Later that year when my brother and I came home from school, our mother was in the front lawn covered in blood. My brother's twin lay before her, full of holes from a kitchen knife. She had lived but would never be the same. We moved soon after. Our mother recovered (with scars), but the mental damage had been worse than the physical. Some days I would catch her looking at my brother before she would burst into tears and would have to leave the room.
I stood outside my parents' bedroom listening in on her talking to my father.
"I can't do it. I just can't make it go away," she said.
"It wasn't him. It wasn't anyone's child. It was a monster and you did the right thing." He tried to give her comfort.
"It was someone's child!," she screamed. "It was someone's child!" Over and over again, as we drove her to the hospital.
Was it someone's child? There were several opinions about them that I knew of. The largest group of people (at least, all the television shows), believed they were just like us, from another place. Another dimension. But that's not what the State and Federal laws reflected. Not in the least. Lobbyists from every nook and cranny were still trying to get the laws changed, but it was slow in coming.
When my mother killed my brother's twin, they asked her some questions, filled out some paperwork, but that was it. Animal control came and took away the body.
Animal control. Like it was a raccoon. I mean, it probably had more soul than a raccoon... They could think and everything. Not all the way, I mean, but mostly. Even now, I make it a habit of talking to the safe ones.
"Hi! How are you?" I ask.
A blank stare, a slow blink, "Hungry," a twin may reply.
"Want some of my sandwich?" I'll ask.
Another blank stare, then a look at me, then a hesitant and outstretched hand. It's then that I don't know what to expect. Usually I will put the sandwich down and slide it towards them. I don't like getting too close. Nobody does. Public Bus drivers had some of the first problems, and now most of them recognize how to deal with it. The Transit Authority of Omaha Nebraska were the first ones to figure it out. The twins loved to be around people. Not interacting with them, but just being around them. Staring at them, watching them, just being all-around creepy. So, they naturally will congregate at bus stops. They usually never have any money, and when they do, they usually don't know how to use it. Paying for the smallest things with wadded up hundred dollar bills, wherever the hell they would get them, who knows?
But anyway, so they get on the busses and cause a commotion, not understanding the tokens or routes, they just stand there and don;t pay, or pay too much, not feeding it into the automated bill collector. Omaha inserted a plexiglass into the back third of their bus, and told the twins to enter and exit by the back door. Well, they technically took off the door, but they did paint the entryway bright yellow and green and the twins get on and get off whenever they feel like it. I watched a selfie the other day about it.
"Oh it's weird all right," a large man in his forties was saying. "They just sit there and stare at you for the whole trip."
A bus driver was interviewed as well. "Yeah - so we just drop em off at the police station at the end of the day. Otherwise some of them would probably still be on the bus all night."
Worldwide, the Transit Authority of Omaha Nebraska "formula" caught on and tolerance seemed to be the best solution.