Author: Mark Joseph Kevlock

A woman gave birth to two versions of herself.

She called them her daughters.

One was kind.

One was not.

In time they grew, as things will, into themselves.

The mean one she sent out to conquer the world in her name.

The nice one she kept close to home, to share in the beauty of existence.

The woman was never sure if her daughters were separate beings or merely extensions of herself.

She decided it didn’t matter.

“There’s only one man who can destroy you,” she told her daughters. “Stay away from him.”

The two daughters, of course, sought him out immediately.

The man lived on a hill at the edge of town. The two daughters recognized the house next to his as the place where their mother had grown up.

The man was her boy next door.

He knew secrets about their mother that no one else could.

He understood her, utterly.

“Tell us who she is,” they pleaded.

He spoke a single line of dialogue from her lips:

“I don’t mind if people disagree with me… as long as they know that I’m right.”

“That’s her!” the two daughters shouted.

They could hardly stop there.

“But… who are we?”

The man, once tall, draped his form over the fence that stood between the two yards. He hesitated, then spoke.

“Just a dream,” he whispered. “Your mother’s dream.”

After his statement he withdrew from the moment. He travelled to inner places, while they stood with patience.

“I tried to get close to her,” he said, “each night, as we stood on this very spot. I thought this fence… just a fence. But I never made it across.”

The man who was the boy next door shook his head, sadly.

Both daughters spoke their disappointment.

“Then… you’re not our father.”

The man who was the boy next door climbed ever so slowly off the fence, as if extricating himself from impalement.

“The choices your mother made left her with only two things in this world: willpower… and imagination.”

The two daughters began to feel unsettled deep within.

The man who was the boy next door turned his gaze upon them, upon where they were… and where they weren’t.

“You are the children who were never born,” the man said.

“But… we exist!”

“Only until her illusion is shattered,” the man said.

The two daughters left him and ran at once to their mother.

They could see the truth before even a single word was spoken.

The one who was not kind asked, “Why, Mother? Why couldn’t you have simply made us… real?”

The woman was reluctant to answer, until she realized this was the only chance she’d ever get.

“I wanted a life like everyone else. But I was afraid.”

Again the one who was not kind questioned in anger.

“Why did you create me so mean, Mother?”

“To protect myself,” the woman said. “To be strong is to be safe. The more you control, the less there is to hurt you.”

The one who was kind finally spoke.

“Then why… am I so nice?”

“Some part of me had to be,” the woman said.

Both daughters grew afraid.

The mean one grew angrier.

“Why couldn’t you have the courage to live your own life? Why did we have to live it for you?”

The woman had no answer.

Suddenly it no longer mattered.

Knowing they didn’t truly exist, the two daughters simply faded away.

The woman wept immediately over her loss.

She’d put a lot of herself into those girls.