Shanna had just ordered her third whiskey sour of the night when she felt the first stirrings of the old familiar tug at the back of her brain. The slight alcoholic buzz of the first two whiskey sours made it a little bit harder to notice than usual, but as she tuned out her surroundings and focused her attention inward, she could sense the force of her intellect aligning like iron filings under the influence of a magnet. And of course, she knew exactly where it was headed.
She pulled out her phone and texted, 'For fucksake, Meg, NOT NOW!' It felt like a strangely clumsy way to communicate, given that her twin sister was quite literally inside her mind; but years of experimentation had established that whatever the bond between them actually was, it wasn't a telepathic link. They couldn't hear each other's thoughts, or feel each other's pain, or any of the crazy bullshit you saw in bad Hollywood movies with cheesy split-screen effects whenever both twins had to show up in the same shot. If Shanna wanted Meg to know that she was bugfuck furious at her, she had to get out her phone and text like a normal sibling.
Shanna's blood practically boiled when she got the reply a minute or two later. 'Sorry,' it said. 'Date with Paul got moved up to tonight. I needs the brain.' The three smiley-face emojis that followed were sort of the icing on the little 'fuck you' cake. Shanna wasn't sure which pissed her off more-her sister deliberately shafting her on a night when she damn well knew Shanna had plans for the evening, the obnoxiously cutesy reference to the card game they used to play as kids that had stopped being funny years ago, or the fact that her sister had this amazing fucking literal superpower and she still used it to sleep with cute guys. As if her tits wouldn't get the job done.
Shanna sometimes wished she and Meg had been born conjoined instead. At least you could sometimes get surgery to fix that. But there wasn't a surgeon alive who could separate a shared soul.
A dizzying lurch in the back of her head told Shanna that if she didn't stop fuming and start fighting, she was going to be spending the rest of the night trying to remember which side of the glass to drink from. She pictured the bond between her and Meg in her head, envisioning it as a thick rope that stretched through some other kind of space to connect them on a level that nobody else could see. Then she imagined herself, digging her feet in and pulling as hard as she could. The tugging sensation diminished, but it didn't go away. Meg was too stubborn for that.
And too sober. That was part of what was making Shanna so genuinely furious-Meg knew she was going out drinking tonight, she knew that Shanna was going to have be vulnerable, and she either didn't care or deliberately took advantage. Shanna hated not being able to trust her sister, not when they were stuck together for life like this. She hated not being able to let her guard down and enjoy herself without worrying about whether some essential part of her intellect and personality was going to be dragged kicking and screaming out of her physical body to join her sister in her attempt to convince Paul Stanhope to go down on her.
And Jesus, would it kill Meg to just find guys who liked eating pussy without superhuman charisma and willpower smothering their normal thought process? Honestly, at least when it was Shanna's turn to take advantage of nearly-doubled intellect and irresistible mental force, she used it for things like getting a raise at the lab, or helping the team with some of their nastier protein synthesis problems.
But Meg seemed perfectly content to bum around from one low-paying drumming gig to the next, using her power whenever she needed to convince her landlord to cover the rent or when one of the cute shy boys that were perpetually her type needed a little extra push to stop being shy. Shanna just didn't understand why anyone would want to get by with just the minimum amount of effort, not when she knew full well that Meg was capable of so much more. Not that this was the time to worry about the way her sister seemed to be drifting through life after college, and it was probably a bad sign that she was thinking about this instead of digging in against the inexorable pull on her mind, but-
A buzz from her phone further distracted Shanna, and the rope turned to flowing sand in her hands as she diverted her attention to reading Meg's text. 'Just get a taxi, OK? I'll make it up to you.' She probably would, but that wasn't the point. Feeling that tug brought back ugly memories of struggling to keep her will inside her head while Meg tried to summon it all into herself just to convince Mom and Dad to let her have a slumber party. Memories of hours spent stumbling around in a daze, her thoughts fogged by confusion and her mind left so malleable that she would do anything the other kids asked. Memories of that sick feeling of terror far underneath the warm, mindless haze, as she convinced herself that this time Meg would break something, this time her mind wouldn't come back to her when they fell asleep like it always had. Memories of coming to desperately hate her sister.
She thought they had put all that behind them years ago, right after the trip to Seattle, but nights like this brought it all back. She gave the rope in her mind a furious yank and texted, 'NO!!' It moved, but sluggishly. Meg already had a little bit of a hold on their shared willpower, and that unbalanced the struggle between them even more than the alcohol. It was always like this when they were young; whoever struck first usually won. The advantage they got from surprise was just too hard to counter. The more Meg pulled, the stronger she got and the weaker Shanna became, until she forgot exactly what she was struggling against and giving up control to her twin sister seemed like just another one of Meg's great ideas.
Shanna was determined not to let it happen this time. She closed her eyes, closing out the distractions of the bar and letting her mind fill with the image of herself holding the rope tightly with both hands. She could see Meg in her imagination-not the actual person, but a representation like the rope represented their shared spirit. She pictured herself walking backwards, step by slow, effortful step, pulling the rope along with her a fraction of an inch at a time. She imagined leaning hard against the tug of her sister's willpower, refusing to give in to the exhausted feeling that sapped her energy and left her drained and subdued. She just needed to hold out a little bit longer, just until things got hot and heavy enough between Meg and Paul that the distraction of arousal neutralized Meg's advantage. She just needed to-
The waitress tapped Shanna on the shoulder and said, "Ma'am? Your drink." Shanna's eyes flew open in startled confusion, and she felt her mind reel for a moment as an amorphous and intangible energy flowed out of her and halfway across town. She looked at the whiskey with a perplexed expression on her face, and it took her a surprisingly long time to make the connection between ordering the drink and its arrival at her table.
