Twinner

A white office building (three simple, clean rooms) sits beneath a cluster of oak trees with heavy limbs resting atop its weathered roof. The early evening sun, setting over the shoulder of the little building, spreads an impressionistic array of gold and bronze and copper onto the hearty, yet worn white paint. A bouncy cricket chirps its pleasure at the day's fading heat, as the tanned head and deep dark hair of Agata, an Italian-born midwife, slides from one side of a window to the other in the foreground of a mat of bright, sterilized light. The muffled sound of two women in friendly and informative conversation gradually becomes louder, clearer.

"Don't fight your urges. Any of them," Agata says with a smile, her voice Italian honey: sweet, soft and satisfying.

A tall, thin, pale woman pulls a pink blouse over her shoulders and down her waist. She has her back to Agata, blankly staring out into a hallway, rubbing her exposed collarbone tenderly. In a couple of months her collarbone (her husband's favorite place on her body) will be all but gone, two fading bumps in growing layers of baby fat. Her face flushes with Agata's comment and her own hand being so close to her neck. "I wonder what I'll want more, food for the baby or food for the body. I haven't had any of the wild food cravings I've heard about, but late at night when I wake up, I find that I'm unsatisfied. I want more of everything, though nothing specifically." She bends down and picks a light blue and brown purse off a small wooden box.

The woman continues to talk, but Agata has stopped listening. She stalks. A hypodermic needle in her small, tan hand presses against her white, medical coat, its plunger filled with clear liquid. Another needle peeks out of a wide front pocket, its plunger burning to the touch, inky black.

With a small prick--unexpected by the tall woman as she turns toward Agata--tingly, warm, translucent fluid spreads across the woman's nervous system, dimming the electrical sparks without snuffing them out completely. Agata catches her easily and returns her to the cool metal table.

Placing the spent needle into her pocket--this is no place to dispose of such incriminating evidence--Agata rolls the pale woman onto her side. She is the trustworthy midwife, a necessary but somewhat forgettable member of society. She is pretty enough and clean enough to instill confidence. She's not too old, not too young. It's easy for women to put the wellbeing of their unborn children into the hands of Agata.

But, Agata is not to be trusted. Her motives are sinister and ancient. She's not what she appears to be.

Agata sticks the long needle of the second syringe deep into the woman's soft side and dispels the black fluid into her body. It singes the flesh of her womb, first charring, then burning, then slowly repairing the layers of delicate tissue. In seconds every targeted cell is destroyed and rebuilt, leaving behind no visible, distinguishing mark. Agata withdraws the needle and says a little prayer in a long forgotten tongue.

Where this morning the thin, pale woman carried one child, this evening she will carry two. One will be the twin of the original, it will be the twinner. If the original manages to survive the parasitic attack of the twinner to birth, it will not be for long and it will be without a soul.

Agata, a twinner herself, completes the rituals of reproduction common to beings like her and lightly taps the woman on the face to wake her.

*******

The days were always gray. The faces of the people; the cars gliding and crashing down the freeway; the buildings reaching to the sky, praying for a wind to tip them over, putting them out of their misery; all gray. A woman, escaping life, escaping a thoughtless husband, thankless child, bustle of the supermarket, drone of the vacuum, spent her days with young men, thinking she was doing something bad, something unexpected, something her husband would never find out about. All the while, her best friend was doing the same exact thing with a young man who happened to be the other woman's husband. All pitifully the same; all gray. That's what Charlie Parker believed.

The nights were bright. Yellow headlights probing, touching, passing; neon glowing, barking to passers-by, "Stop, shop, you need our seedy wares;" the brilliant whites of a million cunning eyes, some rat's, some human's, all alike, all searching and avoiding, challenging, threatening, and killing if necessary. Blood pumping, thumping in ears, dumping in streets, vibrant red, smooth crimson, everyone and everything full of life. No one slept, they lived out life within their head; a life they always wanted, where possibilities were real, a knife to the heart didn't kill, a fall from a building was an opportunity to fly, not die. That's what Charlie Parker believed.

He, the man in blue, the silver badge, the flashing red and blue, black and white, soggy donut, sugary coffee. Good and evil was his game, a blurry line, a carnival mirror. From one angle he saved the innocent; from another he punished those who thought they were innocent. He was always the bearer of bad news, "Your daughter's dead, murdered, raped and beheaded;" and "You're looking at ten to life, brutal beatings, sleepless nights, turn around and pray to God you don't scream too loud;" and "I love you wife, I love you son, but I don't want to see you unless I'm dead; work first, work second, and you last, always last."

Time ticked at irregular intervals but followed the beating of his heart. The illusion of people moving, water running, growing older, petals dying and the grim reaping existed in the head and in the heart. Time was only real when nothing moved. Tonight, time was the most real.

Officer Parker caressed the cold steel balanced in his hand. He shunned the gray, impersonal, department issued, slug spitting, phallic shrinking weapon for what he now held. Where was the gun? He wasn't sure; it didn't matter. Maybe some citizen set a dark corner of his sleepy world ablaze, metal rain tapping the inside of his house's windows, helping his family to slumber. Maybe the day would be a little less gray for it. Charlie could only hope.

Tonight, three feet of unforgiving blade--personal, the rough, warm hand of an abusive and caring father--would send one of the night's brightest lights on a midnight journey.

Three sharp, terrified screams harshly stunted, bludgeoned from a dead body, pierced a glowing window ten feet above a cobbled alleyway, ricocheted against the stone like a stray bullet and knocked Charlie Parker against a green dumpster prone to regurgitating. The violent peals weren't unexpected, Charlie was anxiously awaiting such brutality to the unfortunate occupants of the gray dwelling; but the sheer beauty of the sounds, the screeching conclusion to God's symphony, caught Officer Parker by surprise.

He wanted to dance with the screams forgotten to the world but captured in his memory, sound waves that crested, broke and spread against the sand-numbered synapses of his mind. But! But, the conductor of God's symphony stepped out of the gray and empty building into the dazzling brightness of the night.

Charlie stepped away from the dumpster and into the center of the alley. He stood at the dark precipice of muted light smoothed atop the bumpy street, blade poised for battle, hungry for blood. Officer Parker, the confident warrior of good, wilted. He immediately knew his adversary, the man who had been terrorizing Charlie's sleepy city for months, sweeping gray from the day, a sparkling light in the night. The other man recognized Charlie, and the alley silently wept. Battle would not be waged today.

The two men stepped close, embraced quickly, separated.

"Who are you?"

"They call me Charlie Parker. Who are you?"

"They call me Alessio De Luca."

"Who is your true mother?"

"Agata Ricci."

"Agata Ricci. My true brother. My twinner brother. Rid the world…"

"…of the gray."