“He’d take us out of our cages. Just one at a time. And make us do stuff.”
“Awful stuff,” Alice added.
“And if we didn’t do everything just right, he’d make someone else pay for it. Like he wanted me to… do something to him. I wouldn’t. So then he put me back in my cage and took Mom out. He whipped her right in front of us, then made her do it to him. ’Cause I’d said I wouldn’t.”
Erin’s hand felt hot and sweaty, holding mine. I gave it a gentle squeeze.
“Anyhow,” she said, “he did that sort of stuff to us right from the start, when he was here the first time. He didn’t stay very long, that time. When he went away, he left us in our cages with some food and water, and said he’d come back.”
“But not when,” Alice added.
“Yeah. After a while, we started to think he wasn’t gonna come back at all. We got really low on the food and water. Before it was totally gone, though, we heard this huge explosion.”
“Our yacht going up in smoke?” I asked.
“Yeah. And next thing we knew, he was back. He came in from the jungle, all smiling and happy.”
“And not wearing a stitch,” Alice added.
“He hardly ever does,” Erin said. “Like he thinks everybody wants to be looking at his thing all the time.”
“Which they don’t.”
“Not me.”
“Did he say how he blew up the yacht?” I asked.
“Sure,” Erin said. “He bragged all about how easy it was. He used that razor of his to cut open a fuel line. Down in the engine compartment? Then he made a fuse out of a bedsheet. After he lit it, he snuck overboard and swam away underwater.”
“He was laughing about it,” Alice said. “He thought he was so smart.”
“He outsmarted us, all right,” I told them. “We all thought he blew it up by accident and got himself killed.”
“That’s what he wanted you to think,” Erin explained. “Billie says you figured it out pretty quick, though.”
“Well, we guessed. After people started getting murdered. I mean, who else could’ve been doing it? As far as we knew, the island was uninhabited. We didn’t know there was a whole family… Are there any others?”
“Other what?” Erin asked.
“People. Families. Houses. Do you have neighbors?”
“We’re it.”
“Nobody here but us,” Alice said.
“We had the island all to ourselves. It was great. Until Wesley came along.”
“Mom and Dad brought us here so we’d be safe,” Alice said. “That’s a good one, huh?”
“We lived in Los Angeles,” Erin said. “We moved when the riot happened. That was the last straw, you know? They were afraid we’d all get killed, or something. They wanted to take us someplace where we wouldn’t need to worry about stuff like crime and drugs.”
“And look what happened,” Alice said.
“We know what happened,” Erin told her. “But it was great while it lasted.” To me, she said, “We did home study. No school. Mom and Dad taught us. She used to be a schoolteacher, and Dad was a writer. It was great, not going to some awful school full of nasty kids. And we went swimming and fishing almost every day. It was the greatest, till Wesley came along and ruined everything.”
“I wish we’d stayed in Los Angeles,” Alice said.
“No, you don’t.”
“Mom and Dad’d still be alive.”
“Maybe. But you never know. Maybe the quake would’ve killed us all.”
“Would’ve been better than this.”
“No, it wouldn’t have been.”
“I’d rather be dead,” Alice blurted. “I’d rather be dead any day of the week than get… Rupert, you don’t know what he does to us.”
“Huh-uh,” I said.
I wasn’t about to let on that I’d watched him and Thelma with Erin. It would’ve been too embarrassing. And it would’ve made the twins wonder what was wrong with me—how come I watched them mess with Erin, but didn’t try to help her?
“They play with us,” Alice said. “It’s bad enough we’ve gotta stay in these cages, but it’s a lot worse when they take us out. They take us out to play with us. They play dress-up with us. They play house with us. They make us eat with them and dance for them and fight with them. Anything they can think of, they make us do. And it always ends up the same way, with getting beaten to a pulp and getting fucked.”
“Hey,” Erin said. “You don’t have to get crude about it.”
“It is crude. Everything about it is crude! I wish I was dead!”
“No, you…”
“Hey! Knock it off! Jesus H. Christ, it’s the middle of the night. Some of us are trying to sleep around here, thank you very much.”
“Connie?” I said.
Silence.
Then she asked, “Who said that?”
“Me.”
More silence.
Then, “Rupert?”
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”
“Holy fucking shit! Rupert!”
Reunion
“Rupert?” Now Billie had joined in, obviously awakened by Connie’s excited voice. “Is that you?”
“Yeah. How are you?”
Instead of answering, she sort of gasped, “Oh, my God” in a shaky voice.
“Haul it over here so we don’t have to yell,” Kimberly greeted me.
“Hi, Kimberly,” I said.
“You’re a little late for arriving in the nick of time,” she said, “but better late than never. Come on over here.”
I whispered, “I’d better go. But don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything.” I eased my hand out of Erin’s.
“You’ll get us out of here, won’t you?” Alice asked.
“Yeah. Somehow.”
“Just be careful,” Erin told me. “And come back to our side of things when you get a chance, okay?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
“We don’t even know what you look like,” she said.
I thought about the lighter in my pocket. She’d pretty much invited me to strike it up. I wanted to do it. The flame would give me a close-up look at her, sitting there in her cage. I’d get a chance to see her twin sister, too.
Both of them probably naked.
A good way to find out whether they were really identical.
But they’d already been badly treated—to put it mildly. I didn’t want myself adding to their troubles by lighting them up and embarrassing them.
So I kept the cigarette lighter in my pocket.
