❄ wynter rochelle [two] {fin} ❄

All I've known
Is that
There is an end
Then you can begin again
Day, everyday

When people talk about appearances, they usually describe themselves as if looking into a mirror. Funny thing is, is that I've been doing that all my life.

Summer sits across the table from me at dinner - my absolute reflection. On the outside, that is - underneath our pale skin and waves of brown hair lie two very different souls that scream individual. But that's a different story entirely, another tale to unravel. As I stab at my vegetables with a fork, I watch my twin delicately handle her cutlery, long, elegant fingers handling each tool as if they were living things. She eats one thing at a time, slowly, carefully - chewing 20 times before swallowing, repeating the procedure over and over until all of her carrots are gone, moving on to potatoes. Freak, I think with a scowl, jabbing at the rest of my plate.

My reflection sits poised and proper, her brown locks of hair falling perfectly in place past her shoulders. Mine, in comparison, sits lazily in a ponytail I tied hours ago, damp from a shower after training. If I did so much as even placed a hand on her head, she'd freak. Lips twisting into a silent smirk at the thought, we I stab another piece of dinner and shove it onto my tongue. Bright blue eyes observe her our my reflection, as if a mirror line was places right down the centre of this table to divide us both. Sometimes I think that Summer is what I want to see, an image of perfection I wish I was. I We She goes on and on about wiping the dirt off of my face, about each and every freckle and mark and cut bleeding from a blade, but I shove her off with an annoyed huff each and every time. It's hard to believe that I and the freak were a whole, once. That there was too much of us, that a single cell couldn't handle us both in the same place, ripping my reflection out of the mirror with a long hand as I dragged her into life along with me. Because I need her, really. I always have.

Dressed in old clothes thrown from her my wardrobe and dumped across the floor, I am Summer is adorned with a too neat, too perfect outfit. I watch her day after day, ironing and folding my her clothes ferociously. And though I tell her "Summer, you idiot, you don't have to iron pyjamas, they're just going to end up creased anyway", she insists on wasting her time away on making sure no wrinkles are found in the fabric and everything is stacked neatly in perfect rows. Perfect, perfect, perfect, she makes me sick. Another mischievous snarl blooms as the thought of flinging potato at me her sparks in her my head - but the last thing I need is another lecture from my parents to treat me us her better. Not that they've bothered to enforce it in the past, all they gave me were empty words and fading threats. Maybe I should-

A finger snaps in front of her my face, causing her me to jump and her my fork to clatter onto her my plate. "Wynter!" a faded voice calls, ripping the earphones out the sides of her my head. Raising her my eyebrows quizzically, I scowl. "What?!" she I snap at our my our Father, face flushing furiously.

"I've told you before, take those damned things out of your ears at the table! It's like living with a deaf child in this house..." he mutters, turning his attention back to his tea. Scowling, brows now furrowing together in protest, we I shove the earphones that serve as a protection under her my seat - they play no music, only block out the world from her my head. They'll be sorry, we I think darkly.

"You should really take your elbows off of the table, too" my reflection remarks - as if she is not my sister, my twin, nor my reflection; but my conscience, forever reminding me what I am doing wrong. And, like it or not, Summer and I have this odd way of doing that to each-other. We're never good enough for either of us.


But before I can remark sarcastically, she tucks a strand of hair behind my her ear and scrapes my her knife across my her plate and then it starts it hurts it hurts ithurtsithurtswhysummerwhy stopstopstopstop whystopitwhynonostop- and I cover my her our ears and scrape the chair below me again it hurtshurts and I am madmadmad stopstopstopitstop leavemealonepleasestop screaming at me us her to "Shut up shut up shut up, SUMMER!", sprinting away from my stunned family.


Perhaps it is not a call of impatience, but a cry for help from my reflection to stop the rage that builds up inside of me and turn me into her.

"You're a freak"

I state, when Summer asks me why I'm so cruel to her. "And I hate freaks." Self-destructive. I'm a ticking time bomb, eating myself from the inside-out so I can be my own definition of perfect. She's a chip on my shoulder. A nasty, irritating one, that chip chip chip chip chip's away at me, testing my nerves to breaking point. So I test hers back, messing up her bed, throwing clothes across the room, knocking over pencil pots and re-arranging her books. The difference being that I drive her to snapping point on purpose. She has no idea about how she makes me feel.

People call me temperamental, or as I tend to re-write it, a mental temper. Mental, temper, mental, temper. I can't tell the difference. Being around my family is hard, cloaks of bitterness and detachment caused by a million and one pet peeves. All it takes is a tap tap tap tap from a shoe on the floor or a tick tick tick tick from a clock on the wall before the bomb inside of me starts it's own countdown. Tick be quiet tick stop that tick shut up tick tick tick tick shut up shut up shutupshutupshutup SHUT UP and I have exploded, jolts of electric anger running through my veins as I frazzle and rage, leaving a catastrophe in my path.

"Nutcase" they whisper, with their perfect hair and perfect smiles - just like precious little Summer. "Both of them. They're both crazy." Yet at least I have the respect enough for people to whisper about me, whereas they yell and taunt and tease my twin just as I do did. As my sister taptaptaps away she alights a detonator in me, hovering her match over my breaking point until I can't take the burning any longer. It fills my ears - like an itch, only more powerful, more infuriating. 

So I snap at her, the only way I ever seem to communicate with my sister. Warning her not to push her boundaries, warning her how irritating she is. Summer is like a spot on her my clothes that no matter how hard she I scrub, I cannot get rid of her. I want to be normal and I want to be perfect at the same time - but whether perfection is deemed normal is up to your own opinion, I suppose. I remain trapped against the glass panes, half of me grasping to be like my sister who doesn't mind the tap tap tapping on the transparent surface of our mirror, a doorway that we can never cross. At least, I refuse to cross into her world when she tries so hard to stay out of mine.

You say
"Is this a war?"
Hardly, and then you hit a wall
Honestly, you wan't to know but you can't
I believe, I want to believe, in anything

I can't remember why I'm like this.

It started with Training. I think.

I don't like to remember, because the itching in my ears begins and then it spreads to my head and all hell breaks loose. Well, it didn't, really. It started with us, with me and my reflection. And how we walked the same, talked the same, dressed the same - and most importantly, looked the same. We were stared at - but in a good way, like the way people admire you as you walk down the street. I lust for that once more, but thanks to her, I can never feel that again. And we grew up, slowly, and as we grew tall, we grew apart, inching further and further from each-other. I had my training friends, and she had her teddy bear. Gone were the matching outfits, personalities, shoes and hair ribbons, in their places mismatched and disorganised chaos. Just the way she hates it. And I hate her.

Because it was her fault.

She didn't walk home with me. Too caught up in her own neat freak world. She could have stopped it, whatever it was. Maybe she could have stopped the fury that alights in my ears every time I hear her consistent tapping. But she didn't. So it's her fault I'm like this, her fault I hate her so much. 

She didn't stop him. 

She didn't stop me, either. Not from allowing a stranger to wander into the training centre, didn't ask me why he wasn't wearing regulation trainer uniforms. Didn't tell me that it was odd, how he was taking special interest in me. Didn't mention that we'd never seen him before, that he might be trouble, that she was worried about me because she worries like it's her god damn job. Didn't tell me not to get comfortable around someone who gave me praise, advice, not to let my guard down so soon. Didn't insist that he was just acting when he told me I was pretty, far prettier than my sister. Didn't make me stop to think how on Earth he knew I had a twin, how an identical could look any different, didn't tell me not to assume that everybody knew about us. Didn't stop me from saying "Sure! It's just through the trail there" when the stranger asked "Can I come to your house, sometime?" Didn't tell me to run, run as fast as I could when I suspected that somebody was following me home that day.

She can't tell me what happened after somebody grabbed me, pulling me off of my trail, slamming my ears into the dirt and screaming "DON'T TALK" before everything went black. Only how I woke up alone, in the dirt, trailing home shivering, with a loss much greater than memory and told her that it was nothing, that I got in a fight, that it was no bog deal and she needed to shut up shut up shut up before I exploded.

The ticking started when Summer opened her mouth.