Mila

In a daze, I stare at the naked corpse in front of me. My mind feels sluggish and slow, confused. I hear heart-wrenching sobs; these sobs are echoing through my cell. Curiously, I wonder who is crying as I look around my small cell. I can see no one but me and my dead twin brother. It is then, I realize, the cries are mine.

Hesitatingly, I reach my hand towards his face, a male mirror image of my own. I trace his full lips, straight nose, and hair so golden that it looks lit from within with a shaking hand. I look into his vacant violet eyes, devastated by the missing spark of life. As I memorize every whip lash, every knife slash, and every purple bruise that mars his broken body, I assure Gideon I will avenge him.

I look around my cell which has been my home for the last two of my fifteen years and feel a sense of hopelessness. They made the cell out of four concrete walls a foot thick with no door. They used a small transporter to enter our cell, and we have never left. For two years all we could see were these concrete walls and the rodents and spiders that called this place home. In the beginning, my fear of rats made this an especially cruel place to keep me captive, but after repeated exposure, I learned to keep my fear at bay. They decorated the cell with a single bare light- bulb that was remotely controlled. Sometimes They had it on for days at a time, sometimes They did not turn it on for weeks.

The cell always smells of human waste and body odor, for neither of us had access to a toilet or shower for so long. The smells, dreary decor, intermittent lighting, and torture sessions wear on me, but no matter how little hope I have left, I will never surrender or give up all attempts to escape. I owe Gideon that.

I push myself to my feet, standing unsteadily, blood loss weakening me. Sorrow still is muting the pain of my own injuries, and I am thankful for I know that the agony would impede me from my task. They had given us a small trowel to bury our fecal waste in the far corner of our cell, and I use it now to dig a grave for my brother.

I refuse to think about the reason for digging this cursed hole. Instead, I focus on the soothing rhythm of shoveling. Scoop and dump. Scoop and dump. Do not think about what you're digging. Do not remember his crooked smile. Do not think about his last words. I repeat these phrases inside my head like a mantra, again and again, trying to deaden myself from the pain.

But I can't help myself. "It's okay," he'd said, his cracking voice strained by the effort to talk. His lips trembled as he struggled to smile. "I will wait for you." A small tear had escaped his eyes, slowly trickling down his filthy face, leaving a cleaner swath of flesh across his cheek. I think he tried to say something more, but his body failed him and his chest went still and moved no more.

The hole was small, fitting for a fifteen-year-old boy, malnourished, and small for his age. I was smaller than him by a couple of inches and a few pounds, and I could barely drag him to his grave. Laying him in the grave, I speak to Gideon about our happy memories. I talk of our foster parents and their love for us. I talk of blueberry pancakes covered with syrup and I talk of what our sibling bond meant to me. I close his eyes and say "Goodbye". I cover him with the dirt and know I just buried my heart.

It had been my fault They captured us; I had wanted to celebrate our thirteenth birthday by using my magic to grow a garden like the one from Alice in Wonderland. They had burst on the scene, capturing and torturing us, asking us where we had gotten the primordial magic. I did not understand what They meant.

Gideon had named them They, for they all wore masks, long robes, and had neutral voices, neither male nor female. They never spoke unless they were demanding to know the source of my magic or for me to show them my magic again. My healing was my only magic that still worked and while They were interested in that, self-healing was automatic magic that used very little "primordial magic". And so each time I disappointed them They beat us until their rage ran dry.

I had been born with my magic. We had never met our parents, and I knew little about my magic, only able to play a few illusionary tricks with it and heal myself. They insisted my illusion magic was spectacular because I could make a person use all their senses to interact with my illusion: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. I had often made a small illusion for Gideon, and it was simple for me, just like breathing. No effort. In captivity, though, the more torture I received, the weaker my available magic grew until it all but disappeared. I felt the electric hum in my veins and the pressure that always was present in my chest lessen as the days went by until it left only a few stray pieces warming me in the dark with its comforting hum.

They refused to believe it had been so easy for me to use before and They, even more, refused to believe that I was not hiding my magic from then now. The pain seemed to make my magic hide in a place unreachable to me. I knew my magic had never left my body, but no matter how I tried to coax it into my reach, I could not find its hiding place. It flummoxed me that there was a place inside my body that I could not find and that my magic disobeyed my directives when before my magic and my mind were as one.

I slide to the floor of the cell, cataloging my own wounds: several broken ribs, multiple whip wounds wrapping around to my front from my back, and a large knife wound in my thigh. My healing couldn't kick in because I was too weak from starvation and grief. I was afraid infection would set into the knife wound but I could do nothing about it. Because I had angered them, I was unlikely to be fed soon. Without food, I was weak. Even my magic seemed to suffer from starvation.

They had tried to activate a protective instinct in me with his last beating. My magic loved Gideon as much as I did. He was my twin, an intrinsic part of me, a piece of my soul that lived in another's body.

I could only ignite a few tiny illusions that They could wave their hand and dispel with a second of thought. I had begged my magic to give me something, anything, to save him, but I received no answer. I had been desperate, but my magic had been eerily quiet. That knowledge caused me to flare with more guilt than what I already felt for causing us to be captured in the first place.

I realize that my guilt is useless. He was dead and I was alive. All my energy had to be on escaping and getting revenge. Guilt would only make me emotional. I need my mind to be clear and focused.

I breathe in and out. In and out. Closing my eyes, I shove every emotion that I have ever felt into a dark box at the very edge of my mind and wall it in. I will get out and destroy my brother's murderers and then I will follow him in death.

I sit on the ground for what feels like days, barely conscious, tenuously hanging on to my life. An infection had set into my wounds and fever raged through my body like a firestorm. My body begged to give in and rejoin Gideon, but I was determined to live. I had to live. I must live. I will live. My brother was not going to be a forgotten body buried in the place we had been tortured. I will escape and bury him with our foster parents. That I promised him. And I never broke a promise.