Evan ©

“Has the jury reached a verdict?”
. . . . .
They say your life flashes before your eyes before you die. No kidding.
. . . . .
A plump woman handed the judge a small piece of paper. Her hands trembled slightly as she let it go like a distant memory.
. . . . .
We were sitting on the steps in front of the apartment building; it was mid-afternoon and the hottest summer I can remember. We were eighteen years old but our parents wouldn’t let either of us move away.
Mrs. Tuskin drove up in her white, rusty Oldsmobile. She was a fragile old woman, twice a widow, once to cancer and the other to heart failure. Her hair was a cloudy white and her clothes were dress was a bright pink tartan with a hem of frills.
She walked over to us toting in each hand plastic grocery bags.
“Evan, would you mind helping me with my bags?” Her voice seemed to trill each letter as the rolled off her tongue.
“Ethan will,” he said never once glancing at her. He was my exact twin, we were both five feet and eleven inches tall, and we both had bright brown eyes and matching short wavy hair. The difference between us was simple; we were exact opposites in every way.
. . . . .
Judge Shahid took a deep rushed breath and opened the paper.
“Thank God,” was the only thing she whispered before handing the paper back down.
. . . . .
I was standing in Mrs. Tuskin’s small apartment living room. My nose twitched of the overpowering scent of an old perfume I couldn’t imagine anyone else wearing. It wasn’t musky but wasn’t a sweet either. Her groceries were lain out on the peach colored shag rug but the plastic bags were nowhere to be seen.
As I walked through this before unknown apartment, I couldn’t help wondering where everyone was. After calling out Mrs. Tuskin’s name what felt like a few hundred times, I realized what door must be to her bedroom. When I slowly opened the door as it creaked like a crow trying to be a songbird, I saw the horror of what happened to her.
As I fell backward, overcome with shear panic and shock, and caught myself with my right hand against the wall, I saw her unmoving, lifeless body as it lied upon the bed, the bag laying on her head. Someone had smothered her with the bag. That person stood beside her body, his eyes unthinking as if nothing happened.

“Fine, then I sentence the defendant to at least sixty days in a psychiatric institution for further evaluation,” the judge announced and banged her gavel.
. . . . .
I didn’t kill her. There’s only one person I know who’s crazy enough to have killed old Lady Tuskin. Evan framed me. Evan was guilty. They sent me instead.
. . . . .
Chicago Hospital for the Mentally Ill, that’s what they called it. The building was completely white and gray and was surrounded with fences higher than twelve feet.
They unlocked my cuffs and handed me over to two nurses who took me three stories up. They led me to a large entirely white room with six bared up windows along the farthest wall. In front the door we stepped through, on the left, was a front desk blocked off with glass that looked so thick it must have been bulletproof. Behind the desk was a man seeming to have been doing paperwork, he was biting his lower lip and squinting his gray eyes behind thick circular glasses.
There was an old man walking in a circle whispering something about a rock and another staring as if dead at a tiny TV screen in the top corner of the wall. There was another man lying on the couch and gazing up at the ceiling. In the far right corner was a group of eleven men in a circle with a stout male nurse seemed to be leading the conversation.
To the right of the front desk, the side farther from me was a set of stairs blocked off by a cage-like door. The nurse to my right, a slightly plump woman who looked about forty-two, took out a key and unlocked the door.
We climbed the stairs that led to a door. There was a bookshelf on the right side of the room full of books of psychology, each bigger and older than the last.
“Please, sit down,” the old man sitting behind the oak desk in the middle of the room. He was wearing a suit with his ID card clipped onto his suit pocket. He had salt and pepper colored hair, a clean-shaven face, and bushy eyebrows, which seemed to curl into his eyes. He had short oval glasses half way down his large nose. “Welcome, my name is Dr. Graves.”
Two aids walked in and stood, emotionless, on both sides of the door.
I looked back and then shifted my attention back to the old man. “What do you want from me,” I asked, squinting my left eye and picking at my nails. I pulled down my shirt from the bottom and sat up more straight.
“Do you think you should be here?” he questioned, moving his head forward slightly.
“No, my brother should be here.”
He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin. “Your brother?”
“Yes, my brother,” I remarked, my voice getting louder.
“Why should he belong here?”
“He’s the one who killed Mrs. Tuskin.”
“Can you get Evan to come and visit sometime? Maybe we can have a chat mayhap?” the doctor queried as he inched his head to the left and, for but a moment’s moment, glanced up at one of the aids.
“Probably not,” I whispered and began to run my eyes over his diplomas hanging on the wall next to the only window without bars in the entire building.
After about ten more minutes and him going over my file, I was led downstairs by the aids, which were joined by the same nurse who unlocked the cage-like door, to a hall with a series of metal doors with single tiny mirrors barely lower than my eyes. The nurse took out another set of keys and unlocked the entrance to what would be my new home. It was empty with the exception of a single metal white bed and a white dresser. Three feet off of the ground to the left of the bed, which was at the far right corner of the small room, was a window with slightly thicker bars than those in the main room.
After telling me this was my room, one of the aids had me remove my belt and the nurse went through my luggage.
Minutes after they left, there was a knock at my door. The last person I would expect to visit me stood there. It was Evan. I didn’t bother asking how he got there but just stared on in disbelief.
He was silent.
“What are you doing here?” I wheezed.
“Well visitin’ my brother, of course!”
“I swear to you I never want to see you again!” I began to yell, “Get out!”
“You can never get rid of me, “ he retorted with a slight smile, “I’m with you every time you look in the mirror, you’ll always be with me.”
“We’re only identical twins. When I look in the mirror I see myself, now get out!” In all of my anger I forgot to get him to go and see Dr. Graves. Maybe it’s better that I didn’t.
I went to sleep and when I woke up I was on the floor. My neck hurt and I found that I had several scratches along the back.
There was a loud ding and the door slammed open. Out came the plump nurse from the day before, Nurse Hellena. “Wake up, breakfast time!”
After I got my food, I sat down at the table with the least people. The table was a light blue, almost white, and the first of the two men sitting there clearly belonged there. Michael Vickson, a short man with a declining gray hairline and large brown eyes, was a sufferer of mania. The moment I sat down he began talking unintelligibly. He stopped for a single moment for my answer but when I said nothing his attention shifted to someone else at the table next to ours.
“He has somethin’ called mania so he’s kinda like an extremely arrogant person with extreme ADHD. His name’s Michael. I’m Stephen, Stephen Mahoney. I have Panic Disorder and autophobia, which is usually what triggers the panic attacks.”
“Autophobia? What’s that a fear of cars?” I asked like an idiot.
“It’s a fear of being alone.”
“How is constantly being with other people going to help you get over that?” I questioned, moving in slightly closer and shifting my position in my seat.
“I’m…I’m not sure exactly.” He responded with a shrug. “Before I forget, what’s your name?”
“It’s Ethan. Ethan Robins.”
“What’re ya in for?” He asked as he kept his eyes on his undercooked eggs.
“What do ya mean?”
He looked up at me again, one eyebrow higher than the other. “Well, what’s wrong with your head of course! Why else would ya be in a loony bin?”
“Nothin’s wrong with me! It’s my brother who’s psychotic!” I answered, my voice rising.
“Mmmhmm, that’s what we all say at first.”
After about twenty minutes of silence, there was an announcement over an intercom telling everyone it was time for our medication. I don’t remember taking, or not taking, the pills. What I do remember was being strapped down to table with leather straps. Nurse Hellena and several others were standing around me holding me down. When I was finally calm, they let down on the pressure.
“Where am I?” I managed to utter. There was no answer, I was soon led back to my room and the door was locked. It was already nighttime.
After those two days, fourteen more went by and my visits from Evan became more and more common. One day, around eight o’clock, I heard the knocking on my door.
“Hey, what’s up? Thought I’d visit my little brother,” he chimed in as he arrogantly strode over to me with a smirk held up as if to the ceiling.
“You’re only older by minutes.”
“Still counts,” he said, moving the smirk from the ceiling to me. “So how’s life? Everything good?”
“Of course it’s not! I’m locked in a mental hospital for something you did! How could you do this to me!”
“Hey! Look, I didn’t do nothin’ to you!” He yelled, his smile only slightly faded, “This is all you Ethan! Every last bit of it!”
“How can you say that? You know you killed her! You stared into her old, wizened eyes as they took their last look and didn’t even care! You’re the crazy one! Not me! Not me,” I shouted. My eyes felt like they were going to fall out and my stomach felt as though it might jump straight out of my mouth.
The door slammed open and in poured four nurses. Three of them tried to pick me up and dragged me. As I screamed and kicked, a new nurse, Nurse Marion, a tall Native American woman with black hair like electric silk, shot me with a tranquilizer in the neck.
Once again, I woke up strapped to the same table I had before and so many other times since Evan began to make his visits more common. The only difference was that this time Evan seemed to have snuck in.
“Hey, didn’t forget about me did ya?” He questioned as he stepped forward with his smirk returned.
“I wish I could,” I said as I dropped my head back down onto the table, unable to move anything else but my fingers and toes.
“Well wouldn’t life jus’ be boring without me?”
I didn’t answer.
“Fine, I can take a hint. But I’ll be back tomorrow, don’t you worry. Because you and me, we’re inseparable whether you like it or not.” He walked out the door past Dr. Graves just before he stepped in.
“Well let’s get you outa these binds,” he said, making no eye contact.
“Where’s my brother going? You need to stop him, he’s supposed to be here not me,” I begged slowly, still drowsy from the tranquilizer.
He sighed.
“What? What! Why aren’t you trying to catch up with him?” I asked, slowly regaining energy.
“Your brother isn’t even in the building. In fact, I checked your file and there are no records of you ever having a brother at all,” he told me, his head down, retightening the binds he had just loosened.
“What are you talking about? I’ve had a brother all of my life!”
“No Evan, you are the brother,” he answered, slowly backing away.
“My name is Ethan! Evan is my brother who happens to exist!”
“Evan, Ethan is only a split personality. You’re real name is Evan.”
“No…it’s…not! I’ve seen my brother with my own eyes all of my life!” I argued as I tried to tell myself it was just a joke or a nightmare.
It was no joke.
“Evan, our research has found that you have undifferentiated schizophrenia and a dissociative identity disorder, or multiple personalities,” he said as if he’d been practicing it in the mirror for some time now.
“That’s not possible, that can’t be true!” I began to scream. My life truly must be over now, and as I looked back I began to realize the proof of it all. As I looked out the small tiny window outside of the room, I could see my mother crying into my father’s arms. I saw, with horror, the truth of what I had done and saw the truth that Evan’s words, or rather my words were true, Evan will be with me every time I look in the mirror, every time I see my refection in the water, and ever time I dream at night.