Chapter 1: Where's Hell When You Need It?

Chapter 1: Where's Hell When You Need It?

A Chapter by Cameron Lockhart
"

The twins explain their backstory, just before starting another repetitive day in the afterlife.

"

Big Sky was a rather compact community within Montana, not quite a small town, but practically a speck compared to cities like Missoula or Billings. Nonetheless, it did house a small handful of distinct, larger-than-life buildings, and one of them was the Irving Regional Bank, located right near the center of town, easily within shouting distance of City Hall. Today, the bank seemed to be operating pretty normally, but it didn't look like that would last much longer, judging by the presence of two mysterious figures lurking on the roof. One of them, a shorter silhouette with a more feminine shape, appeared to be the leader.


"Okay, now here's the plan: I'll unbend my hair-clip and use it to reach past the edge of this skylight, so we can crank it open," she explained. "Now which side of my head did I put the clip on?"


"Or we could just do this." her partner in crime, a male shadow with a buff, top-heavy build, took a few steps back, before standing up straight and keeping his limbs tucked in as he jumped through the glass.


"You meathead! What the hell are you doing?!"


But her partner didn't answer, gracefully descending onto the floor and crushing a banker under his weight, immediately after he'd opened the massive vault before him. The worker was unconscious the moment contact was made.


"Don't mind me. Just being more efficient," the male shrugged, ignoring the bloody cuts on his brawny biceps.

"Ugh, you're lucky you skip leg day. Otherwise, you'd have made much more noise." the woman dropped into the hole and broke her fall with a handstand, flipping to her feet.


"I do not skip leg day!"


"Shhh, keep it down."


The two teens then entered the compartment, looking equally awed at the heaps of cash and gold that lay before them. But not wanting to stall for too long, the female thief pulled out a trash bag and together they started packing it with as much wealth as they could.


"Ah, I love the musk of dough in the morning. Just imagine what we could splurge on with this." the female twin smirked a bit, a departure from her usual stoic embitterment.


"Like what, some breast implants?" her brother sneered.


"Cram it, you pig!"


"Freeze!"


Both of them looked back and saw a small group of cops cornering them inside the safe, all with their guns drawn.


"Sooo… right about now, you're probably wondering how we got ourselves into this mess, right? Well before we get into that, I think it'd be helpful to disclose who we are first: I'm Josephine, the only woman in the world who can make glasses look hot. And that jackass standing next to me is my brother, Mike Seymour Jr."


"Hmph, still about eight minutes older than you."


"Seven minutes and thirty-two seconds, to be exact!"


"Well, well, well, if it isn't those bratty twins," one officer taunted. "What, you runts finally got tired of terrorizing Hitsville?"


"You f*****g wish!" Mike Jr. spat.


"You know, this could've gone differently if you'd just used your head for once." his sister folded her arms with a glower.


"You want me to use my head? Well okay then!"


Before Josephine could get another word it, he dragged his foot like a bull and then ran towards the cop at the front of the pack, dealing a strong enough head-butt to knock him and his partners over like a group of bowling pins. He coolly stood back up, smoothing out his platinum-blonde pompadour.


"Oh, quit your showboating and let's book it already!" Josephine rolled her eyes, dragging her brother out of the bank as sirens started to go off.


"We're not bad kids. We were just raised that way. We're the latest in a wealthy crime family, and ever since we could walk, our parents have groomed us to be the perfect antagonists, and allowed us to make the entire state of Montana into our own giant playground! …except Kicksburg, that is. Town's so lame it's not even worth causing trouble in."


By the time the twins got outside, they found that another group of police officers had shown up, surrounding the bank's front entrance. Having had enough of their antics, they didn't bother to let them come quietly and launched an attack in an instant. Josephine fought back with brute force, being a black belt in all known martial arts, combining them all with her speed and agility as she practically danced around the front steps, none of the cops able to land a hit on her. The last of which was a rather burly one, taking advantage of her own smaller frame and hurriedly climbing all around his body like a snake, taking him by surprise with a chop to the groin and a devastating double spin-kick to the cranium.


Mike Jr. typically fought with Japanese and Brazilian jiu jitsu, combining them with sambo, lucha libre, and even a little ARB, though right now he was busy swinging the heavy money sack around, using it as a powerful bludgeoning tool to take down all comers as efficiently as possible, and occasionally throwing it at opponents that were a bit further away. Soon enough, it appeared that the twins had won, but their victory was short-lived when the SWAT team showed up, not only with more armor and stronger weaponry, but more aggressive tactics as well. A bunch of them prioritized Mike Jr. as a target and immediately ganged up on him.


"Ey Josie, catch!" he hollered, tossing the bag of money to her.


"Words can't describe how much I despise being called that." Josephine rolled her eyes, catching the bag.


While her bother busied himself fending off the cops surrounding him, she took the time to hurry off, as some of the other SWAT officers gave chase. Using her superior mobility to her advantage, Josephine couldn't help but smirk as she darted into an alley, abruptly juking left and right when she got close to walls or trees and causing her assailants to ram into them, the force knocking them unconscious in the process. When she just had one cop left on her tail, she leapt onto a lamppost and swung around it, knocking him out with a swift kick to the chest.


But just when she thought she was alone, a slew of officers came out from all sides. Mike Jr. quickly dropped in with a bodyslam to take most of them out, while Josephine leapt off the ground and performed a split, kicking two of them in the face at once. Predictably, more cops arrived, which they started to fight off, but one policewoman was quick enough to taser Mike Jr., stunning him for a few seconds.


"Yow, that hurt like a b***h, you c**t!" he shouted, causing all the cops on the scene to gasp as they shared looks of astonishment.


This gave the twins just enough time to slip out with their stolen valuables in tow, and when the cops realized they'd been distracted, there was no sign of their targets anywhere.




"Ah, looting, vandalism, starting fights and getting what I want… frankly, those are the only things that can produce enough adrenaline make a girl like me happy. F**k diamonds and chocolate… although I do like those things too. Point is, this is the life for us, and we see no reason to change!"


"And the best part is? All the police captains in the state are on our parents' payroll! Even if those dumb pigs were able to stop us, it wouldn't mean s**t!"


Later on, the twins were shown on a remote tropical island that appeared to be mostly jungle, competing in a footrace against another pair of twins their age.


"Of course, even the coolest of villains have their off days. We finally met our match shortly after turning eighteen, in the form of those Simmons chumps, who were able to best us multiple times in a row…"


On the same island, but at night, both of the twins competed against their same-sex rivals in a no-holds-barred duel, but ultimately lost when Mike Jr. was bitten by a snake and Josephine was bowled over by a wave of magma.

"…and even managed to get us killed, for crying out loud!"


"And even in the afterlife, we still couldn't catch a break."


Just outside the very mansion they lived in, the Seymour twins duked it out against a trio of other people, consisting of a redheaded woman, a bespectacled black guy with a flat-top, and a man with long brown hair. They poured all they could into the fight, but they both ended up getting knocked out.


"Those damn Looks Don't Matter goons just showed up one day and beat us easily when we challenged them! We spent a good few weeks searching for them in order to get a rematch, but they just up and vanished."


"I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a little demoralizing to suffer those setbacks, but if you think we're gonna let that stop us, you're out of your mind! Tomorrow's another day, as they say."


"Gee, look at you saying something brainy for once."


"Oh, shut the f**k up!"




It looked to be an ordinary day up in the afterlife version of Hitsville, Montana. A small town that was barely on the map, solely because of Seymour Manor which had been built within its borders generations ago. It was a rather nice mansion, built to the nines with a moat surrounding it, filled with oceanic whitetip sharks, and sporting two gated bridges that allowed cars to drive across. It was in this very house where the twins resided with their mother, all of them having passed away at roughly the same time. Despite the family's sinister reputation, the mansion appeared to be rather peaceful… until Katherine strolled into one of the hallways, standing halfway between the doors to her children's rooms as she played a militaristic bugle tune through her phone.


"Rise and shine, my little angels! …or should I say devils," she crooned in a light German accent, sporting a chardonnay-colored eye-patch to match her tracksuit, unzipped about halfway and without an undershirt.


"Ugh, it's only ten in the morning. Just a couple more hours," Josephine moaned, her gray eyes only slightly open.


"Yeah, I already got up at five for a workout. I earned this," Mike Jr. groaned mid-snore, not even under the covers.


"Yeah, well you're eighteen! You're adults now!" Katherine barked back.


"Mom, we're in heaven. We're kinda' stuck at this age," Josephine snarked.


"All the more reason to learn to like caffeine. Now up and at 'em! Today's a new day, and you two are not gonna squander it by not doing something evil. I don't care if it's bombing a house or just leaving the toilet seat up. Every act counts!"


No response.


"And you can bet I'll stay out here until you two get your asses up!" Katherine continued.


"Yeah, yeah, we're moving." Josephine sighed.


"That's my girl."


"Shut it, Mom."


"Yep, that's right. Keep up the rudeness. All part of being a good villain."


"UGH!"


Trying to ignore her mother, who was being much more of a nag than usual, Josephine climbed out of bed, a little pleased to see her bleached blond hair, styled into a curly bob, didn't need much maintenance. Just a light fluffing up with some spray-in conditioner was all she needed, before she got started in donning her default attire: a short-sleeved red and white-striped crop top under a denim button-up vest, with khaki capris that were torn at the edges, a braided belt, and coffee-brown Converse. After polishing her amaranth-colored cat-eye glasses, she slid them on, pleased to see how well they hid the bags under her eyes, before giving a satisfied nod (albeit without a smile to back it up) and exiting her room.




Josephine was hardly surprised to see her slightly older brother already waiting in the foyer. Typical of him to rush headlong into things and not care about doing them well. He stood there rather indifferently, rocking on his heels in a yellow and green baseball tee with a light brown neckerchief, accompanied by camouflage pants and sneakers.


"Ah, good, you're up. So! What's on the agenda today?" Katherine chirped.


"Eh, not much. Just gonna go into town and see if there's anything interesting we'd wanna buy," Josephine replied, checking her nails out of disinterest.


"And by 'buy', you mean steal, right?"


"Sure, whatever you say."


"I'm not feeling any enthusiasm!"


"Oh, and uh, we were also thinking about raiding the burger joint," Mike Jr. butt in. "Maybe we could even throw the hot fryer oil onto the employees."


"Ooh, I love the way you think, young man! Welp, have fun!" Katherine finally departed into the depths of the house.


"You're welcome."


"Yeah yeah, now let's get out of here and stall or something." Josephine opened the front door, silently glad her mother wasn't breathing down her neck for the time being. "Here's to another day of trying to see if this villain thing really is our bag…"



© 2022 Cameron Lockhart


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Added on September 8, 2022
Last Updated on September 8, 2022
Tags: antihero, afterlife, action, humor, family, drama, comedy, redemption


Author

Cameron Lockhart
Cameron Lockhart

Charleston, SC



About
I've loved writing ever since I could properly hold a pencil, and I currently strive to become a published author someday. In 2021, I earned a BA in Creative Writing; I primarily focused on prose and .. more..

Writing