The Idea Book

Living for Tyler

This is an idea that originally came when I was watching Hugo Cabret. Hugo Cabret is about a genius kid whose father was killed in a fire. He goes to live with uncle to work winding the clocks in a clock tower. The only thing he takes with him is an unwanted, broken automaton that his father had found in a museum, and a notebook that carried the repair notes his father had made for the automaton. Later, his uncle disappears and dies without anyone knowing. People still thinks he's winding the clocks, when it's actually little Hugo.

Hugo turns into a thief/escape artist to survive. He has to steal to fill his belly and he needs to stay away from the officer who is determined to take every street kid to the orphanage.

Long story short, Hugo fixes the automaton, but still needs a key to start it. He finds the girl that has the key and finds out that her godfather had made the automaton. After a lot of hustle, he brings the automaton back to the godfather and completes the old man's life.

Anyway.

This is about a set of abandoned identical twins, a girl and a boy. Attached at the hip (figuratively, not literally), finishing sentences, all that. One night, they're caught in the middle of a robbery. A man appears with his gang, seemingly out of nowhere, and the man is about to take the girl away when her brother steps in and some fighting ensues. The girl, Taylor, is knocked out. Upon waking, she finds no Tyler and no tracks to follow. She feels grievous, thinking he must be dead or will be dead. She doesn't know that Tyler had made a deal with the gang. He join them, they don't use her.

She starts living his life, chopping off her hair roughly, wrapping her chest tight, wearing baggy clothes, and dirt on the face. Years later, she works in a bar as the bartender. She meets a man wearing the sign of the gang who had robbed the shop that day. When he refuses to bring her to his leader or say a word about her twin, she attacks him. Surprised by her quick reflexes and shocking strength, he agrees to let her come to the gang headquarters, on the condition that she join the gang. She finds Tyler, joins the gang, and they live as one big happy family.

I'm only including in this chapter their lives up to the robbery. I really like this idea...like every idea...so yeah.

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"Psst!"

Taylor's eyes snapped toward the soft sound. Her brother, Tyler, leaned casually against a barrel of pickles, whistling and winking at girls as they passed by. He had a slim, lightly muscled figure and boyishly handsome features that drew girls like flies to rotting fruit. Taylor giggled at the metaphor and rolled her eyes as the boy charmed the shopkeeper, an older lady, out of the shop. Taylor strode normally up to the small shop, blending in with the bustling crowd. Her dark, messy clothes blended her into the muddy walls of the small shop. She carefully arranged her body's position so her back was to the opening of the shop, and she looked like the average customer, browsing through the store's food and little trinkets.

She started picking up small packets and pieces, anything she could fit in her pockets or down her belted shirt without seeming too suspicious. She glanced over her shoulder, frowning when she saw the new store across the street. It was set in front of a small patch of dying forest, sharply contrasting the background. Clean glass windows...gleaming with fresh paint...packed with new, shiny toys and sacks of fruit and rice and meat...

Once she'd filled her pockets and shirt, she sauntered to the door, satisfied with her haul. But once she reached the door...

"Thief! Thief!"

The shopkeeper ran toward her, back from wherever Tyler had charmed her off to. Cursing, Taylor ran toward their rendezvous - an ancient, crumbling shack hidden in the forest behind the new store. Hands grasped at her clothes and wrists angrily, a sharp scream as she shoved a middle aged woman out of the way. Then, a baby crawled directly in front of her, forcing her to take a sharp turn, landing her on her back in the dirt. Men grabbed her arms and legs roughly, holding her in place as she struggled, her eyes wide and her body wriggling in desperation. They had dragged her until she lay flat on her back, suspended in midair by her ankles and wrists. The shopkeeper trudged toward her, a cane in her hand and a murderous expression on her face. Swallowing down cries of fear, Taylor instead kept her eyes out for Tyler, knowing he would be planning something to keep her safe. Something...any time now...

BANG!

That wasn't Tyler.

"Alright now. You can put down the girl."

Stuck in the position she was, Taylor couldn't see the new addition to their spectacle. A man, definitely. A real man. Deep voice. Strong voice.

No one moved.

"Put her down."

Taylor saw her captors' Adam's apples bobbing nervously, their grips loosening and causing Taylor's skin to stretch painfully.

"Now."

One man dropped her left arm, leaving her in an even more uncomfortable position. Frustrated, she yanked both feet and her right arm hard, hitting the dirt on her backside again. A few people made a move toward her to restrain her, but the sound of a gun cocking stopped them. Instead, one of the man's hands gripped the back of her neck.

She glanced up at the stranger with the gun. He was at least a decade older than her fifteen years, tall and broad, not particularly good looking. She saw a tattoo sleeve splayed over his right arm, an entire sleeve of intricate designs, words (Taylor had never learned to read), and symbols. Not the sort of symbols one would expect from a scary man with a gun, though. No blood or gore, guns or knives or skulls and crossbones. Strange symbols that made no sense to Taylor, just a lingering feeling of awe at the unending detail. Glancing around, wide-eyed, she noticed that several people carried the same tattoo, on the other arm. All of them wore uneasy expressions.

"Taylor!"

She whipped around, seeking the source of the sound. Tyler was struggling to the front of the crowd that had gathered, anxious to see his twin. The man in front of her let out a yell, and immediately one of the tattoo sleeved men grabbed Tyler and held him at gunpoint. Taylor noticed the reluctant look on his face as he did so.

The twins stared at each other, and to the crowd, it seemed as if they were almost exchanging thoughts. However, before they could finish this "conversation," the right-arm-tat-sleeve man dragged Taylor a little closer to himself. "Ladies and gentlemen. If you don't mind, we'd like to take ourselves away from this place. After all..." his grip tightened on the young girl's neck painfully. "Why beat such a young, supple, and tight body if you can put it to better use?"

The man's sick innuendo sent shivers down her spine. Wisely, she noted the size of his hands and the size of her neck...then pictured what it might look like if he decided there was no more use for her alive.

She stood still.

Tyler did not.

His eyes lit with a protective, brotherly rage and he swept the gun aside (not that his captor did much to restrain him) and leapt at the much, much larger man. Taylor screamed as she was suddenly grabbed by her collar and dragged in front of the man. Tyler plowed into her, causing her to lose her balance and fall. A rock intercepted before she could meet the softer dirt and all went black.

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That's it. what do you think?

ScLoLi