I was born a cannibal. My mother carried twins: my sister and me. Savagely hungry, I curled up in utero closer to the placenta than my twin, sucking the nutrients from it, sharing none with her. I bared tiny, jagged teeth, protecting what was mine. I used them for as long as I needed; they withdrew into my gums and would grow out again later. I grew bigger and heavier while my twin shrank to the size of a pea. She stubbornly refused to die. Instead, she withered and latched onto me. Like a tapeworm, she burrowed inside my skin and drank whatever it was I ate. She carried like a light burden, floating inside me like the yolk of an egg that would never hatch.

When I was born, the doctor told my mother I’d absorbed my twin, meaning I’d eaten her. She’d only heard of it in sharks. Before birth, they were already tiny eating machines, dining on their siblings and fighting to survive within the womb, perhaps knowing Mother would never protect them. She might eat them herself, and they’d be tethered to her forever. Something you would expect from a magnificent monster who’d seen some shit yet still ruled the sea.

But people?

Mother, silver-eyed and slender, with succulent skin and flowing, fine hair, abhorred me. I was an abomination in her silver eyes. Yet, she’d carried me, balanced me within the cove that was her womb—a seesaw that teetered precariously on the edge of insanity after I had eaten my twin. I sensed her loathing and squalled like a tempest in a teacup, stiffened when she held me as I looked directly into the depths of her light-filled eyes. Mine were made of sea glass and one day, my tangled, black hair would tumble to my feet.

She fed me with an empty heart, torn open by a spiral-shaped bullet that seared through it with rage. I was always hungry. Somehow, I gained weight—out of spite, not for life. I wanted nothing from her.

From a young age, I yearned to become a two-headed golden-beaked eagle, carrying my sister with me and thriving alone in the most bitter of winters. I made my home in a barren nest atop a hostile mountain, burdened with layers of watertight wings that spread as far across as a valley. I’d dip from the sky and rip into my prey, my talons gripping the animal’s innards until I was airborne again. A soft apocalypse for the errant hare and the twin I carried in my belly. 

You cannot run from death, defy your fate, or live forever. There is no shame in savagery; it is a glorious thing.

My twin began speaking to me when I was four. I answered, telling her about the eroding roads in life that led to nowhere. I told her to embed herself in my womb for as long as she could and not to leave until she was forced out into the bloody battlefield.

“Every child has an imaginary friend,” my father assured my fearful mother. 

My mother, a coward, was never alone with me. She didn’t like my kaleidoscope eyes and the way they twisted in and out of focus when I looked at her. She feared I’d slice her in two when I blinked. It was another reason to hate her into eternity.

Over time, my belly bulged with my sister, and I couldn’t protect her anymore. 

“Hide, hide, hide!” I whispered. “The world is glacial and there is no love here for you.”

She was spiteful, and she grew and grew. My mother was even more afraid of me. I leered at her, flashing those tiny, jagged teeth that had regrown in perfect points like mountainous peaks, and wondered how her throat would taste. 

My father brought me to an oncologist. My mother stayed and hid at home.

“Look at her misshapen stomach,” he wept. 

The doctor said whatever the massive bulge might be, he must remove it. 

“It will suck the life out of her. It may be doing it now,” he said. 

Cutting people open and ripping out their innards was what he did best. 

Is it possible to kill what you love without killing yourself? I thought about eating my twin before they could remove her. It would be my last, unselfish act. But they put me to sleep and scooped her out, leaving a crevice they closed with a scar as thick and undulating as an earthworm. I awoke to find my abdomen empty and scraped clean, a pumpkin with its pulp and seeds removed, an empty shell left to rot without a barrier from the shit, the vulgarities, and the snakes beneath my feet.

My father held her in his arms. She looked at him with eyes of sea glass. She was wrapped in black hair that tumbled to her feet. He said he always knew he had two daughters. This was nothing he hadn’t expected. 

A seasick, foolish, empty-headed man! 

My eyes met my sister’s, and we hid a sinister smile. We’d begin the feast with our father. I wanted our wretched mother to watch the feeding until it was her turn.