Together Forever

by Dan Malach

At first, disbelieving your cold skin, I shook you, wishing you awake. How could this happen? How could you die and I live? They told us it wasn’t possible, that one couldn’t exist without the other. We were destined to go together!

I wiped my tears away and looked at your wrinkled profile, the silhouette I know so well. It was a part of me. It still is. From the most fleeting glance out of the corner of my eye, I could tell what you were thinking. The way you raised a single eyebrow, that meant you thought they were a phony, or how you’d laugh at inappropriate things, like seeing another couple arguing, because really you were embarrassed to be watching. You made me whole and without you I’m nothing.

I remember when our story was front-page news and people surrounded us, everyone demanding a piece. We had more than our fifteen minutes. But no one cares any more. The world lost interest and left us alone. I don’t blame them, we were famous by default rather than design. You only had to look at us to know that. In the end, we knew we had nothing of value except each other, and so really it was us who dismissed the world.

Why didn’t we realise this would happen? We trivialised every discussion about it with ‘together forever’. Together forever. Two stupid, meaningless words!

It’s dark in here and I can’t even get up to open the window, to clear the stench of death from the room. I can’t do anything any more. Without you I’m half a man, a useless existence. What’s going to happen when I need to eat? Or to use the toilet? The old lady that brings us food and tidies for us won’t be here for days. I’ll be lying beside your rotting corpse for days until someone finds us. And what if she leaves when we don’t answer the door? Oh, what do I care any more anyway! I wouldn’t open the door even if I could! I’m going to wither and die, right here in our coffin of a bed.

My panic becomes breathless and I start pushing you. “Wake up, please wake up. Please don’t leave me alone!” I batter my weak fists onto your corpse like sand falling on the desert, sobbing, the tears streaming over my cheeks, the catarrh clogging in my throat. Soon my feeble cries become whimpers of submission and I slip back down.

The two of us were born together, conjoined peas in the pod. And after I delicately trace my fingers through the valley in our skulls where our skin melts into one another and our heads merge, I lie back, drained, empty, and wait to join you.