Authors: Jennifer Pelland
Little Sister’s body, what there was of it, hadn’t been built to last, and pieces failed in a continuous stream. Mama used Daddy’s insurance money to replace what she could, but Little Sister’s body rejected both the artificial fixes and those cloned from Big Sister’s healthy DNA. When the sisters were fourteen, it became clear that Little Sister didn’t have enough functioning pieces to make it much longer.
And one day, Big Sister woke up sore and groggy in an ancient hospital bed in the basement of their home. Mama had found a doctor, who, for the right amount of money, would secretly help Little Sister stay alive.
“It’s only fair,” Mama said. “She deserves this.”
The doctor loomed over the bed, beady eyes glinting out from his cadaverous face. “The little one’s hooked up nice and tight,” he said, his sour breath assaulting Big Sister’s nostrils. “If anyone tries to cut her out, they’ll both bleed to death. And I’ve strengthened the big one’s immune system so she’ll never need to see a doctor so long as she doesn’t do something stupid. Your secret is safe.”
“Now my angel can go outside,” Mama said proudly as she bent over to kiss Little Sister on the cheek. “You two will be together forever.” She glared up at Big Sister, still woozy from the anesthesia. “Only Uncle Roy knows about this. You can never tell anyone else.”
How could she? If Big Sister had thought her life had been a nightmare before, she’d been sorely mistaken. There was no way she’d ever have a chance at a normal life now. Not with this monstrous face protruding from her belly.
After the doctor left and Mama fell asleep, Big Sister whispered, “Did you know about Mama’s plans before the operation?”
“She told me not to tell you because you might spoil it,” Little Sister whispered back.
Big Sister said nothing. She knew she couldn’t. Anything she said would just get back to Mama. So she clamped her mouth shut and kept it that way.
They buried what was left of Little Sister’s body and declared her legally dead.
Big Sister finished high school, then went to college across town to study biology. Just like before, Mama wouldn’t let her get involved in anything beyond classes. Mama wanted Little Sister home as often as possible so she could talk to her, stroke her cheek, ask her how she liked listening in on the world outside now that she had someone to carry her around. And once Big Sister graduated, Mama forbade her from getting a job outside the home. Big Sister took a holonet job for a few weeks, but couldn’t concentrate on the work what with Mama constantly doting on Little Sister even when Big Sister was on the clock. So she quit and did nothing. There didn’t seem to be any point.
And then Mama grew sick. She said, “I’m leaving the money in the hands of your Uncle Roy. He’ll be in charge of doling it out to you so long as your sister is safe.”
The day Mama died, Big Sister moved into her own apartment.
Uncle Roy gave Big Sister her first month’s allowance without asking to see Little Sister. “I can’t…” He looked like he was going to throw up. He’d never been able to look at Little Sister after the operation, had never even spoken to her, which suited Big Sister just fine. “I’ll just send you the money each month. Your word’s good enough for me.”
Big Sister had suffered for far too long. She was going to enjoy making Little Sister pay.
* * * *
Uncle Roy told Big Sister that she could do whatever she wanted with the things in Mama’s house. So she did.
“Wasn’t this your favorite?” Big Sister asked, holding a dingy stuffed bunny up to her bared belly.
“You know it was,” Little Sister whispered toothlessly.
Big Sister stuffed it into a self-compacting garbage sack. “Bye-bye Flopsy.”
“That’s not fair!”
“No one gives a shit about you anymore. The only person besides me who knows you still exist doesn’t even want to look at you. You’d better get used to it.”
Big Sister moved on to the holo-player and scrolled through the stored titles. “Aw, these were your only friends.”
“At least I had friends.”
“And whose fault was it that I didn’t have any?”
“I didn’t ask to be born broken.”
Big Sister twisted Little Sister’s sole remaining ear until tears streamed down Little Sister’s face.
“Much better.”
Big Sister chucked the holoplayer into the sack and laughed as she heard the compactor grind it into bits.
She moved to the living room, picked up the family album, and held it inches from Little Sister’s nose. “Did you know that there’s not a single picture of me in here?”
Into the sack it went.
Big Sister went on a spree. She threw away the dozens of old porcelain dolls that lined the walls of Little Sister’s room, piles of picture books that Mama had read to her “broken angel,” an endless succession of quilts that Mama had crocheted to keep her “twisted baby” warm, all of Little Sister’s tiny clothes, and Little Sister’s scrapbook of the letters she’d exchanged with her favorite holo stars.
Anything that had ever been meaningful to Little Sister got trashed.
Big Sister pulled on a jacket before going outside. She wheeled the sack to the tiny square of concrete behind the house and pulled her lighter from her pocket.
She grinned and unzipped her jacket just enough to let one of Little Sister’s eyes peek out. “You know what this is?” she asked.
Little Sister reflexively cried, “I’ll tell Mama!”
“Not until I find a way to carve you out so you can join her.”
She touched the lighter to the sack and watched as it burst into flames.
“Your life’s over,” she said. “How does it feel?”
Big Sister felt tears running down her belly and smiled.
* * * *
Mama’s allowance didn’t leave enough money to pay rent, so Big Sister looked for a job. “You weren’t supposed to move out of the house!” Little Sister protested. “The money would be fine if you’d just stay there.”
“Like I could stay in that prison one minute longer,” Big Sister snapped. “Now shut up.” To make sure she did, Big Sister put tape over Little Sister’s mouth and nose before pulling on her blouse. It wasn’t like Little Sister needed to breathe anyway.
She landed a job at a biotech company that made artificial skin. It was just a lab tech position, but the pay was decent, and it allowed her to finally use her college degree. Better yet, it was a job that required her to be on-site every day. She’d get to interact face-to-face with her coworkers, and maybe even make a few friends in the process—friends she could hang out with after work. She’d never again need to rush home to sit in a holo-filled room with a decaying hunk of barely-sentient meat. It was heady. And she shouldn’t have had to wait until she was twenty-four to feel this way.
On the way home from the interview, she celebrated by taking Mama’s car to the cemetery. There, in tiny side-by-side shelves, lay the cremated remains of Mama and most of Little Sister.
“Look at you,” Big Sister said. “You’re dead.”
She could feel Little Sister’s mouth struggling against the tape.
“You don’t legally exist. I can do anything to you. And once I figure out how to get you out, it won’t be murder, because you’ve been dead for a decade.”
Her blouse moistened with tears.
“Oh, now really. Do I need to tape up your eyes too?”
She took to sleeping on her stomach at nights. She brought men home and laughed as they screamed and gibbered at her sister’s face. She cheerfully took advantage of the fact that the butcher who’d crammed her sister into her abdomen hadn’t been able to tie their nervous systems together. It was amazing the pain that could be inflicted with well-placed pins, a laser-cutter set on low, or a pair of needle-nosed pliers.
But slowly, she began to tire of it.
Not of taking out a lifetime of frustration on the sister who’d caused it, no. Big Sister had a bottomless appetite for that. Instead, she tired of the massive gulf yawning between her and the rest of the world. So long as she had her sister’s face protruding from her belly, she could never have anything even vaguely resembling a normal life. Never actually make love to another person. Never have a family. Her experiments at making friends had been successful so far, in large part because Big Sister had taken to binding her belly up with cling wrap to keep her sister’s noises and liquids from seeping through. But it wasn’t enough.
She wanted to take full possession of her life for the first time ever. And she was pretty sure she knew how to do it.
She lay in bed smoothing a dermal patch over a laser burn on Little Sister’s face.
Little Sister’s lips trembled, the closest she’d been able to come to a shudder since being joined with Big Sister. “Why are you doing that?”
“Because we’re going to see Uncle Roy. You’re going to talk to him, and I want you all healed up for the visit.”
“I’ll tell him what you’ve been doing to me.”
“You’ll try.”
“What are you going to do?”
Big Sister slapped Little Sister on the cheek. “Patience.”
“Ow!” Little Sister cried voicelessly. “Why are you so mean to me? None of this is my fault! Mama decided everything!”
“Did you ever once stand up for me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you ever say, ‘Oh Mama, let sister make friends’? Did you ever say, ‘Mama, let sister play soccer. I know it would make her happy’?” Big Sister glared down at the horrid face, hands balled into tight fists that she kept rigidly at her side so she wouldn’t pummel her sister into one giant bruise. “Did you ever say, ‘Mama, let sister have her own life’?”
“Those were all Mama’s decisions. I couldn’t question Mama.”
“You couldn’t? Did she tape your mouth closed when I wasn’t home?”
“No, but—”
“When she told you about the operation, did you tell her not to do it? Did you tell her that my life would be ruined if I had to carry your head around in my belly until I died?”
“I was just fourteen! I didn’t want to die!”
“I know. I don’t care.”
“But I’m your sister. You don’t want me dead, do you?”
Big Sister chuckled. “Not anymore.”
Little Sister fell silent, her lips trembling furiously.
Big Sister crooked a grin and snatched her digi-buddy out of her purse.
“What are you doing?” Little Sister asked.
“Reviewing your drug allergies.” Big Sister unfolded the screen and scrolled through seemingly endless volumes of her sister’s medical information. “Remember when you had that terrible bladder infection and the doctors gave you Zanatra?”
Little Sister’s mouth gaped as far as her partial jaw allowed. “You wouldn’t!”
“You know, I thought you would have caught on by now that I really don’t give a shit. It’s definitely time to see Uncle Roy.”
Big Sister stopped injuring Little Sister, at least in ways that left marks. Using her medical connections at work, she managed to get her hands on some Zanatra and tested it to make sure it still affected her sister the same way it had when she was in her own body.
It did.
She called Uncle Roy to arrange a visit and made sure to take a Zanatra exactly one hour before their meeting.
They met at Mama’s house. Uncle Roy was already there, waiting on the front porch, dressed in one of his ubiquitous cardigans. He leaned over to kiss Big Sister on the cheek, and then visibly paled as he cast a quick glance down at her belly. “Is this about…it?”
Big Sister schooled her features into carefully rehearsed anguish. “Can we talk about this in private?”
He nodded and pressed his thumb to the lock. The door swung open, the musty, medicinal smell of the house rushing past them as if trying to escape into the clean air outside. “Doesn’t look like you took any furniture.”
“I didn’t.” Big Sister turned her back to her uncle, unzipped her jacket and carefully draped it over a dusty armchair. She’d turned the house filters off when she moved out. She wanted the place to decay. She looked at her uncle over her shoulder and said, “Uncle Roy. I…” Big Sister bit her lip and turned away, her shoulders tense with what she hoped looked like distress.
The floorboards creaked as he approached her from behind. “Please, just tell me,” he said.
She let her head droop and shook it slowly from side to side. “I can’t live this way anymore.”
Uncle Roy let out a long breath, and two heavy hands fell on her shoulders. “Sweetheart, I…” He sighed again. “My sister butchered you. I just wish she’d said something to me before she did it so I could have tried to stop her.”
“I…I know.” And she really did believe him. It almost made her feel bad for what she was about to do.
“I wish I could do something to help, but I don’t know what. The doctor who did this to you died two years ago.”
The tears of frustration that sprung to Big Sister’s eyes surprised her.
“Your mother left me the holos from the procedure in case something went wrong with your sister and she needed surgery.” He snorted. “She never did care about you, did she?”
Big Sister shook her head, the familiar anger burning away the tears.
“I’ve shown them anonymously to a couple of surgeons. They were horrified. They couldn’t believe that any doctor would perform such a grossly unethical procedure. Still…” He let out a long breath. “None of them could figure out a way to get your sister out of there. And even if they could…”
Here it came.
“I mean, what would we do with her?”
With mock innocence, Big Sister asked, “What do you mean?”
“Well, she’s alive in there, isn’t she?”
Big Sister turned around and pointed to the spreading drool stain over her belly. “She’s been brain dead ever since the operation.”
Uncle Roy clapped his hands over his mouth and nose. “Oh my god. Your mother said—”
“Mama lied to herself so she wouldn’t have to believe that her precious was gone.”
“Oh god.” He staggered back, one hand dropping to clutch at his stomach. “Oh god. I’ll…I’ll keep looking for someone who can cut her out, no matter how long it takes.”
“No,” Big Sister snapped. “I can’t wait any longer. I’ve waited long enough already.”