Kyle woke to a cold, rainy spring morning. His fiancée, Seraphina, was still asleep beside him. Her long, dark hair was strewn across the pillow, looking like a failed cosmetology experiment after a night of restless tossing. The quiet flashes of lightning outside briefly illuminated her dark brown skin, sending a jolt of warmth through him. He felt lighter knowing that next year, she would be Mrs. Rainer.
Kyle rolled slowly and carefully out of bed, attempting not to wake his one-day bride. It was Saturday, and they both worked weekdays. Kyle was an online journalist, running his operation from an office desk set up for filming. He didn't have many followers yet, but he hoped to expand soon—maybe even move to a bigger place where he could hire an editor to cut his media. That would let him focus entirely on story development and investigations, giving him more time to spend with Sera.
He occasionally worked weekends, but only when a major national or global event broke. In those rare moments, Sera never complained; she became as invested in the story as he was.
Kyle sat at his desk to check the latest from the American news cycle and review comments or emails. He noticed a message questioning his accuracy on a previous story, prompting him to get up and head to the closet where he stored hard-copy information he hadn't digitized yet.
As he shifted things around, he accidentally pulled down a photo album. Its thick, puffy cover was faded and worn by time. He bent the spine back, forcing his mind three decades into the past. Everything he had been focused on—his job, his fiancée—dissolved.
He was sitting in the small kitchen of his parents' house, perhaps on a weekend or summer break, waiting for his twin sister, Kara, to join him for breakfast. He could hear her rushing through the halls, eager to eat quickly so they could go outside or hit their video games.
Then, his memory shifted focus to a younger Kyle, sitting in the same spot at the same table. He was still waiting for his sister. At that time, Kara was in college. While she usually came home after Friday classes, sometimes she'd arrive later—or not at all. She always called ahead to explain, usually writing a paper or a cram session with friends.
He remembered that particular weekend was when she vanished. He checked his phone. He woke his parents, who confirmed they hadn't heard from her. Kyle desperately called everyone he knew connected to Kara—nothing. He immediately drove the hour to her college, thinking perhaps she had passed out in her dorm with a dead phone. No need to panic, he told himself. There were dozens of simple reasons she might have disappeared.
Kara's Obsession
Kara had finished all her core business classes years prior, but she developed a strange obsession with death and the dead—not with the sick, but with those who had already passed on. She claimed she felt there was a secret world—a subterranean reality beneath or even inside death—that she needed to be closer to. After earning her Associate's degree, she enrolled in funerary arts.
Recently, she had started meeting new people, which Kyle found deeply strange—branching out into such dark, new acquaintances so close to graduation. He worried she might do something reckless. She'd never indulged the typical youthful urge to make mistakes. He was terrified she'd meet some guy who'd get her hooked on drugs or, metaphorically or literally, drive them both off a cliff. He couldn't bear to lose his twin sister over some foolish misadventure.
When he reached the school, he headed for residence life. He climbed the stairs, searching for her room or the resident assistant. He found her door slightly open. He pushed inside, careful to touch as few things as possible in case fingerprints mattered later. Her roommate was also absent.
Kyle prowled the dorm halls, searching for the R.A.—like a bloodhound on a scent.
A tall, skinny boy stood in the doorway of one room.
"Can I help you find something?"
"Kara," Kyle said. "She stays just down the hall. Have you seen her or know where she might have gone?"
The narrow, shirtless boy began, "I saw her early last night. She said she was going out with some new people she met; she seemed excited and in a hurry."
"Is there anything else you remember that might help me find her?" Kyle asked, clinging to hope.
Thanking the boy, Kyle pulled out his flip phone to call the police. The automated system seemed intentionally designed to delay. He finally reached an operator just as he arrived at the dean's office and explained the situation.
The lady on the other end responded with little empathy. Almost glad he was going through this, she said, "Sir, she has to be missing for forty-eight hours before we can do anything. Besides, she's over eighteen. I doubt the police would do much anyway. Girls ditch school all the time, start new lives with some guy, with drugs, or—"
"My sister does not do drugs!" Kyle snapped, voice rising.
He told the receptionist about Kara. She took his information, but the chances of anything beyond the police doing follow-up were slim. He might get a call if she showed up in class again. Her grades were high enough, and the semester was almost over. She would graduate whether she attended or not.
Maybe she met someone new, found a job, or planned to have her diploma mailed. Or maybe she didn't care—met a wealthy guy and was sailing from port to port, until he got tired of her and sold her into bondage to pay for a goat.
Over the next few days, Kyle gathered what little information he could from her dorm mates. The same details kept repeating: she met new people no one seemed to know or remember seeing. Nobody asked where she was going or followed up. She was clearly an outsider among the self-centered, and she must have finally met someone outside her family who paid attention to her for who she really was—someone who could see her inner self, the way he did, and who was able to transplant her somewhere.
"Alive or dead, I will find you, Kara," he vowed. "We may not have been identical twins, but I still know you better than anyone you may have just met. I am not walking away from dead-end information. There has to be something missed. Maybe a person saw or knows something. I won't rest until I find out what happened and where you are."
Weeks turned into months, then years. The cold trails Kyle pursued turned to ice. He began to lose hope. Like most, he started to move on. When one effort failed, he picked up another.
Two Decades Later
One morning, Kyle rushed to get coffee at a local café. In his haste, he spun and lunged forward without looking, slamming his coffee cup into one of the most beautiful women he'd ever seen.
She was so attractive that he momentarily forgot everything about his sister the moment he looked into her huge, wide, white eyes. The depth of her brown eyes only heightened the richness of her soft skin. He absorbed most of the splash-back, deciding it was better that he was the one dripping in hot coffee.
The "Mocha Princess" grabbed a handful of napkins to dry him off. She thought he looked like an adorable dumb-ass, clumsy in his way.
Gathering courage, he asked for her number before continuing with his original mission. Her giant anime eyes stayed with him all day, monopolizing his focus.
He called her the next day to set up a date. Usually, he wouldn't rush so fast, but it was a Thursday, and he couldn't wait a whole week to see her again. He'd get nothing done.
Unaware that the date would only deepen his obsession, they eventually moved in together, and he asked her to marry him.
He was in his office closet when he found a picture of his sister. Everything buried—memories, pain, the world's indifference—came crashing down. He froze, stunned by his past two decades.
His mind exploded. He leapt into his car to pick up where he'd left off. Sera ceased to exist in his mind as he sped down the road like a NASCAR driver on meth. It was as if he'd never met her.
She still lay in bed, half-awake, wondering what the noise was as the door slammed shut behind him.
Kyle drove to the college's head office, just like twenty years ago, to see if they had any new, minor info they'd dismissed. They had nothing.
He walked toward where Kara was last seen—only one main road, flanked by smaller streets. One by one, he drove three or four blocks down each side until the streetlights came on.
He went door-to-door, like a frantic salesman. He stopped at trap houses, knocking on doors of places that wouldn't care if a girl went missing. Some of these houses might even be where she vanished from—homeless shelters, drug dens, gang hideouts.
Back at the college, he got out of his car and looked around the fence line. Like a wild dog sensing prey just out of reach, he forced himself to stop looking and start seeing.
About 300 yards away, he spotted a tree line he hadn't noticed before. He walked the fence to the corner, turned, and followed it. He passed an empty field and what looked like a former housing project site.
After walking about 1,200 yards past the corner, he looked across the street to his right. There stood a hospital for people with chronic mental conditions—those with no one, or whose issues were too big to manage alone.
Kyle saw an older man beside a chair, staring intently. Kyle knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked harder.
Finally, a large Black man in teal scrubs rushed out.
"What you want man, you gitten these folks uppity now. You ain't the one gotta calm 'em back down; I DO. Stop making all this damn noise out her!"
Kyle took half a step back. "Look, I'm sorry for the knocking, but I need to ask you something."
The orderly shook his head. "Ain't nobody here but me and Leon. Leon's so high he oughta have his own room. Come back tamarra, around ten o'clock. Dat's when the staff gets in, peoples her will be able ta help you out den."
Kyle dropped his head. "Fine. Ten o'clock?"
"TEN-OH-CLOCK," the man confirmed.
Kyle started the long walk back to his car, wondering if it was still intact. "Shit!" he yelled. He ran as fast as he could and found his car untouched.
I guess there's one good thing about this college, he thought—at least it kept my car safe for a while. But I still believe this creepy-ass school for the dead played some part in Kara's disappearance, directly or indirectly.
"If this college wasn't here, my sister could've had a normal job, working in a cubicle somewhere safe. She could've met some boring guy, gotten married, had a couple of kids, and vacationed every year like everyone else. Why was that idea so crazy to her? She'd rather be a crazy old cat lady than with someone who didn't make her feel exactly how she needed to."
He paused, voice trembling. "I know she was my sister. I love her more than anything. But that's just crazy talk. Why should anyone depend on someone else for happiness? Maybe it's because she never dated much when she was younger. All the girls I talked to said they wanted a sensitive man, someone who understood them. When Sera tells me something, I hear her."
The Confrontation
Making his way home, Kyle found Sera in the kitchen.
"Hello, baby. Making something to eat?" he asked casually.
Sera shot back, her voice tight with tension. "I'm making something for ME to eat!"
Kyle's mouth opened, bewildered. Before he could respond, she snapped again.
"I wasn't the one who left before I even woke up today. I'm not the one who wouldn't answer her phone. I wasn't the one making me wonder what the hell was going on with you! You say you want to get married, but you give me no stability—no structure. Sometimes, you have emotional outbursts, or blame me for things I can't control. I really hoped that, when we met, it'd be about your sister. That after some time, you'd show strength in how you approach this relationship. But after today, I think I made a mistake saying yes to marriage."
Kyle was more confused than ever. A single tear rolled down his cheek.
"Right there!" Sera yelled, pointing. "That's what I'm talking about! What kind of man openly cries in front of a woman he wants to marry? Are you sure you're not gay or something?"
In a flash, Kyle lashed out, his hand connecting with her face before he even registered it.
Sera looked back at him, her eyes cold and fierce—like a frost giant's. Nothing so cold had ever existed before tonight. She looked at him through her fingers, clutching the spot he'd struck.
Through gritted teeth, she whispered, "I'm going to my mother's house. Don't fucking follow me."
Kyle lowered his head like a beaten dog and walked into his office, trying to process the chaos. What was her deal? Just let her go. I'll call her tomorrow, and everything will be normal again.
Sera grabbed a pre-packed bag from the side of the bed and reached for her coat.
"Did you have that made up already?" Kyle asked, glancing from his office to the bedroom.
"Yes, for when you do something like this. Like vanish before we go to lunch—at my work! Remember? I'm a paralegal."
Oh shit, he thought. I really fucked up this time.
He decided to give her two days to cool off.
As Sera stormed out, pulling down the driveway, Kyle cracked open a forty-year-old bottle of whiskey his father had bought for him the day the twins were born. He drank until he blacked out. Tomorrow was going to be a very bad day.