The Hidden Life of Things

The Proper Half

An Almost Murder Story with some Moral at the End

When Left woke up that sunny, quiet morning, he felt something was missing from his life. Something that made him who he thought he was had disappeared and had left him physically and emotionally impaired. Left needed to share the pressing black-holeness in his gut with the closest someone he had — his mirror image brother Right.

Right was the life of the company. He was easy-going, friendly, and curious about all the wonders in the world. He would be the first one to jump on the opportunity to check the weirdest, slimiest, stickiest, dampest stuff he could dip his bottom into. He wasn’t afraid of getting his feet dirty. He was courageous to outrage and not once had vexed everybody with his impulsive stunts. But he was always present. So Left always knew who he was — a proper half.

But his brother was missing. It looked as if he had never existed. Left felt an impending solitude creeping up his hollow body. If Right was gone, was he still Left? What did his leftness mean without his brother’s rightness? Was he still a proper half of the whole if the other half was absent or was he a perfect whole of himself?

Left sat on the floor and tried to reconstruct the final route they had taken the previous evening before wrapping it up here — close to the master bathroom door.

Let’s see…

Enter the hallway at approximately 3 AM or 4 or 5… Remove shoes — classy! Tiptoe to the kitchen [but really stamping to the kitchen]. Open the fridge as quietly as possible.[note: ‘as quietly as possible’ at 4 AM is a myth] Try to avoid the puddles of spilled beer and crumbs of half-eaten food on the floor. Certain one can’t resist the temptation to plop head first in the beer puddles — is that Right?! Dammit, Right — you again! Grunting noise follows from *up there*. A few more shuffling rounds in the room to make sure everything is not left in the way it was found. Crawl to the master bathroom. [….] This is a memory placeholder — later would patch up something here. Then bed. Probably. Hopefully.

Nothing particularly unusual stood out.

Left — in a state of growing despair over his gone brother — could do nothing but lay motionless on the carpet. As he lied there he observed as the two feet he shared the bedroom with maneuvered unsteadily among the furniture. The master bathroom door opened with a bang and torrent of unintelligible sounds leavened the silent space as the two feet scuffled with the bathroom rug. The room reeked of many lost rounds of flip cup.

Left, only half-interested into the unfolding event and tormented by nightmarish visions of the mismatched coupling which anticipated him in case his brother never came back, noticed something which made his colors fade away instantly.

It was Right, over there, hanging from the ceiling fan! His limp, visibly damp body was swaying in the stinky air. He looked lifeless. Was he drowned, then scragged, then murdered by exposure?! Dear Lord of the Dance! Left was floored. What a psycho killer would want to gibbet Right here on his bathroom fan?! Umm, literally all of them but that was not the point.

It felt unreal.

And…

Left was right. It wasn’t real. Right was left to hang there to air dry his socking-wet bottom from the late-night kitchen rendezvous. His curiosity almost killed him but ultimately it didn’t. He was stinking well later the same afternoon. Left felt like a proper half again.

So Right didn’t learn much of this experience after all. He remained reckless but charming till he punctured a hole in his head and retired in a crowded retirement drawer. Left was mismatched with another loner. And eventually learned how to mend the holes in his halved identity quite well.

A correction to our story is required. In the current times of false reporting we strive to maintain the highest standards of journalism and storytelling. It came to our attention that Right’s name was, in fact, Wrong. The Writer hadn’t fact-checked her story before publishing it. Shame on her — she’ll be publicly ostracized. But you stay assured our reputation remains stellar! However, if we were you we wouldn’t trust a word that came out of her mouth or under her pen. You can also leave her an angry comment below the article. She’s a cheap labor, though so we’ll keep her. Happy reading!