In high school, Kelly Watanabe was something of a loner. Everyday after school, she would hang out by herself on the side of the building, sitting on the cold, stone steps and smoking a cigarette. One day after school, she went to hang out in her usual spot, where she found somebody was already there, sitting on the stone staircase where she normally sat. He was slim and tall for his age, his long black hair covering his face, which was covered up more by a realistic-looking mask made out of wax. Rather than tell the freakish-looking kid to get lost or try to bully him, Kelly went over and approached him with a smile.
"Hi", said Kelly.
The boy raised his head, staring up at her. His right eye socket was blackened out, leaving only a single blue eye to take her in. She was a beautiful girl of Chinese-American heritage, and wore a black leather jacket and pants with a white shirt and laced up boots, looking like a punk rock chick. She wore dark eyeliner and rose red lipstick. Her long hair shined like black silk in the sunshine. Her skin was a smooth, pale cream color, almost as pale and smooth as the surface of the mask he wore.
"You mind if I sit here?" Kelly asked, pointing to the space next to him.
The boy looked down at the pile of sketchbooks that were sitting next to him and moved them out of the way so she could sit down. Kelly made herself comfortable and pulled out a packet of cigarettes and took one out for herself, then offered the packet to him.
"You want one?"
The boy shook his head slowly, not saying a word.
Kelly shrugged. "Suit yourself." Lighting the cigarette, Kelly took a drag and blew out smoke, looking around before focusing her eyes on what he was drawing in one of his sketchbooks. "What's that?"
The boy ignored her, keeping his attention focused on the sketch he was working on.
"Come on, let me see it-" Kelly snatched the book out of the boy's hands and took a look at the drawing, which was a pencil drawing of a couple and their dog. Kelly looked at the boy and asked him, "Who are they?"
The boy said nothing and continued to stare at her through the left eye socket of his mask.
"What's the matter?" Kelly asked him. "Cat got your tongue?"
The long-haired boy looked away, wishing he were invisible right now.
Kelly knew she wasn't going to get anywhere with him and handed his sketchbook back to him. "It's a good drawing", she said.
The boy took back his sketchbook and continued working on his drawing, ignoring the girl sitting next to him. He wasn't doing it to be rude. He was simply in art mode and wanted to finish his work.
"What, am I not good enough to talk to you?" Kelly questioned.
The long-haired boy flipped to another page and wrote something done. He showed it to the girl, who read what it said, "My name is Vincent Sinclair. I can't speak."
Kelly felt bad for sounding mean to him and said, "I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to make fun of you or anything. I just wanted to talk to you."
Vincent shrugged, then flipped back to the page he was working on. He couldn't wait to get home and work on some real art. Maybe he would sculpt something out of wax later, like a statue of a mermaid or something.
"My name's Kelly. Kelly Watanabe."
Vincent stopped drawing and turned his head to look at Kelly, staring at her with one blue eye through the left eye socket of his mask. He liked the sound of her name and thought she was pretty, but he couldn't figure out why Kelly wanted to waste her time talking to him. Nobody ever wanted to hang out with Vincent, let alone talk to him. Girls like her should be hanging out with other girls or talking to attractive boys like his older twin, Bo.
"You're new here, aren't you?" Kelly asked him.
Vincent answered with a slow nod of his head.
"I thought so. Well, if you're ever looking for a friend or need somebody to talk to, you can count on me. I'll see you around, Vincent."
Standing up, Kelly finished the last of her cigarette and walked away. She thought Vincent was strange, but knew he was probably just misunderstood. She liked people like that. She didn't care about appearances, so long at the person was nice. So what if Vincent wore a mask? There was no harm in that, was there? What was he hiding underneath that facade, anyway?
During the next three months, Kelly started hanging out with Vincent more and more. Though he couldn't talk, she knew not to judge him for it. She knew American Sign Language, having learned it when her uncle lost his hearing during the Vietnam War, and taught a little bit to Vincent so he could communicate with her better. He learned it pretty quick and was able to express himself to her in a way he never could before. There were times were other teenagers would pick on Vincent or try to take his mask off and tell him he should never have been born, but Kelly was always there to defend him. To everybody else, Vincent was a freak, but not to her. Kelly had learned to look beyond the surface of the mask that covered his face and see the true beauty that lied within him. Vincent was beautiful in his own unique way, especially when it came to expressing himself through art. They were best friends and hung out for a long time, until one day, Vincent stopped coming to school.
Years later, Kelly decided to take a drive out to the backwoods of Louisiana and found herself in the desolated town of Ambrose. She got out of her car at the gas station, wondering where everybody was when a handsome young man came out and asked if she needed any assistance. Kelly told him to fill up the tank and handed the man a twenty to cover the expenses. The man asked if she was traveling somewhere, to which Kelly replied no and that she was simply taking a drive out in the country. The man said that was nice and mentioned his name was Bo Sinclair. Kelly remembered hearing that name before and asked him if he was related to Vincent Sinclair. Bo flashed her a charming smile and said that Vincent was his younger twin brother. When asked how she knew him, Kelly answered she had known Vincent from high school a long time ago. Bo accepted her answer and kindly offered her to his and Vincent's house for dinner, which Kelly accepted.
When he arrived at the house later that evening, Vincent wasn't the least bit surprised to find Bo sitting in the living room on the couch with a pretty young woman, who was laughing and sipping on a glass of lemonade.
Walking into the kitchen, Vincent started preparing dinner, not caring the least bit about his brother's female company and failing to realize who she was.
When Kelly walked into the kitchen to rinse out her glass and put it in the sink, she looked over at the silent man and said with a soft smile, "Hello, Vincent. Don't you remember your best friend from high school?"
Vincent raised his head up a bit and turned around to look at her, staring at her with his good eye. Kelly signed a phrase to him, asking him again if he remembered her. Vincent was a little rusty with his signing, but remembered the basic words she taught him to form a sentence and replied that he did. He asked her how she found this place, to which Kelly laughed and replied that was she was just taking a drive through the state and ran into his brother at the gas station. When she came over to trap him into a hug, Vincent flinched and froze with fear, despair written all over his face underneath his mask. Kelly failed to see his anguish, not knowing of the fate that would await her if she ever found out the truth about the town.
Over the next few days, Kelly stayed at the Sinclair house and continued to help Vincent improve his sign language skills when he wasn't busy working downstairs in the basement of the House of Wax, which is where he spent the majority of his time. Bo was confused by the whole thing and said it was stupid and a waste of time. The last thing he wanted was for Vincent to start waving his arms around trying to speak some "fairy language", as he put it, that he couldn't understand. Kelly took offense to Bo's rude statement and almost told him off, but when Vincent gripped her shoulder and shook his head telling her not to provoke him, she decided to back off and take a walk through town.
Once she was out of earshot, Bo told Vincent that Kelly was starting to ask too many questions and ordered his younger twin to kill her and turn her into a wax sculpture. Vincent refused at first, but after Bo threatened to kill her if he didn't, he went to carry out his brother's orders. When he confronted Kelly in the movie theater with a dragon-handled knife in his hand, Vincent found out he couldn't kill her. Kelly had been kind to him, and was the only one who was ever nice to him besides his mother and father. Bo loved Vincent in his own dark and twisted way, but didn't respect him enough to care about his younger twin.
When Vincent returned to the house with Kelly and Bo found out she was still alive, the older twin dragged her upstairs to his room, pinning her down on the bed and forcing himself onto Kelly. To make things worse, Kelly was a virgin and never had sex before, so when she was forced to suffer the unloving act of rape against her will, she allowed herself to endure the pain and get it over with, otherwise Bo would torture her further or possibly try to kill her himself. Vincent waited downstairs, covering his ears the entire time while Kelly screamed upstairs. He wanted to help her, but he didn't know how.
When Bo finally came down and went outside for a cigarette, Vincent went upstairs to Bo's room and found Kelly lying half naked and crying on the mattress. He knelt down by her side and checked on her to see how badly she was hurt, calming her down when she flinched at the slightest touch of his hand. Vincent picked Kelly up into his strong arms and carried her downstairs to his underground workshop, lying her down gently onto his own bed while he worked to clean up the blood and his brother's semen still left on her legs. Kelly was still shook up from what happened, but didn't hold it against Vincent. She knew he didn't mean for her to get hurt. He was just about as trapped in this situation as she was. They were both prisoners trapped in a world of isolation. There was no chance of either one of them leaving Ambrose anytime soon.
Over the next two months, Kelly tried to figure out a way for both her and Vincent to escape and get away from Bo, but nothing sounded like it would work. She knew Vincent had a rather handsome collection of knives and blades downstairs in his workshop and could probably use one to chop Bo's head off while he slept, but since the bastard kept his room locked at night, and Kelly didn't know how to pick a lock, she quickly tossed that plan right out the window. Poisoning him was out of the question, as Bo didn't trust her in the kitchen, and Vincent did most of the cooking, anyway. Even if Kelly could find any poison in Ambrose, she knew Vincent wouldn't allow her to mix it into Bo's food and drink. With Vincent blinded by devotion to his older twin, Kelly felt the situation was hopeless.
One week later, a group of six twenty-somethings were on their way to a football game and decided to camp out in the woods just outside of Ambrose. Kelly heard about them and quickly devised a plan on how to kill Bo and explained it to Vincent, who was against it. Not because Bo was crazy and arguably deserved it, but because he was still loyal to him. Kelly talked down to Vincent as gently as possible and told him that if he wasn't going to do anything about his brother, then she would take care of Bo by herself.
'No, Kelly, it's too dangerous!' Vincent signed. 'I don't want to see you get hurt again.'
"I don't care", said Kelly. "I'm doing this for you. For us. We have to try to get out of here before it's too late."
'But where are we going to go?' Vincent asked, signing.
Kelly took Vincent's hands into her own and told him, "Don't you worry about that. After tonight, it will be just you and me. I'll take you away from here and we can both be free. I'm not leaving here without you, Vincent."
Vincent cupped her face into his hands, touching his forehead to hers in an affectionate matter similar to a kiss. He then took something out of his satchel and put it into her hand before signing for Kelly to be careful.
When she emerged out of the underground tunnel and reached the surface world, Kelly heard the sound of a gunshot being fired and saw Bo go into the movie theater. She waited outside until the brother and sister that were being pursued came out. A little while later, Bo came out of the theater, with an arrow in his chest and another one through his left arm, and started heading up towards the house, leaving his shotgun behind in the theater. Kelly waited until Bo was gone to sneak inside and found the shotgun sitting on the counter, grabbing it and loading it up with two rounds of ammo Vincent managed to provide for her. One quick shot to Bo's head and it would all be over, unless those arrows took care of him first.
The plan almost worked, but Kelly's idea of taking Bo out was foiled when she smelled smoke coming from somewhere and looked over towards the burning House of Wax. Kelly's eyes widened with fear, knowing that Vincent was most likely still in there. Quickly, she rushed over and kicked the door open. Once inside, she found Bo's body on the floor, his pretty face having been beaten in with a baseball bat. Problem solved.
Just then, Kelly heard commotion from upstairs and headed up the quickly-melting staircase, getting stuck twice and pulling herself out of the gunk. She arrived just in time to see an unmasked Vincent struggling to stab the man on the bed, ordering his sister to kill him. The girl stabbed Vincent with a knife, jabbing it into his left side. Before the girl could jab the blade further into Vincent's side, and before Kelly could fire a shot at her, the floor suddenly caved in, sending the four of them falling through to the main room below. Kelly was unharmed, but knew that Vincent was in trouble. Filled with adrenaline, she helped him to his feet and rushed to get them both out of the burning house of wax, leaving the sibling duo to fend for themselves.
Kelly helped Vincent walk away slowly from the burning wax museum and headed up towards the house. She sat him down on the couch and tried to pull the knife out, but Vincent stopped her, breathing heavily. He was in need of medical attention, but Kelly didn't know what to do.
"Oh, Vincent", Kelly whispered, trying real hard not to cry. "I need to get you out of here. I have to get you to a doctor somehow, but I'm afraid of what people are going to say when they ask us how it happened."
Vincent signed to her, 'I don't need a doctor. I can stitch the wound myself. Go look upstairs.'
Kelly knew Vincent was talking about his father's office upstairs and went to look for medical supplies. She found a First Aid kit and brought it downstairs to Vincent, who managed to pull the knife out by himself and was now clutching at his wound, trying to stop the bleeding. He signed for Kelly to bring him warm water and some towels from the kitchen. Kelly went to go get them and returned just as Vincent had finished threading a needle. She helped him out of his overcoat and sweater, wiping away the blood and sanitizing the wound with warm water and one of the towels, then she sat beside Vincent on the couch while he sewed up the wound.
Just as Vincent was done securing his wound, Kelly heard police sirens and went to look outside the window. The House of Wax was still burning in the distance, but there was a firetruck trying to put out the flames.
Kelly looked at Vincent and told him they needed to get out of town now while they still had the chance. Vincent stood and walked over to head up the stairs. Kelly followed after him, asking him what he was doing.
Kneeling down, Vincent pulled out a tin box from underneath Bo's bed and opened it, showing to Kelly that it was full of money. They were going to need it. With the currency collected from the wax-casted victims over the years, Kelly and Vincent were finally able to leave Ambrose behind and get out of town. They sneaked out the backdoor and walked away as more police cars and an ambulance arrived. Vincent stopped for a minute and turned to look back at the only place he had ever known, a sad look showing on the left side of his face. Kelly allowed Vincent a short minute to mourn, then touched his arm and gave it a gentle tug, silently telling him they needed to go. Vincent looked at Kelly and placed his hand over hers, then turned and walked away from Ambrose with her. Neither one of them knew where the road would take them, but wherever they went, at least they would be together.