Twins are creepy, Alice thought to herself as she kicked a pile of gold glitter absentmindedly. It was everywhere on Hollywood Blvd that day: big metallic chunks of celebration that had been strewn about recklessly; a glimmering manifestation of the vapidness that surrounded her. The glitter, much like her problems, seemed to have no end in sight.
She despised being a carbon, so why did she choose to live here of all places? This was something that she often pondered. She hated the way her sister looked at her all the time, with eyes so much like her own. Being filled with self-hatred, she didn’t necessarily want to stare into a mirror all of the time. Her memories stepped outside and wandered off without her, dragging her by a psychic leash, back to that time at the tea-party when her sister made an herbal-infused spectacle of herself, dancing atop the table to reveal she hadn’t any knickers under her dress before pissing into everyone’s teacups with perfect aim and precision.
Day turned into night and the night turned cold and she found herself still on Hollywood Blvd, staring into the store windows at The Hollywood & Highland center. She thought that she saw her sister inside the GAP. “What the fuck is she doing in there after hours?” she said aloud softly. She couldn’t take it. There seemed to be no escaping her. She turned on her heels and started running. She ran all the way home to their shared apartment on Sunset and Santa Monica. She bolted inside and collapsed panting on the couch. Her sister was sitting there watching some mindless television show in her underwear.
“Why are you panting?” the sister asked without averting her eyes from the television screen.
“I thought I saw you in the GAP.”
“Well you didn’t. I’m sitting right here obviously. I don’t like their clothes anyway.”
“Isn’t it enough that we shared a womb? Why do you have to be everywhere I am.”
“Fuck you, asshole. I’m hungry.”
She contemplated making her sister some spaghetti with glass in it before getting up to go into the bathroom, but decided against it. Once inside, she calmly took off her pantyhose and fashioned them into a noose that hung from the shower curtain rod. As she slowly stepped into the tub, the door opened and her sister appeared instantly on the toilet seat; cotton panties around her ankles, a Camel cigarette dangling from her lips.
“Not high enough, idiot.” the sister remarked through a cloud of smoke.
Alice climbed onto the edge of the bathtub and put her head in anyway. Her sister didn’t even blink. As Alice tightened the hose she noticed there wasn’t even a flicker of concern inside of her sister’s cold blue eyes. She stepped off.
And they stared at each other with the same eyes for all of eternity.
