The Evil Beginning

A Long Forgotten Talent

I was sort of in a daze. Somehow, my sister and I had found our way into the backseat of a car. A car. A real motorized vehicle!

            So what had happened was that the mysterious man turned out to be a marketing agent. His name was Tyler Stuart, but he wanted us to call him Ty. He said that we looked very “commercial” and “unique”, but I was almost positive that those two words were antonymous.

            Rin and I, after being assured that we weren’t being tricked into being turned in to the authorities, agreed that maybe, just maybe we would work with them. But honestly… it wasn’t so much that we wanted to be stars. We just didn’t want to be scrounging for food or ducking under the radar any longer.

            So long story short, we decided to enter the world of entertainment.

            A sudden cold shot through me at the prospect of going to a place we didn’t know. We were leaving our maze of confusion and protection and entering a world that we knew nothing about.

            Rin gave my hand a reassuring squeeze and I calmed down slightly. At least if I was going to be lost, I was going to have my sister by my side.

            At this point, Ty was the only person Rin and I sort of trusted which is why when he handed us over to someone that he referred to as a “talent agent”, we were terrified.

            “Don’t worry,” a man with a nametag that read ‘Devon Parsons’ said, “I’m only going to help you find your inner passion.”

            I blinked. Did dodging and running count as a talent?

            Devon’s black hair was slicked back in a way that made him look as if he had just taken a swim in a lake. His clothes were less formal than what Ty wore, but still more extravagant than anything Rin or I had ever worn.

            “So I’ll leave it to you then, Dev?” Ty asked, tapping a cigarette out of a box.

            “Leave it to me,” Devon responded obediently.

            Ty left soon after that and Devon circled us, examining. We waited for a moment, sitting through his speculation, before Rin burst out, “Okay, you’re not going to find out anything about us if you don’t say something.”

            Devon paused for a moment before chuckling. “I suppose you’re correct. Well, why don’t we explore your talents, shall we?” He instructed us to take a seat in the little sitting area we occupied, then he disappeared into a back room, only to return with a list of potential passions. “So, first off, can either of you paint a decent picture or something of the like?”

            “Nope,” I finalized.

            “I have trouble drawing stick figures,” Rin ageed.

            Taking a pencil off the coffee table between us, Devon made a mark on his sheet of paper. “What about acting?”

            After fetching a woman who specialized in acting and putting us through a couple trials, Devon declared that we were okay, but not passable to make a career out of it.

            And so on it went. A couple hours passed and we had only gone through half of his list. We were on the M’s now and Devon asked us about musicianship.

Rin pondered for a second. “Not particularly…”

“I used to, but it was a really long time ago,” I admitted, remembering vague figures in a bright room, reviewing and reviewing the same tune over and over again.