Stitchboy

There he goes again. Wearing my face. Living my life.

Image created with Chat GPT, using a stock photo as a base.

It’s still there. The house.

I don’t know why I’d think it wouldn’t be; hasn’t been that long since all of…this happened. A few months since I disappeared. Since I was ripped apart and stitched, stapled and bolted back together again by something that had a sick fascination with the nuances of life, death, and undeath.

“Option C”, she called it. Like it was a choice, or a backup plan.

I’m sure my sister would be disappointed to know that faeries are less sparkly tiny people with wings and more borderline-eldritch things with deeply skewed logic. The one that grabbed me — literally plucked me out of reality between one heartbeat and the next — called herself Renata. ‘Rennie’ if she was trying to be cute.

There’s nothing cute about Mary Shelley meets Willy Wonka with a bonesaw.

Imagine being cut open by someone like that. Having her giggle about how adorable your kidneys were, or how much better you would look with an extra mouth in your throat. Listening to her coo over how you’d be her greatest work, a monument to scientific achievement.

“Behave, or I’ll turn off your heart again,” she’d chirp with a too-wide smile whenever I was struggling more than she’d like. Every time she did, I hoped she wouldn’t start it back up again.

I wish I could say escaping from her was something cool or clever, but it wasn’t. It really wasn’t. She was off tending this weird garden full of carnivorous plants she had when I pulled out all the lines and tubes she had in me. Pulled them all out, crawled to an open window, and half-jumped, half-fell out of it.

I might have been trying to end it all for good. Break myself so well even she couldn’t put me back together again. Instead, I just fell through time and space, back to reality and straight into a dumpster. The dumbest of luck, but I wasn’t about to question it. All I did was stumble through the streets, trying to find my way home.

But by the time I got there, someone had already taken my place.

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Not only is the house still there, but so is he.

I saw him today. Out there, trimming the hedge with my hands. Laughing my laugh.

Wearing my skin.

A fake, made from whatever was left over when she sliced me up and sewed me back together wrong.

He waved to the neighbor across the street, the one who always used to give me banana bread even though I hate bananas. He waved like he belonged there. Like he knew how to wave. Like he didn’t steal that motion. That moment. That piece of me.

Mom and Dad don’t even know the difference. They think he — I —  was kidnapped, and that’s why he doesn’t remember everything he should. Why he’s so much more mellow than me. Why sometimes he wanders around in a daze, not sure of where or who he is until he ‘resets’ and everything’s okay again.

They think he just needs time.

It’s tempting to just kick in the door and out him as a fake. A copy made from scraps and lies. I still have the same face despite it all. I still remember everything he doesn’t. Evie’s sixth birthday, my high school graduation, the trip we took last summer where I was carsick for the entire miserable four-hour drive.

But I won’t, because I’m a monster.

All they’re going to see are the stitches, the patchwork skin and glowing eyes, the second mouth lined with jagged teeth in my throat. I have a second set of arms, and the fingers of those are scalpels. I’m not even sure if I’m alive or not.

Why would they want something like me around?

So I stay away. I lurk in the shadows because that life? The one with family dinners, homework, band practice and actual hope for the future? That’s a costume I can’t wear anymore, not with these seams. Not with a second mouth in my throat that screams in my sleep. Not with her fingerprints still all over my bones.

Let him have it.

Let him mow the lawn.

Let him go to college.

Let him be someone my mom can hug without flinching.

That life isn’t mine anymore.

But sometimes I miss it so much it feels like another death, and the other me’s the one that got to keep the heartbeat.

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