My three brothers died young, untimely deaths. Roland Robert died at the age of thirty-two of diabetes lying in a New York hospital bed with an amputated leg and a thinning body ravaged by the disease. Another brother, Earl Saunders, was a teen-age, random victim of an assassin's rifle bullet fired from the rooftop of a 114th Street tenement in black Harlem.
This story, however, is about the murder of my unnamed, unborn, twin brother. My reply to my court-appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Hagman, when he asked, astounded, "You did what?" may shock you as much as it shocked him.
"I murdered my twin brother," I repeated, more slowly this time. "Even though I had killed my twin-that-might-have-been in a crime that until now no one has suspected of having been committed, my brother's presence has always been a constant, invisible, accusatory companion--ever since I had left my mother's womb twenty-three years ago." I was telling my story as quickly as I could for my twin, in dreams, had sworn revenge. "I knew early in my mother's pregnancy that I was sharing her body with an evil double. Being the stronger twin, I focused every ounce of energy I could muster within that womb to weaken and destroy my evil twin. I concentrated on blocking the flow of blood and nutrition to the tubes and connections leading to my other half. I was committing murder in utero! My twin died minutes before his birth. I was a murderer before I was even born! And recent, narrow escapes with my life convinces me that his evil still exists!" I lay back on Dr. Hagman's couch--confession was tiring me! Just then a sudden thunderstorm erupted and the doctor left me alone to check on open windows in other parts of his office. Minutes later a bolt of lightning hit the building. When my psychiatrist returned, he found me dead on his couch. "Death by electrocution," said the coroner. But he had no explanation for the scorched number on my right shoulder--666!
