Hope was so tired she picked the phone as if in slow motion.
“What did you want?” she said into the mouthpiece of the phone to her twin sister in the other room.
“What did I want?”
“Yeah you just turned my door knob and I heard you go back when you found the door locked.”
“I haven’t stepped out of my room in the last one hour.”
“That’s odd; someone did come to my door” Hope said with a frown. She transferred the phone to her other hand as her eyes strayed to the door.
“Are you sure of that? You were sleeping, and I sure did not hear… someone is in the hallway, I just heard footsteps!” Charity’s voice had made a transition from tired and lazy to frantic.
“Is your door locked?” Hope screamed. She felt a shiver from the core of her being. Something was definitely wrong. If someone was in the house, he must have broken in. She and her twin lived alone in a two bedroom apartment with both rooms on both sides of the house, and she was sure she had locked the main door when came in hours earlier.
“Is your door locked?” She asked again.
“I’m not sure… oh my God the door knob just turned…ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
“Charity, Charity is your door locked, charity is your door locked?!”
Even as she kept screaming the question to a now silent phone, she ran to the door, unlocked it in one beat and began a sprint to her twin sister’s room. She was just a little distance away from Charity’s door when she noticed it open, she stopped abruptly, her heart beating so furiously fast that it was the only sound she heard. She couldn’t have been more scared, and then as if being pushed, she moved like a zombie to Charity’s door. With few more steps to the door, she pulled to a stop again, rushing into her with great force was the feeling she gets when something goes wrong with her twin sister. This time, the feeling was a million times more intense than what she’d ever felt. She never could have believed that it was possible to feel so intensely. Feeling this way could only mean one thing, and in total denial, she started shaking her head vigorously.
“No! Oh God no. it can’t be true. No it can’t be true…”
By the time she got to Hope’s room, she was already sobbing profusely, and to confirm her fears was her sister in a pool of blood on the floor just by the foot of her bed. Still moving like a zombie, she went to the body and knelt beside it and gasped when she saw clearly the horror before her. Hope had been stabbed seven times in the stomach and once at the centre of her heart.
Who could be this vicious? Who could Hope have wronged to have been this angry? A sound from her back made her spring up and turn and then she saw him. He wasn’t a tall man, but he was strongly built. He had a murderous expression on his face and in his raised hand was the knife he had used on her sister still dripping blood.
Fear tore into her like the knife he was holding. The last thing that crossed her mind before the knife came down into her stomach was that her sister must have felt exactly the way she was feeling now before she had died. That thought made her feel happy in a painful sort of way.
Charity woke up with a start and a scream, her throat was so dry that the scream did not quite make it to her lips. Her body was covered in sweat, making her night gown stick to her like a second skin, the bed sheet and her duvet were both on the floor. She must have kicked them off the bed in the course of the dream.
She had never in her life had a nightmare that graphic, her heart was still beating fast, and in an inexplicable way, she still felt that painful happiness. Odd, so odd…
 
She was thinking of a cold drink of water when her door knob turned.
 
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Victoria is an editor and writer. She blogs at mytwocentsnmore.blogspot.com