The Hans Twins (Short Story)

The Hans twins, Kalia and Michael, look nothing alike. This is remarked upon often by their extended family and classmates – even classmates who’ve been with them for all nine grades of formal schooling. To Michael and Kalia, the remark is meaningless. At fourteen, the twins have instead grown to share a chaotic energy, a love for anarchy, and an aura of inarticulable danger. For some locals, simply passing by the twins on the street will leave them with a vague sense of impending danger.

It’s also why the twins were so surprised when their parents left them home alone for the weekend. Michael and Kalia were aware of their reputation and could sense their parents’ anxiety about it. They had two theories about why they did it. One - that their parents had to leave because the out-of-town funeral was of some secret adult significance they didn’t understand; or, two - that the bereaved had asked their parents not to bring the twins. A babysitter was out of the question, too – you can’t really hire a thirteen-year-old to babysit two fourteen-year-olds.

Kalia made arrangements with schoolmate Hera McGee on MSN the moment she heard about the unsupervised weekend. Michael became involved in his twin’s plan because of his strange interest in Hera, and he knew his friends would tease him for having this interest openly. Like much between twins, it was entirely unspoken, but entirely understood, that Kalia’s invitation of Hera was just a ploy to invite Hera’s best friend, Theo. Theo interested Kalia because he seemed very different from the boys who always pursued Kalia. Kalia knew Hera would never attend without Theo, and thus the plan became that the twins would be joined by classmates Hera McGee and Theo Harrison while their parents left town to mourn a tragic death the twins weren’t interested in.

On the day their parents depart, Michael realises he’s spoken little to Theo in school, and both he and Hera are strangers, despite the small town they live in. When Theo and Hera arrive at the twins’ home, Michael’s first thought when he sees Theo is that Theo, so fey, so shy, would never pose any form of challenge to Michael: physical, emotional, social. Knowing this, Michael relaxes, letting Kalia take charge for the weekend. Kalia’s plan to hook up with Theo doesn’t bother him -- he isn’t one of those brothers who acts protectively of their sister’s virginity. In Grade Eight, the twins got sick of classmates teasing them for their closeness and making jokes about incest, and so these days the twins pretend to be strangers at school. Michael is used to staying quiet while the older boys gossip knowingly and intimately about his twin and her doings.

Hera McGee and Theo Harrison sit with their hosts politely, but only briefly, before Kalia takes charge and suggests they play a game. Michael, knowing this cue, offers Hera a drink. Kalia does the same for Theo, finding it adorable when Theo struggles to meet her eyes. They steal from their parents’ poorly-hidden liquor bottles and plan to replace the liquids later – vodka with water, whisky with tea – to at least give the twins some time before they get caught.

With this mix of liquors, the twins concoct a sour punch they all share before beginning Kalia’s game. The game is spin the bottle. Both twins notice that Theo and Hera shoot each other a strange glance at this. Hera explains that she won’t kiss Theo if it the bottle lands on him, nor vice versa will he kiss her, and she adds that “you two are twins, so…”. Hera concludes that this makes the game “pointless”, and Kalia hates her for this. Kalia steels herself for a moment, needing to be more direct than the twins had planned.

“Wanna see my room, Theo?” Kalia asks very suddenly, like a non-sequitur.

“Okay,” he says, the first word she remembers him saying since arrival. Theo and Kalia peel off, down the hall, leaving Michael and Hera behind. Michael sees Kalia grab Theo’s hand so confidently that he has flashes of some of the things Grade Nine boys say about what Kalia does. He shakes the thought away.  He looks to Hera, sitting across from him. She looks better out of the school uniform. More like a girl Michael would normally ask out, and his wouldn’t tease him for it. Thinking this makes him feel bold, more liquor-brave.

“You wanna come see my room, too, then?” he asks her. She nods and holds her hand out for Michael to lead her, offering him physical touch.

Once in his room, Hera surprises Michael with her forwardness, sitting down on his bed and untying her hair. He’d imagined he’d have to cajole and convince her, but perhaps she was drunker than he expected.

Hera lets Michael kiss her and returns his kisses on his lips, neck, and body. She then removes his shirt, another surprisingly direct move, and says kind things to him about his body. Very soon after, Michael receives head for the first time (although he’d never admit it to his mates). It feels good, but overhyped – he considers maybe Hera isn’t doing it very well, but she’d seemed to forward and experienced. He doesn’t know what to do during the act. He’s seen videos on the sites his friend Jarred linked him to, in which men said strange and brutal things while girls did stuff to them.

“Yeah, that’s good,” Michael says, conscious of his silence. He thinks more about the videos, what the men say in them, which makes him more anxious – Michael generally feels comfortable in his skin and doesn’t enjoy this vulnerability. “Suck it good, bitch,” he adds. He thinks he saw that in one video, but he watched a lot and is unsure. He can’t see Hera’s entire face or her expression, but he can see her cheeks are red and her hands, which she’s using to assist, have her saliva all on them. Michael knows he's about to finish but can’t remember if the men in those websites warn women when they cum. Maybe Hera can tell he’s about to, anyway, he decides. Michael groans and then he’s finished, flushed with sudden clarity. He says to her another thing from the videos that the men say to the girl: “You’ve got a great mouth, cunt.”

Hera seems fine with this but is now searching his room for a place to spit rather urgently. Michael directs her to an empty mug on his desk, and she spits an unseen substance into the mug, and her face looks like when you get soap in your mouth accidentally. It suddenly all feels very clinical and discomforting to Michael, so when Hera tell him: “I think I want to go home, now,” Michael says nothing at all and just nods, gesturing generally to the door.

Michael hears Hera knock on his Kalia’s door after she leaves his room. “Theo?” she says. “Theo, I wanna go home, now, please?”. Michael can hear the strange urgency and the need in her voice but can’t understand it.

In Kalia’s room, Kalia notes how obediently Theo agrees with that it’s time for them to leave. Kalia was used to different boys and Theo was a conscious choice, but she’d still been surprised by how much of an active role she’d had to take. She’d made every first move, and even though he kissed her back when she kissed him, touched her body when she his, it sort of reminded her of the plays her friends in drama club performed -- something fundamentally dramatized. Most boys, especially the older ones, would put things – penises, fingers, rocks – inside her without even talking to Kalia, but each step with Theo had needed much choregraphing from her.

Theo stood quickly, kissed Kalia chastely on the cheek, and left her house with his friend.

Theo is aware that something deep inside his personality drives him to avoid conflict or negativity. Hera’s behaviour after fleeing the twin’s house demands an answer, he knows this, but first he must negotiate through that impulse to avoid enquiry. “What’s wrong?” Theo finally asks. She doesn’t answer directly. She’s walking ahead of him. After grabbing Theo’s hand, Hera leads him to a gazebo in the council park a few blocks from the twin’s house. Enough time passed in that period that Theo has to ask a second time. He steels himself and fights his own brain, pressing her, “Well?”

“He sounded like a fucking RedTube video,” Hera says, “and he stunk. His parts stunk.”

“Did you…?”

“No! I just gave him head. It was foul. He called me a cunt, too,” Hera says.

“Oh. I don’t watch porn,” Theo says. He does this sometimes – offers Hera little morsels of embarrassing information about himself, especially when he gets to see it make her happy. She smiles, snapping out of her mood a little.

“What? That’s fucked, you’re lying,” she says, grinning. Theo shakes his head, but Hera is unsatisfied, wanting a better explanation, which Theo doesn’t have and dreads providing.

But Hera, despite her questioning, knows exactly what Theo means, or at least has a good idea. There’s guilt there, because she could easily let Theo feel understood entirely, but she’s choosing not to because it’d be too real, too uncomfortable, and she’s too young to have the words for it. She thinks of him with Kalia and suddenly feels guilty for complaining at all, knowing what Theo likely went through with his half of the twins. She felt an overwhelming pity for both Kalia and Theo.

“I guess I haven’t found one I like yet,” Theo finally says, “A porn, I mean.”

Hera looks at him, trying to seem helpful, or at least present, for an issue neither of them ever actually evoked. Theo and Hera often talk of wishing they could communicate telepathically, but Hera wonders why Theo would say this, knowing what he’s hiding from her and what it would reveal.

“And with Kalia…?” Hera asks, despite knowing.  

Theo just shakes his head. Theo is aware he can’t say why it made him uncomfortable and what he felt about it, and so he falls back on a general “I just didn’t gel with her.” He sees Hera’s face fall when he says this. Theo couldn’t even say why he agreed to go with her -- Hera presupposed the twin’s plans the moment Kalia invited her, and so Theo should have seen it coming.  

“Theo, you know don’t ever have to do that stuff, you know?” says Hera, her words coming out awkwardly, as if she’s reading a written essay aloud, “Well, I hope you know that, at least”. She wants to offer more to him more than that, and searches for more, but finds little. She’s unsure how to tell someone that you know what goes on inside their mind – but perhaps that explains why they both share a desire to communicate telepathically.

“What do you mean?” Theo asks her, “with Kalia?”

“With any girl. You don’t have to do that,” Hera says, clarifying. She smiles at him, but her hands are shaking at how close to the truth she’s come, to saying the thing they both never say. Theo looks at her again, but he’s hard to interpret when they talk like this.

“I’m sorry Michael called you a cunt,” says Theo, “I don’t think you’re a cunt.”

“Thanks. I don’t think I am either.” Hera reaches out, grabbing Theo’s hand tightly. She feels the nervous sweat in his palms, confirming she’d crossed a boundary with him earlier.

Like a trauma-bonding, the pair briefly feel very close for hating their experiences, though for different reasons. They both believe that this will shape them as people, somehow, independently of one another -- and arguably, both of them sharing that thought at the same time is them engaging in telepathy.  

Later, in the silence of the council gazebo, Hera thinks again of Michael Hans. She wonders how Theo could even understand that it wasn’t Michael calling her a cunt that bothered her, not really – he’s hardly the first boy to do that. It was more that Michael making that choice let Hera in on some secret knowledge – the knowledge that Michael, or any guy, could decide to hurt her, kill her even, when previously she’d been so ignorant of this. Now, all her past kisses with boys, all innocent memories, feel mixed with-up with injury and death. Less innocent memories – older men saying dirty things to her in passing when she was perhaps twelve – are positively nightmarish.

Theo’s looking at Hera from across the gazebo. The pair have just gone across the road bought a loaf of bread and some jam. Theo thinks Hera spreads jam like a crazy person, and he normally enjoys watching her do it so carelessly, but now she seems slow, even mournful about it. He can’t know why, or ever understand it, and he would never be comfortable asking her. He wants to take back his earlier wish for telepathy, because he can’t stop thinking about how much Hera must hate him for lying to her, and telepathy would just confirm all the lies. Theo remembers all the times he defended himself against schoolyard taunts with “I am not!” with Hera present or in earshot, and that even then he was lying to her. Theo thinks this continued dishonesty with Hera – even today, in agreeing to go with her to the twins’ house despite knowing what Kalia Hans wanted from him – feels like an act of disrespect. And he knows he will choose to lie every time because it’s easier. He supposes, as a result, that his friendship with Hera will likely end when she figures out her hatred, which is surely soon, and he’ll never be close with someone again.

For Theo, something in the pair’s friendship shifts – a dynamic, a level of need, something – right then and there.