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  Before Now

  Hope E. Davis

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 Hope E. Davis

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 9781701656666

  For my sisters,

  Alike, but unique

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Cover by Victoria Cooper

  Edited by Jaclyn Seelagy and Kaye Hardy

  Foreward

  In the twenty-first century, twins are a common sight in society. This wasn’t always the case. All over the world, throughout history, twins have been received with mixed emotions. The Igbo society in Nigeria, Africa, thought twins to be a bad omen sent from the gods. In contrast, the Yoruba tribe praised them as a gift (Adewumi, 2014). Because of the opposing views of society and religion, twins were often killed, or left to die by their parents.

  There are many sorts of twins. The most common, especially in Western society, due to modern fertility treatments, is the fraternal twin. This occurs when two different eggs are fertilized in the womb by two separate sperm at the same time. Both twins then have their own amniotic sac and placenta during the course of their development. Fraternal twins can be two boys, two girls, or one of each sex (Vaziri Flais, 2015). Regardless of the sex, these children may look alike, or look completely different and have their own set of genes.

  Perhaps more widely recognized is the identical twin, which occurs when a woman releases a single egg, which is then fertilized by a single sperm, and splits into two embryos in the week following conception. These twins are almost always either both males or both females, and if for some reason there is one of each, there is usually a chromosomal defect present (Fiero, 2019). The twins can either each have their own amniotic sac and placenta or share them, depending on how early the egg splits. Identical twins make up only about thirty percent of all twins worldwide. Contrary to common belief, a tendency toward identical twins is not genetic, and does not run in families. To this day, doctors aren’t sure why a fertilized egg decides to split (Fiero, 2019).

  Sometimes, when a fertilized egg splits, the split is incomplete, too late, or the two parts of the split egg develop too close together. When this occurs, conjoined twins are formed. Conjoined twins have many different classifications, but the main definition is two twins who develop in the same placenta and, as a result, share one or more major body parts (DeRuiter, 2011). This is very dangerous, and often, depending on the body part shared, and the difficulty needed to separate them, conjoined twins die shortly after birth or during infancy. Those that do survive face a whole different set of challenges as they grow.

  One type of identical twin is perhaps the most interesting and rare of all. When a woman’s egg splits after the seven day range considered “normal” for identical twins to form, but not so late that conjoined twins form, the result is something incredibly unique (Fiero, 2019). These late splitting twins often form asymmetric identical features. These features can range from something as small as a mole appearing on the opposite side of each twin’s face, to something as large as one twin being left handed and the other right handed. In extreme cases, some sets of these twins are reported to have organs on the opposite sides of the body (twins.org). When this occurs, these twins are known as mirror image twins.

  PART ONE

  REMI

  NOW

  Remi cracks open her left eye, sleep still muddling her brain. She was dreaming of her glory days on the swim team, until the dream became a nightmare and she was pulled from the water and strapped to a back board, unable to move. Dreaming is not abnormal for Remi, but this was definitely one of the weirder ones.

  Rolling over, she notices her bed does not feel nearly as soft as it usually does. In fact, she realizes, she’s lying on the ground. As her sense of smell awakens, her nostrils fill with the scent of dirt.

  Just where the hell did I pass out last night? Remi wonders. This isn’t like her at all.

  She opens her other eye, and the room comes into focus. It’s dark, and she can’t see the outline of the door. That’s not right, she almost always leaves her apartment hall light on at night in case she needs to go to the bathroom. Although sometimes Daisy, Remi’s roommate, shuts it off.

  Remi begins to feel around with her hands, only to realize she’s not on her bedroom floor. Her bedroom floor is hardwood, she’s definitely lying on some sort of cold concrete.

  The night before starts to flood back to Remi. She went to a party with her twin sister, and they had a few drinks. She ended up sharing an Uber home to her sister’s place. She’s been to her house a few times, but doesn’t think she’s ever been in this room before. Is this the basement?

  “Rayna?” She tries to call out loudly, but it comes out the volume of normal speaking voice. She clears her throat and tries again. “Rayna?” Once again, it doesn’t come out as loud as she wants, but she doesn't think she could speak any louder without some water.

  The room is pitch black, and her eyes won’t, or can’t, adjust. Remi begins crawling around on her hands and knees.

  The room is empty. There’s no furniture, no clothes, nothing. She finds the outline of the door on one of the walls. The door itself feels off. And there’s no knob on this side. She touches her hands lightly to the walls nearby. The entire room, including the door, feel like cement.

  Just where in the hell am I? she wonders.

  And where is Rayna?

  Remi sits back on her heels and takes a deep breath. She runs a hand down the front of her body to feel what clothing she is wearing. It’s the same hoodie over a tank top and a pair of jeans that she left the house in the night before. The outfit she remembers wearing to the party. At least that’s one good thing. Her shoes are gone, and she vaguely remembers that she was, at one point, wearing sandals.

  How much did she have to drink last night? Remi can’t remember. She doesn’t have a hangover, and no headache, so it couldn’t have been that much. Could it?

  She moves to sit with her back against the wall, and pulls her knees up to her chest. Think, Remi, think! She wracks her brain for details of the night before. Nothing solidifies, beyond planning to go to the party, then ending up in an Uber with Rayna.

  So just how did she end up here?

  “Hello?” she calls out. “Anyone out there? I think something happened…” Her voice again is not near loud enough and simply echos off the concrete walls.

  What she really needs is some water. She crawls around the room once again, looking for something, anything, to quench her thirst.

  There’s nothing.

  Remi lies down in the corner, curling her knees to her chest. She can feel the tears starting to gather and quickly looks up to force them back. Crying will not help the dehydration situation, and she knows it. She pinches her eyes shut and takes deep breaths to calm herself. I can figure this out, she tells herself. After all, I’ve always been the smart twin.

  REMI

  BEFORE

  She squints at the numbers on the paper in front of her, willing them to make sense. Math has always been her strong point, but every now and then these debt sheets get the best of her. She reaches for her calculator and zeroes it out, time to start from the beginning.

  “Heeeeeeyyyy.”

  Remi sees her sister Rayna peering around the doorframe and spins her plush swivel chair to face her fully.

  “What do you want?”

  Her sister steps fully into view. Besides the clothes, it’s like looking in a mirror. They’re identical twins, and were one hundred percent identical
as toddlers. People kept saying as they grew, they would develop differences. But for whatever reason it never happened.

  Both women now have thin but athletic frames, dark hair, and dark features. Their skin is the same light tone, and neither of them ever bothers to visit tanning beds. They’re both health conscious, and always slather on the sunscreen when they go outside. They even wear the exact same sized clothing and shoes. Both are cursed with thick, unruly curly hair, which most of the time does its own thing regardless of how each of them tries to style it differently. To make it even more difficult to identify them, both girls grew out their bangs sometime in middle school, and liked it so much they both maintained the trendy style over the years.

  “What do you say to going to a party with me?” Rayna wiggles her perfectly plucked eyebrows. Remi rolls her eyes. She should’ve known this would be a party invite by her twin’s purple mini skirt and white tube top.

  “I can’t,” Remi says, motioning to the pile of papers on the mahogany desk in front of her. “I’ve got work to do.”

  Rayna inspects her glittery manicured nails, pretty much the only way to tell them apart. Rayna’s are always done in bright colors and sparkles, and Remi’s are only painted with a home-done French tip, if they’re done at all.

  Rayna huffs in frustration. “Aren’t you supposed to do work, at you know, work.” She emphasizes the last word.

  “You know, sometimes my work comes home with me. Especially during tax season.”

  Remi is a CPA for a large firm downtown. And while her hours are mostly nine to five, for the first four months of the year she almost always brings work home with her. She doesn’t usually mind, though. Her compensation is generous and the overtime even more so.

  “Ugh, always such a goody two shoes,” Rayna says as she turns to leave the room.

  As kids, Rayna and Remi were practically joined at the hip. Born only six minutes apart, their parents liked to joke they didn’t know who came first because they always did everything together. But that was a lie, Rayna was the firstborn.

  As they grew up, although their looks stayed the same, their personalities diverged completely. Remi loved books, numbers, and tennis, while her sister enjoyed the swim team, soccer, and, to their parents’ dismay, boys. Now that they’re in their mid-twenties, Remi has caught up in the boys department, and they both have boyfriends. But they’re still as different as night and day.

  Remi attended college for finance, finding a well-paying job right off the bat as a CPA. Her sister, on the other hand, is still trying to find her way in life. College wasn’t for her, even though she initially attended on a swimming scholarship. Her current passion of the week is fashion design, but that somehow translates into a job serving at a local restaurant, a job which she only works the bare minimum needed to pay the bills.

  The girls live in an apartment together, but Remi has a feeling Rayna will soon be moving out. Her relationship with her boyfriend Zeki is quickly becoming serious. They’ve been together for almost two years, and Remi senses a proposal on the horizon. Rayna jokes that she “isn’t that into him,” but two years is longer than Rayna has spent with anyone else, so Remi figures she must have some sort of feelings for him.

  Personally, Remi isn’t a huge fan of Zeki. Sure, he’s nice, tall, attractive, and rich, but she’s always sensed something off about him. Rayna complains that she’s just being a nit, that everyone can’t be as perfect as her, but Remi feels that her intuitions are not misplaced when it comes to Zeki.

  She sets down her pen after coming up with an answer that doesn’t make sense for a third time. Some money is missing, and Remi can’t figure out why.

  Leaning over, she opens one of her expanding file folders to pull out another bundle of papers. The answer has to be there somewhere.

  “So, you coming?”

  Rayna is back, leaning against her doorframe. She has since applied a generous amount of makeup and slid large hoop earrings into her ears. She looks great.

  “I already told you, I can’t. Just go with Zeki,” Remi suggests, putting her nose back into her ever growing pile of work.

  “He’s no fun at parties,” Rayna whines.

  “And I am?” She doesn’t look up from the page she’s reviewing.

  “You’re hilarious when you’re drunk.”

  Remi groans. “That was one time, I’ve only gotten drunk with you one time!” She’s never been a drinker but she’s known to occasionally indulge in a drink or two. Or five, at their mutual friend’s recent birthday celebration.

  Rayna laughs. “It was a fun one time.” Remi can practically hear her smirk as she once again turns and heads back to her room.

  The girls currently share a two-bedroom apartment in the heart of downtown. Remi can afford the place herself—she could afford a house by herself—but Rayna can’t with her current income. And they both like the amenities of being centrally located.

  Neither of them owns a car, finding driving to be just too difficult in a busy city. Both girls choose to ride the metro to and from work, and Uber when necessary.

  She hears Rayna’s keys and jewelry jingle as she walks back by the doorway on her way out.

  “Last chance!” she calls out over her shoulder.

  “Bye!” Remi shouts back. Rayna huffs, and the front door slams shortly after.

  Remi smiles and turns her attention back to the numbers in front of her.

  Her MacBook lies on the corner of her desk. She has it opened to Excel, which has found the same errors she has. Although most financial things are done electronically these days, sometimes the only way to find the origin of errors is to go back through and verify there isn’t a data entry error. And in this case, there isn’t. She’d been on these same accounts for months now. And no matter what she does, the numbers just don’t work the way they should.

  Her phone buzzes from the corner of the desk, the screen lighting up with a text. It’s her boyfriend, John.

  “Dinner?” the text asks.

  She texts back a quick “of course” and turns back to her work.

  John and Remi met in college and quickly became friends. Their relationship morphed into romance shortly after they graduated. They’ve been dating for just over a year now, and Remi can tell he’s interested in living together, but they both have leases they can’t break for awhile. Remi has nine months left on hers, he has seven left on his. John works as a beer sales representative, which is great for him because he makes a decent wage while getting to try, and bring home, all sorts of new beers. Which never mattered to Remi much, because she doesn’t like beer.

  She’s halfway through the audit of the receipts when there’s a knock at the door. Remi figures it must be John with the food. She quickly closes her work and slides it into her work messenger bag. Although most people can’t understand the numbers covering the pages, she’s still under a strict confidentiality agreement.

  Remi opens the door and embraces John in a giant bear hug that almost makes him fall backwards.

  “Woah, I see someone missed me.”

  “More like you’re bringing me food,” she jokes, grabbing the bags of take out from his hands while placing a small peck on his lips.

  Remi quickly goes to the kitchen to get plates to eat off of while John switches on the TV. A year in and they have this routine down.

  They’re both busy professionals and often find it hard to make time for each other on week nights, and it has been especially difficult with her work lately. Dinner while chilling on the couch is easier than dressing up for a date.

  Remi walks back into the living room, curious to see what movie he’s selected. John stands in the middle of the living room, scrolling through the channels. She smiles at the sight of her best-friend-turned-boyfriend. John is taller than Remi. Not by much, but she is also fairly tall for a woman. He’s slender, with dark hair and light skin. And Remi is pretty sure that, besides their parents, he’s the only one on this earth who can tell the
twins apart. When she asked him about it back during their college years, he simply smiled and said, “you two talk differently,” and left it at that.

  After a few more minutes of scrolling, he selects a channel playing a movie. Remi isn’t big on TV, so she doesn’t care much what he picks, as they usually just end up talking through it anyway.

  “So how was your day?” he asks as he takes a bite of a chicken wing.

  Remi shrugs. “Not too bad, I suppose.” She wants to tell him about the errors she keeps encountering in the accounts, but decides it’s probably against her confidentiality contract. “How was yours?”

  “I landed a new weekly order, which is nice. Always an accomplishment.” He sets down the chicken wing to take a bite of the salad. “Where’s the usual vermin? I brought enough for her, too.”

  “She’s my sister you know.” Remi scolds him at the use of the word ‘vermin’ but the smile never leaves her face. John and Rayna have never gotten along. And she has never been able to pinpoint why.

  “I know, that’s why I brought her food.” He motions to the box on the coffee table overflowing with wings.

  They both chuckle. John turns to the TV for a moment to get caught up on what’s playing. She opens her mouth, intending to ask John about his weekend plans, when suddenly, her phone rings from the kitchen counter.

  John’s eyes meet Remi’s.

  “No one ever calls you.”

  “I know, strange,” she replies as she gets up and walks over to the phone. The screen reads “private number,” so she decides not to answer, sending it to voicemail instead. If it’s truly important, the person will leave a message or call back later. Remi doesn’t really have many friends, and Rayna and her parents never use a private number, so it likely isn’t important.