Time Twin

“Do you know why you are here? Who brought you? Where you came from?”

I stare at the man across from me, sitting in his white coat, sitting with a stick up his ass as he bombards me with his absurd questions. Of course I know where I came from. Of course I know where I am, who I am. Who brought me here? Well I did of course, I need help. But he knows that already. He knows what I did; he just needs to know why. But he doesn’t need to know.

“You’re very quiet. Your name is Gary Weld, your 23 years old, and you’re at the Philadelphia State Hospital. You brought yourself here, despite the fact the police were after you. Why did you come here?”

I wish I was back home, back in the woods where I didn’t have to deal with any of this shit, all of these accusations. I suppose most of those actually came from my brother. God, I wish he was here.

“I can sit at this table just as long as you can Gary, I’m not leaving until I have my answers. I need you to know, I am your friend in this place, I am here to help you, to make you feel better. I’m here to help you get out. But I need to know why you did what you did.”

My brother and I were always special. Set apart from the rest of society in our own little way. Social rejects, I suppose, but that’s what happens when you’re born with a birth defect such as our own. At first we didn’t believe it was a defect, we thought we could use it, we could become kings, godlike, and I suppose in our own way we were. We no one ever knew, not even our parents.

“Gary, I need answers. You’re going to give them to me, or you’re going to give them to the police, and their methods are far less pleasant than mine.”

Locked up with a brain doctor in a small room isn’t so pleasant in itself. Hell, give me to the police, let them beat me to death, it’s what I deserve. Though I suppose my brother deserved it more.

“Gary, I’m your friend, you can tell me anything you need to, I will listen with an open mind.”

We were twins, and special twins at that. We had an ability that I always assumed was specific only to us, but I suppose I would never know if anyone else could do it. We were born with the ability to stop and start time. It wasn’t so simple though, only I could stop time, only he could start it. As we grew older we had ideas, we could take what we wanted when time stopped, and when we started again we would be rich, powerful, whatever we wanted to be. But brother, he developed other ideas, violent ones. We could do anything we wanted to objects, and to people. He became impulsive, demanded, no threatened that I stop time so he could have his way with people, cripple, damage, steal from and generally ruin the lives of these people.

“Gary, the police will be here in 5 minutes to take you to their holding cells, please, tell me why you killed him!”

The choice seemed obvious to me. He had to die. I gave up our bright and glorious, dark and sinister dreams, cut them to ribbons. No more stopping time, no more starting it again. But now there’s another issue.

Who’s this?

“Doctor, the police are here.”

Finally.

“Gary! Tell me what happened!”

I couldn’t do what had to be done. Time must go forward, and to make sure it does, my time must come to an end. I couldn’t kill myself; the police will do it for me.

“Good day officer, I couldn’t get him to tell me what happened. He’s all yours.”

“Excellent. On your feet boy, you’re under arr-“

Shit. Reflex. I don’t want to die.