(edited)
You would think it's cool to have a twin sister who shares the same hazel eyes and brown hair, the same nose and lips and who is approximately the same height as you are.
Okay, yeah. Half of the time it is cool, but the other half... not so much. And let me tell you why's that. It's actually a funny yet sad, twisted yet unexpected story.
And it all started because of the damn tampons...
***
Earlier that day...
"I want a Dallas in my life." I sigh dreamily and put a handful of popcorns in my mouth while staring at the brown haired guy with a leather jacket on the laptop screen.
How can he be so damn gorgeous? How?
Putting another handful of popcorns in my mouth, I continue watching The Outsiders and imagining Dallas as my boyfriend.
What? It's not weird, okay? I'm sure you've all done it as well.
Single life has been boring recently.
As I watch the movie, mom decides it would be a great time to call out after me from the other side of the house.
"Willa, honey, can you go to the store for me? We're out of tampons." She yells from her and dad's bathroom. With a heavy sigh, I press the pause button on the laptop and make my way there, lazily sliding my feet across the carpeted floor.
"Can't someone else go, mom? I'm kinda busy."
"Watching Dallas for the fourth time this week is hardly called being busy," she snickered then added. "Anyways, I would've sent Jade if she was home. That girl seriously goes out too much." She ends the sentence with a worried mumble and shoves the clean towels she had folded in the bathroom shelves. I furrow my eyebrows.
Jade is my twin and lately, she has been going out a lot more and even staying until sunrise sometimes. One night she even came home with cut lip and bruised eye, and I had to lie my parents to cover for her.
"What about dad?" I think of him as an alternative almost immediately. My little brother would've been the other option if he wasn't too young. Dad will be able to go, yes. Believe it or not, he likes to go to grocery shopping . He says it calms him down for some reason.
"Oh, honey, he refers to the tampons as blood bazookas. Do you really think he's mature enough to buy a box of tampons? He's almost fifty and he's still immature." She laughs at my suggestion then points a finger at me to grab my attention and make me listen. "All the men in his family are like that, you know. Your grandmother warned me, but no. I thought that was refreshing, something different from all the serious guys at the time. Now, he can't go out and buy a simple ladies' product."
Mum rambles on and puts a new soap in the container by the faucets, and I just stare at her, debating whether I should silently walk away while she's distracted and free myself from going to the store.
"What was I saying?" she abruptly cut herself off and looked at me, eyebrows furrowed and lips tight, then lifted those brows in remembrance. "Go get me some tampons before this place looks like a crime scene." She fishes out a fifty from her back pocket, shoves it in my hand and hurries me out of the bathroom. I guess I'm all out of options then. After all, you don't want to deal with a woman on her period.
From there, I go straight to my room. I take a hot second to look for my sneakers and my phone, and when I have them I walk downstairs in the living room. I notice Christopher sitting on the carpet by the couch, playing with his mini plastic soldiers, and I smile. Maybe a little devilishly, too.
"Whatcha got there?" I innocently skip to where he is, still thinking if I should tickle him or throw a cushion at him just to annoy him. He becomes the cutest six year old when angered.
Without turning his head to me, his small cute voice stopped me just an arm's reach away from him. "Don't you dare." then he turned his head to the left, a coy smirk resting on his lips that you'd think twice before suggesting it belonged to that sweet voice. "I'll tell mum you broke the clock in the kitchen, the one grandma gave it to her." he added and stared me down.
Damn, this kid has got some game...
Scowling, and half playful half serious, I raise my hands in surrender, but lower my right hand to my lips and put my index finger vertically across them, a don't say a word motion. Christopher shakes off that coy smirk and replaces it with a sweet one, then goes back to playing with his toys.
"Willa, hurry up!" Mom muffled, urging voice comes from upstairs, making me rush and put on my sneakers at once. Not 10 seconds later, I was out of the house.
The sun has already set down and the stars are beginning to show up. It was the start of autumn here in Washington so the weather was bound to get chiller sooner or later. That's why I have a long-sleeved shirt on.
The nearest shop is five minutes away if you walk so once I get there, I grab a box of mum's preferred tampons and, with the rest of the money, I get some nachos and a salsa dip contained in a medium sized jar. Christopher adores the combination.
I pay for the stuff then start walking home, but as I put one foot in front of the other and distracted by the phone in my hand, all of a sudden something metal comes out of nowhere on the pavement right in front of me and I manage to walk straight into it, my nose taking the most of the colision impact. My glasses fall on the ground after the bump so I let out a string of curses before bending down to pick them up. Now, despite a reddened and probably bruised nose, I will have broken eyeglasses, too. Perfect.
As I try to put the glass lens back into my eyeglasses frame, out of the corner of my right eye I detect unusual motion few feet away from me. It is too blurry to tell what exactly it is so I shrug it off and continue trying to piece together the eye wear. Just when I succeed, instead of feeling proud I repaired them, I jump in surprise when I hear yelling in front of me. I put my glasses back on hurriedly and turn around to see what is happening. Four tall and buff men come striding my way, faces full of angry expressions and sneers, and my stomach drops when I realize they're staring at me. Not at someone behind me, but at me. My heart picks up its pace and I try going the other way when one of the four yells.
"It's definitely her!" the gruff man, who's maybe in his forties, growls and suddenly the four of them stand just few feet in front of me. I gulp, my throat suddenly as dry as sandpaper, and stare at them. Black suits, polished shoes and eyes as cold as ice stare back.
I try to swiping my tongue over my dried out lips ti wet them before mustering up the courage to speak. "What's going on?" I ask at last, my voice coming out more scared and wavering than I wanted.
"You'll soon find out," the only one who has spoken so far answers, and with the flick of his wrist, another man from my right steps toward me and pressed something sharp against the side of my ribs. Something metal. I look down and my breath gets stuck in my throat when I see that that metal something is a gun.
Oh, dear God!
Instinctively, my legs, no matter how shaky, start taking me backwards, away from them, as I stare at that metal machinery capable of killing with a single hook of a finger. As soon as the voiced man notices me moving he narrows his eyes and now the guy on my left just gets a hold of my forearm and grips it securely while the other holds me at gunpoint. "Another step and you get the hard way."
"Please, don't hurt me. I-I have some money. You can have it." I tell him, but I doubt it is money they're after. Dressed in impecable black suits like that, money most surely isn't what they're after. He ignores me and angles his head, a sign for the others to grab me and get going. At this, panic rises in me as never before and I try to free my arm, but to no luck. For the first time, the guy holding the gun speaks up and surprisingly with a thick Italian accent, unlike the other one.
"You move, I shoot your leg." and for emphasis, he cocks the gun, the vibration of the moving mechanism traveling along my stiff spine.
For the n-th time, my heart skips a beat and now tears begin welling up in my eyes.
"Please, don't," the sentence is a sorry attempt at begging and my voice is even more pitiful.
I look around, but no other humans are there to see this, to help me.
They drag me down the road, the first guy who spoke leading the way a few feet ahead to two back and window tinted cars parked behind a flower shop that's now closed.
I struggle to get free despite the threat I'd get shot. Somewhere along the way to the cars, I dropped the grocery bag and phone and now my hands are free to help me defend myself in any way possible.
The car door opened. I kicked and I screamed. They threw me in the back of one of the cars. I still kicked and begged to be let go. One of them got in to sit next to me. They closed the door. Then the car started and my vision got blurry all of us a sudden.
Before I could realize they had drugged me with a cloth over my mouth, I was already woozy.
"Why can't we just kill her?"
"Because Boss wants her alive," was the last thing I heard before I dozed off into a dreamless dream.