Dearest Priscilla

Dearest Priscilla,

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  There is irony in the intimacy of what could’ve been; in every life, in every timeline, I hope Heaven alone wouldn’t dare to separate us. I write to you in my last moments as I bleed out under fluorescent lights. The paper gown they have me in is ill-fitting and uncomfortable–it reminds me of the suit I wore on our anniversary. You asked me how much I loved you under the December storm, under glow-in-the-dark stars. I answered with some halfwitted cliché, something I probably had read on a Hallmark Card. Now, I reminisce on our time together, and I am ready to answer your question–albeit four years too late. I love you to death. Call my name above my grave, and I promise my love will rise to meet you, even then.

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  You must be wondering why I write to you in my last moments. For the first time in four years. After I left you out on Fifth Avenue in your red coat–have I ever told you detested the color?--before my soul can patiently wait for our reunion, I owe you the truth, the story of how I passed. 

 

  I dreamed of becoming a painter, desperate to visualize what drove my mother to hang herself on that tree, while my brother and I watched helplessly from the locked car. It wasn’t until years later that I learned she had been diagnosed with schizophrenia—a diagnosis that explained so much yet left me with more questions than answers. She had tucked my brother and I into bed the night before, reading us a book that she had been working on. 

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  Did I ever tell you that she was an author? Ira had already fallen asleep before the story ended. I remember her flipping through pages when she noticed. She pointed at a page, where the words ended at the middle of the page. I asked her why there was so much space, and she responded that the book wasn’t yet finished. Now, the book resides on my desk, untouched. Her life—her story—ended before it could be completed. I often wondered if mine, too, was an unfinished book, waiting for someone to turn the page. 

When I left you on that street, my mother’s insanity had already caught up to me; the looming madness I had been running from my entire life. I had begun staring at the ghost of my mother in my darkness—her madness had started creeping into me, taking root where my consciousness once lived.

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  The first time I saw her again, it was the night of our anniversary, under the same glowing stars on your ceiling. There she was, a beautiful stranger staring back at me. You asked me if I was okay and I muttered, "Aren’t mirrors incredible?" 

I began to see more after that night. I opened my eyes to something I had been failing to see for the past twenty-seven years. Hear the voices of my ancestry, the undead, and their whispers that clung to the edges of my thoughts, their words buried deep in the recesses of my mind. They spoke of things I was never meant to hear—echoes of my mother’s despair, fragments of her broken soul that had been passed down through generations. And there, in the silence of your room, I realized: I had become her. In the way her madness lived inside me, pulsing, insistent, unraveling what little I had left of myself. I had become a mosaic of fractured pieces, shattered by the weight of a family’s grief. I had tried to outrun it, to outrun her, and in turn, you.

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  My insanity became their masterpiece. And I began to take control of it, little by little. Priscilla, my dearest, I vowed to reign complete control of my ghosts before I returned for you! But I had begun to see it leak into the mind of my brother. 

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  The madness had always been there, lurking in the corners of his mind, a family inheritance we could never escape. At first, it was subtle. The way my Ira’s eyes would dart nervously when he thought no one was looking, or how he'd whisper things under his breath when the house fell silent. His words began to slip into the same paranoid ramblings my mother would utter. He'd speak of voices in the walls, of the shadows that followed him, of people who had never existed. 

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  I should’ve recognized it sooner. The madness wasn’t just something that happened to her—it was in all of us, waiting. I had seen it in his eyes—the same vacant, lost look my mother had when she began to slip away. He was turning, and I could feel it spreading between us like a plague. I’d seen what it did to my mother, how it twisted her into something unrecognizable. It was pulling him into its abyss, and he didn’t have the strength to push himself out like I had been doing. 

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  So, I made the decision. I wasn’t saving him from himself, or saving me from him. I was saving us both—from the inevitable descent, from the ruin that would consume us whole. I know Priscilla, he wasn’t mine to save. But my love, wouldn’t you agree that it was merciful to end the suffering before it takes hold fully? Was I not doing the most humane thing? I had to stop it—before it could finish him off like it did her. 

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  But mercy comes at a cost. I wanted to be the man able to conquer the darkness, step outside the family legacy, burying the ghosts. I wanted to stand under your glow-in-the-dark stars, during that December storm and answer your question without my mother beckoning me to join her. But I saw too clearly what lay ahead–a life where the madness consumes everything, where we all become unfinished books, our stories abandoned mid-sentence.

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  I spared him, Priscilla, by taking the burden of his weight onto myself. Priscilla, you know why I won't survive this. It is the inevitable truth we’ve carried together, a bond deeper than flesh and bone, deeper than our fractured bloodline. I wasn’t just saving Ira—I was saving us both. 

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  The doctors always said we were a miracle, two hearts stitched together, two lives somehow sustained in one fragile body. Ira was the first to slip away, but I knew the moment I felt it—the hollowness where he had always been. He took the madness with him, and now I’m left with the aftermath, the weight of the choices I made for us.

 

  The fluorescent lights above me hum like a dirge now, sterile and detached, mocking my decision. I feel the blood soaking through this paper gown, pooling beneath me. Funny, isn’t it, how I always hated the color red? Too loud, too final. But here I am, painted in it, leaving a piece of myself behind for you to find. 

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  Priscilla, they’ll say I was weak. A man undone by his inheritance, unable to fight what ran in his veins. They’ll call it a tragedy. But you, my love, will know the truth: this was my masterpiece. The madness didn’t win—I did. By ending my story, I’ve given him a chance to finish his.

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  This is my final act of love, for him, for you, for all of us. My story ends here, under these sterile lights, in this ill-fitting paper gown, soaked in the color I’ve always hated. But, Priscilla, please understand—I did this for the both of us. I chose mercy.

Call my name above my grave, and I promise my love will rise to meet you, even then. My body will rest beneath the earth, but my love for you will echo in the cracks of the world. You asked me once how much I loved you.

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   I love you to death, Priscilla. To the very edge of it and beyond.

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Yours eternally,

William

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Patient Record
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Names: Ira and William Adler
Condition: Conjoined twins at the thorax. Shared vascular system.
Date of Admission: June 25, 2004
Time of Death: 00:23

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Physician’s Notes: Cause of death: Exsanguination.

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