Billy winces faintly as she tries to smile at me. “He gave me you.”
I read an article in a clinical psychology quarterly a couple of weeks back.It premised that two wolves live inside every person, constantly at war. The author called them Good and Evil, which struck me as just plain lazy.
Apparently, whichever one you fed more often ultimately won.
It sounded like Jungian shadow theory packaged for mass consumption.
But I get it now.
There’s this intense internal pressure building at the base of my skull that feels almost like the start of a headache. I can feel myself being pulled in two directions—morality versus immorality. Wrong versus right.
Good Wolf versus Bad Wolf.
I guess they’re both puppies. Newly born scraps of fur, mewling for sustenance. And even though I’ve already decided what I’m going to do, I don’t know which one is about to be fed.
Is mercy killing good or evil?
Is setting someone free—through death—moral or immoral?
Will slicing my sister’s wrists and watching her bleed out in the tub forever mark me as a good man, or a monster?
My wolves are only just opening their eyes. Only just staggering to their feet.
I know there will be situations where I’ll need them both. Surely I don’t have to feed only one?
The wolves don’t weigh in on my dilemma.
I suppose I’ll have to make this choice alone.
Except…it doesn’t feel like Ihavea choice.
I’ve spent a considerable portion of my life doing my utmost to ensure Evelyn didn’t torture Sybil. Usually by making Evelyn even angrier at me so she’d forget to punish Billy for whatever bullshit transgression she accused my sister of committing.
I’d be a damn hypocrite if I stopped taking care of my sister right when she needs me most.
So…yeah…I guess there isn’t a choice, actually.
The resistance I’m feeling is cowardice, not guilt.
I leave Billy in the bath and stride to my room on steady legs. My mind is clear. My breathing slow and even. My hands have stopped shaking.
I keep the razor blades I stole from Evelyn’s bathroom trash in a tin under my mattress. I use them to carve things—I’m working on a chessboard at the moment, about a third of the way through carving the pieces.
I take a blade.
When I return to the bathroom, Billy is humming Hallelujah. She stops when she senses me come closer and turns to face me.
She looks insignificant in the bathtub. A pale, skeletal girl with faded hair and shadowed eyes. Like a fairy someone left tied up in their basement too long, her tiny frame starved of magic.
I sink to my knees beside the tub.
“Are you sure about this, Billy?”
She holds out her arm, nodding slowly. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever been sure of.”
I take her arm. The veins at her wrist are clearly visible under her paper-thin skin, those blue lines mapping the geography of a wilted life.
“You can’t change your mind,” I warn her.
