Dimorphic by Cy Wyss

It would be unfair to blame that crazy year on Batman. Yet who can say how much my love for the Dark Knight was responsible for the whole murderous mess? At the very least, I blame DC Comics for my lifelong hero complex and fanatic ability to take random violence personally. “Why is it,” I would ask, “people are so freaked out by the news, but no one does anything about it?”

My twin brother, Ethan, would answer, “We are doing something about it. We live our lives and make sure those stories aren’t written about us.”

He grew up into a wiry beast of a man, while I grew up into a buxom klutz of a woman. How fair is that?

Throughout our youth, Ethan gallivanted around Atlanta, branding its towering facades with fantastic graffiti. He was a wisp of smoke dissipating in the night air, leaving behind a spray of hieroglyphic taunts. I, on the other hand, spent life in a tent in our backyard nibbling cheese puffs and devouring the Justice League’s latest escapades by an upended flashlight. By twenty-three Ethan was big in the XGames and had scored a lucrative sponsorship for professional daredevilry. I, on the other hand, had dropped out of law school a week before graduating to join the police academy, from which I was ejected a mere two weeks later due to irreconcilable clumsiness and an unfortunate inability to defer to authority. It didn’t matter. If I couldn’t be a police officer, then I’d be a bounty hunter. Or a private detective. Or a fireman. I would be something heroic, even if it killed me—reality be damned.

But reality had other ideas. I like to believe the forces of the universe give as much as they take. Unfortunately they also take as much as they give, so if you are going to receive a vast and powerful boon, you have to suffer in equal measure first. Like Batman, whose parents were gunned down before his eyes.

October descended, and the worst happened. In global events, $500 million of U.S. sky supremacy suddenly and rudely vanished over Afghanistan; in regional events, Atlanta underwent a freak drought, which was promptly declared apocalyptic; and, in personal events, my beloved twin died a prosaic death. It wasn’t a hero’s demise. He simply miscalculated on his motocross. By the time they airlifted him to Brennan Memorial’s trauma center, his cerebral cortex was lifeless.

A day later, on October 31 at exactly 17:33, Ethan was declared brain-dead by the presiding neurologist. I was there. I sat in an armchair next to Ethan’s bed and stared at his spiritless body. It didn’t seem real. I watched his stomach rise and fall as artificial breath filled his muscular chest. Inside, his organs hummed right along, unaware they no longer constituted life.

* * *

I coughed and choked, struggling to sit up. I only managed to hang my head off the side of the bed. It wasn’t [my] bed. Where am I? I wondered. The flashing red light was back. I squinted at it. It was a respirator, warning me of some kind of connection problem. Below me, the face mask sat in a puddle of sour-smelling bile on the floor. I could see how that might constitute a connection problem.

I looked around. I was in a hospital room, at night. Rain splattered against the windows. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and panic twisted in my chest. It wasn’t my hand. It was too broad, and there was hair on it. I clapped those foreign hands to my face. Someone else’s stubbly jaw pulsed under my touch.

I rolled out of the bed onto unfamiliar legs. In front of me was a sink in a small alcove, illuminated with a dim night-light. Water. I would wake up if I got water. I staggered toward the sink. I whacked my knee on an armchair and stumbled over big feet. Nothing seemed to be where it was supposed to be. When I made it to the sink, I slammed my forehead into the squat mirror above the faucet on my way down to the running water. I drank voraciously, right from the tap. I shoved my head into the sink and let the water run over me. Some water got up my nose, and I sneezed and had to back off, sputtering and rubbing my face.

When my hands parted, I saw the face staring back at me from the mirror. It was my face. Or, at least, as close as possible—for someone of the opposite sex. A more prominent brow, a more angular chin beneath the shadow, darker shades of blue eyes and brown hair. . .

I was Ethan.

My eyes rolled back in my head and my knees buckled as I fainted.