Playmates

By Jess C Scott

Follow THE WILDE TWINS in a twisted tale of love and loyalty. . .

PLAYMATES (Wilde Twins, Book #1)

As kids, Tania and Trevor's unsupervised play time offers a lifeline to sanity amidst the chaos of family dysfunction. When danger threatens Tania, Trevor isn't willing to stand by and watch his sister get hurt. The instinct for survival is only rivaled by the killer instincts the Wilde siblings encourage in each other. Instincts that turn into a deadly game igniting their first taste for blood.

Book #1 in The Wilde Twins: a psychological thriller about an "evil twins" serial killing team--and their slow descent into amoral mayhem.

***

WILDE TWINS Books:

Book 1 - Playmates
Book 2 - Bedmates
Book 3 - Soulmates

***

Praise for Jess C Scott and her award-winning fiction:

-Reviewer Top Pick at Night Owl Reviews (2011)
-Readers' Favorite Five Star Award (2014)

"A chilling portrayal of two young siblings from a broken home who embark on a journey of bloodlust. Scott captures the pathos, the inner turmoil, and the cold logic of surviving childhood in a world without tenderness--with only the smell of cheap wine on its breath."
-- Charles Austin Muir, contributing author to Hell Comes to Hollywood (Stoker-nominated)

"A true-to-life action-packed family drama, complete with sex, drugs, alcoholism, and violence."
-- Katherine Mayfield, author of Bullied

"Tragic, brutal, morbid and disturbingly enthralling. . .this is a dark cautionary tale of children mutated by our sick and hypocritical society that should not be missed."
-- Kristopher Miller, reviewer at The Catacomb's Bookshelf

"Events [in Playmates] progress to a crescendo and offer no predictable conclusion. This means readers should be prepared for the second installment of a slowly-building psychological thriller of the emergence of evil and sociopathic responses to an impossible life."
-- D. Donovan, Senior eBook Reviewer, MB

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jess C Scott
• Release date: Apr 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311368775

Jess C Scott

Jess is a writer who's moved on to better things.She thanks her (loyal!) readers for appreciating her writing over the years.She continues to write lots of non-fiction these days. And yes, she still blogs in a range of different specialties.Jess was a participating author in the 2012 Singapore Writers Festival, and has been called “bold, daring, and always original” by The Arts House.

Book preview

PRAISE for PLAYMATES

A chilling portrayal of two young siblings from a broken home who embark on a journey of bloodlust. Scott captures the pathos, the inner turmoil, and the cold logic of surviving childhood in a world without tenderness—with only the smell of cheap wine on its breath.

— Charles Austin Muir, contributing author to Hell Comes to Hollywood (Stoker-nominated) and Dark Visions (Grey Matter Press)

A true-to-life action-packed family drama, complete with sex, drugs, alcoholism, and violence.

— Katherine Mayfield, award-winning author of Bullied

Tragic, brutal, morbid and disturbingly enthralling. . .this is a dark cautionary tale of children mutated by our sick and hypocritical society that should not be missed.

— Kristopher Miller, reviewer at The Catacomb’s Bookshelf

* * *

PLAYMATES (Wilde Twins, Book 1)

By Jess C Scott

Published by jessINK | Smashwords Edition

Text Copyright © 2014 by Jess C Scott

Cover Design by jessINK

Cover Image by joyfull/Bigstock

Website: www.jessINK.com/wilde.htm

Chapter 39 originally appeared in Bards and Sages Quarterly.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

1. Fiction—Psychological

2. Fiction—Thrillers

3. Fiction—Crime

Summary: As kids, survival instincts turn into a deadly game which ignites the Wilde twins’ first taste for blood. Book #1 in The Wilde Twins trilogy.

* * *

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART 1: 9 Years Old

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9

PART 2: 10 Years Old

Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17

PART 3: 11 Years Old

Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23 | Chapter 24 | Chapter 25

PART 4: 12 Years Old

Chapter 26 | Chapter 27 | Chapter 28 | Chapter 29 | Chapter 30 | Chapter 31 | Chapter 32 | Chapter 33

PART 5: 13 Years Old

Chapter 34 | Chapter 35 | Chapter 36 | Chapter 37 | Chapter 38 | Chapter 39 | Chapter 40

SNEAK PEEK: BEDMATES

JESS C SCOTT’S OTHER WORKS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

* * *

Dedication:

To Billy (age 4) and The Kids.

Because every child should grow up in a healthy home environment.

* * *

All things truly wicked start from innocence.

~ Ernest Hemingway

* * *

PART 1: 9 Years Old

Chapter 1: Trevor

My birthday wish was simple: run away with my twin sister.

We were seated on the upper bunk of the bunk bed in our bedroom. The top bunk was mine.

Make the first wish, Tania said, since you’re older than me by two minutes.

Tania often reminded me of the fact. It was how we decided I’d get to be on top too.

She was lying on her stomach and resting her chin on her hands, looking at the starry night sky from our log cabin at Pleasant Lake.

I’d like to run away with you, I said, as I pointed out the brightest star. I didn’t know whether it was a star or planet, but I liked how it flickered with white, red and blue hues every night.

Where would we go? Tania’s big eyes were shining brightly. Do you know?

I shook my head. Somewhere faraway from here.

At least I was sure of that.

Tania gave a half-hearted smile. She gazed out the window as a gentle breeze brushed her soft hair against her face. I would like to be a movie star.

There was a loud yell from the living room then—Dad’s voice—and the familiar violent jolt of the sound of glass shattering. Someone had once again broken a bottle on the wall just outside our room.

Flinging the bottle, I whispered, even though our parents referred to it as daily wine time.

I moved a little closer to Tania when I saw her wince. No matter how routine loud sounds could be, they always affected her. A hint of frightened tension would go over her face, like she was just on the verge of breaking into tears at any second, even though she rarely did.

I wanna be a star—I wanna run away—I wanna be a star, Tania muttered, almost like she was repeating a chant. Run away with you. Yes. I would like that, Trev. I would like that very much.

I glanced at the clock on the wall. 8:00 PM. Wine Time usually started at 6:00 PM and would go on as the sounds and yelling got louder and louder—Shit!—You bitch!—Whore!—the famous eff word—until Mom or Dad threw a bottle at the other person. It would be left to Tania and me to clear the mess and clean up the blood.

Tania and I tasted some of that stuff called alcohol, by the way, the day before our ninth birthday. We helped ourselves to one of the bottles lying around on the floor.

I poked my tongue out and made a face when I tasted it. It had a strange scent and taste and got me very thirsty very quickly.

"They’ll start throwing the bottle at us one day, Tania said as she bit on her nails. You see it on TV. Our parents are batshit crazy. I wish we could live like the Kazandjians."

Tania only said batshit in front of me or some of her friends at school.

Mom struck her across the face the first time she said it.

Nasty bitch running her mouth! Mom had muttered under her breath. And Mom’s Herculean foot kicked Tania out of the way as she stomped across the hallway towards the kitchen.

I was sitting on the couch when that happened. I was watching something about a porn star’s boobs and butt implants on MTV. I recognized the blonde sweet-faced porn star in some of Mom’s Always In Touch magazines that were stacked high on one side of the couch.

Tania crawled onto the seat next to me, folding her arms across her chest with a sullen look on her face.

Mom says ‘shit’ all the time, Tania snarled during an ad break. She spoke softly since Mom was pretty nearby, talking very loudly and cussing a lot over the phone. "And she doesn’t hit you when you say bad words."

Then I won’t say those words in front of Mom too, I said with a smile. Okay?

Tania nodded and leaned against me as we watched a masked man using a black marker to draw arrows on the porn star’s nose, face, and body.

I liked being close to Tania. I liked that we didn’t pick on each other. We knew we both didn’t want to. What did we have apart from each other?

In the mornings, we would sometimes gaze out at the colors of the sky at dawn, listening to the trickling sounds of the lake lapping the shore, or viewing the wonder of the sun rising out.

At the same time, I thought it was funny we lived in a place called Pleasant Lake, where the people around us often weren’t in a very pleasant mood at all.

Mom always had colorful pills and a vodka bottle in hand. She liked talking to herself and throwing random things on the floor or against the wall. Sometimes, she’d take Dad’s hand gun out and wave it around. She’d point it at us and cackle, Don’t worry, kids—it ain’t loaded... before tossing it back into the drawer where it came from.

She never did that to us when Dad or anyone else was in the house.

It must have had something to do with a back injury she had from a ski trip when Tania and I were six years old. That’s when the doctor gave her those white pills in an orange bottle, then she got more pills by herself from the store, and later on started to take them all together, washing it all down with a swig or two from the bottle she’d have in an iron grip with her right hand.

Mom was a beauty queen in her senior year of high school. She used to be very pretty. She started to dress more sloppy and pack on the pounds once she started staying at home more. I think she stopped combing her hair too. After that, her favorite pastime was walking around the house announcing she wasn’t going to bathe that day because she hated taking showers past 4:00 PM.

Dad sometimes said she could be featured on Ripley’s Believe It or Not for ending up this way when she actually was a former ed tech at Pleasant Point Community College, which was how she met Dad, who was an English lecturer.

He confused me too.

I would see him nicely dressed in the morning for work, looking every bit the studious professor he was. Black rectangular glasses, trimmed beard, ironed shirt, nice shoes.

Tania and I would sometimes see him at the college when he picked us up from school.

He was all smiles at his workplace, with a pleasant face and greeted all around by smiley faces. He was happy during the drive back home too—goofing around to the songs that played on the radio or whatever. Tania would howl with laughter with some of the nonsensical lyrics he made up on the fly. Like, he’d change the words I’ll Never Break Your Heart to I’m Gonna Breaaak Your Heart, or sing Sweet Dreams Tomato Juice to the tune of Sweet Dreams Are Made of These.

But he’d reach out for one of those bottles lying around the minute he set foot into the house. Very often, like clockwork, Tania and I would do our homework, then sit in front of the TV with our TV dinners, or go to our room with a peanut butter sandwich for dinner, as our parents had what they called their wine time.

So Tania and I had each other at least, in that Pleasant Lake house.

Later on, I still had simple birthday wishes.

I’d wish that my twin sister and I could have had a childhood.

Chapter 2: Tania

When Momma first hit me, I knew it wasn’t the last time she’d do it.

I knew because I could see how much she enjoyed it—inflicting pain on me, taking her unexpressed rage at the world or whoever out on me because I was the daughter and I couldn’t do anything against my mother. Each blow on me was a triumph for her, another successful venting of the inner demons that lurked deep within her disturbed self.

I’d stand in front of the bathroom mirror, looking at the red blotches on my arm that shouldn’t have been there.

Nothing I did ever seemed good enough.

I swear I could sense her looming, hulking presence at the doorway, where she’d be screaming at Trevor and me.

"Do Your Homework! she would shriek, sometimes slapping a long wooden ruler against her fat open palm, sometimes waving around that favorite hand gun of hers. She’d threaten us about slamming our faces into the computer desk" if we didn’t listen.

Momma was not a big woman, but I could feel myself shrinking and cowering if I dared to meet the gaze behind the thick reading glasses she had on all the time. It was a soulless gaze, burning with a wild hatred that shouldn’t be there in anyone who could call themselves a parent.

Those glasses made her appear a lot older too. They made Momma’s eyes look beady and broadcast the fine lines on her face.

You’re worthless and stupid, Momma would constantly remind me, with flecks of spittle from her mouth raining down the back of my neck if she stood near.

Momma sometimes rambled on about how I wasn’t wanted.

Piece of shit—I never shoulda had you—we only wanted one son! Where can I send you back? You’re a ho, watching TV with that little boy next door.

I had been watching TV with both Trevor and the boy next door since the boy’s parents invited the two of us over. So I supposed Momma thought little girls were all ho’s if they sat beside little boys.

I gathered from early on that Trevor was always better, always smarter. He was even born two minutes before me. So he was ahead of me right from the beginning.

One afternoon, I was watching a reality TV show about teenage runaways.

Trev! I called out, a little short of breath. Look! One day, we’ll be TV stars too.

He nodded, and we both swore on our pinkie fingers that we’d really do it one day—run away together, away from the small town backwoods forever—once we had figured out where we wanted to go and how we were going to get there.

Momma says I’m a mistake and that I shouldn’t have been born, I said to a few nights later. I watched a Netflix show on abortion today. Momma shoulda aborted me.

Think of Jesus, Trevor would gravely advise me.

Why?

He said, ‘Forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’ I bet Mom doesn’t know what she’s saying or doing to you. It’s the pills. They make her crazy.

I was smart enough to know she’d skin me alive if she saw the drawings I did of her, in her tattered nightgown muumuu clothes with the oversized glasses that gave her the evil alien eyes. My favorite part of the pencil sketches were the bold, squiggly dark lines which signified the crinkles on her face.

So I’d show the drawings to Trevor. We’d laugh. Then I would shred them up into fifty million tiny pieces and throw them away so Momma couldn’t piece them back together even if she was sober enough to try.

Momma was the one who taught me that humans are selfish by nature. The TV, Netflix, YouTube and the Internet, were my parents and teachers. I was sure Momma cared a lot more about her pills and drinking than she did about Trevor and me.

That hit me one day when I was watching the news about children who died in an orphanage shooting in Germany. I realized most people in the world were more concerned with how their hair looked that day—it was just too bad for the children who had died in the orphanage that morning. I knew.

And I could prove it with a flick of the remote, since I was just one channel away from a show called Perfect Hair 4-Ever, which featured the world’s top ten hairstylists battling it out to see who could create the best styles for ten ugly ducklings cursed with difficult types of hair to work with.

Another thing that hit me came about from watching the men Momma entertained during the day in our log cabin house.

It would happen once or twice a month, when Dad was out with his buddies and she needed more cash. She would sometimes wear glittery eye shadow and sheer, shimmery lipstick, just before they came. Then she’d shut the door and there’d be sounds for a while that even the TV on full volume failed to totally block out.

Once, Trevor and I managed to have a sneak peek because the door wasn’t properly shut. The image of Momma and the man was reflected in the antique, duck egg blue framed vertical swing mirror standing on the other side of the room.

The gilded mirror was a lot prettier than the image it reflected. At first, I thought it was two sweaty animals on the bed instead of two human bodies.

Momma was in a weird position—legs over her head, mouth open, the man standing directly behind and slamming his body up against hers.

They finished what they were doing soon after.

Fifty, Momma demanded when the man was getting dressed. She flicked the back of her wrist towards him.

I saw him take out a five-dollar bill from his wallet. He placed it on top of the bed.

"I’ve got kids to feed!" The desperate pleading in her voice, her face, her eyes, was fake.

Trevor and I knew what