Here is a chance for you to get into my head

For an English assignment due on Monday, I had to write a short story. Now, normally, this would have been an easy task, but it was not. Do you know why? This is because our teacher gave us a series of (random) photos and we had to write our stories based on the inspiration we received from them. So, this is where you come in. Yes, I would appreciate it if you read the story, but I also want to give you the chance to see what thoughts bob to thetop when I see the picture above.

I apologize for the bad quality- I had to use my webcam in class to take the picture. Unlike the other lucky kids, I don't have a cell phone yet.

Anyway, here is the story.

Reminisce

“I, Dorcas, great witch of Salem, and heir of the to-be Howe family, cast a prolonged spell upon the first twins of the clan. From this day forward, the first identical brothers to be born into my family will be bound with the great fidelius charm. This charm will cause the circumstances which arise upon one to arise upon the other in the event where physicality is involved. This bond will last through the afterlife and will not be broken even if one dies leaving the other as the sole brother. Through this, I will ensure that their minds become one and they never separate- allowing my family to prosper without feuds of any sort! Though for this charm to work—”

Jonathan and his twin brother Anthony Howe, laughed as they flipped through the pages of an old newspaper they had uncovered in a box in their basement labelled “Ancestral Information”. These were apparently the last words of their great-great-great-great-great-grandmother as the head witch of Salem, before she commit suicide at approximately 11:59 PM, in fear of becoming the next one to be burned at the stake for practicing witchcraft in the witch trials of 1450. What made Jonathan and Anthony laugh was not only the fact that a great witch like Dorcas had to kill herself to hide from mortals, but also the fact that they were the first twins to have been born into the Howe family. Although their parents treated them like normal kids (chores, homework, punishments...) their grandmother, cousins, and aunts and uncles always viewed them with looks of awe. They had never quite understood what “The Firsts! They are the Firsts!” meant until now. Yet finding out why only made them laugh at the sheer foolishness of their family. They knew that this fidelius charm was just a bunch of bologna. Both of them loved adventure and as a result often got caught in some sticky situations, but whenever one had come home with a broken leg the other had not. It was obvious their great-great-great-great-great-grandmother was simply a crazy old lady who was scared of being executed for some sort of petty crime. That was all. At least, that was all they could infer from the yellowed and dusty old newspaper they had found labelled, “Ye Informeth”. It was evident that some of the information was missing, such as the necessary step which was to be taken for the fidelius charm to work; though with video games, school, chores, and sports in their lives, once Jonathan and Anthony left the newspaper on a table in their basement after running upstairs to get a snack, they did not look at it again until the Halloween of 2014. Five years from the present; which would prove to be fatal for both of them.

**Five Years Later**

“You are such an idiot, Anthony!” cried Jonathan. “Why in the world would you tell on me?”

“I-I didn’t mean to upset you,” mumbled Anthony. “I was just concerned about your safety. That is all. You know how harmful drugs can be.”

“Did I ask for a lecture? God... We are lucky Mom and Dad are on vacation- otherwise I would have been screwed!” retorted Jonathan.

“I guess that was a good thing... Jon, don’t you think we should be more careful about what we do though? We wouldn’t want to cause harm to each other. You have to realize that we are different.”

“Please don’t tell me you are talking about our great-whatever-grandmother’s charm!” sneered Jonathan. “You said yourself, it’s stupid and it doesn’t work. We tried, remember? I cut myself, and nothing happened to you. You were stressed out about that math contest, I was sleeping... Most importantly, I tackled you while playing football last week, and you couldn’t even touch me!”

“But there are times when it has worked! Remember the frog incident?”

“That was one time Anthony, and I thought I told you to shut up about that! It was an accident, alright? I was mad...”

“...You could have really hurt me Jon. I could have died...”

“But you didn’t, and I for one am sorry for that fact! An idiot like you doesn’t deserve a second chance! Just get lost!”

“B-but Jon! I am sorry!”

“I said shut up. I am going for a smoke. Leave me alone. I swear, if I as much as hear your condemned footsteps, I will kill you.” With that, Jonathan left for his favourite place to get high, the barn.

Remembering how his brother had tried to kill him when they were thirteen for talking to the girl he had liked, Anthony realized it was probably best to leave Jonathan to cool down by himself. Jonathan was not one to hold grudges. He would come out of it, Anthony was sure of it. Until then, he would go finish up his life sciences project. With a topic like the Genome Project, it was impossible to not want to research. It was simply so interesting! Or at least, that was what Anthony thought. Jonathan preferred to get high as opposed to get high grades. Over the years the two had slipped apart... As Anthony jotted down some information from his textbook onto his Bristol board, he noticed a crepuscular breeze coming from the window. After opening his window and smelling the fresh scent of opium, Anthony gagged, covered his mouth, and closed the window as fast as was humanly possible. His brother taking drugs never made sense to him. He was a good kid, why did he need these things? Surely there weren’t any problems in his life... Surely he wasn’t the problem, was he? Realizing he needed an eraser, Anthony decided his brother wouldn’t mind if he went through his drawer to take something he never used anyway.

As Anthony fumbled through his brother’s messy drawer of “school supplies”, he came up with pocket knives, needles, and condoms, but no eraser. Just as he was about to give up and simply cross the text out on his sheet, Anthony noticed a book sticking out of his brother’s pillowcase.

Now that is a weird place to keep a book... thought Anthony to himself as he took it out of its protective enamels- or in other words, the pillowcase and some tin foil.

When he finally had the entire book unwrapped, Anthony was shocked. It was a notebook. Was his brother studying? No, that could not be it... But then what was it? Anthony knew his brother was a fan of manga graphic novels such as Death Note, (a story in which the main character simply had to write down the names of his victims to kill them) but surely this was nothing of the sort. As Anthony opened the book, his eyes magnified to ten times their usual size. This wasn’t a Death Note, but it was some sick “little black book” which contained an alphabetical, tabbed list of people’s names, and when you were to flip to a specific page, it would list all the ways Jonathan had contemplated of killing that person.

Was this really what his brother did in his spare time? No, it couldn’t be... but the evidence was too pungent. It was all here. Sure, his brother had not killed anyone—yet, but what about when he did? No. Anthony realized he had to talk to him how. Forgetting about the eraser he had originally set out to find, he quickly stuffed his feet into his shoes, stuck one of the pocket knives in his jeans pocket, and ran to the barn with the notebook. When he finally arrived, he was out of breath. The barn was at least a ten minute walk from the house, and finding the dark building in the night was even harder, but Anthony had the thin fog of opium smoke to guide him. Before walking into the barn and confronting his brother, Anthony peeked in through a small hole through the old wooden and diseased walls of the barn. There his brother was... looking so peaceful in his protective bubble of smoke. Could this really be his reality? Was he a to-be serial killer? Being unable to hold it in anymore, Anthony rushed in, pulled the joint out of his brother’s hand and stomped it out. After making sure all the distractions were out of the way, he pulled out the book and showed it to his brother, yelling, saying he couldn’t believe he did something so... heinous! Jonathan merely shrugged and asked if he could see the book. Being in a spasm of anger, Anthony did not think before giving the book to his brother, and in turn, told him to look at the pages of shame in there. As he yelled, Jonathan simply sat there with a blank look on his face. After spending about an hour yelling at his brother, Anthony announced that he was “disgusted” and wished he “was never born to be the equal of someone with such a horrid mind”. He claimed that he “would have been better off dead”. After realizing Jonathan had enough to think about, Anthony left his brother alone in the barn and headed back to the house.

Anthony was extremely thankful there hadn’t been a need for the pocket knife, though he kept it inside his jeans pocket just in case.

“It was merely a precaution in case the drugs made Jonathan do something,” Anthony thought to himself. “There wouldn’t have been a real need for it...”

While he poured himself some tea, it suddenly occurred to Anthony that he had forgotten the notebook with the various methods of murder in it with Jonathan. At first he started at this fact, but then realized that no one could kill without direct contact. As long as he locked the doors to the house, he would be safe for the night. Jonathan had slept in the barn before, and tonight was not very cold for an October night. In fact, it was a very eerie kind of warm. Anyway, Anthony decided not to think too much about that and go to sleep for the night.

As he slept, he had a dream that Jonathan, or at least he believed it to be Jonathan, was coming up to him and caressing something cold and smooth against his neck. It felt wrong, but it felt so right... He hated it, but he needed it... As Jonathan moved the object back and forth against his neck, Anthony felt more and more uncomfortable, yet completely serene at the same time. The third time, as Anthony was expecting the smooth object to slide across his neck once more, he felt something rough and serrated cut through the flesh on his neck in its place... Anthony woke up in a panic and looked outside into the barn. A small, contained fire was burning. That meant Jonathan was not in the house. Yet that dream... As Anthony once again tried to fall asleep, he saw the dream, he felt the dream... it came back. After waking up the second time, Anthony knew there was only one way to solve his problem. He simply could not sleep knowing Jonathan was out there with that book—mad at him. He knew he would have to die... Slowly, he stood up and pulled the pocket knife out of his pocket and put the smooth side against his neck for a second. This was the cool metal he had felt at first, the one that felt... right. Knowing he did not have much time left, Anthony quickly turned the knife over to the sharp, notched edge, and in one quick movement, penetrated through his own flesh. He was dead and it was over. There was nothing more to worry about.

Outside, about ten minutes north of the Howe household, on October the 31^st, at about 11:59 PM, there was a scream. When the cops came to investigate a week later, they came to find two bodies of identical males, in two different locations. Now normally they simply would have thought this to be a coincidence, but they had a notion that something else had happened here. For when they had taken the bodies in for an autopsy, the results had shown that both of them had been killed by a blade slit in exactly the same site. This fact was chilling, but the worst part of all, was the fact that there was no murder weapon—let alone blade—to be found...