You're trying my shoes on for a change / They look so good but fit so strange / Out of fashion, so I can't complain...
"Stupid, stupid, stupid!" cried Jimmy, pounding his fist against the shack's metal wall. "God, how could I be so dumb?!"
The twins watched helplessly as their friend raged. They were a heartbreaking sight now, thin and pale, with a trauma in their big guileless eyes that would haunt Jimmy for years.
"You're not stupid," Bette said softly. Her hair was dyed blonde now, set in big curls that had initially looked glamorous but now were mussed and wilted. "You came for us."
"You don't understand!" exclaimed Jimmy, turning to face them. "I failed everyone! I failed Meep, I failed my Ma, I failed Dandy, and now I failed you! I can't save you! Don't you get it?!"
The girls came closer so that Dot's hand could stroke Jimmy's cheek. "It was never your job to save us," the dark-haired twin said. "Just to love us. And you did, Jimmy. You do."
Jimmy shook his head. "We're gonna rot in here," he said. "I know it. We've been tricked, tricked and trapped. That asshole is gonna leave us to die in this place then he's gonna take everything. And it's my fault."
Bette forced a wan smile. "Back on the farm," she said, "whenever Dot and I were scared, when it was stormy or mama was angry... we'd pray."
Bitter tears came to Jimmy's eyes. "I don't believe in God," he whispered. "Not a God who would create the likes of us."
Bette nodded. "That's okay," she said, but when the twins' shared body knelt to the cold floor, it took only the lightest touch to make Jimmy kneel with them.
"Lord," whispered Bette, her voice shaking as she bowed her head and reached for Jimmy's hand. "Make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love." Tears dripped from her closed eyes. Dot was crying, too. She reached blindly for Jimmy's other hand and he took hers, completing the circle.
"Where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, harmony; where there is error, truth; where there is doubt... faith."
Jimmy hung his head and tried to feel the presence of the God he didn't believe in. He closed his eyes and tried to see the deity, the light, but all that appeared behind his lids was blackness. He heard Bette's voice, though, her sweet southern drawl choked with emotion. It filled him with the kind of inner warmth churches talked about, that slowly creeping comfort. It wasn't God; but it was love, Jimmy figured, and God was that.
"...Where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness... joy. Oh divine master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love..."
Bette's voice broke and a draft blew through the locked shack, chilling them. It was cold and shut up and dark, and Jimmy had no idea how much time had passed or whether it was day or night. He gripped the twins' hands tighter in his lengthy, clumsy claws. If they died, he realized, if this really was it, then at least they died together. As much as he loved Dandy, the twins understood him on a level that no normal-bodied person ever could. The bond between freaks was a special one, as unspoken as it was unbreakable.
If they died in there, Jimmy Darling thought, if Stanley never came and Dandy never found them and they starved and rotted, at least he died loved.
"For it is in giving that we receive;" Bette whispered, "It is in pardoning that we are pardoned... And it is in d-dying that we are born to eternal life.."
The girls' choked sobs were the only sound in the room, their hands in his all he could feel. A tear trickled down from beneath Jimmy's eyelashes, unseen and falling.
The girl outside of the gas station rest stop was a sorry sight, tarted up with too much cheap makeup and too tight a dress. She cowered, the flat plane of her face contorting in fear as the older man yelled at her.
"Excuse me, sir?" said Dandy, stepping forward from the spot where his car was filling with gas. Maggie tried to hold him back but he ignored her.
"Unless you wanna buy this little screw-up for the night, I don't wanna hear it!" the graying man barked, barely turning to look at him. "She ain't made me a goddamn penny in days!"
The prostitute cast a terrified glance at Dandy under the glow of the dim street lamp. Initially he'd cared little for the girl. The man was being noisy and disturbing his train of thought, and all self-righteous monologuing be damned, Dandy was ready to stab him then and there for it. But then he noticed that the cast of her face and her stout, blunt body marked her as simple, the product of a chromosomal abnormality.
Freak. His heart steeled and his blood ran cold.
"Haven't you read the Bible, sir?" he asked, icy-polite. Dandy wasn't a religious man, but now the old scripture came to him, so relevant and pointed that he felt it in his bones.
"I ain't got no time for you door to door preachers," the man grumbled. "Take it elsewhere."
Dandy's mouth twitched a smile like cold steel. "And the king will say," he said evenly, drawing his mother's pistol from his suit pocket, "'Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.'" Then he aimed the gun and pulled the trigger. The old man died instantly, shot point-blank in the back of the head.
"Holy shit, Dandy!" gasped Maggie, looking as far as she could see in either direction for someone who might have seen them. But it was deepest night and the country road was deserted.
Dandy went to the young woman, peering down into her shocked face. "What is your name, dearest?" he asked mildly.
"D-D-Daisy..." the girl trembled, tears making tracks in her grotesque makeup.
"Daisy, I know of a place for you," he said. "One where you'll be protected, safe. I swear on my family's name no one will ever violate you again. Maggie!" He turned to his companion, still lingering nervous by the car. "Drive Daisy here to the freak show and tell one of the good ones to look after her."
"Wait, who?"
"Oh, I don't know! The fellow with the strange arms or something, he seemed nice! Do as I say. I'll stay here and dispose of this trash."
"Are you sleeping?" asked Maggie softly. She and Dandy lay side by side in the double bed of the cheap roadside motel room they'd rented for the night. It wasn't what he was used to, but they couldn't risk being seen checking into one of the better-known hotels in town.
"No," said Dandy tensely.
Maggie bit her lip, sullen in the dark. "Me neither."
Dandy sighed heavily and began to rise, but Maggie's hand on his arm stopped him. "Hey," she said softly. "Come on. You've gotta sleep sometime."
"What if we're too late?" he moaned, lying back down beside her. "What if they die? I simply have to think of something, something tonight..."
Maggie's face clouded. "If they die," she said, her voice catching slightly, "it'll be my fault. Not yours."
"Don't be absurd," he muttered. "You've done nothing."
"You don't know," she said bitterly. "The things I've done, Dandy... You're not the only one with blood on your hands."
"So you've killed?" he dismissed. "So has Jimmy. Bette, even. It's fine."
"No," said Maggie, shaking her head. "I mean people Jimmy knew, ones he loved... Ma Petite, Salty, even... even Ethel. I didn't mean to, Dandy, and I didn't pull any triggers, but they're still dead because of me. Me and Stanley. But he was the only parent I ever knew and I was just so scared, and... God, no. No. There's no excuse."
Dandy hesitated a moment before silencing her with a kiss. He had little in terms of a conventional sex drive and even less of that was geared towards women, but the thrill of a kill always whet his appetite for physical pleasure. That, and he was silencing fears of his own, finding solace in her kiss.
Maggie did the same. After a prolonged liplock he moved further down, lifting her half-slip and pulling aside her satin panties. Maggie gasped when his tongue touched her nether regions. He'd never done it before, but he took cues from her, teasing her open with the tip of his tongue and lapping at her clit until she cried out softly with orgasm and pushed him away. The taste to him was sweet but somehow primal, too, like the smell of the blood he brought forth in his victims.
The murderous pair stripped quickly in the semi-dark and Dandy climbed atop Maggie with eager force, biting at her neck while she tugged at his hair. He was used to holding Jimmy and she felt tiny in comparison, birdlike where Jimmy was solid. He pinned her delicate wrists down and slipped inside of her, wet and easy.
Maggie freed her arms and wrapped them around Dandy, pulling him close as he thrust, making the bed shake and clatter against the cheap wall. Her small breasts, soft and shallow on her narrow chest, pressed against him. Dandy was an average-sized man, but he felt incredibly strong in her arms, each muscle solid and forceful and hard. He didn't feel like any of the other men she'd been with. His skin and hair were softer, as if he'd known less physical hardship. He even smelled expensive, she thought. Like fine soap and new leather.
They held tight to one another and fucked desperately, as if in a frantic search for comfort; a need to forget.
Jimmy didn't know how long it had been, whether it was mere hours or days. Their water supply was running low, as was the small ration of bread and fruit Stanley had left them with. It was as if he could feel his bones freezing, his rib cage collapsing with hunger inside him, his stomach folding in on itself with emptiness. He sat with the twins atop the small cot and held them, wanting them warm. He hoped his heart went first.
When the door to the shack cracked open, he was shocked to see light. He expected to see Stanley, but instead a man no older than himself stepped inside, dressed in blue scrubs. Jimmy squinted. He'd never seen the guy before.
"Hello," the young man said nervously. "I'm Doctor Sugar. I'm here to perform your... um... operations?"
A chill ran down Jimmy's spine. This couldn't be right. This man looked too young to be a doctor, and his stilted way of speaking suggested a child in a Christmas play more than it did a brilliant surgeon.
Dot and Bette hung back, similar reservations showing in their faces. Jimmy swallowed his fear and stood up, stepping forward. "Me first," he said.
The twins moved from the cot and let Jimmy lie down. From his prone position he saw the young doctor's mouth twitch, as if he were frightened or sad. "Just like puppies..." he muttered, reaching into the large bag he carried.
"What?"
"N-Nothing. Lie down, Mr. Darling, and I'll administer the anesthesia. You won't feel a thing."
The syringe only looked half full. Jimmy held back tears, resisting with every bone in his body the urge to jump up, to panic, to run.
Dot came close and took his hand. "Don't cry, little architect," she whispered. Jimmy took one last look at the hands heredity cursed him with before focusing on her face. He felt the needle slide into a vein in his wrist. Dot was the last thing he saw before it all went black.