Spiral
The twins had been different, once.
Well, perhaps different was too strong of a word to use. "Manageable" might have been a closer term to the true description of the matter. They had never been the sort of children or teenagers who would easily obey orders or follow the rules; if anything, they tested them all not because they actually wanted to do the opposite of what was asked of them, but simply to see what could happen if they broke them, how much of a challenge it would be to get away with doing so. Ever since early childhood they had commanded more attention directed their way than David and Francis had combined, due to the high number of times their behavior invited correction and discipline of some kind.
The difference was, though, that a year ago, it had been their parents that the twins were testing, their parents whose instructions they rebelled against, and this, David knew, had made all the difference. Back then, the twins' recklessness was tempered with good humor and mischievousness rather than genuine anger or desire to hurt, and they respected the authority over them, their parents, enough to see and respect a certain line between rebellion and anarchy against them. When their parents truly were serious in their anger or disappointment with them, David could see, regardless of how little Wendell or Darlene might show it, that they were sorry for their actions and would possibly consider not doing the same or similar ones again, knowing how strongly their parents had felt about them.
There was no such buffer present now. With David, Darlene and Wendell not only cared nothing for his opinion or his feelings towards anything they could think of to do, they delighted in infuriating and humiliating him, in not only brushing against the imaginary line, but leaping over it, then repeatedly rubbing their soles against its mark until it was so blurred and scuffed it was almost impossible to see any longer. He suspected sometimes that it wasn't what they were doing that gave them such adrenalized excitement, the "rush" they had once described, so much as observing his reaction after the fact.
Their parents had been capable of handling the twins with calm, firm words and expressions, with stated consequences and expressions of disappointment, and they had been mostly effective in their efforts to wrangle them in as needed. David could yell and scream, beg and plead, even cry, if he ever let himself get to that new low in front of them, and he knew very well by now that the twins would simply smirk at him, arms entwined around each other in a self-satisfied expression of solidarity, and make sneering remarks before walking away, only to up the ante of their misbehavior the next time.
They had certainly never been well-behaved, but the death of their parents seemed to have sent them spiraling out of control. Whether this was due to unresolved grief or anger, or simply a removal of the safeguards that had once been in place to keep them within reasonable limits, David could not know for sure. But it did seem, he realized slowly, after months of the same failed sequences of confrontations again and again, that most of the twins' more perverse and shocking behaviors seemed to occur when they were certain they would have an audience, or later be found out. What this told him about their level of control, their deliberate choice not to exert it over themselves, was as frustrating as their behavior itself.
He sometimes wondered what would happen if he were to simply ignore their behavior, whether it would eventually ease off the frequency and intensity of their perversity. But the thought of leaving them to do as they liked, and how they might escalate even more afterward in an attempt to provoke a response, was enough of a fear to David that he could never manage to even try.
It had been simpler, much simpler, when he had not had to even try to pretend to know what he was doing in regards to them.