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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/lightingnations on 2024-10-09 12:06:49+00:00.
On the night of our 29th birthday, my twin sister got in a car accident. She was fresh out of surgery by the time I reached the hospital, and more wrapped up than an Egyptian Mummy. She wouldn’t quit asking about her husband, whose smeared remains needed to be scraped off the asphalt, so the doctors asked me to break the bad news.
Gently squeezing her bandaged hand, I said, “Becca, you were in a crash. Tony’s gone.”
The heart monitor beside her bed went crazy until the meds kicked in.
After Becca got discharged, I invited her to live with me. I told my wife, Alice, it was only until she’d regained the ability to walk.
On more than one occasion Becca grabbed her crutches in her sleep and hobbled around the apartment, searching for her keys and screaming Tony’s name, and at least twice a week she’d shake me awake and say, “Daniel tell the truth, was the accident my fault?”
“NO,” I always replied firmly.
Even though she’d done nothing wrong, Becca couldn’t escape the shadow of what happened. So in the end she used Tony’s life insurance payout to buy a house in the country.
This decision hit me worse than a ton of bricks. Becca was my only living relative. My closest friend. She’d almost been ripped away from me once already, wasn’t that bad enough?
At first, we talked over the phone every day. This morphed into every other day. Her new job kept her busy, you see. Plus she joined a reading group which occupied her evenings.
Without her I found myself adrift. I started driving the long way home from work, picking out landmarks from our childhood. We used to have a secret ‘treehouse’—really a bundle of sticks tied together by a length of rope—in an elm by our house, and we once hid there for an entire day because Becca gave the first girl I ever kissed a bloody nose.
Unfortunately, the girl’s three older brothers threatened to turn me into a human slinky as payback. Clasping hands like we always did whenever life got too real, we promised we’d be there for each other no matter what.
I would’ve killed to experience that closeness again.
When Becca invited me to visit, I couldn’t say yes fast enough. Alice wasn’t happy about cancelling our trip to Rome (we’d booked it to help decompress after the stressful year), and that ice still hadn’t thawed when we drove down there. Alice just stared out the side window, her golden hair flashing in the passing streetlights.
Becca’s house sat on the lower slope of a mountain. A banner draped across the front porch read: Happy 30th birthday Becks & Daniel.
“Well if it isn’t my baby bro,” Becca said, greeting us at the door. She loved lauding our five-minute age gap over my head.
Like me, Becca inherited our mom’s curly brown hair and Dad’s delicate chin. Our welcome hug felt nice, don’t get me wrong. But something was missing. A sense of warmth, maybe?
Alice and Becca exchanged a polite nod, then we dropped our coats off in a little cloakroom. Down the hall and to the left, a set of folded back double doors connected a lounge and a dining room. Several guests stood around a long table covered with sandwiches and chips and salsa, murmuring hello as we walked past.
In the lounge, Becca took her place behind a home bar with a mirrored backboard and said, “So what’s your poison?”
Secretly furious, I let out a low whistle. I had conflicted feelings about how well she’d flourished without her baby brother.
Glancing around, I said, “Bluh-dee-hell.”
“Nice, huh? I haven’t even shown you the garden yet. Ten steps past the gate and I’m already in the forest. It makes getting rid of corpses a breeze.”
“It is a pain keeping them all in the freezer.”
“Tell me about it. Bet you’re wishing you didn’t stay in that toilet of a town now."
Alice shot me an icy glare. I’d neglected to mention how Becca almost talked me into moving with her.
Eager to lighten the mood, I said, “I don’t think I could afford it. Not unless I started an OnlyFans.”
“You’d probably make more accepting donations to not start one. What can I get for you both?”
“I’ll take a strawberry daiquiri,” Alice added, making zero effort to disguise the anger in her voice.
“Same.”
While Becca mixed the cocktails, I glanced around the room. A photo of her and Tony on their wedding day hung from the wall.
I said, “So how many folks are coming tonight?”
“Oh, about thirty or so. Not including Tony.”
“Tony?” Alice asked, confused.
“That’s right.”
“Tony who?”
“Uhhhhh, Tony Turnball.” From the way she replied, you’d think it was the most obvious answer in the world. “He’s running fashionably late. As usual.”
Behind us, conversations seemed to taper off. Either that or the pop music playing from a hidden speaker grew louder.
Alice said, “Let me get this straight, are we talking about your late husband Anthony Turnball?”
Rebecca smiled in an overly exaggerated way that showed way too many teeth. “Oh, I’ll need to remember that one. My late husband. Y’know I once told his mom how bad he was at keeping time and do you know what she said?”
Alice and I stared at her, completely silent.
“‘…That boy was born two weeks late.’”
My stomach twisted in a knot. Becca always had a killer sense of humour—a famous comedian once even encouraged her to try stand-up—so maybe this was an inappropriate joke?
From down the hall, the doorbell piped up.
“What the fuck was that?” Alice asked, after Becca excused herself.
“Just forget it. It was one of her pranks. Try not taking the bait for once.”
“Prank? It sounded more like the surgeons forgot to give her an MRI scan.”
I tapped the side of her cocktail. “What happened to ‘taking it easy’?”
With a roll of her eyes, she took a sip even sailors would describe as ‘generous’. When she lifted her arm the gold bracelets around her wrist clanked together. That jangling sound was like a royal procession announcing she was about to enter a room.
Becca re-entered the room accompanied by a tall man with grey, bushy eyebrows.
“Okay, introductions. Daniel, I’d like you to meet the greatest neighbour on planet Earth, Ben.”
As Alice planted her empty glass on the counter, Ben’s expression darkened, but then his eyes flicked toward me and he was all smiles again. "Ahh, the famous twin.”
We left Becca to her hosting duties and relocated to the adjacent room, making ourselves comfortable on a ring of sofas surrounding a low, glass table. The way Ben stretched out set my teeth on edge. Did he think he owned the place?
He hit us with a barrage of questions, like what we did for work, and barely waited for an answer before droning on about life in ‘the IT game’ (which wasn’t as dull as it sounded). Meanwhile, guests kept appearing, and soon we needed to raise our voices above the rabble.
As my attention wandered, I caught part of a conversation about football. The three men left of me went quiet for ten seconds before picking up a new thread about a recipe for beef stew without skipping a beat. Weird.
“What about you Daniel?” Ben asked, dragging me back to the tasteless conversation. “What’s your dream car?”
“Oh I’m not much of a petrol head. If it gets me from point A to point B, it could be a Del Boy three-wheeler for all I care.”
“Well, pobodies nerfect. Now Tony! There’s a guy who loves his automobiles.”
All energy drained from the room. Alice and I exchanged a glance, then she leaned forward and said, “Did you say…Tony?”
“Oh yeah. If it’s got four wheels and an engine, that brother-in-law of yours could write an instruction manual for it. Why just last week he helped get my Subaru purring like a kitty.” Ben set his whiskey on the table. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta shake a little dew off the lily.”
“He said Tony fixed his fucking car,” Alice whispered when we were alone.
“My ears do work y’know.”
“Why’s he talking like Tony’s alive?”
“It’s just a joke. Becca told him to wind us up. Stop taking everything so seriously. Enjoy the party.”
“Good idea.” She shook her empty glass in my face, jewellery rattling away. Honestly, sometimes it amazed me that she could lift her arm at all.
I marched over to the bar, glass in hand. A line of people were queued for a refill, so I made idle chitchat while I waited, sticking to the typical safe subjects: weather, jobs, family.
With a raised eyebrow, Becca said, “Another refill already?”
“Please,” I replied, a little apologetic.
I wanted to ask about the Tony joke, but in the mirrored backboard guests kept shooting me a sprinkling of looks, and my neck hairs bristled.
Back by the sofas, Ben had a very bored Alice pinned down. I handed her the fresh drink, which she wasted zero time draining.
Ben was explaining why bird watching was more exciting than people believed when a chorus of greetings went up. Becca stepped through the door accompanied by a man in a red, chequered shirt. On their way across the room, the guy shook hands with the various partygoers like a politician at a campaign rally, gradually working their way toward us.
“And last but not least,” Becca said, “I’d like you to meet my brother Daniel—”
“Hello.”
“—his wife, Alison—”
“Hi.”
“—and of course you know Ben. Everyone, this is Stu—"
Ben leaned forward so he could shake Stu’s hand.
“—and his wife Vicky.”
Without missing a single beat, Ben clasped an invisible hand inside his own. “Always a pleasure.”
Becca stared at me, hard. I searched her face for any hint of a punchline, finding none. Some…
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