The Scissor Sisters

The Scissor Sisters
Kody Boye1

2

Mary-Anne and Kathryn Bell had an obsession.
Their obsession was gardening.
Every day, the two of them would go around their house and trim everything they could. They would trim the dead branches off of the rose bushes, the odd limbs on the trees, and the hedges when the need arose.
Of course, the two eighteen-year-old sisters enjoyed what they did.
Fresh out of high school and enjoying a life on their own, they could do anything they wanted to.
It was also when a wicked obsession started.
One day, an admirably-determined teenage boy decided to play one of the biggest pranks on Mary-Anne and Kathryn. It was Billy Joe’s biggest prank ever, something he could go to school and tell his friends. ‘I bombed their house good. That pile of shit will ruin that nice, fancy carpet of theirs.’
Billy Joe had snuck by them when Mary-Anne was talking to Kathryn about the length of one particular tree limb.
“Kathryn, what do you think? Is it too long or too short?”
“I think it’s fine.”
“Kathryn, you can’t be serious! This branch is obviously too long!”
“No, it’s too short!”
The two continued to bicker back and forth until they heard the shatter of a very old antique mirror.
“Oh my God!” Mary-Anne said as she ran toward the front door.
“Mary!”
Kathryn followed her close behind, but when they stopped, they saw who the culprit was.
It was Billy Joe.
The expression on his face seemed painted, as if it were something that only a cartoon character could show. It showed fear, fear that a young man his age probably would have never had.
“What have you done!” she shrieked. “That was our mother’s mirror!”
At her side, Kathryn glared at Billy with her.
“I-I-I-I d-d-didn’t t-t-try t-t-t-to.”
“Didn’t try to?” she asked. “You didn’t try to? That was our mother’s mirror!”
She felt her fingers fidgeting on the hedge clippers. They desired something, something that was running through her mind at a speed which she couldn’t comprehend. It was something that she had never felt before, yet at the same time she felt ecstatic about it.
“Grab him, Kathryn.”
She cast aside her hedge clippers and grabbed Billy, forcing her hand over his mouth and kneeing him in the groin to stop his struggling.
“In the house,” she said, thrusting at the door with the clippers. “Go!”
Her sister made no move to refuse her order. Kathryn drug Billy into the house, every so often kneeing him when he started struggling.
She smiled.
The fun was just about to begin.
She snapped her hedge clippers shut in satisfaction.3

The news said that Billy Joe was missing.
He was missing to the general public, anyway.
She and Kathryn knew right where he was.
Downstairs in the cellar was where Billy was.
Of course, Billy wasn’t like he normally was, anymore.
Billy was in several different pieces.
The hedge clippers that had done the deed sat on the mantel, just waiting to be used again.
“That was fun, huh Mary-Anne?” her sister asked from her side, her fingers twitching in mock satisfaction.
“Yes,” she said, her voice low, her eyes concentrating on the hedge clippers. “It was.”
“We gotta do another,” her sister said. “Can we, Marry-Anne, oh can we?”
“We need to find someone,” she said. “Someone that they wouldn’t expect to die.”
“Who cares if they don’t expect them to die!” Kathryn laughed. “Another one, we need another one!”
“Who do we really hate?” she asked as her eyes wandered around the room, stopping at a yearbook that was sitting on a nearby coffee table. “Maybe somebody who really did something wrong to us.”
“What about that Marisa Winchester?” Kathryn asked. “That dirty rotten no good take it up the ass cheerleader didn’t like us one bit. Remember what she did to us? How she said that we stuffed out bras, how she said that we were lesbians?”
Oh, she did remember.
Marisa Winchester had been the worst person in that whole school. She had the prettiest blonde hair a girl could have, the nicest boyfriend a girl could have, and the richest parents a girl could want. Just because her and Kathryn were country girls she had made fun of them, just because there weren’t as rich as her.
“How do we get her here?” she asked.
Kathryn smiled.
“How about a tea party?”4

Marisa Winchester did come for the tea party.
She had come alone, by herself, just like she had said she would. She had also walked, so there was nothing to show that she had come over.
When Marisa had walked in, she and Kathryn jumped. They held the hedge trimmers out toward her and drug her down into the cellar, where they pushed her against the wall and began their work. She cried out in pain and asked why they were doing this, but they just laughed.
“Because we want to,” Kathryn said. “Pretty rich girl’s going to die now!”
She remained silent and Kathryn grabbed Marisa’s wrist, holding it out so she had a clear view of it.
“Let’s see what she looks like without a pretty hand.”
She opened her ‘scissors’ and--with all her might--slammed them down on the wrist.
Two more times and the hand came from off.
Marisa, meanwhile, had passed out.
She and her sister finished business.
The next thing they did was cut the heads off both Billy and Marisa and wrapped them up in a blanket. The two sisters walked out of the house--perfectly clean, as they always were--and down to the canal.
Kathryn held the blanket close to her chest.
“Bye bye, Billy and Marisa,” she said as she dropped the blanket into the canal. “May they find you so safe and sound.”
Of course, they would only find the heads of both of them, with shocked, horrified, painful expressions on their faces.5

“Mary, do you think someone will come here?”
“No one will come, Kathryn,” she reassured her sister. “No one ever comes here anyway, and no one will ever suspect that we’re going this.”
“Why? How can you be so sure, Mary?”
“Because they never think of girls like us as suspects. They never do.”
They never would either.6

Over the course of a month, they had stopped killing. Billy and Marisa had been enough, and while it was still all over the news, little was being done to try and find the killers.
She and Kathryn had continued doing what they did best: gardening. Every day they would tidy up the place, making sure that everything was right. The two of them had even begun planting flowers around the gateway so that there would be a path leading up to the door.
A dark van pulled up just as she lifted her head to check on her sister’s progress.
“Mary, who’s that?” Kathryn asked from her side of the path. “Did you invite someone over?”
“No,” she said. “I didn’t.”
They waited for the van to pull up to the curb. For a moment, no one came out, but just as she was about to stand and go up to the car, a man stepped out.
“Hello, ladies,” the man said. “How are you today?”
“Fine,” they both said.
“That’s good. I don’t mean to disturb you, but I and a few other officers are going around to see if anyone knows about the recent murders.”
“No, we haven’t heard anything,” she said, looking over at Kathryn and seeing her shake her head. “It’s sad though.”
“You know nothing at all?”
“Sadly, we don’t, officer,” she said, answering for Kathryn as well. “We’re just two girls who like to plant flowers and tend to our plants.”
The man gave a small nod and pulled a pen out of his breast pocket, marking off something.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“I’m just marking houses off,” the man said. “Hey, would either of you be able to tell me where Nanny McGruter’s house is?”
“It’s down the street, take a right, and then go down the very end of the road. It’s hard to see through all of the trees, but you should hear the dogs barking.”
He nodded and wrote the directions down on his clipboard before slipping the pen back into his breast pocket.
“Thank you, ladies; you have a nice day now.”
“You too,” they both said, watching the man walk back to his van.
It wasn’t long before he got in and drove off down the road, heading over to Nanny McGruter’s house.
“Do you think he suspects anything?” Kathryn asked as she dusted a bit of dirt off of her shirt.
“No,” she said. “No one suspects a thing, Kathryn.”7

By now, Clark County was starting to get afraid. Everyone was on edge, wondering who would be the next victim to a horrible murder. The two of them knew that those who didn’t lock their doors now did.
Quite a name had been called for themselves.
The general public was now convinced that the people who were doing it were women. For some strange, inhumane reason, they believe it to be a pair of female killers doing this. This speculation had aroused because of the troublesome Billy Joe--who went around playing pranks on the local girls--and Marisa Winchester, who wasn‘t friendly toward all women.
The general public suspected that they were sisters.
They were now being called ‘The Scissor Sisters.’
“Pretty cool name, huh Mary?” her sister asked from her side.
She gave a small not, but kept her attention focused on cleaning the hedge trimmers. The recent stains of blood still lingered on the clippers and if they didn’t do anything, they could get caught.
That would be sloppy.
“Mary?”
“What is it, Kathryn?”
“Is something wrong?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Just what I said, no.”
“But you’re not as enthusiastic about this as I am. Come on, Mary, we gotta get someone else, we just gotta, we…”
In a motion that she herself didn’t even have control of, she turned and backhanded her sister, sending her into couch.
“Mary!” Kathryn sobbed.
She looked down at her wrist and grimaced. Her knuckles were red and so was her sister’s face.
“I don’t know what came over me, Kat; I’m sorry. Please, forgive me.”
Her sister didn’t answer her at first, but when Kathryn did, she nodded, standing and coming to her side.
Her fingers locked within her own.
“To the Scissor Sisters,” she whispered, tightening the grip on her fingers. “The best of sisters.”
She nodded, gripping Kathryn’s hand tighter.
They were the best of sisters.8

Not many sisters would willingly follow another, especially into a bad situation such as death and murder. Oh course, she and Kathryn weren’t just sisters; they were more than that.
Not many sisters could say they were more than just sisters.
They had helped each other through the hard times of life. Their father’s abusive rage, their mother’s drunken ways, and the casualties of loosing two innocent souls too early.
Of course, she and her sister had helped each other through some very hard times.
For some time now, she was more than sure that Kathryn had something wrong with her. Even now--as she begged to do another--she knew that something was wrong with her sister. Her twin had the same startling appearance as her, but the only different in the two was the eye colors. Born with a genetic rarity that caused their eye colors to be different, they shared this, except the colors were on opposite sides. With both blue and green, it was easy to look at them.
It was also easy to tell who from who.
Her green eye was on the right side, while it was Kathryn’s blue eye who was on the right.
“Sis,” Kathryn began, the begging, childish tone returning. “We have to do another one!”
“We don’t have to do anything,” she said as she looked over at her sister in mild disgust. “We need to wait, Kat. Time is on our side, just as long as we wait and don’t mess up.”
“But there’s no one in Clark County who’s smart enough to catch us!” she cried, jumping to her feet, her eyes wide like an animal’s. “Nobody is, Mary-Anne!”
“Stop screaming.”
“Stop screaming? Stop screaming? Who the hell do you think you are?”
“I’m the one who’s kept both of us sane,” she said. “The people you used to see drove me just as mad, Kat, because I was the one who was lying awake all night trying to make sure you were all right. But I think they‘re coming back to you, sister. What are they telling you?”
“They’re not telling me anything,” she said, turning her head away, “Mary-Anne…”
“They’re back, aren’t they?” she asked as she grabbed her sister’s arm and turned her around. “Kathryn, you have to tell me. They used to tell you what we should do, remember? Remember the old priest that came to us? He told us to stick together, always, together forever.”
Her sister pulled her arm away as she walked over to the coffee table. As they did every night, they lit the candles instead of using the electricity. The only electricity they had was in the room they shared, which was the small diamond-shaped lamp that hung on the wall.
Kathryn watched the flames with an almost eager intent.
She was fascinated by them.
She only did this if she was seeing them.
“Who was it this time?” she asked as she sat down beside her sister. “Any of the ones who have visited you before?”
“No.”
Kathryn went silent and for a moment, all she could see in her sister’s eyes were the flames moving back and forth through them.
“Kat?”
“It’s a man,” she said, her eyes watching the candles.
“Who’s the man?”
“I… I don’t know who he is. He’s just there, Mary.”
She gave a small nod and leaned back into the couch, waiting to see if her sister would gain any new insight from ‘the man.’ For all she knew, he wasn’t even there anymore.
Maybe Kathryn was just saying this.
No, she thought to herself. She does see these people, I know it. An old woman she saw told us to watch out for the prank at school last year.
“Kathryn?” she asked after several moments of silence. “What does the man want us to do?”
“He says that we’re going to kill one more,” she said. “One more.”
“Who is it?” she asked.
“Mrs. Maple, from down the street.”9

Even though they weren’t rightfully prepared to do what they were going to do, they would do it anyway. Their plan was perfect. They would walk down the street to Mrs. Maple’s house and ask if she had any spare flower seed. As always, Mrs. Maple would let them both in and then they would do their deed.
Halfway down the street, Kathryn got nervous.
“Wait!” she said, stopping her in her tracks.
“What is it?” she asked as she turned and looked at her sister. “If this is something about killing her, forget about it; we’re doing it.”
“No,” she said. “It’s not that… She’s the last one we’ll kill.”
A shiver ran up her spine.
“What do you mean?”
“That’s what the man told me. He said, ‘She’ll be the last one we kill.’”
“We’ll be fine,” she reassured her. “Don’t worry about any of that, he was probably lying.”
“They don’t lie, Mary, you know…”
She ignored her sister and felt for the hedge clippers at her side; they were still there.
Now my sister’s having a freak moment.
“Mary!”
“Shut up!” she said under her breath, not wanting to draw attention to themselves. “You need to chill out. You’re the one who wanted to do this.”
“But the man said…”
“Who cares what the man said!”
She gripped her sister’s arm and led her to Mrs. Maple’s out.
She too had second thoughts.
“Hi, Mary, Kathryn!”
She looked up to see Mrs. Maple standing at her mailbox.
“Hi,” she said, letting go of her sister’s arm. “Could I ask you for a favor?”
“Sure, what is it?”
“Do you happen to have any petunia seeds? We ran out and just when we’re redoing the yard.”
“Sure I do! Come on in, girls.”
A wicked smirk came across her face just as she turned.
She will be the last one.10

Several complicated months later, she and her sister sat in the stone-cold room of Clark County Asylum. This was where the most evil and notorious serial killers stayed, where they kept them locked up in rooms with little to no contact with the outside world.
Kathryn, meanwhile, had gone silent.
The guards mistook her sister for a mute most of the time.
“Kathryn?” she asked as she looked at her sister. “Are you ok?”
The white gown that she was looking at should have been stained with blood, blood from what they had done.
Was her sister coming to the realization that they had done something bad?
“Kathryn?” she asked again. “We’re still sisters, right?”
She nodded.
“Together forever, the Scissor Sisters.”