Dawn After the Night

That night, Esperanza didn’t hunt animals. She was saving her strength for the ultimate feast, the one that would end everything. Hidden away in her bedroom, she had prepared a knife, buckets, and a mild sedative to make sure Luz wouldn’t suffer.

This wouldn’t just be a meal. It would be a twisted act of love, an absolute union between the twins. Something deeper, more intimate. Esperanza convinced herself that by consuming Luz, she would save her too, merging their beings forever. Luz would surely understand in the end. She would see the beauty of what they were about to share.

Outside, the full moon washed the sleeping village in a pale, cold light. The hour of El Chupacabra had come.

Luz hadn’t left the house since their nighttime encounter. She had barricaded herself in her room, venturing out only for the bathroom, always making sure Esperanza wasn’t nearby. Their parents took turns standing guard, but exhaustion dulled their vigilance.

Esperanza waited until their breathing grew heavy with sleep, then cornered Luz as she came out of the bathroom. She pressed the knife close to her sister’s throat, knowing Luz couldn’t make a sound or risk alerting their parents.

“It was only ever a matter of time,” Luz murmured, her voice eerily calm.

Esperanza leaned closer, her eyes glinting in the dim light. In recent days, her face had grown hollow, her smile more feral, her skin corpse-pale save for the bloodstains that clung to her lips like warped lipstick.

“You’re not afraid,” Esperanza said, surprised.

“I’ve been terrified my whole life,” Luz replied. “But now that it’s ending… I almost feel relieved. No more waiting for this moment in dread.”

The resignation unsettled Esperanza. She had expected a chase, pleas for mercy, a trembling prey. Not this quiet surrender.

“Before my photo ends up on the family altar,” Luz whispered, “grant me one last favor. Let me write a farewell message for our parents.”

“No tricks,” Esperanza warned, pulling the blade back slightly. “After that, we go to the clinic. That’s where it all began.”

When Luz had finished her note, she waited until Esperanza’s focus wavered for a heartbeat and slipped a small voice recorder into her robe pocket, her heart pounding.

They walked together toward the annex, the silence between them solemn, like a grim procession. Luz, guided by the knife pressed at her back, unlocked the door with the stolen key. Inside, the operating room glowed under harsh neon lights. Esperanza had prepared it meticulously — a pristine white sheet laid over the table, the air heavy like a ritual chamber awaiting sacrifice.

“Take this sedative. Lie down,” Esperanza ordered, her voice stripped of humanity now.

Luz complied. Under the cold lights, Esperanza saw every scar she had inflicted over the years. They formed a grotesque map, charting her descent into monstrosity.

“You’re beautiful,” Esperanza murmured, stroking her sister’s neck softly. “And that essence running through you — so pure, so familiar, so precious… You’ve always been the most beautiful. The purest.”

She leaned closer, hearing the hypnotic rhythm of their shared blood pumping beneath fragile skin. Forbidden, exquisite, irresistible.

“Esperanza, you don’t have to do this,” Luz said, her voice steady despite the blade nearby. “You’re sick, but you can still get help…”

“Sick ? Get help ?” Esperanza cut her off, lifting her face to Luz’s. “I’m a monster. I’ve always been a monster. I don’t want to be fixed, Luz. I want to be whole.”

For an instant, her expression softened, almost loving.
“Don’t you see the beauty in what we’re about to share ? We’re twins — we came from the same egg, the same blood. By consuming you, I’ll reunite us. We’ll be one again, like before we were born.”

Tears slid down Luz’s cheeks. Her sister was gone, swallowed by madness that twisted love into predation.

“This isn’t love, Esperanza,” she whispered. “It’s an illness.”

Esperanza’s face hardened instantly.
“Don’t say that! You don’t know what it’s like — to live with this hunger gnawing at you, this thirst that never ends! To wake up every morning knowing you’re a monster!”

She raised the knife, its blade flashing under the sterile lights, poised to pierce the flesh she had craved for so long.

“But with you,” she breathed, “it ends. Your blood will heal me, complete me. And you’ll be with me forever.”

It was then Luz played her last card. Her hand shook as she pulled the small recorder from her pocket and pressed play.

A child’s voice, high and full of joy, filled the room:

“One day, I’ll heal every sick animal! I’ll be the best vet in the whole world! Just like Mom and Dad, but even better! I’ll make people smile again when their little pets get well! And I’ll build a huge hospital for all the abandoned animals! And I’ll…”

The voice went on, pure and hopeful, weaving dreams of kindness and salvation. The voice of Esperanza as a child — before illness, before the taste of blood had devoured her innocence.

The effect was instant and devastating. Esperanza froze, knife suspended mid-air, eyes wide, staring at the recorder as if it were a ghost. That voice, brimming with compassion and joy, was hers once. She had wanted to save lives, not consume them.

The knife slipped from her hands, clattering against the tiles like a verdict. She collapsed to her knees, hands clamped over her ears, as if the voice stabbed at her soul.

“No… no, no, no…” she sobbed. “That little girl is dead! She died the first time I tasted blood! I’m not her anymore!”

But the voice played on, relentless in its innocence. Each word pierced her fractured mind, dragging into light everything she had become, everything she had done, everything she was about to do to the person she loved most.

“I’m a monster,” she whispered, and for the first time since her return, the words sounded like a medical diagnosis, not a boast. “I’m truly sick.”

The mania broke as brutally as it had risen. Esperanza collapsed fully, wracked by heart-wrenching sobs. Reality crashed over her: the dead animals, the terror she had sown, the moment she had nearly killed her twin.

“Forgive me,” she choked out, curling on the cold floor. “Forgive me, Luz… please forgive me…”

With trembling hands, she picked up the knife and this time turned it inward, pressing it to her stomach. In a final flash of clarity, she opened herself, desperate to silence the beast forever, to offer her own blood as penance.

Luz bolted from the room, screaming for help, voice raw with panic. She fumbled with the clinic phone, dialing blindly through tears.

Hiroshi arrived first, his face twisted in horror as he lunged toward his bleeding daughter, prying the knife from her hands, trying to stem the flow. Maria followed seconds later, kneeling in the spreading pool of red, her own hands shaking but firm as she pressed on the wound.

The next hours blurred into sirens, flashing lights, urgent voices. Questions, restraints, medical evaluations. At last, Esperanza was taken to a specialized facility in Tokyo, finally given a name for the darkness inside her: Type I Bipolar Disorder with Renfield’s Syndrome, a rare pathology linking manic episodes to a compulsion for blood.