Psycho Chapter One

Vincent had been prepared to die. When three hulking demons barged into the empty house he and his sister had been illegally squatting in, he had been asleep. He had wanted to die, in fact, or else he would never hear the end of it from Stella. She always got irrationally upset when he fell asleep on watch.

But he wasn’t dead. Even though everything was pitch black and the air around him was warm and dry, he knew that he wasn’t dead. The pain was always a good indicator. His face stung, his arms and legs felt bruised beyond recognition. With a great deal of effort, he forced his heavy eyelids open. Vincent found himself lying facedown on a dirt floor. He groaned and rolled over on top of his hands, which were tied tightly behind his back with a length of coarse rope.

“Stella?” He meant to call her name, but the word came out in a hoarse whisper. He was parched. There was no reply. Vincent rolled onto his back, hoping it was because she didn’t hear him, and took stock of his surroundings. Judging by the musty smell and dirt floor, Vincent guessed that he was underground. The dim light wavered, suggesting that torches were the only source of illumination. Wriggling like a fish out of water, he forced himself into a sitting position, leaning against one of the dirt walls. A dark lump a few feet away from him caught Vincent’s eye, and he breathed a sigh of relief. It was his sister.

But his relief quickly turned to worry, because if the demons didn’t kill him, Stella definitely would.

Luckily, she was unconscious (Vincent never thought he’d hear himself think that), so he could assess their newest obstacle. Vincent had been in a dungeon before (dirt walls, torch light, there was no other possibility), and most of them weren’t too difficult to escape from. People usually didn’t take Psycho abilities into account when building cells.

This dungeon was particularly stereotypical, Vincent thought - he liked to spend whatever free time he had watching Ordinary movies of all sorts (especially the Disney princess ones, which he would never admit to Stella), so he was a bit of a dungeon expert. Three sturdy dirt walls stretched their gloomy fingers ten feet in the air, the last side fitted with thick iron bars. There was no way of opening them from the inside, but surely he and Stella would think of something.

Vincent strained at the ropes binding his wrists together, but whoever had tied them was an expert. They pushed his green and black beaded bracelet painfully into his wrist. Clumsily, he got to his feet. He was slightly disappointed in their captor; there was no weighted ball and chain attached to his ankle. Sloppy.

Tripping more times than he’d like to admit (all on purpose, of course, for theatrical effect), he stumbled over to Stella and knelt down beside her. Vincent took a deep breath. It was time to face the wrath of the beast. Cautiously, he nudged her shoulder.

“Stella?” She was breathing. She was alive. He nudged her again. “C’mon Stella, wake up!” Stella moaned, rolling over. Alright Stella, Vincent thought. Just remember, you brought this upon yourself. The temperate atmosphere was suddenly permeated with cold wind, and then, out of nowhere, it began to snow over Stella’s head.

At first, the flakes fell lightly, sharply contrasting with Stella’s near black hair and all black attire. Then, Vincent got impatient. The snow began to fall faster, and the wind picked up, whipping the flakes around and creating a miniature blizzard.

“Vincent I’m going to kill you!”

Ah, she’s awake.

“Quit it!” Stella roared. The snow melted away, creating a small puddle of water around Stella, who looked positively furious. “Why did you do that?” Vincent shrugged.

“You wouldn’t wake up,” he explained. Stella glanced around the cell as if she had just realized where they were.

“Vincent,” she said softly. Stella was always scarier when she spoke quietly.

“Sorry! Sorry, sorry, I fell asleep!”

“How could you-”

“I couldn’t help it! I was tired!”

“You can sleep when you’re dead, which is going to be pretty damn soon if we don’t get out of here.” She got to her feet much faster than Vincent had. He wondered vaguely how she managed not to fall flat on her face. “Do you know where we are?”

“I got no idea.” Stella swore.

“Perfect. This is just perfect.”

“Calm down, Stell. We’ll get out of it. We always do.”

“Well one of these times we aren’t going to get out of it and it will be your fault,” she snapped.

“Geez, no need to be so pessimistic.” Vincent preferred to have a positive outlook on the world. He woke up every morning with a cheerful thought like : Hey, look at that, I’ve lived another day. or Yipee! I’m not fatally wounded.

On those days when he was fatally wounded, it was harder to come up with something.

But Stella was always a downer. She had to find the bad in everything. Instead of being grateful that this particular dungeon wasn’t pitch black, she had to focus on the fact that they were trapped. It was depressing, really.

“Untie me,” she commanded, scooting closer to Vincent. He fumbled at her ropes with his own bound hands. He was already uncoordinated enough when he could see what he was doing. When he wasn’t looking, it was a complete disaster. “Hurry up!”

“I’m trying! They’re tight and I can’t see.” Vincent practically heard Stella roll her eyes. Pessimistic.

Eventually, he managed to get her ropes undone. She turned around and freed him in less than a minute. “That’s not fair, your hands were in front of you,” he muttered, rubbing his sore wrists.

“Do you want me to tie you up again?”

“No.” It was with great difficulty that Vincent refrained from saying not that you could anyway. Stella was already in a bad mood, and he really didn’t want her to set his hair on fire. He had been proudly not on fire for three days, it was a new record.

Stella paced dizzyingly around the cell, dragging her hand against the dirt wall and closing her eyes in deep concentration. Vincent sat on the floor and grew little icicles from the ground. He watched Stella shake the iron bars.

“They’re strong,” she announced.

“They’re bars on a dungeon cell door, I’d think they’d be strong.”

“Oh shut up. I’m just making observations.”

“There’s not much to observe. We’ll have to wait for someone to pass. Then we can force them to stop and help us,” Vincent said. Reluctantly, Stella nodded. She sank down onto the dirt floor, her back pressed against a wall.

“At least its quiet,” she said. She had said something nearly optimistic. Vincent wished they had balloons to celebrate the occasion. Instead, he just smiled widely - which wasn’t much of a change from normal - and nodded. “They couldn’t have taken us too far.”

“We can just add our current location to the list of things that we don’t know,” Vincent said. Stella snorted bitterly.

“There has to be some explanation, we can’t have just forgotten sixteen years of our lives.” It seemed that every one of their discussions came to this, the unconquerable enigma that was their existence. There was no way for them to find out who they really were. Just one day nearly a year ago, they had woken up in the penthouse of a five star hotel with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and a note in elegant print telling them their names and a bit of very basic information. And that had been all that they knew.

Vincent assumed that he was some sort of superhero. The villains must have gotten to him and erased his memory to make him less of a danger to their nefarious schemes. Stella (of course) harbored darker notions.

“No, clearly someone wiped our memories,” Vincent said.

“But why us?” Vincent sighed. Stella asked that question far too often and he still had no answer. A million snarky retorts jumped to the tip of his tongue, but there was no need to upset Stella further.

“I dunno.” They lapsed into silence. The quiet was never awkward between them. Even when they had woken up knowing nothing about themselves, they could feel a bond between them. They were twins. Vincent would do anything for Stella, and he knew, despite her distance, that Stella felt the same way.

Quick, light footsteps disturbed the silence. Vincent met Stella’s eye. This was their chance. All they had to do was use their abilities to trap whoever was coming and force them to open the cell. Vincent abandoned his spot in the center of the cell and pressed himself up against the wall near Stella. Whoever was approaching was whistling.

Vincent’s heart rate sped up, adrenaline pumped though his veins. Someone rounded the corner, and like a well-practiced team that they were, he and Stella pounced.