The Twins

Five days passed. The night of the fire incident ended with Harley apologizing and telling her group members to leave. She promised she would call them and let them know when they could work on the project again. But she never picked up the phone.

Harley skipped her classes because she couldn’t find the strength to leave her house. She didn’t want to lay her eyes on the burnt wreck across the street that was completely her fault.

The two that had died in the fire were her best friend’s children. Beth and Harley were like sisters. That night, Beth had asked Harley to babysit her two daughters while she and her husband went to dinner. Harley accepted, but only stayed with the girls for a short while and promised them that she would come back within an hour to check up on them.

She told them to call her if they needed anything and that she would be just across the street, working with the other students.

While Harley mourned and wallowed in her guilt, she couldn’t rid herself of the image of the girls suffocating from the black smoke. She forced herself not to think of their names.

Then, for the first time in five days, Harley’s phone rang. It was a number she didn’t recognize, so she assumed it would be one of the other students.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Harley.” It was Scott.

“Hey, Scott,” she replied, climbing out of bed.

“I just wanted to ask if you were okay.”

Harley treaded her way to the bathroom. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m sorry I haven’t called you guys yet. I’ve just been... busy.”

“You want to talk about it?”

She paused as she looked at her reflection in the mirror. “About what?”

“Well, I know you were pretty upset when that fire happened. You said they were your godchildren. That must be really difficult to deal with... And plus, no one’s seen you in the past few days. At least I haven’t.”

Harley yanked a tangle out of her hair. “Are you going to tell me that I should see a psychiatrist?”

Scott laughed. “No, Harley. I was going to ask if you wanted to meet up and talk.”

“I’m a little scared to leave my house,” Harley admitted. Her face flushed red and her heart began to pound.

“Then I’ll come over there,” he said. “Do you mind?”

“No,” Harley said mindlessly. “You can come over.”

They exchanged their goodbyes and she threw the shower curtain open, turning on the hot water. She’d forgotten that she hadn’t showered in the past few days and knew she was absolutely filthy. When the water was at a reasonable heat, she stripped off her clothes and tossed them into a basket in the corner of the bathroom. She stepped in and took a long, deep breath as the water soaked into her hair and slithered down her body. She remained under the water for a few moments of relaxation.

Water unevenly gushed out of the shower head at a rising temperature. Harley winced and moved away from the water. She peered down at her chest, where the water had hit. The skin had turned a bright red. She leaned against the shower wall and shut her eyes at the thought of Beth's daughters burning to death.

Don’t cry, she told herself. You’ve cried enough.

The doorbell rang and forced Harley’s eyes open. She shut off the shower and grabbed a towel, quickly drying herself. She picked the white cotton robe off the hook behind the door and wrapped it around herself.

Three knocks came to the door as she ran down the stairs and tied the black robe ribbon around her waist. “Just a second!”

She opened the door and smiled faintly. “Hi, Scott. Come in.”

Scott stepped through the threshold and waited for her by the entrance of the living room. “Sorry, did I interrupt your shower?” he asked.

She caught up to him. “Yeah, but it’s fine. It’s my fault, really. I decided to shower last minute.” She led him into the living room and offered him a seat.

He sat in the same recliner he’d been sitting in a few days ago and watched her sit on the ottoman, which was now by the curtained window. The room was scarcely lit by an old lamp and gave off the effect of candlelight.

A moment of silence passed and he cleared his throat. “So... are you doing okay?”

Harley nodded simply. “I’m fine,” she said. “Thanks for coming by to check up on me. It means a lot.”

“Well,” Scott began. He smirked as he pondered his thoughts. “I wasn’t the only one who was concerned about you. Andrew has the same hours for Victimology and he was asking me if I knew what was going on with you. I told him I didn’t know and that I would find out. So, today, I took up the task.”

“I see,” Harley said. “I’m sorry if I worried you guys--”

“No, don’t worry about it. What happened across the street was a huge mess and I don’t think I’d want to talk to anybody either... But I just wanted to check up on you is all.”

“Okay,” she said. “Thank you, again.”

The overall coldness of the house was causing Harley to shiver and she casually crossed her arms to try and hide it.

“Are you cold?” Scott sat forward and began to shrug off his unzipped leather jacket.

Harley waved her hands in refusal. “No, no, don’t worry about it. I think it’s because I didn’t dry off completely.” She stood from her seat. “Can you excuse me for a minute?”

“Yeah, of course,” Scott said.

Her footsteps pattered up the polished wooden stairs and into her bedroom. She shut the door and untied the ribbon around her waist, letting the robe fall to the floor.

The room was cloaked in darkness from the drawn curtains. It was spacious enough to house two beds, but there would be no use for that--Harley lived alone. The feeling of living alone certainly overwhelmed her sometimes, but she preferred it over having to worry about someone else’s actions under her roof.

Her set of drawers across the bed was crowned with picture frames that were now face down. Most of the pictures were of Harley and Beth.

She approached the top drawer, opening it, and grabbed a pair of underwear. She looked up at the mirror on the wall and jumped, dropping what she had in her hands. Scott was standing there, looking in the eyes of her reflection.

Harley grabbed the robe off the floor and covered herself. “What are you doing in here?”

He took three steps towards her, closing the space between them. His hand came to the robe and he pushed it away from her body. Then, suddenly, Harley felt powerless. She continued to look in his eyes, which never left hers.

“You shouldn’t...” she whispered.

Scott’s hand came to the side of her neck and her pulse began to beat inside of it. He pulled her in until her cold body was pressed against him. “I’ll give you the comfort you need,” he whispered as he pressed his lips to her jawline.

Chills went through Harley’s body like a tremor. She began to feel an arousing heat below her hips. She closed her eyes and let his hand reach between her legs.

“You alright up there?” Scott’s voice called from downstairs.


Harley opened her eyes. She was still facing the mirror with the open drawer in front of her. Her head turned as she wondered if she had fallen asleep where she stood and dreamed.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she called back.

She hastily went through her drawers, putting on a random set of clothes, and rushed back downstairs. She entered the living room at a seemingly normal pace.

“Sorry about that,” she said, brushing her hair out of her face. “I think I...”

Her heart skipped a beat when she realized that Scott wasn’t sitting where he was before. In fact, he wasn’t in the living room at all. The lamp was shut off and all that filled the room was the dim moonlight that fought its way through the curtains.

“Scott...?”

She gasped when a rapid creaking noise echoed from the opposite side of the house. It sounded like the door to the basement moving. Harley had forgotten to oil the hinges of the door, so it always made noise whenever she would open or close it. She exited the living room and crossed the hallway, into the den, which was commonly used for guests to sleep in.

She felt for the light switch and flipped it on, but the lights didn’t activate. She tried again and again, but got nothing. Her palms began to sweat as she approached the basement door, feeling her way around the furniture in the den.

Her eyes began to adjust to the darkness as soon as she reached the door and it suddenly opened, causing her to shriek and fall to the floor.

A piercing light flashed in her eyes as the sound of glass breaking sounded throughout the room.

“Harley?” Scott said. He was standing in the doorway to the basement, utilizing the flashlight on his phone. “Holy shit, are you okay?”

“My God,” she replied, covering her face. “You scared the shit out of me. You disappeared.”

“I’m sorry. The lightbulb in the living room burned out, so I tried the lights, but didn’t get anything. So I went looking for a power box and a new lightbulb... That’s why I asked you if you were okay. Your power box is actually shot right now. It’s too dangerous to touch.”

Harley stood up before Scott could warn her to watch her step and a shard of glass punctured her foot. “Fuck!” she cried out. She lifted her foot off the ground and leaned against the wall.

Scott cautiously stepped over the remains of the broken lightbulb and shined the light on Harley’s injury. “Come on,” he said, wrapping his arm around her waist. “Do you have a first aid kit lying around anywhere?”

“Upstairs,” Harley retorted, wincing at the throbbing pain. “In my bathroom.”

They slowly progressed towards the stairs and then stopped at the bottom step.

Harley sighed. “How are we--”

Scott lifted her up into his arms, putting an end to her concern. She fought the urge to smile, but couldn’t stop herself from blushing. “Problem solved,” Scott said as they ascended the stairs.


As they reached the top of the stairs, they beheld the sight of a silhouette of a person standing in their way.

“Who the hell are you?” Scott demanded.

The person didn’t say a word.

Scott began to take careful steps backward and tighten his hold around Harley. “Harley,” he whispered. “As soon as we reach the bottom of the stairs, I want you to run as fast as you can to the next house, okay?”

He eyed the stranger at the top of the stairs as he quickened his sure but steady pace down the stairs.

Suddenly, a hand gripped the back of Scott’s leather jacket and pulled. He did his best to defy gravity, but fell anyway. He and Harley landed on the wooden floor at the bottom of the stairs with a loud thud.

Harley was frozen where she lay as two, dark silhouettes descended the stairs. They moved slowly and it hung her in suspense. One of them held a bowie knife in their left hand, the other held a sickle.

She finally tore her eyes away from the strangers and looked over at Scott.

He wasn’t moving.