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 me from every angle.
My back arched against the chair as if some invisible force were trying to split me apart.
My vision narrowed, white bleeding in from the edges until all I could see were flashes—ceiling, light, shadow—each fragment flickering past like a broken film reel.
I tried to breathe, but my throat clamped down. My jaw slammed shut so hard my teeth rattled, and something 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 somewhere 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 screamed her name, but my lips wouldn’t part. My tongue lay heavy, paralyzed.
"Goodbye, Eli," she whispered, and darkness swallowed me whole.
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. Somehow, 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 . Expected, they called it.
There was no mention of poison, though.
How’d they not know I was poisoned?
This made me confused. And I began to question myself.
Had I really heard Elene’s voice, cold and final, bidding me 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 something cruel while I convulsed?
The doubt gnawed at me.
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 remembered—then how much of me 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 me, like sound trapped behind glass, but I caught fragments—"stability," "seizure," "monitor."
Then, without warning, the door swung open.
Elene stepped inside.
My heart skipped a beat—not from joy, but from the memory that slammed into me 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 memory and the sister standing before me now was so stark it made my chest tighten.
Her eyes widened as they landed on me, 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 shimmered with tears, the way they used to when she was younger, when she still looked at me 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 me—whether this was real concern bleeding through or another mask, another carefully crafted lie.
It was jarring. Too jarring.
"I cannot believe something 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 me."
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 something 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?"
The world around me cracked and splintered, as though reality itself had turned brittle in my hands. My ears rang, my breath caught, and for a long moment, the sterile hospital room blurred into nothing.
"Just die already, Eli," she continued, her voice steady, almost bored, as though she were commenting on the weather. "Free us from this burden."
"You... you..." The words tumbled from my mouth in broken stutters. "You... poisoned me."
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 me. The one I thought still carried a shred of love for me.
How could she do this?
The thought looped endlessly in my mind.
"You poisoned me," I repeated.
"You can’t say I did? After all, the doctor didn’t find anything."
"You poisoned me?" I repeated once more. Tears in my eyes.
The pain I felt within me 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 me," I said, louder this time, 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.