The Binding Knot (A short story)

[Vallosia Hortensia]

The following is a story I wrote that has absolutely nothing to do with the game, but I would greatly appreciate some feedback on it if anyone has the time to read it.


Our hair was a mess of tangled threads, locked with each other’s as much as with our own. The sensation of her endlessly mesmerizing lips upon mine never failed to be the spark that set me off. It wasn’t until we began practicing this ritual of losing ourselves in each other’s warmth that I was much of an active person at all. Today she pecked at my cheeks with a new vigor, likely due to her anticipation of the day’s coming events. I never shared her thrill of us turning twenty years old. I never understood the majesty that she saw in most things. I could never share her unconditional love for all things living, her welcoming appreciation of every last deed and object that was hers to enjoy. Now, it may at one point or another in my tale come across that I thought her extreme fascination with the smallest things annoying, even something befitting of only an individual of an unusually low IQ. This is not true at all. Rather, I found it to be the most outstandingly fascinating quality of hers. There was just no sense in such an intelligent person showing such childish and simplistic views. There was no logical reasoning except for the deceptively simple suggestion that it was nothing more than a trait of a fantastic optimism. However, this thought tends to bring a smile to my face. It is silly for such a person to be attached to one such as myself.

It is locked away in my permanent memory how her emerald eyes pierced directly into me that morning. The arctic stone lodged in my chest turned to magma as a sudden spurt from the showerhead caused the water the splash harshly off of my body and launch straight into her eye. Such an adorable squint as that could soften anyone in high-finance, let alone a moderately successful painter such as me. Jenny’s timeless giggle was the icing on the cake. I lost myself, overtaken by my lust for her, throwing the both of us into a kiss that felt much deeper than most that we had shared. It pained me to think how Mother would react upon discovering that we were romantically involved with one another. She had always been embarrassingly foolish in that regard, it was only natural to fall for the one you were sharing a liver with.

I felt Jenny’s untainted, pale arms tighten around my waist in a sign that she shared my passion. Maybe it was because of her immaculately innocent aura that I never thought of our romances as being lewd or in the least bit perverted. In private we always mentioned how we would have been out long ago if it was not for our fear of Mother’s strong objections or disappointment. The poor woman must have been hitting senility early if she thought that any sane guy would date a girl who was permanently connected by flesh to her sister. I could never comprehend how she could be so stubborn that we would each have a healthy romantic life with a man when she herself had been abandoned by one not a week after giving birth to a pair of Siamese twins.

I instantly regretted shattering our moment of fantasy by taking a look at the hideous sack of flesh that bound us together. It was this plain yet grotesque hammock that had caused our lives to be so restricted, as they were. It was this macabre knot which tied us together, forced us both into lives of overprotection from Mother. One liver could hardly to do its job of cleansing sufficiently with twice the bodies to care for. Rather than forsake one of us and curse the other with failing transplant organ after failing transplant organ, dear old mom had been firm about keeping us just the way that we were. I can only be grateful for this decision, for otherwise I would never feel my sister’s caring grasp in the shower. I could never thank Mother enough for this.

I pitied those who were forced to live their lives knowing that a significant half of them, a cherished sibling, had been stolen from them too early for any memories of the person to survive. I could not imagine my life without Jenny in it. It would surely be one of more exploration, more frequent adventures outside of our simple suburban home. Never was I curious as to what alien things I was missing out on, for the world’s greatest mystery was sitting next to me at all times.

I cherished the familiar aroma of the blueberry-scented shampoo that we both used. Its smooth and elegant smell was completely contrary to the price-tag; Jenny had had to convince me that such cheap shampoo would not actually be harmful to my hair, its bargain-bin crap serving only to pollute my pores. I still was not sure of its nutritional value but damn did it smell good, and feel even better to have those warm hands as familiar as my own rub it into my scalp, fingers letting my dark-golden hair twist around them like an infant’s hand around the comparatively enormous finger of its newly-turned parents. I didn’t give a damn how socially unacceptable incest was, couldn’t care less what anyone could ever say about homosexuality. Those people haven’t lived the life that I have. They couldn’t understand what Jenny was to me, just like I couldn’t understand how they could get by without someone like her. To put it rationally, our love was a defense mechanism.

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“How come you’re so tense, Jess?” It came as no surprise that my eternally-bound sister was an ace when it came to reading me. While she was such a complete mystery to me, I could hide nothing from her. I knew her, knew more about her than maybe even she, but what eluded me was what really made her tick, why she was the way that she was. It bothered me almost as much as it intrigued me.
I shook my head, a common response when she asked me that same question. “Not tense, Jen. You’ve just never seen me excited before.” I know, what bullshit. I never expected it to prove effective in the least. As much as it was a mechanism to deflect attention, it was also a joke, one that she received well judging from the cherub’s smile that stretched her features. She knew how much I detested the idea of putting so much importance in birthdays. She knew my thoughts on the idiocy of it all, how age is nothing but a meaningless label that serves as nothing but just another divider within society. This was my sense of humor, as dry and sarcastic as could be.

“Oh come on, Jess, we’re gonna have so much fun! I’ve been waiting twenty years for this day!” I cracked a smile. She said the same thing every year, that she had been waiting the same number of years as our age was turning. It was the sweetest little thing that she could have said to me that morning. It was something of a ritual, always when we were dressing ourselves (and each other) after the morning’s shower. The amount of power that stupid little joke had over me never failed to shock me. Now, it was far from anyone’s idea of a good joke, but what I enjoyed so much was how she said it, and simply that she said it. We shared countless similar games and traditions; it’s what happens when you’re stuck together for all of your life. The hypocrite that I am scoffs at others who share such simple joys, inside-jokes and the like, calling them nothing more than uncreative repetition that the participants only share due to a lack of imagination. It would seem that this be not the only matter which I was only comfortable with when it concerned Jennifer and myself, my sister and particular. Most individuals with such an impossible outlook on the world are merely masking their true identity, hiding uncomfortability, or driving away some sort of suspicion. I despised such people for this reason.

It has occurred to me that the common person would view one such as Jenny as extremely simplistic, a dull-minded optimist too blind to see the veiled colors of the world. She was quite the opposite; her seeming simplicity was due to the very unmatchable depth of her mind. Her eyes looked past the subterranean shadows of society, saw that any deed carried out by man was performed in the pursuit of happiness. A man who commits a crime does so due to the fact that they believe that the act will bring about a positive outcome. Robbers rob to provide for others, murders kill for being convinced that the victim would be better off dead. Every last complexity boiled down to this one single simplicity, that necessity was truly a matter of perspective.

Our dresser had been carved of old mahogany, an antique passed down through generations of our family. Mother even had such an heirloom disassembled and hand-scrubbed each part herself before it could enter the house. She had always been over-protective of us, with her apparent fear that even the common cold may prove too much for our already-strained immune system. The aged wood squeaked slightly as Jennifer tugged the top drawer loose. It came easily, wood sliding against smoothed wood like a train on a track. With vigor she rummaged through the layers of shirts that had been packed tighter than rice from a take-out place. She was the half of the duo who dealt with the bright colors, elegant but spontaneous-looking strokes always added a further layer of warmth to the canvas. I always let her pick out my outfit on our birthday, another of our personal rituals; she saw so much importance in these days that otherwise would have no meaning to me, and her eye for lighter colors, along with her artistic complexity, came through in the intricate two-person outfits that she designed. She might as well be a fashion designer, what with her remarkable ability to make us look so damn good together without simply sticking with bland one-or-two-colored schemes. She could make reds go with yellows, oranges go with purples, greens with blacks, and have all of those pairings incorporated in the same outfit, and it would work.

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I almost chose not to eat the pancakes. The darkened strips of bacon falling over a golden-brown face of blueberry eyes and a smile of whipped cream join together at the side to a very similar pancake-face. Jenny's pancakes were just about the best damn thing I'd ever tasted, but I felt that devouring these girls who shared our pain would somehow ruin the atmosphere.
It was Jenny's fork that came down over my side of the meal and sliced off a chunk of my head. My eyes were fixed to the hand as she brought it up to her mouth and popped it in, in that way that goes strictly against all manners but is simply too adorable to get mad over. I watched her chew, savoring the taste of our joint effort (Jenny always did most of the work, I was just there for assistance), and I got the feeling that she not only did not mind that I was staring but rather enjoyed it. When you're attached to someone by flesh, there will always be staring. You really can't afford to make a deal out of it. I never understood this infatuation with attention, though the notice that our condition inevitably attracted was never of any concern to me. It's pointless, it's a nothing. Nevertheless, I had no objection to how Jenny enjoyed attracting eyes to herself, or to us. The sparkle that shone in her eye while she drew eyes stood out to me was touched by a small hint of a greater force, a greater mystery, something that looked strangely predatory. The pristine innocence would almost falter for but a second, though I was surely the only observer to have caught these half-seconds of this mysterious pride, for it was rare for her to purposefully attract attention for solely the purpose of attracting attention, which was the only time that she showed this. It was satisfaction, in succeeding in attracting an audience. We were both artists.

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Meaningless ceremonies. Rituals of which the purposes had been long-forgotten.

It does not disturb me that much of the remainder of that day has since eluded my memory. Even as events unfolded I had been aware that nothing of it would be worth the mental space.

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Our bodies mingled once again under the hundreds of cascading drops. Mother ensured that we showered at least twice per day, though it never was a problem since we each cherished our time together in the most private of places we could be. Nowhere else were we so absolutely safe from the possibility of Mother deciding to walk in unannounced. I tasted fire in Jenny's saliva, saw it burn deep in the pits of her eyes.

Mother had left us alone while she went out to pick up our after-party Chinese food, just as she did every year. She was intent on driving the distance herself rather than ordering delivery, almost as if she went out of her way to give us some alone-time after a day of feigned sympathy and cheap gifts. We didn't bother getting dressed, not wishing to disrupt our moment of passion, fumbling to our bedroom between kissing and necking and a healthy amount of groping.

Together we writhed above the bed sheets, twisting and rubbing and pulling, her soft pink nipples still erect from the shower, and hers were not alone in that state. Her lips and her hips and all of her body shared the complex simplicity of her philosophies, setting me off with the softest of motions, her sweetness and tenderness tearing through my exterior and leaving me but a mass of flesh brought to an extreme state of ecstasy. No words passed my lips, no thoughts crossed my mind other than the then and there; what I tasted, what I felt, what I smelled, what I saw. So lost in this primal state of an animal whose purpose was no more than to mate was I that I felt but a pinch when Jenny's teeth pierced my flesh.

Fresh blood spilled over her lips as she tore the meat from my arm, just below the shoulder. I watched with peculiar indifference as she sucked on the muscles that she had pulled from my body, her teeth slicing the skin and dissecting it into multiple chunks to toss around in her mouth. Unpolished nails stabbed into the gaping wound, peeling strips of gore from the bone itself. I did not scream. I did not cry. I did not make any motion to object to the way she ravaged my body.
Her hand must have already been painted a striking crimson when her delicate fingers tightened around my humerus, the muscles and tendons reduced to but a macabre casing for the brilliant white object that seemed to pierce through like unmolested moonlight. I watched with more fascination than horror as she burrowed her fingers through the opposite side of my skin and pulled, peeling the meat around from the bone, leaving a gap that circled around my arm where no flesh or muscle remained.
Not a word passed between us. The gush of blood that following the manual removal of my arm from the shoulder socket produced the only sounds, other than the popping of the bones and tearing of muscles. Gore hung from what was now less than a stump. My eyes fixated on my limp, lifeless arm, now held before me by my sister.
My arm was a brush to paint her masterpiece, the artist herself looking devoid of anything approaching dread or remorse. An identical expression was reflected in her eyes, the reflection of the easel. For I knew that as my very life was pouring from my wounds, she had in her mind the happiness of none but myself. She had been planning this all along, dammit. My gift, from her to me. The girl who knew my every thought, whose own thoughts were a mystery to me. Words would have only served to taint the sacred silence that hung thick in the air. I welcomed the darkness brought to me by my sole source of light.
I whispered a final "I love you," as my unspoken wish was granted.