Gloria Was My Brother

Flash fiction on twins, worship, and murder.

We were born identical twins. The only thing that distinguished us was the tattoos our parents made us get when we were two years old. It was our family’s form of christening.

Our parents worshipped the number 37, that’s right, worshipped. It wasn’t a cult-like type of worship, it was often unspoken, sometimes murmured and other times it was hummed. 37 was no deity, and it wasn’t a spirit either: it just seemed perfect in their labyrinthine mathematical minds—they were Mathematicians, you see. Best in their field, although no one knew who they were.

Paul and Paula—those were their actual names—and no, I didn’t just make this up—were devout 37s as they called themselves. They did not explain their odd choice in belief, of course it wasn’t odd then and it’s still not odd to me now.

We grew up revering 37 and it was the standard for everything that we did: drank 37 ounces of water a day, we could either weigh 37 pounds or an odd integer multiple of 37 pounds, if we didn’t, a pound or more or less would have to be “extracted”. Our clocks operated on the 37, wake up at 6:37, 7:37 etc. We loved the system. We adhered to the system and we worshipped the system just as they taught us.

My brother had everything I ever wanted, including a rare allergy that gave him an air of superior uniqueness. His name was Gloria (he never once got bullied for this.) Our parents loved him to bits, and he in turn loved the environment. Then, on a Tuesday, a bullet shredded his perfect skull into a fine mélange of bone, brain, and blood. All fingers were pointed at me.

Enough of this tendentious telling of Gloria’s tale! This is my story too.

We started playing it when we were fourteen. It remains debatable as to who developed it, the masses would likely align themselves with the Gloria side, but I maintain that we can never really know.

Flesh and Blood was simple; it started as a game of numbers, but we only knew to worship numbers, and thus over time it became a prayer. We worshiped it alongside 37, and we made a pact that the price of exiting the play forever would be winning three rounds of Russian roulette. Gloria just had to convert to environmentalism. He sealed his fate. Confident that he was doing the right thing, I held Paula’s revolver to his head.