they did. You felt your breath catch in your throat. The voice sounded deep, like a man. You instinctively made your way to one of the fireplaces iron skewers. You knew better than to test the odds between a sixteen year old girl and a fully grown man. Besides, you were rusty on your fencing. Now was your chance to polish up.
You stalked your way past the swinging doors of the kitchen, you hated how dramatic this part of the house was. Your family never even cooked, they always hired some kind of world renowned chef for their meals. Everyday you wonder how they managed to survive.
You inched towards the mini path that led to a cupboard that you think might hold pans, under it was a sink with an equal amount of cup boards, and rummaging through the cupboard was the hunched figure of a man.
It felt as if your heart was going to leap from your chest, your skewer was pointed directly at his back, if he made any quick movements you could easily stab him. With your heart hammering in your ears you cleared your throat, the shoulders of the man jumped and the cupboard made a loud thunk! When his head hit the inside of the cupboard.
“Who are you.” You noticed how despite the firmness of your voice, your hand shook violently with the skewer in your hand. The hunched man slowly turned, he was wearing a black suit, his tie having blue and white stripes.
Your name fell from his lips as he fully turned around, and suddenly the skewer fell. You succumbed to the shaking feeling that began in your hands, and soon your entire being was shaking as the unknown man rapped you into a soul crushing hug. One that you returned.
“Charlie...?” Your voice came out shaky as you stared at your once baby brother. You knew it was him, it had to be him. He had the same as you, the one thing that you and him considered to be your guy’s connection. You and Paul were carbon copy’s of eachother, the only difference was that Paul was a guy. You were not.
He was older now, and taller. He was already growing Stubble and he looked at you as if you had died and came back.
“Y-your back? I-how?” He was out of breath as he cradled your head in his suddenly too big hands. You shook in his hands, opening your mouth and trying to croak out the closest thing to a sentence.
“What do you mean? Why are you older?”
Your name fell from his lips once more, this time he sounded solemn. You looked up at him, Charlie had always been someone easy to read. An open book you’d often call him.
“You’ve been gone for five years. I- everything, the business- everything you’ve worked so hard for-“ he almost sounded frustrated as he spoke. His hands on your shoulders. You knew what he was leading up to. You still couldn’t wrap your head around just what went on within the second you blinked, but whatever it was had to be one of your worst nightmares. You gripped your now older brothers hand and slowly removed them from your shoulders.
“Where did it go?” You knew the answer. But you had to hear it from him. Because then you’d know that this wasn’t a nightmare.
“Paul. It all went to Paul.”
It was a reality.