At first, I thought it was just because I’d been gripping the spoon too tightly.
But then the numbness spread, cold and unrelenting, and the realization struck far too late.
My fingers went rigid, curling in on themselves like claws I couldn’t control.
My chest tightened, and before I could call out, the world snapped in half. My muscles locked, stiff and unyielding, pulling from every angle.
My back arched against the chair as if so invisible force were trying to split apart.
My vision narrowed, white bleeding in from the edges until all I could see were flashes—ceiling, light, shadow—each fragnt flickering past like a broken film reel.
I tried to breathe, but my throat clamped down. My jaw slamd shut so hard my teeth rattled, and sothing bitter filled my mouth—saliva, maybe blood—I couldn’t tell.
My body wasn’t mine anymore. It jerked and thrashed on its own. And I fell to the ground.
The clatter of the table, the scrape of my chair, voices shouting sowhere distant—I couldn’t make sense of any of it.
Then, just as suddenly as it began, it started to fade.
The convulsions slowed, my arms grew heavy, and my chest dragged in uneven, desperate gasps. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak.
I just lay there, staring at the ceiling with blurry eyes, my body trembling with aftershocks. My mind was awake, but floating, distant, too far away to reach.
And then, through that haze, I heard her voice. Clear. Deliberate.
"I didn’t think the poison would kick in so soon. But it seems to be working."
Elene? My mind scread her na, but my lips wouldn’t part. My tongue lay heavy, paralyzed.
"Goodbye, Eli," she whispered, and darkness swallowed whole.
...
But I survived.
The steady beeping of machines pressed against my ears, the sterile scent of antiseptic filling my lungs. My chest rose and fell in shallow rhythm, proof that I hadn’t slipped away for good. Sohow, against all odds, I had survived.
Later, the doctors explained everything.
They said I had suffered a seizure, the kind triggered by my worsening brain cancer. To them, it was nothing unusual—patients in my condition often experienced episodes like this. Expected, they called it.
There was no ntion of poison, though.
How’d they not know I was poisoned?
This made confused. And I began to question myself.
Had I really heard Elene’s voice, cold and final, bidding goodbye as if she’d orchestrated my death? Or had my damaged brain conjured the sound out of static, twisting her face and voice into sothing cruel while I convulsed?
The doubt gnawed at .
If my illness was corrupting not only my body but my mind—if I couldn’t trust what I saw, what I heard, what I rembered—then how much of was left?
I could hear my parents murmuring with the doctor just outside the room, their voices low and heavy with worry. The muffled conversation barely reached , like sound trapped behind glass, but I caught fragnts—"stability," "seizure," "monitor."
Then, without warning, the door swung open.
Elene stepped inside.
My heart skipped a beat—not from joy, but from the mory that slamd into the instant I saw her face. I could still recall, vivid and raw, the coldness in her expression before I blacked out, the way her voice had dripped with venom, like a demon wearing her skin.
The contrast between that mory and the sister standing before now was so stark it made my chest tighten.
Her eyes widened as they landed on , and she hurried across the room, the sound of her shoes muffled by the linoleum. She tugged gently at my arm, leaning close, her face filled with what looked like worry.
For a fleeting second, her eyes shimred with tears, the way they used to when she was younger, when she still looked at like I mattered.
"Eli," she whispered, her voice trembling, "how are you doing?"
I stared at her, my lips refusing to move, my throat refusing to form words.
Because I couldn’t tell—not for the life of —whether this was real concern bleeding through or another mask, another carefully crafted lie.
It was jarring. Too jarring.
"I cannot believe sothing like this would happen to you," she went on, voice breaking as tears slipped free, streaking down her cheeks. She pulled out a folded handkerchief and dabbed at her face, her hands shaking as though she herself couldn’t contain the sorrow. "It... it scared ."
Her tears fell like rain, but all I could do was stare, hollow and unsure, wondering if I was watching my sister—or the illusion of one.
Then—suddenly, as if the mask slipped—her expression hardened.
The tears dried almost instantly, her face flattening into sothing cold, almost inhuman in its indifference.
"I thought you were going to pass on, Eli," she said, her tone stripped of warmth. "Why are you still alive?"
I froze.
The world around cracked and splintered, as though reality itself had turned brittle in my hands. My ears rang, my breath caught, and for a long mont, the sterile hospital room blurred into nothing.
"Just die already, Eli," she continued, her voice steady, almost bored, as though she were comnting on the weather. "Free us from this burden."
My chest caved.
"You... you..." The words tumbled from my mouth in broken stutters. "You... poisoned ."
Her eyes didn’t waver. She didn’t even flinch.
"Yes," she said simply. No excuses. No hesitation. Just a confession laid bare.
I was stupefied. A silence stretched between us, heavy and suffocating, filled only by the distant hum of hospital machines.
She had admitted it. My sister. The one person I had clung to when the world abandoned . The one I thought still carried a shred of love for .
How could she do this?
The thought looped endlessly in my mind.
"You poisoned ," I repeated.
"You can’t say I did? After all, the doctor didn’t find anything."
"You poisoned ?" I repeated once more. Tears in my eyes.
The pain I felt within was indescribable.
Mum and Dad entered the room.
I turned my head toward them, the words clawing up my throat before I could stop myself.
"You poisoned ," I said, louder this ti, my voice echoing against the sterile walls.
I wanted them to hear it. No—needed them to hear it.
They had to know what their daughter had just confessed.
But they...
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