Part Two

‘Where’s Abel?’ my father asks. I’ve changed into his dead daughter’s clothes, dressed her carefully as if she were a porcelain doll, I have been wearing her face for my whole life, and yet he can tell us apart.

‘I’m Abel, dad.’ I respond.

‘Oh.’ That’s all he says. No questions about where I am. He doesn’t care, the thought doesn’t even cross his mind.

‘I’m not my sister’s keeper.’ I say, ‘But I think she’s out in the fields somewhere, screwing up our dinner.’

He huffs and mumbles something about her, me, being useless, before leaving.

He returned soon, joined by my mother. They were covered in blood, Abel’s blood.

‘She’s dead.’ My father said.

I asked how and my mother tells me she suffered an injury to her cranium. Their voices are monotone. They look surprised, but they’re not hurt. Their child had been murdered and they couldn’t care less.

‘At least it wasn’t you. But now we have a funeral to plan.’ My mother said.

I offered to organise it, to which she smiled and cupped my face with her blood-stained hands. ‘You’re the perfect daughter as always.’

Even in death Abel keeps on overshadowing me.