Twin From Hell

My very first memory of my twin sister was her sneering face staring coldly at me as I fell head first from the second floor, later when our parents asked what happened, she turned the truth on its head. Breaking into sobs as she recounted the horrible ordeal of me trying to push her down the stairs, but because she avoided my outstretched hands, unable to stop, I, the villain of her story ended up plummeting due to inertia, meeting the inevitable fate that landed me in the hospital. I remember yelling angrily at her, and screaming hysterically to my parents that she was lying, she was the one who pushed me. What I will never forget to this day was their disappointed look as they flung my hand away, then they both went to my sister and hugged her, appeasing her. Back then, I couldn't understand why they chose to believe my sister's distorted version of the truth, especially when her explanation on the series of events which led to me being hospitalized and getting eight stitches was clearly full of holes. I was obviously the one lying on the hospital bed, but they still chose to believe in her half-baked version of the truth. Till now, I still remember her smug victorious smile clearly, my parents were still fawning over her and consoling her, but there she was, giving me the most unapologetic, evil, hair raising grin. Back then, I had been so hurt and confused, why didn't they believe me? Why were they so biased towards her? If only I knew that that was just the beginning. From then on it was as if my sister had unlocked the hidden psycho within, she started setting me up on multiple occasions, and it didn't help that we were practically the spitting image of each other, that only made it easier for her to get into trouble using my name and come off completely clean, totally innocent of all crime. She was the darling Angelic daughter of the Murphy family, while I was the scheming hateful black sheep of the family. Everyone seemed to ignore the ever-increasing scars on my body, scars inflicted on me by her, I might add. Dismissing it as a poorly planned out device to get attention or just me simply being careless. They refused to believe that my darling twin sister had a hand in my injuries, but they had no problem believing I threw myself off the stairs, ran purposely in front of a moving car, threw myself into the river when I couldn't swim, and so many other scenarios like that. And if reverse was the case, they acted like the world had ended, hurling curses at me for so much as nicking a nail of hers, when in reality, I'd done nothing. She'd go as far as hurting herself just to get me in trouble, and my parents being the gullible fools they were would buy into her bullshit. They had disappointed me so much that I'd lost all hope and trust in them and decided to stand up for myself from then on, and against all their objections and resistance I stood strong and enrolled in a mixed martial arts class. That was the very first time I rebelled against my parents. I was ten at the time, from then on it became impossible for her to ever hurt me physically ever again, although she continued looking for ways to hurt me emotionally. Fast forward to high school, we both blossomed into budding womanhood and started getting attention from guys when she once again fell to old tricks. You see, although we were identical twins, we had certain traits that differentiated us from each other, the most obvious being our hair, hers was an intense copper red, while mine was barbie doll, platinum blonde, something she always envied and resented me for. She believed I'd stolen all the best traits from the womb, namely my smooth, glass like honey skin tone and perfect acne free face, leaving her with an uneven complexion and a freckled filled face, so she made it her mission to take away everything from me, our parents love, everyone's attention, friends, boyfriends, you name it. So, where was I? Yes, high school. In high school, we started drawing attention from guys, well, mostly me, something which infuriated her and made her even more jealous of me, so she resulted to old tricks, she started hurting herself and would later start telling everyone it was me, she used my martial arts background as a weapon against me. Concocting a pitiful story of how our parents favored me and maltreated her, how she barely had anything to eat at home, resulting in her being weak and her unsightly complexion. And teenagers, being the hormone driven fools they were, believed her. From then on, I became a social Pariah in high school, and was almost physically assaulted on numerous occasions, had I not had the ability to fight back I'd have been seriously injured by some self-righteous pricks who had taken it upon themselves to uphold justice for my innocent, pitiful angel of a sister. Left with no friends or even a boyfriend for that matter, I had turned to my books and martial arts and finally it paid off, I was able to raise my average grades and became one of the top ten in class. For the first time in forever, my parents actually looked proud of me. Something my sister hated, so she decided to do better than me. The next year my sister suddenly rose from her lackluster grades and became a top student, getting straight A's in all her subjects, eclipsing all my earlier efforts. How she managed that was beyond me, but I guess, just like what they say, you can do anything you set your mind to, and I had the misfortune of being my twin's motivation. It continued like that, whenever I did something, she had to do it, and be even better at it, she made it her mission to be better than me at everything and in doing so she always seemed to render all my hard work miniscule, downplaying my very effort. The only thing I had that she couldn't take away was martial arts, and that was due to a congenial weakness of hers from birth. Something she always made use of to guilt trip our parents. So, after high school I focused on martial arts, but I made sure to take revenge in my own little way, I first of all made her believe I was signing up for college with biochemical engineering as my major knowing her weakness in science subjects, and true to her obsessive nature, she followed after me and signed up to study biochemical engineering, disregarding her lack of ability on the subject. I still remember the distorted look on her face when I announced my scholarship into a revered mixed martial arts program of a top-level institution. Till now I still chuckled at the memory. However, it didn't take long for her to retaliate like the vindictive b***h she was, she once again spurn a web of lies and told our parents about how I bullied and ostracized her in school and she even went the extra mile and showed our parents pictures of her dressed like me, smoking, taking drugs and going out with various men, the one that broke the camel's back was a picture of me seemingly coming out of an abortion clinic. By then, I had already lost all warmth for the group of people I was supposed to call family, so when my parents declared that they had disowned me and cut off all contact with me, I honestly welcomed it. So, imagine my surprise when I receive a call from my ex-parents after what had been ages, urging me to go home for an "emergency".