Page 1 of Moonstruck
SUBJECT: ASA
They were perfect. Literally perfect. The two boys lay on the floor of the playroom, one pointing their feet north and the other south, their heads slotted beside one another, close enough for their dark brown hair to blend together, giving them the appearance that they were one unit.
Thomas hadn’t been looking for two. Hell, he was never actively searching for new subjects—new children for his project—but, somehow, they found him. They came to him almost through some sort of divine will. He knew instantly they were his. His children, his subjects. Even knowing nothing else about them, he knew they would go home with him.
They appeared to be around five or six. Unlike when he’d found his other children, these two looked healthy, clean, and well-fed. Perhaps they’d lost their parents to an accident and there were no others to care for them. That seemed the only valid explanation for parents abandoning two children they’d clearly cared for. At least, physically.
“Identical twins,” Thomas said, almost breathless. He could have never dared to hope for such a gift. Two children split from the same egg. Two halves of a whole. This would take his experiments to a new level. And he’d give the boys everything they needed to succeed, of course.
The woman beside him—Dr. Barbara Rice, the director of the group home—kept a close watch on the two children, her arms crossed over her ample chest. They knew they were being observed; there was no false mirror, no one-way glass. They simply stood outside the playroom where the two boys lay sprawled, staring up at the fake solar system overhead.
Dr. Rice clearly cared about this place and these children. Unlike many group homes Thomas had visited over the years, this one was bright and clean, as were the children. On his way in, every child he’d passed had appeared well cared for, even happy. But unlike the other children, Dr. Rice didn’t smile when she looked at the two boys. She seemed unnerved by them.
“Mirror twins,” Dr. Rice corrected. “Each one the perfect mirror image of the other, right down to their birthmarks.”
The two weren’t speaking out loud, but they would smile and laugh in tandem, as if one had told the other a joke. Even though they didn’t look at each other, they seemed perfectly in sync. If one moved their left leg, the other moved their right. Same with their hand movements.
“Are they always like this?”
“Like what?” she asked, her tone implying she knew full well what he meant but was unwilling to say it out loud.
“Do they always communicate this way? That is what they’re doing, right? Communicating without speaking? It’s not uncommon in identical twins. I imagine it’s more so in mirror twins.”
Dr. Rice looked at him in surprise. “Do you really believe that twins can communicate telepathically?”
“There have been studies,” Thomas said carefully. “I do believe in science, but I think it would be hubris for me to declare that telepathy is impossible between children who grew from the same fertilized egg. Besides, look at them. They’re clearly communicating. Don’t you think?”
Dr. Rice watched in silence for a moment or two before giving a stilted nod. “Yes, they most definitely are communicating.”
It became clear then. Dr. Rice, this woman who loved her job and took so much pride in her facility, was afraid. She seemed like a woman who wasn’t easily rattled, but these two clearly spooked her. Interesting.
They didn’t frighten Thomas. He had others at home who were equally unnerving, maybe even more so. He couldn’t take his eyes off them as they continued their strange pantomime of a silent conversation. Would they like their new home? Their brothers? Their new curriculum? Thomas had decided he would take them even without knowing if they truly belonged with him. After all this time, he just knew. “History?”
She gave a weary sigh, shifting from one booted foot to the other. It was chilly outside, and she was dressed as if she’d entered the building and come straight to meet with him. She had on a long plaid skirt, a red turtleneck, a blazer, and brown leather boots that disappeared under the hem of her skirt.
She reached for the file on the table beside her, but she didn’t open it, just hugged it against her chest as if she could absorb the information through osmosis. “According to the case worker who brought them here, they were adopted at just six months old from an adoption agency in Hungary.”
“International adoption? Were the parents a poor fit for adopting here in the States or were they only looking to adopt infants?” Thomas questioned.
“Hard to say. I’ve not met the parents, but the mother is a corporate lawyer for a large corporation and the father is a dermatologist.”
Thomas frowned. “Was there abuse in the home?”
Dr. Rice shook her head. “Not to our knowledge. They came to us clean and well cared for. The social worker—Rachel—said the mother spent most of the meeting talking about how it was better for the boys to be with someone else. She said even as babies they cried all the time, were often inconsolable, and that it was clear they ‘didn’t like her.’”
“Her babies didn’t like her?”
Dr. Rice nodded. “She said they never interacted with her or her husband. That they abhorred all attempts at affection. That they embarrassed her often by refusing any attempts to bond with her. They never hugged her or asked for help.”
She sounded like a narcissist to Thomas. But what did he know? He was raising a household of psychopaths. None of them were particularly affectionate unless it was part of the curriculum. One of the biggest components to making what Thomas did work was teaching those without any ability to feel to pass in society. Sometimes, that meant teaching them how to fake being polite, civil, charming, funny, even how to hug each other or shake hands. It was all new to them.
“So, this was a vanity thing?”
Dr. Rice grimaced. “She said they didn’t smile, rarely spoke, and that the other mothers constantly judged her behind her back while pretending to be sympathetic to her plight.”
“Her plight?”
“Yes, being a mother to sons who hated her.”
