My dad always wanted a son. He got three daughters instead. He hated us all, hated my twin sisters, hated my mother. But he hated me most of all because I was the last child my mother had before she died. That didn’t stop him from treating me like his little boy. It didn’t stop him from trying to beat the hatred of my own gender into me.

Quit your crying, he’d snap, or you’ll end up like your sniveling bitch of a mother. After years of that, he was shocked that I grew up as a tomboy. I think he hated that even more because I was just a constant reminder of what he never got to have.

A Mother Lost Too Soon

My mother died when she was only twenty-seven. I was only four years old. The coroner said it was natural causes, some heart problem that took her in her sleep. My dad, though, he said it was because of her family’s curse. Whenever I asked him about my mother, a woman I barely knew, he never had much to say. I’m pretty sure he was just drunk most of the time.

Every woman in her damn family, they die when they’re twenty-seven, he’d say, smelling of stale beer. I think the real curse is that my mom was the one who died, and not him.

Sisters Lost to Tragedy

I wasn’t fully convinced by the ramblings of a drunk man. But then I lost both of my sisters just months before their twenty-eighth birthday. I knew it couldn’t be a coincidence. Moira was found murdered. Her face was badly hurt from a shooter while she was out for a run. Joy took her own life only days later.

I was the one who found her. She was hanging in her apartment bedroom. I had gone to pick her up for Moira’s funeral. She had been there, swinging from the ceiling, all night. It was a horrifying discovery.

Living with an Expiration Date

It’s hard to live a normal life when you know you have an expiration date. This was especially true when it covered an entire year. I always dreaded my birthday. From a young age, it was less about fun and cake and more about worry and funeral caskets. But after Moira and Joy died, my next birthday, twenty-five, was the most dreadful day of my life. Twenty-six was worse. Twenty-seven was unimaginable.

This is it, I thought. I closed all the blinds in my apartment. I drank the last drop of vodka in the bottle. This is the last year of my life.

The

Year of Waiting

Twenty-seven has been uneventful, to say the least. Why would I make any long-term plans or build meaningful relationships when I know they simply cannot last? The worst part of this last year has been simply *not

• knowing when my death was coming. It could have been any day in the last 364 days. It could be within the next minute.

I admit I became a bit of a recluse. My windows were always shuttered. I added extra locks to my door. I let the phone go to voicemail. I hid under my covers with the lights out whenever someone knocked. I stocked up on preserved foods and other goods to last the year. I was so scared that I even covered my mail slot. I stuffed a towel under my front door. I didn’t want anything from the outside world getting in. I was afraid of anything, like an anthrax letter.

Isolation and Strange Calls

Falling off the face of the earth didn’t matter much anyway. I didn’t have friends or family left. My mother and both my sisters were dead. My dad disowned me when I came out as a lesbian after my sisters died. I moved away and cut off contact soon after.

The night before my twenty-seventh birthday, I started getting strange phone calls from a blocked number. I’ve always had anxiety about phone calls, so I just let it ring. The number kept calling, at least once a day for the past year. Then the knocking started. It was once a week at first, but it’s only gotten worse. It’s more frequent, and the pounding on my door is more frantic each time. Convinced it had something to do with my inevitable death, I’ve been driven mad by the unknown visitor, especially over the past week.

A Fateful Morning

I got ready for bed last night. I knew that tomorrow, which is today now, is the day I turn

28. My time had run out. I searched for comfort in a bottle of liquor, but I didn’t find it. I fell into bed, drunk and delirious. I prayed the morning wouldn’t come, though I knew it would. I eventually got to sleep, but it was restless and unsatisfying. The kind of sleep where you feel like you have one eye open, always watching.

That’s why I woke up quickly when the door to my bedroom creaked open early in the morning, before the first light. I shot up in my bed. I looked around my room in a panicked frenzy. At first, I saw nothing out of the ordinary except the door, pushed slightly ajar. A closer look revealed something I’d missed, something that sent my heart racing and froze me to my core. Two dark figures stood in the empty space behind the half-opened door. They were unmoving, almost like statues. Waiting. Watching. Wordless.

“Leave me… leave me alone,” I squeaked. I was unable to move, paralyzed by their presence.

The shadowy figures shuffled out from behind the door. They crept slowly towards me in the dark. I knew this would certainly be the end of my life, the fulfillment of my curse, if I didn’t act. Suddenly recalling the self-defense methods I’d drilled into my mind, I flipped my bedside lamp on to stun the intruders. I reached underneath the table to pull the knife I’d duct-taped there a year ago. It was a twenty-seventh birthday gift to myself.

As soon as the light flooded the room, though, I knew the blade would be of no use. My intruders were not human assassins. In the yellow light of the lamp, I saw the identities of the dark figures. They were my sisters.

A Ghostly Reunion

Joy stood at the foot of my bed. She was pale, wearing the same conservative black dress I’d found her dead in years ago. It was the one she’d picked out for Moira’s funeral. Her head hung parallel to her shoulders. Her neck was bent grotesquely from her hanging. Moira was a few steps behind her. I could only assume it was her, considering the severity of her injuries. She’d suffered a gunshot wound to the head. It was so brutal that we were not allowed to see her after her death. It had entirely disfigured her face. The lower half of her face was a pit of gore. Her jawbone was barely attached on one side. Her mouth was mangled, with only several teeth remaining scattered throughout the mess.

“Why are you here?” I cried. I gathered my knees to my chest and held them tight. “Are you… are you here to take me?”

Joy made a weak attempt to shake her head. The side of her face only brushed weakly against her shoulder. She waited several moments before moving towards the side of my bed. As I recoiled instinctively, she slowed her pace. Moira trailed after her until they were both beside me.

I whimpered as Joy leaned over me. Her head flopped forward suddenly with the motion, her neck cracking sickeningly. With her lips brushing against my ear, she whispered, “she… she tried.” Her speech was labored and wheezing, as if her vocal cords had been nearly shredded.

“What do you mean, Joy?” I pleaded.

Her lips moved against my ear once more, but no sounds came out. It was clear she was trying hard. Moira tried to answer my question. But she only succeeded in sputtering blood from the gaping wound in her face. She ejected one of her remaining teeth onto the floor as her jawbone swung precariously, barely hanging on. She raised one hand, slowly curling it into a fist. Then she struck her knuckles furiously against my bedpost.

The incessant sounds startled me. I forced my eyes shut tight and pulled my knees even closer to my chest. Moira’s knocking seemed to get louder. It seemed to go on forever, until finally, it stopped. I cracked my eyes open to find that both of my sisters had vanished. The light of early morning had begun to spill in through the slats of my blinds. It was just past six o’clock, the seventh of June, the day of my twenty-eighth birthday.

The Truth Revealed

I was born at 9:26 AM. Once I learned of the curse, I burned the time of my ultimate expiration into my mind. I only had three hours and sixteen minutes left to live, if I even had that long. Draping my covers over my head, I resolved to spend the rest of my life asleep. I figured I’d rather pass peacefully in my sleep like my mother did than to suffer a fate similar to my sisters'.

My plans were interrupted, however, by that damned knocking on the door. The interruption usually didn’t come so early in the morning. I decided to ignore the strange visitor at first. But I pulled the blankets back down soon after as a certain sense of familiarity struck me. The pounding on the door reminded me all too much of Moira’s knocking just moments before.

It easily could have been a trick of the curse, but something compelled me to approach the door. “What do you want?” I called from behind the barrier, clinging to the relative safety it provided.

The reply came from an unfamiliar man’s voice. “I just have a letter for you, miss.”

“Just… just slide it under the door, and please leave,” I returned. I used my bare foot to remove the towel I used to block the small space beneath it.

He deposited a bright yellow envelope under the door as I requested. I waited quietly for the sounds of receding footsteps before sliding on a pair of gloves to handle the letter. It was addressed to me, simply by first name and with no address. Carefully, I unsealed the envelope to reveal a birthday card. I hadn’t received one in years.

Bright, sparkling letters on the front formed the words, Daughter, you’re 27!. I scoffed at the sick joke. I hadn’t received a birthday card since I was a child, and my dad couldn’t even get my birthday right. I didn’t think he even knew my address. I cracked it open gingerly to read the message inside.

Laura,

If you’re reading this, your father has killed me. Don’t believe a thing he or the police say , I was not the target of a random attack, I did not die of natural causes, and I certainly did not commit suicide. I would never leave you if I had the choice.

The truth is… I died is because I found the truth behind my family’s curse and foolishly told your father. He was in on it the whole time, planted in my life by some secret society to eradicate me. To eradicate us. What we have is not a curse, it is a gift , a gift of immense power. The power to heal, but the power to harm just the same.

We come into our power at the age of 28, a number associated with independence, leadership, and self-sufficiency. An age where we can handle the responsibility such a power inevitably comes with. It’s a strong number, and you will come into great strength, though you’ve always been a strong girl.

I hope you’ve made it this far, but at the same time… I know you have. You were always a feisty little girl for the four years I had the pleasure of knowing you, of loving you. You never let anyone tell you what to think or do , especially not your father.

Happy birthday , I love you.

Mom

I closed the card softly. I thought about the strained words of my sister. Mom had tried to warn them, but they didn’t listen. The pieces of the puzzle slid into place. My dad must have murdered Moira. And Joy ended her own life out of grief and a belief that she would inevitably be next.

At the time of writing this, I only have two hours and thirty-two minutes until I officially turn twenty-eight. Over the past hour or so, I’ve already begun to feel the power flowing into my body, electrifying as it runs through my veins. I will the towel to reposition itself under the door, and it does so, sliding across the floor on its own. I need to keep myself safe until 9:

26. I’m planning on surprising my father with a visit.

The family curse was a lie. The real danger was human. And now, with a newfound power awakening, the cycle of death might just be broken, replaced by something far more potent.