Mira and Lyan stared at each other in a fierce battle of wills. Mira's body ached, her muscles quivered, and a single cold bead of sweat ran from her flushed brow down the side of her nose.
"She's going to kill me," Mira thought. Fighting, she turned away from her sister and staggered out of the bathroom and into the hallway, where she fell against the wall, breathing hard as Lyan fought to drag her back.
Another tug jerked her back a step, and Lyan laughed softly into her ear. "You can't get away, Mira. I'm not going to hurt you, you know."
Screaming with effort and terror, Mira threw herself forward into the living room and dug her fingers into the brown shag carpet. She had to get out of the house, away from the bathroom and the antique mirror that hung there with its ornate ivory frame and twin figures of Comedy and Tragedy.
Lyan giggled and tugged at her forcefully, like a dog wrestling a toy from the hand of its master. But the pulls were less insistent this time. "I can make it," Mira thought. "I'm halfway to the door. Only a little further."
Gasping with each movement, she clawed her way forward, nails breaking from the force of her efforts and the tightness of her grip on the carpet fibers.
Each painful movement came a little faster than the last. With a tremendous effort, she got her feet under her and broke into a lurching run. Sobbing, she hurtled into the kitchen, feeling Lyan's dragging resistance fall away, and came to rest against the kitchen door.
That was when she saw Lyan, in the little mirror that hung on the wall by the door.
In her hand and clutched by fingers tipped with broken nails, Lyan held a pair of scissors that had been on the kitchen countertop a moment before.
Lyan smiled in the mirror at Mira, her conjoined twin and snipped playfully at one of the long locks of hair by Mira's shoulder. "I told you you couldn't get away. Let's do something playful this time. I feel like pixie cut, don't you?"
