Anne and Enna

Being twins, it's not easy.

Anne didn't know, aged twelve, if she'd fought with her sister Enna straight from the womb, but sometimes their mother told them so. "You two in me, it was like I was some kind of tumble dryer with a pair of tennis shoes in it. You must've started your bickering there, I'm sure of it." And there was no reason to doubt their mother's word, mostly.

Anne spent that whole year, when they were twelve, looking at herself in the mirror. She'd put colours next to her face and judge the agreement and contrast. She was looking for just her colour, and watching her mouth say, "Hello. Hello."

There was another side to her bedroom, of course. On that side was some old desk with Enna's books on it. Anne hated it when her sister was in the room. The mirror was upstaged at those times because in it she could always see her sister's face in profile poring into some old book along with her own face (which was nearer, of course), and Anne's sense of being pretty was mangled because Enna wasn't pretty at all or sometimes was a bit prettier.

Anne could barely spare a look at Enna's books because they were all textbooks of math and stuff. But Anne had her own bunch of books, about girls and their adventures being detectives and having boyfriends. Anne would even write her own stories about the girls who *starred* in the stories, especially about Henrietta Hanahan in her Ohio town with its bunches and bunches of crooks of some sort or another and twice there were wicked scientists even.

But her sister? Enna? Enna was a fool. What did she see in the math? why was she so ridiculous?

Anne's hatred of her sister was as natural as her blue eyes.

Twenty years later, Anne bitterly, drudgingly, went to her twin sister's boring suburban house for their birthday party, in attendance Enna's boring husband and boring son and boring daughter. This was even after Anne had savagely panned Enna's book of 'popular' science, <i>If I Break Time</i>, in a national newspaper. But Anne knew Enna was just too goody-goody to make anything even approaching a deal of it.

For twenty years had passed, and in that time Anne had become something of a journalist and story-writer while Enna had gotten a Ph.D. in particle physics or whatnot. Neither their relationship or characters had changed a bit. If anything--Anne knew nothing of Enna's inner life, nor did she care a bit--Anne's bitter hatred--freely admitted intentionally perversely--had become all-consuming. Anne's entire career was built on her hatred of everything that could be even remotely called academic. No reason could reach her, no fact was better than opinion--see Kuhn, Foucault, Butler--, nothing was anything but power, force, positivist imperialism.

(Earnings of year-to-date: Anne-$18,243.65; Enna-$47,674.02.)

Anne walked from the bus stop to her sister's house. She went around to the back as usual, and found the boredy foursum at a plastic table drinking what appeared to be and be only <i>lemonade</i>.

Enna stood up and walked to her. "Anne, happy birthday."

Anne said, "Happy birthday, yes. Happy birthday to us."

"To us," smiled Enna.

Enna, smug Enna.

"Come inside," said Enna. "Into the kitchen."

Anne followed her sister through the screen door. The former didn't even look at the tablesitters.

Up three steps to the kitchen the sisters went. Enna turned and clasped her hands in a sick display of glee. "Watermelon and peaches!" She turned sharply and opened the fridge.

Anne said just loudly enough, "Did you read my review of your book?"

Enna nodded. "Many of your criticisms were fair."

"Ah! But not <i>all</i> of them."

Enna handed the big watermelon to Anne. "Knife's in the drawer." Then: "You made some mis-inferences, and you didn't fully read the chapter about isometric angularity, did you?"

"What of it? You don't have to ear a whole apple to know it's rotten."

Enna smiled and shrugged. "It's simply that time must be a dimension with the same number of degrees away from the normal three, and the implications of that. It means that--"

"Don't lecture me." Anne took the largest knife from the drawer.

"I'm just trying to make you understand."

"Well, understand this," and drove the knife deep into her sister's breast.

Anne quickly called an ambulance and the ambulance arrived in eight minutes. The paramedics stabilized Enna as best they could. She was taken out on a stretcher and put into the back of the ambulance. The ambulance sped off, the siren going weeyah weeyah, and arrived at the ambulance dock. The first paramedic hopped out and grasped the bottom of the stretcher, pulled it out, dropped the wheels. The second paramedic got behind Enna's head and pushed out and those legs dropped too. She was wheeled into the hospital.

In the operating room she was put on a respirator. She was dying. Slowly and more slowly did circulate her blood, with less and less oxygen going from her lungs to the weakening left side of her heart--lub-dub lub-dub--and diminishingly through her whole cooling body and to the right side of her heart--lub-dub lub-dub--and back to her lungs, weakly. The doctors still worked on her.

Then everything stopped. Enna's heart stopped; she heard the flatline eeeeee.

And, as it always happens:

eeeeeeee said the ECG.

Weakly the blood bereft of oxygen flowed from her lungs to the right side of her heart--dub-lub dub-lub--through her whole warming body increasingly to the left side of her heart--dub-lub dub-lub--and into her lungs where the oxygen left and was replaced by carbon dioxide. The respirator was removed from her face and she was put onto the stretcher and out of the hospital. The paramedics walked quickly backwards.

The second paramedic hopped into the back of the ambulance and pulled Enna in. The first paramedic closed the legs at Enna's feet and shoved her in. He hopped into the ambulance and closed the doors.

The ambulance, in reverse, its siren going aayee aayee, drove to her house. Enna was carried into the kitchen, backwards, and the paramedics bent over her to remove various monitoring devices from her. All removed, they left quickly.

Eight minutes later Anne picked up the telephone and spoke into it. Enna was watching weakly, but gaining strength moment by moment. Anne punched a number on the phone--119--and hung up.

Enna reached up to her sister and groaned.

The pain from the knife stopped.

Enna got up in a weird way, namely, in the reverse of a fall.

Anne grabbed the knife in Enna's breast and pulled it out.

Anne said, "Sith dunatsrernu leww, " with the knife in her hand.

Enna said something Enna didn't understand.

Anne said something Enna didn't understand.

The conversation continued in the kitchen as Enna took the watermelon from Anne.

Backwards they walked into the back yard of Enna's house.

Enna turned to her sister and said, "Kitchen eth ootni."

Anne walked backwards to the gate which opened on its own allowing her regress while Enna sat down awkwardly with her husband and her son and daughter, and as she emptied her stomach of lemonade--and as her husband and kids did the same--she--a certain part of her--realized first of all that she was going backwards in time and second of all that unexpectedly she was experiencing something which confirmed her theories about time being--more or less--just another line through everything that could be reversed as simply as deciding to go east instead of west.

As her family ungathered at the table and as she put the lemonade back in the fridge and as her husband collapsed the table and as the cd player played 'The Very Best of Dusty Springfield' from the outside edge to the inside edge of the compact disk, Enna deduced she was indeed living her life again backwards. It could not be doubted because she was phenomenologically experiencing it. However, <i>she understood</i>, she had no volition in any of it. But she was wrong, as she figured out five minutes earlier as she looked at the clock going counterclockwise; there was <i>some</i>thing in her volition: she'd said to her sister, "Kitchen," rather than, uh, "neshtick." But that did not have any effect on things because causality still worked, as far as everything outside of her consciousness was concerned, in only one direction. As she wrapped her breakfast birthday presents and said, "ooy kenath," to one and all, she could only view the things that were happening--or unhappening--to her. There was no point but in going along for the backwards ride.

Soon it was morning. Time to go to bed. Her husband climbed onto her, ejaculated in her, Enna came, her husband started thrusting, he rolled off, and she rubbed his cock til it was soft.

As she slept she dreamed. The dreams didn't seem backwards. Enna realized this was because dreams are constructed by consciousness out of irrational sensational data. Thus her consciousness created from the stimuli presented to it a "coherent" narrative. When she slowly awoke at 11:30 the previous evening, she wondered if her psyche would start, after some experience, being backwards just like the rest of the world was.

The day went backwards, the week, month, year, went reeling in. She unread her sister's mean-spirited review of her book, which was subsequently unpublished and unwritten. Did she regret not being able to communicate her experience, seeing that anything she did in the world only affected her past and their (husband's, son's, daughter's) futures? You bet your chronometer it bothered her. Even with the small moments of free will (caused, as she figured [accurately], by quantum uncertainties in the space-time fabric) available to her, whatever gesture she would make would disappear into the future, with results never ever to be seen.

After her son's infant body popped into her womb, after her daughter's did likewise two years before, after she became single again, she told her sister she was engaged.

Enna knew Anne would say, backwards, "What's there to be happy about? It doesn't affect me in the least," so Enna managed to say, in response to that (before Anne said what she did) (and backwards), "I really wish you could be happy." It was a free action, and Enna wondered how it would affect the future she couldn't experience. Since she had changed the future--quantumly--there would be two different futures. But what about her next free action? Would it erase whatever change she was doing then? Perhaps. So whatever was to be changed, she had to wait for a very long time before being sure it would ever have an impact.

Thus she decided to save up her quantum charges, hoping she could 'spend' it all at one single significant time.

This was something she thought about for quite some backwards time.

To provide some extra symmetry to this story, let's return to the scene that was chosen to begin it all.

When Enna was twelve, as she sat at her desk in the bedroom she shared with her sister, unlearning and unreading all sorts of interesting mathematical facts and unwriting answers to questions that followed the backwards half of her cognition, she could see her sister's face in the mirror which she used to preen herself. Enna could see, in retrospect (or is it foresight?), that her sister's hatred had very deep roots. It was already there, plain for anyone to see. Enna wanted to wait and see. There must be a cause to all the grief of her sister's life.

Enna got smaller and smaller and so did her sister. After a few years they were silly and stupid-acting. Anne liked screaming a whole lot, and Enna's impulse was to keep away from her. In fact it seemed Anne's screaming was to infuriate Enna.

Enna figured out the following.

Her living backwards was probably not something especial to her. And thus it happened to everyone. Now, was it not possible that the backwards life along with moments of quantum uncertainty could create all the eeriness of life? All the momentary premonitions, all the senses of meeting someone new for the <i>second</i> time? Enna figured she might never know the truth.

Was she to reverse her life again, at conception, and start living forwards again? The same life, slightly more perfected?

She had to wait and see.

A few years later, Enna and Anne coupled closely in their mother's womb. Enna was rapidly losing cells as they joined together and together. She was struggling against her sister; they were kicking each other. Enna noticed her sister was smaller than her. Was this the cause of what was to come? Why was she hitting her sister so? She was smaller, weaker. So Enna used all the quantum phenomena she had saved up over the years, and stopped struggling against her sister. Immediately her sister calmed down; in the inner redness of the womb, she saw her sister smile and relax. Backwards, of course.

Then they were just eight cells apiece. There were just a few seconds left. Enna wondered: will I start going forward again? Is this the moment? Four cells, then two, then one apiece. Enna was no more and a sperm cell swam backwards.

Or was she?

I'm not giving away the ending.

Suffice it to say:

It's not easy, being twins.