A Guilty Flame

“Maya!” a man called out to a woman across the road.

The woman ignored his calls and kept walking.

“Maya, how are you alive?”

“I’m sorry, but you’ve mistaken me for someone else. I’m Neilya.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. You’re just the spitting image of my wife.”

“Did something happen to her?”

“She died in a fire two months ago.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, Mr..?”

“George. George D’Angelo.”

George apologised to Neilya once more before leaving. At home, his mind lingered in his meeting with Neilya. He wondered whether she was really telling the truth. He called his brother Charlie to talk about it.

“It’s just in your head, George.”

“This seems too real to me, Charlie. I might be losing it, I don’t know.”

“Pack some clothes and come over. I think you could use some company.”

That evening, George went to his brother’s house. However, his nightmares would follow him.

“No, I’m sorry! I didn't mean to kill you!”

“Wake up, George, it’s just a nightmare!”

George woke up drenched in sweat. His face was pale and his eyes were agape.

“Maya is taunting me, Charlie.”

“First of all, she’s dead; and second, why would she taunt you?”

George hesitated for a second, looking down as she clenched the bedsheets.

“Because I killed her.”

“What?”

George opened up about the night Maya died. He said he was in an argument with her, and that things got out of hand. He had hit Maya and she had fallen down the stairs. She had been bleeding profusely at the time and he had hesitated to call an ambulance, fearing what would happen to him. And so, he set the house aflame, making it look like an accident.

Charlie’s expressions of concern soon turned into disgust.

“You what? I can’t believe this!”

“I had no choice; she had already filed domestic abuse charges against me a week before.”

“So, she was telling the truth. That’s it, get out of my house before I call the cops.”

George left Charlie’s house that night. The next morning, he came across Neilya again. He tried to call out to her, but she got in a taxi. From that day on, he attempted to meet her every day, even taking time off work to the point where he was reprimanded by his boss. But George didn’t listen; his guilt drove him to desperation, and eventually, he lost his job. With his deteriorating mental state, George found it impossible to maintain a job; his nightmares were constant, making him lose sleep for sometimes a week in a row. Charlie later admitted him to a rehabilitation centre; there, he met Neilya once again. She was employed as a nurse at the centre. However, George was still convinced she was Maya. When she entered his room to hand over his medicine, he declined to take them, asking her whom she really was.

“You’re Maya, aren’t you?”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not. I already told you, my name is Neilya.”

“I’m so sorry, Maya. I didn’t mean to burn down the house with you in it that night. I just didn’t want to go to jail.”

Neilya sighed, looking down. A tear fell from her eye as she smiled.

“Well, you’re definitely going to jail now.”

“What?”

Right then, two cops walked into the room. George moved back as his body began to quiver.

“Maya was my twin. We had been separated at birth, but I didn’t know that until I heard about her death at the station and decided to look into it.”

George was tried a week later and was sentenced to life in prison.