The Parasitic Sister Must Suffer

Even though Belinda and I were identical twins, no one ever put us in the same category.

She practically lived on a diet of fried chicken and soda, yet her body remained as slender and willowy as a runway model, her legs growing longer by the day.

I counted every single calorie, starved myself on wilted lettuce, and yet my body bloated like a waterlogged balloon.

She baked under the harsh summer sun without a drop of SPF, yet her skin stayed as luminous and flawless as freshly poured cream.

I hid from the daylight, slathered myself in sunscreen year-round, yet my complexion grew dull, broken, and bruised.

She skipped class daily to get high with bleach-blonde dropouts behind the bleachers, yet she consistently pulled straight As and ranked first in the district.

I slept three hours a night, my textbooks highlighted until the pages tore, and I still managed to fail every math exam handed to me.

Eventually, I contracted a horrific, unspeakable disease. My skin blistered, weeping and rotting from the inside out.

I died utterly alone on a sterile hospital bed.

But after I died, my soul didn't disperse. I lingered, floating in the cold, antiseptic air of the room.

That was when I watched Belinda suddenly change.

She stopped binge-eating junk food. She blocked the numbers of her dropout boyfriends. She began living a quiet, meticulously clean, and disciplined life.

It was only then, suspended in the ether of the afterlife, that the horrifying truth clicked into place. The reason I had lived like a grotesque, suffering monster was entirely because of her.

So, I spent my afterlife clawing through the dark, bargaining with whatever forces govern the dead, saving up enough karmic currency for one thing: a second chance.

When I finally opened my eyes again, I was back on the exact day Belinda sat in front of her ring light, binge-eating for thousands of viewers.

I pushed open the bedroom door and saw Belinda mid-livestream.

Every agonizing memory from my past life slammed into my skullthe weeping, rotting sores, the nights I spent screaming into my pillow from the pain, the thousands of comments online calling me a disgusting freak, telling me I deserved it.

A loud, piercing ring echoed in my ears.

I lunged toward the dining table, grabbed a paring knife from the fruit bowl, and brought it down hard across my own cheek.

Blood welled up instantly, a hot, dark red line tracking down my jaw and dripping onto the floorboards.

I didn't care about the pain. I kept my chin high, staring dead into Belindas eyes.

A flicker of mild surprise crossed her flawless face.

"Whoa, why are you being so dramatic? Why would you do that to yourself? Go to the ER or something."

Without missing a beat, she turned her bright, camera-ready smile back to her phone. She picked up a massive, grease-dripping slice of pepperoni pizza. "Sorry about that, guys! Anyway, let's keep going!"

I stood frozen. Drops of my blood patterned the floor. I felt utterly, hollowly cold.

Why?

Why didn't the gash on my face appear on hers?

Was the transfer strictly one-way?

No. In my previous life, there was a brief window where my body had actually started to heal. The transfer wasn't a one-way mirror. There had to be a mechanism, a set of rules governing this sick magic.

I was going to figure out how it worked. I refused to die as a sacrificial lamb again.

Just then, our mother, Diane, stepped out of the hallway.

She took one look at my face and let out a bloodcurdling scream.

"Are you out of your mind?! Why would you do this to your face?!"

She was screaming at me, but her hands were trembling violently. She frantically grabbed a clean dish towel and pressed it hard against my bleeding cheek.

"Does it hurt? Shh, it's okay, Mom's here. We're going to the hospital right now."

She practically dragged me to the ER.

They cleaned the wound. Ten stitches.

Through the entire procedure, Diane stood in the corner, crying into her hands as the doctor spoke.

When we left the hospital, she drove straight to a high-end department store. She bought the most expensive scar-fading serums on the market and dragged me to a luxury beauty counter to color-match an array of heavy concealers.

"With these, you won't even be able to tell," she whispered, her voice tight.

Then, we went to an organic grocery store, loading the cart with lean proteins and dark greens. "Don't worry, honey. Mom is going to diet right alongside you!"

Later that night, I lay in my bed, the rhythmic throbbing of my stitches syncing with my heartbeat. Inside, my chest was a cavern of ice.

I had been dead wrong.

I thought hurting myself would finally make Belinda feel the pain. But I had ten black threads holding my face together, and she hadn't so much as winced. The damage I inflicted on myself didn't magically bounce onto her.

I closed my eyes, forcing myself to sift through every microscopic detail of my past life.

In my previous life, I remembered a man visiting our house. He looked like one of those hollow-eyed street psychicsa drifter who claimed to read auras.

Ever since the day he walked through our front door, the gravity in our house shifted.

Belinda suddenly started doing "mukbang" livestreams, rebranding herself as an internet personality.

On camera, she would tear into buckets of fried chicken, chug two-liter bottles of soda, and inhale entire frosted cakes in minutes.

The more she ate, the less she studied. Her backpack gathered dust in the corner of her room.

Her channel was called "The Honor Roll Glutton." Her comments were flooded with people obsessing over how she could be so impossibly gorgeous, eat like a linebacker, and still be the smartest girl in school.

But I knew the truth. She hadn't opened a book in months.

One evening, I watched her pull open a greasy cardboard box holding another massive pizza. I couldn't help myself. "You really shouldn't eat that. It's garbage. And finals are coming upyou can't just stream every night. You need to study."

Belinda looked up at me, a slow, mocking smirk stretching across her lips.

"Why are you so obsessed with what I do? I'm naturally gifted. I can pass without even trying."

She dismissed me with a wave of her hand and turned back to her phone, her voice instantly dropping an octave into that sweet, breathy influencer tone. "Okay besties, time for the family-sized bucket challenge!"

I bit my tongue and retreated to my room.

But the moment I sat down at my desk, my stomach seized. A violent wave of nausea hit me. I barely made it to the bathroom before I was hunched over the toilet, dry-heaving until I threw up bitter, burning bile.

From that day forward, my weight skyrocketed. I could breathe in the vicinity of a carb and put on three pounds.

My face erupted in deep, painful cystic acne that sat under my skin like angry red bruises.

Diane dragged me to every specialist in the county.

Every doctor gave us the exact same speech: My diet was terrible, I was consuming too much sugar and oil, and my hormones were severely imbalanced.

They prescribed a pharmacy's worth of pills and handed me strict, joyless meal plans.

Diane hyper-fixated on my recovery.

She spent hours in the kitchen prepping my "clean eats." Boiled, unseasoned chicken breast. Sad, limp broccoli. Salads dressed in nothing but a squeeze of lemon.

She maxed out her credit cards on skincare. My vanity was buried under glass droppers and frosted jars.

"My friend at the med-spa said this is the holy grail," she'd tell me, carefully lining them up. "Acne-clearing, brightening, cell-renewing. It has everything."

I looked at the price tags left on the bottles and felt a sickening knot of guilt in my stomach.

"Mom, how much did all this cost? It's too much."

"Don't say that!" Diane snapped, though her eyes were shining with tears. "If it fixes you, I'd sell this house. You know that."

I swallowed the guilt and became a militant soldier for my own health.

I kept a dedicated journal. I tracked every ounce of my weight, every fraction of an inch on my waist. I documented whether the swelling of my acne had gone down or flared up.

But no miracle ever came.

My weight didn't just plateau; it climbed relentlessly, expanding me like a balloon hooked to a helium tank.

Across the hall, Belinda strutted around in denim cut-offs, her skin taut and glowing, her legs perfectly straight and devoid of a single flaw.

I stood in front of my mirror, staring at my heavy, swollen body, trailing my fingers over the bumpy, inflamed terrain of my cheeks. A violent concoction of grief and rage bubbled up in my throat.

"I'm so jealous of you," I muttered to her once. "You eat whatever you want, and your skin is perfect."

Belinda just smiled at me. It was a smile that didn't reach her eyes.

"Good genetics, I guess. You can't force what Mom and Dad didn't give you. I mean, sure, we're twins... but at the end of the day, some people are just built different. Right?"

My weight continued its terrifying, uncontrollable ascent.

Diane was frantic. She pulled strings to get me into an exclusive endocrinologist.

The specialist stared at my bloodwork and my painstakingly detailed food logs, his brow deeply furrowed. "Are you absolutely certain you've adhered to this diet and exercise regimen?"

"Yes! Doctor, we follow it like it's the Bible!" Dianes voice pitched up in desperation. She pulled out her phone, aggressively swiping through a photo album documenting every single miserable meal I had eaten, alongside screenshots of my Apple Watch fitness rings.

The doctor scrolled through the evidence, looking profoundly disturbed. "This doesn't make physiological sense. Even with severe metabolic resistance, under this caloric deficit and cardiovascular strain, her weight should have stabilized. It certainly shouldn't be climbing like this."

He looked up at me, his eyes entirely blank with confusion. "Your regimen is flawless. Scientifically, this outcome should be impossible."

I felt like I was drowning in wet concrete.

Even the experts didn't know what was wrong with me.

Why couldn't I lose a single pound? Why was I living in a state of constant, grueling deprivation for absolutely nothing?

And then there was Belinda. Screaming at her camera while shoving fistfuls of frosted cake into her mouth. She never moved faster than a slow walk. She didn't even take the stairs if she could avoid it.

Yet she looked airbrushed in real life. Glowing. Perfect.

A dark, deeply unsettling thought wormed its way into my brain.

Was it possible... that the "health" I was starving myself for, and the "results" of the grueling workouts I put my body through... were being transferred?

Siphoned off, straight into Belinda?

I shook my head violently, trying to rattle the insane theory out of my skull.

It was ridiculous. I was just looking for a scapegoat for my own broken biology.

But something in me snapped. I was done.

If I was going to look like a monster anyway, I might as well stop torturing myself.

That night at dinner, I shoved the plate of boiled, pale vegetables away. "I'm not eating this. Don't cook it for me anymore."

Diane froze, her fork suspended in mid-air. "Are you out of your mind? You can't just give up!"

"I eat this garbage and I get fatter! I work out and I get uglier! What is the point?!" I yelled.

"Paige, don't do this."

The voice came from across the table. Belinda.

She was staring at me, her voice laced with a frantic, desperate urgency I had never heard before. "You just have to keep going. It's going to work. Look how hard Mom is trying for you."

I stared at my sister. Her shoulders were rigid. There was real, undeniable panic in her eyes.

Belinda never looked at me. She treated me like furniture. Why on earth did she suddenly care if I ate my broccoli?

She was overreacting. It wasn't natural.

She was hiding something.

I swallowed the suspicion rising in my throat and forced my shoulders to drop, faking defeat. "Fine. You're right. I'll keep trying."

Diane let out a massive sigh of relief, and the visible tension completely drained from Belinda's posture.

But from that moment on, I lived a double life.

When Diane brought me my diet food, I waited until she turned her back and flushed it down the toilet. Then Id sneak out the fire escape, buy a massive bag of fast food, and eat it in the dark of my closet.

During the hours I was supposed to be doing HIIT workouts in my room, I lay flat on my back, scrolling on my phone.

I did this for four days.

When weigh-in day arrived, I stepped onto the scale.

I hadn't gained a pound. In fact, I had dropped weight.

As I stared at the digital numbers in shock, a furious shriek echoed from the living room.

"Mom! Why the hell am I up two pounds?! And what is this massive zit on my chin?!"

I spent an entire week living like a total slob, and I dropped twenty pounds.

Belinda was the first to realize something was wrong.

"You haven't been eating Mom's food, have you? And you're skipping your workouts."

I didn't answer her.

She immediately shot a sharp, panicked look at Diane.

Diane practically lunged at me, gripping my upper arms tightly. "Paige, you can't do this to me! We are so close to a breakthrough, you just have to push through the plateau!"

I ignored her.

So, Diane became my warden. She shadowed me. She watched me swallow every single bite of unseasoned spinach. She stood in the corner of my room, counting aloud while I jumped rope until my lungs burned.

Two days later, I stepped on the scale. The twenty pounds were back.

Belinda, meanwhile, walked out of her bedroom with glass-like skin, looking radiant and utterly refreshed.

Word around the house was that she had connected with a "top donator" from her livestreamsome rich older guy she was calling her Sugar Daddyand she had started spending most of her nights out.

Simultaneously, my body started failing again. My skin blistered and wept. A searing, agonizing itch spread across my most private areas.

Diane rushed me to the clinic.

When the lab results came back, the diagnosis hit me like a physical blow: an STD.

Inside the small examination room, the way the doctor and the attending nurse looked at me made my skin crawl. It was a mix of clinical pity and profound, undisguised disgust.

I sat on the paper-covered table, staring at my swollen, scabbed hands, wishing the floor would open up and swallow me whole.

When we got home, Diane placed the orange prescription bottle on the kitchen island.

"You probably picked it up from a public restroom or something, honey. I know you're a good girl. Just take the pills."

I swallowed the heavy antibiotics, but they didn't do a damn thing.

The itching grew worse, the festering sores spreading further across my thighs.

That evening, Belinda actually graced us with her presence for dinner.

Diane served her a bowl of rich, savory stew.

As I watched Belinda lift the spoon to her perfect lips, a dark, intrusive thought bloomed in my mind and took root.

When she got up to check her phone, I grabbed the heavy antibiotic pills the doctor had given me, crushed them into a fine white powder, and dumped them straight into her leftover broth.

The next morning, I woke up, and the maddening, skin-crawling itch was practically gone.

But that night, a video of me crushing the pills went live on Belindas social media.

Diane had installed a nanny cam in the kitchen to make sure I wasn't cheating on my diet.

It had caught my exact, calculated movements.

The video went viral within hours.

The internet tore me to shreds.

"Ugly on the outside, evil on the inside. She caught a nasty disease and tried to poison her sister with it!"

"Looking like a literal troll and acting like a psycho."

"Belinda is an angel. Imagine living with a monster like that, praying for her."

"We love you, Belinda! Stay safe!"

Diane watched the video and didn't offer a single word in my defense.

Belindas follower count exploded overnight.

She hosted a livestream, sobbing beautifully into the camera, dabbing at her dry eyes. "I just... I never thought my own flesh and blood would try to hurt me like this."

Donations, super-chats, and digital gifts rained down across the screen.

She trended on Twitter. #ProtectBelinda. #MukbangQueen.

Talent agencies started sliding into her DMs, offering her brand deals and reality TV spots.

The timeline was flooded with photos of her looking fragile, gorgeous, and "brave."

And I was the grotesque villain in her origin story.

My face was photoshopped into horrifying, demonic caricatures, placed side-by-side with her angelic selfies.

After that night, the last thread of my compliance snapped.

Fuck the diet. Fuck the medication. Fuck the jumping rope.

Diane cried. She begged. She screamed. She even slapped me across the face. "Are you trying to kill yourself?! Why can't you just be good?!"

I didn't care. I barricaded myself in my room. I ordered greasy takeout, I refused to move, and I threw the medication in the trash.

And, like clockwork, the numbers on my scale began to drop. The weeping sores on my skin finally began to scab over and heal.

When Diane realized I was fully refusing to eat her boiled garbage, she lost her mind.

She went out to the garage and came back with a thin, flexible fiberglass rod used for tomato plants.

"You are going to eat!" she screamed. "You are not leaving this table until that plate is clean!"

I clenched my jaw and shook my head.

She swung it. The rod sliced through the air and struck my arm right through my thin pajama shirt. It burned like a line of liquid fire.

Tears streamed down my face from the shock of the pain. Sobbing, I grabbed handfuls of the cold, wet lettuce and shoved them into my mouth, chewing through my own tears.

She stood over me until I swallowed every bite, then pointed to the jump rope.

"Jump! One thousand times! If you stop before a thousand, I will beat you until you can't stand!"

I jumped. My heavy body shook with every landing, the tears blinding me. Every time I slowed down, the rod snapped against my back.

But I didn't lose weight. I only gained it back, heavier than before.

I couldn't take it anymore.

While they were taking a nap the next afternoon, I slipped out the front door and sprinted all the way to the local police precinct.

The desk sergeant looked over the counter at me, bewildered. "Can I help you, miss?"

"I need to report an assault!" I gasped, out of breath. "My mother and my sister! They're abusing me! She hit me with a fiberglass whip and forces me to exercise until I pass out!"

The officers face hardened. "Do you have proof? Where are the injuries?"

"Right here!" I violently shoved my sleeves up, then yanked up the legs of my sweatpants. "Look! She hit me so hard, I swear!"

I looked down.

My arms and legs were covered in soft, heavy flesh. The skin was completely clear.

Not a single red mark. Not a single bruise.

The officer frowned deeply.

Before I could speak, the precinct doors burst open. Diane and Belinda rushed in.

The second Diane saw me, she burst into theatrical, heartbroken tears, running over to wrap her arms around me.

"Officer, I am so, so sorry! Please excuse this!" she wept, sounding entirely devastated. "My daughter... she's very sick. She's refusing her treatments. I'm just at my wit's end!"

She pulled her phone out, aggressively swiping to show the officer her meticulously curated photo album of my "health food," along with a thick stack of printed medical records.

"The doctors told her if she keeps gaining weight, her heart is going to give out! But if I don't force her, she just lays in bed eating herself to death! What is a mother supposed to do?!"

The officer looked through the medical files. His stern expression melted into sympathetic understanding. He turned to me, his voice taking on a firm, patronizing tone.

"Listen to me, young lady. Your mother is trying to save your life. You need to cooperate. Put down the junk food, get some exercise, and get healthy."

Belinda stepped forward, placing a gentle, perfectly manicured hand on my shoulder. She looked at the officer, then at the small crowd of onlookers in the lobby.

"Don't worry, Officer. We're going to get her the help she needs. Paige, please don't give up. We're family. We love you."

The bystanders nodded approvingly.

"That poor mother."

"She's lucky to have a sister who cares that much."

"Kids these days have no idea how good they have it."

Belindas face was the picture of sorrowful concern, but as she looked at me, the extreme corner of her mouth twitched upward in a smirk.

To punish me for my little stunt, Belinda kicked her lifestyle into overdrive.

Belindas streams became unhinged.

She booked a flight to a developing country on a whim.

She went live while wading waist-deep into a highly polluted, trash-filled river, eating greasy street food with unwashed hands. When she got thirsty, she cupped her hands and drank the brown, murky river water right on camera.

Her chat went nuclear.

"OMG is she insane??"

"Bro that water is toxic waste!"

"Shes got a stomach of iron, absolute legend."

"Instant follow."

The shock value worked. She hit a million concurrent viewers.

She stood dripping wet on the riverbank, proudly showing off her impossibly flat stomach and glowing, untouchable skin.

Ten minutes after she ended her stream, I was sitting in my bedroom when my stomach cramped so violently I fell out of my chair.

I crawled to the bathroom, gripping the toilet bowl, and vomited.

It wasn't food. It was pitch-black, rancid sludge that smelled like decaying meat.

I collapsed onto the bathroom tiles, gasping for air. As my vision cleared, I looked into the bowl.

Tiny, pale white parasites were writhing in the dark water.

Something inside me shattered.

I bolted out of the apartment. I didn't know where I was going, I just ran until my lungs burned, blindly forcing open the roof access door of our apartment building.

The wind hit my face. I stepped up onto the ledge.

Just as I shifted my weight forward, a handbony but incredibly strongclamped around my bicep and yanked me backward.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, child?!"

I hit the gravel roof, curling into a ball, sobbing hysterically.

It was Alma, an older woman who sometimes stayed with our neighbor, Martha. She was deeply spiritual, an old-school holistic healer who practiced out of a small apothecary downtown.

Without asking, she dropped to her knees, grabbed my wrist, and pressed her fingers hard into my pulse points. Her silver eyebrows knitted together.

"What have you done to yourself, girl?" she demanded, her voice sharp with authority. "Your pulse is a chaotic mess. Its weak, completely hollowed out. This is the pulse of someone who has been ingesting literal filth and entirely depleted their life force! And the infectionsare you living on the streets? Have you no self-respect?"

"No! No, I haven't!" I screamed, grabbing the hem of her cardigan like a lifeline, my voice cracking. "Please believe me! I swear! I only eat boiled vegetables! I've never even held a boy's hand!"

"What on earth is going on up here?"

Martha, our neighbor, stepped out onto the roof, her eyes widening when she saw me on the ground.

She listened to Almas harsh assessment, then looked down at me. Martha hesitated for a second before softening. "Alma, I've watched this girl grow up. She was always the quiet, sweet one. Shes not out there living wild. If she says it's the truth, I believe her."

After all these years.

Finally. Someone said they believed me.

The dam broke. The years of gaslighting, the physical torture, the crushing isolationit all flooded out. I wailed, my body shaking so hard I couldn't catch my breath, the last remaining threads of my sanity snapping.

Almas stern face softened. She pressed her fingers back to my pulse, muttering to herself. "It makes no sense. You carry all this weight, but your energy is entirely drained, like a hollow shell. A body this size shouldn't be starving to death from the inside. Something here is deeply unnatural."

Martha gently helped me to my feet. "Come on, sweetheart. You're coming to my place."

Inside Marthas apartment, it felt like stepping into a different universe.

She set a steaming bowl of rich, savory beef stew in front of me, alongside a plate of buttered rolls.

I hadn't tasted real salt or fat in so long. The first bite made me weep silently into the bowl.

When I finished, she pulled a cold, perfectly ripe peach from the fridge and placed it in my hands.

"I remember you used to love these when you were little."

I held the fuzzy skin against my palm. I did love them.

But years ago, Diane suddenly declared I was deathly allergic to peaches and forbade me from ever eating one again.

I took a massive bite of the sweet fruit. With my other hand, I pulled out my phone and tapped into Belindas livestream.