F Wilson - Sibs

He propped the cell door open with copies of the PDR and Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary—he didn't want to be accidentally locked in here. He'd probably die of starvation before anybody found him. He turned on the overhead light and stood in the center of the cell.

What on earth had Gates used this for? Who had he kept here?

The questions plagued him. Questions existed to be answered. They never went away until they were answered.

He paced the narrow dimensions of the room, tapping on the padding with the heel of his hand and the side of his shoe. It was thick. If you were the sort who was inclined toward such things, you might be able to knock yourself out by banging your head against these walls, but you wouldn't be able to crack your skull. You might even—

Something crunched.

Rob's shoe had tapped against a slight bulge in the lower padding. Something else was under the fabric. He reached down and found a split seam along the floorline. Dropping to his knees, he wriggled his fingers up under the fabric. There was paper crammed in there. He vised a couple of sheets between his fingers and yanked them out. Then he pulled more out. The space was stuffed with scraps from notepads, prescription blanks, used envelopes, all covered with tiny script. And a pencil, short, looking as if someone had sharpened it with his teeth.

Rob studied the script. He was no handwriting expert, but these looked like they were written by the same hand that had sent Kara the warning note. And they were dated.

Rob began setting them in order. He had some reading to do.

He had a feeling one of his questions was about to be answered.

▼

The basement was small, as Rob had mentioned earlier. Had it been less than twelve hours since they'd arrived here together? It seemed ages. After all the high ceilings upstairs, these low-slung pipes overhead gave her a hemmed-in feeling, seemed to press down on her.

Her body took her to a paneled partition. Her hand reached up among the pipes and pulled a lever. Something clicked inside the wall. She pushed on a panel which dropped back then slid to the left, revealing a small room.

A foul odor wafted out—urine, feces. Had she been in control of her body she might have gagged.

"Unpleasant, isn't it? But if I've got to smell it, so should you. I've been living in that for almost two days."

A Tiffany-type floor lamp threw a cone of light on the room's single piece of furniture. A crib. In the crib was the source of the odor.

"Let me introduce myself properly. My name is Gabor. This is my body."

Had she a voice, Kara would have screamed. In the crib was a wrinkled, shrunken thing with thick, mottled skin and whispy white hair trailing off its scalp. The head was too big for its body—adult-sized on a body no bigger than the average five-year old's. It's face was a caricature of humanity with its flattened nose, its drooling, toothless mouth, its white-coated eyes stared blindly upward. In contrast to its short, warped, wizened limbs, its body was a bloated, corpulent, barrel-chested mass, the pelvis sheathed in a stained, fouled diaper.

"Loathsome, aren't I?"

Kara was numb. Had she been able, she wasn't sure she would have dared to frame a reply.

"You needn't worry about injuring my feelings. Even I find myself repulsive."

She detected something behind the words, a cosmic rage, a tragic self-loathing.

But this is Doctor Gates' house!

"The man you know as Doctor Gates was my brother, Lazlo. The body, at least, was Lazlo's. The intellect you dealt with, pouring your heart out to in your therapy sessions, was I. Gabor. So, in a real sense, Doctor Gates isn't dead. I am Doctor Gates. I went through pre-med and medical school, I sat through those tedious lectures, I studied those dry texts till my eyes burned like heated coals in my head, I passed those tests and board exams, spent those years in residency. The medical degree and license may have Lazlo's name on them, but they are the result of my work. They are mine."

Where… where was Lazlo all this time?

"With me. A passenger in his own body. Like you."

Oh, God!

"It wasn't so bad for him. I left him alone at times. And after all, we were brothers. Twins, would you believe? Twins! Like you and Kelly. Yet something went wrong with me in utero, early on, when we were both little more than collections of cells. My body became distorted while his grew perfectly. Twins should share, don't you think?"

Poor Lazlo!

"Never mind him. He's gone. And my body needs tending. First a quick change of diaper—I prefer the Huggies to Pampers—and then we'll feed me. It's been two days since I've eaten and I'm starving. That's what the junior foods are for. I use them when I haven't got time to puree something more appetizing. After dinner, a sponge bath. As you'll soon learn, I take good care of my body. I bathe it every day."

Kara wanted to cry at her helplessness, but she had no tears.

Let me go! Please let me go!

"Lazlo used to plead for release in the early days, but he stopped after a while when he came to realize that it would do him no good. You might as well do the same. We're going to be together for a long, long time, Kara."

▼

With Kara's hand you spoon the food into your mouth—your other mouth, the mouth you were born with. You're glad you were finally able to escape from that body this afternoon. The hunger was becoming unbearable.

But that's over now. You're in control again, just as you planned. Everything has gone according to your contingency plans. You've foreseen everything. You always knew there was a possibility that Lazlo would meet with an untimely end, so you prepared for that. You knew that, by law, his immediate heir would be his brother, yourself, Gabor. But since your body is itself incapable of meaningful communication, you knew Gabor would be declared incompetent and all your inherited assets placed in trust under some sort of guardianship—out of your control.

That would never do. So you arranged for Gabor to 'die.' Then, as Lazlo, you made a will and left all of your assets to the woman in whose body you were most comfortable at the time. There has been a string of heirs. For the past year it was Kelly Wade. Just a week ago you changed the chief beneficiary to Kara. Fortuitous timing. And brilliant anticipation. You should be proud.

Why then do you feel so empty?

It's not the hunger. It's not the trauma of two nights ago. It's Lazlo. He's gone. He's dead. He gladly killed himself to escape you. That has hurt you deeper than you ever thought possible.

You miss Lazlo. Miss the familiar workings of his body, miss his companionship. And after all, he was your twin brother.

Now he's dead. You can trace his death back to Kelly Wade. It began with her. If she hadn't managed to jump out that window at the Plaza, you would still be occupying Lazlo's body and going about your usual business. But Kelly's death brought Kara to town, and Kara was a temptation you couldn't resist. But Kara's boyfriend is a cop, a tenacious one. And if he hadn't harassed you so, you would not be in your present position—the sole surviving member of the Gati family.

It's Harris' fault. If he hadn't hounded you, you would not have fled onto 42nd Street and been hit by the car. The impact temporarily severed your contact with Lazlo, giving him a chance to try to steal Harris' pistol. When you returned to Lazlo, you discovered yourself in mid-grapple with Harris. You tried to let go of the pistol but your finger was stuck. When you tried to yank it free, the gun went off.

And that is all you remember. The impact of a bullet tearing through the brain you were occupying traumatized your consciousness. You lay in a coma for almost a full day. You're still weak. You could barely occupy Kara when she arrived here.