Another Three-Word-Game story for /x/, April 2010
He and his sister were the "bad kids" at school. Whenever something bad happened, they were blamed. The desks were all stacked up in the corner? Blame the twins. Windows were broken? The twins did it. No matter what it was, it was always the twins.
They spent a lot of time in time-out together, but that was all right. They seemed to not mind the inactivity, as long as they were together. If the teachers tried to split them up, though, they would each throw FITS, they'd scratch and bite and scream and cry until they were put back together. Then, just like that! They would be completely content, silent, blank again. The other kids talked, but the twins did not care. Or, if they did, they showed no indication of it.
When the twins got blamed for the last incident, where one of the third-grade teachers fell down the stairs and broke both her legs, though, that was when they started to exhibit behaviour they had not been seen exhibiting before. He would fidget, furrow his brow, wipe his eyes a lot. She would pace, back and forth, along the edge of the time-out box, eying the students on the playground in a manner that can only be described as "hungrily." It was not all the time; only when they were blamed for something did they start acting strange. It would last for an hour or so, and then they would be the stoic twins again, blank and still.
After school one day, Thomas Belkin, the class president, made a point of it to push the both of them out of his way while he was leaving the classroom. She fell over, hit her elbow on a desk. Thomas looked shocked for a moment, but then brought his bravado back. He was the class president-- what could they do to him?
He wondered exactly what had been done to him when the girl's brother was suddenly in front of him, his eyes narrowed, his fists balled up. "You've done it for the last time," he had said through his clenched teeth. "You watch. Tell your mommy you'll be home late tonight," he said, and then he helped his sister up, and they were gone, out the door, down the street toward their house.
Thomas, visibly shaken, suddenly felt ill. While it was very much time to go home, he instead made his way to the nurse's office, explained to her that he had a stomachache and that she had better call his mother to come pick him up. He didn't feel good enough to walk home.
Some fifteen minutes passed before his mother arrived in her white minivan, typical of the "mother of an honour student" that her bumper sticker proclaimed her to be. All the while, Thomas started feeling sicker and sicker. He had developed a fever, started sweating. His stomach hurt, and he did not know why.
He could not eat dinner that night, and was just barely able to hold down the glasses of water he so often wanted for. His fever was high, he was dizzy, and all he wanted in the world was to lie down. So he did, in his room, his race-car bed seemingly tilting side-to-side as his eyes swam in his head.
In this manner he lay, his body trying to fight off the fever, break its hold on him, when all of a sudden the grandfather clock in the living room struck one o-clock. The window was shut, he knew, but a wind billowed through his room, and then at the foot of his bed stood the twins.
No, it wasn't them. It was, but it wasn't. Something was different-- were the girl's eyes glowing, was her mouth full of long teeth, or was he just hallucinating? Was the boy really made of a seething mass of worms, or was that just his imagination?
"What did you do?" he croaked, his voice stifled by the fever and delerium. She smiled, the razor-sharp teeth glinting in the red light from his digital clock.
"That's the wrong question, Tommy," said the girl, sliding up close to his face.
"What will we do, is the right one," added the boy, creeping up the other side of the bed.
The police tape yellow was a stark contrast to the black and red and pink that was the boy's bedroom the next morning. It was reported that he'd been attacked by animals, because that was the only logical explanation for the state the remains of his body were in. Animals, of course. But what they did not tell the reporters was what was scrawled in the poor boy's organ juices and blood on the hardwood floor in front of his bed.
In big, messy letters.
BLAME
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