Chapter One

Bethany and Nora were identical twins who liked Lord of the Rings. They had read the Silmarillion, the books, and had wached the movies countless times.

During recess at the Belles High School, Bethany could be ound reading either the Fellowship or the appendix of the Return of the King. Nora did most of her reading during lunch hour, forfeiting supper to have the satisfied feeling of reading a well written fantasy novel.

Neither of them had many friends at school, but this was due to their strange, deranged fandom. They liked Orcs and Sauron. Not Elves.

Bethany liked Orcs while Nora had a years old attraction to the Black Evil which was Sauron. Nora was the one who liked to wear black, was deeply into Goth, and she oftentimes wore black t-shirts with a flaming red eye painted on it.

Ever since Return of the King, Extended DVD, Bethany had found it incredibly tempting to select the scene with the black-eyed Orc driver was in and then watch it over and over again. Of course, this nearly drove everyone in house crazy once she started played scenes with Uftak (as she so christened said Orc). She had even saved footage of him from online, printed out the scene with him in it, hanging him up around her room and on her ceiling.

Nora, on the other hand, had saved and printed just about every picture of Sauron she could stomach. Most were fan-art depictions of him in a dark, sinister, and sensuous form of a young, dark elvish youth. However, she was becoming increasingly drawn to Sauron as he had appeared at the beginning of the movie, Fellowship of the Ring. She thought the armor had been darkly sexy with its Goth appeal, and then the way it had sculpted his slender body. Not to mention the totally rad spiky helmet.

“Y’know, Bethany, if you were in Middle-earth and a bunch of Orcs found ou, you would be dead in no time,” Nora said one evening as they sat on the sofa watching the Fellowship together. The opening scene with Sauron and Orcs had passed by and now they were at the party scene at Bag End.

“I think Sauron would mutilate you slowly, torture you, then decide torturing you wasn’t really worthwhile,” Bethany said slowly, a thoughtful expression crossing her face. Then she grinned. “You would probably scare him.”

Nora couldn’t hold back her laughter.

“Yeah. I would,” she said, snickering. Suddenly she grabbed the remote and turned the volume up. It was the part where Gandalf was telling Frodo about the Dark Lord Sauron, and how he, Sauron, had forged the One Ring to rule all others.

Nora actually sighed in a disgustingly lovesick way, and Bethany rolled her eyes at her Goth twin.

“Better wipe off your drool, Sis.”

“Wow…Saurie…Ring…Mmmmm,” Nora was saying, a glazed, dreamy look in her eyes. An enraptured smile was on her face. She mechanically reached out for the box of Kleenex which was used just for that purpose and wiped her drool off.

After the profound Sauron/Ring scene, they started chatting to each other, the volume down low as it was only Frodo and Sam in the wilderness. Nothing important there.

When the Nazgul scene came, with the totally awesome Ringwraith chorus, they hunched together, eyes wide open with awe as they beheld Ringwraith after Ringwraith chase after Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin.

Both held there breaths in this scene, waiting for the hobbits to die and the Ring to be taken to Sauron. But this didn’t happen as they both knew it wouldnÆt.

“I can’t believe it. People don’t just miraculously outrun horses. When I am a rich billionaire, I will pay Peter Jackson to redo the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Heck, if copyrights didnÆt exist, I would have been glad to make Frodo die on Weathertop and the Witch-king take the Ring as he should have done,” Bethany said.

“Yeah. All our Orcs die in Return of the King. Sad. Very sad.”

-I-I-I-I-

After watching all the Extended DVDs of all movies, they were zonked out the rest of the night and most of the morning.

Bethany woke up to the smell of pancakes cooking. She groaned as bright sunlight splashed into her eyes, white spots where the bright light touched her sleep sensitive eyes appearing.

“Rise and shine, honey!” her motherÆs obnoxiously cheerful voice came from the doorway. A hint of concern was in it.

“Mo-om,” Bethany whined, trying to get more shut-eye.

“Oh no you don’t! Today is Saturday and you’ll be washing the car with your sis, remember?” Then her mother let out a sigh. “Nora is wearing her black shirt, black pants, and black lipstick and eyeshadow again. Sometimes I want to scrub the junk off with my bare hands, and toss that awful black t-shirt in an incinerator!”

Bethany’s eyes widened at her mother’s words.

“It isn’t healthy at all to be a a fangirl of something as evil as Sorawn for crying out loud,” her mother babbled on. Bethan decided not to tell her mother the emphasis was on the first syllable of his name, or that it was pronounced SOUR-on.

“Well, I’d better quit talking before I start hurting someone,” her mother said, walking away.

ee. Thanks for your consideration, Mother, Behany said silently to herself, glaring daggers at her motherÆs retreating figure. She knew she shouldn’t be angry, but she was. Her parents didn’t quite mind her fascination with Orcs. In fact, sometimes she had the feeling they liked Orcs, too. But it was different somehow with her twin sisterÆs obsession with Sauron. Somehow that was more abhorrent, even though Sauron was just a fictional character like the Elf prissy Legolas many girls dreamt about. Sauron wasn’t Satan for crying out loud!

Bethany got up from bed, stretching and slipping on the Uftak t-shirt she had specially ordered. It was really a closeup of Uftak, the Orc driver which she had saved, only in the center of a flaming red Gothic heart. Nora had something like it, except it had the words I love Sauron in the runes of Mordor underneath, and below the dripping blood red heart was a creepy skull with the flaming Eye of Sauron.

Bethany would never understand why somehting like that could ever upset anyone.

“Hola, Beth,” her twin said from the kitchen. She was busy reading the Silmarillion in one hand while flipping pancakes with the other. “Made ya some pancakes.”

“Mmm,” Bethany said, inhaling the tantalizing aroma of melted butter over crispy, fried pancakes.

“‘Can hardly wait ta try ’em,” she said in her practiced Orc accent.

“Girls, remember after eating you’ll wash the car. Don’t eat too much or we’ll have to wash it again,” came their father’s deep, baritone voice from the living room, where he was stiing in his favorite recliner, smoking his brown pipe, and reading Sports Illustrated.

‘And, Nora-please take off that disgusting thing and wear something else!” their mother said as she stepped foot in the kitchen.

“All right, Mom,” Nora grumbled,sulkily walking over to her room where she slipped on another short. Of course, this one was black, too, but only with the words I love Sauron on it in blazing hot pink across the front.

Their mother sighed. “Girls, girls, girls,” she muttered, shaking her head slowly from side to side as she left the kitchen to talk to her husband concerning her children.

“When will this phase pass, I wonder? It’s killing me!” She sat down across from her husband, who was looking up from the article he had been reading.

“Ah, come on, Clarissa. TheyÆll get out of it soon,” he said.

ôAnd when will that be? NoraÆs been sleeping with an Eye of Sorawn plushie since she was eight! And Bethany has been into those goblin creatures since she was eleven. Both are seventeen now,” his wife said, folding her arms across her chest. “Not that I blame Bethany for liking Uftak. He is sorta-kinda cute for a goblin,” she added as an afterthought.

“I know. They’ll grow out of it. Trust me. They haven’t done anything outright evil,” he said.

“No? And I suppose worshipping evil from afar but not being outright into satanic practices makes it any better?! Clark, I’m worried about our two girls. I almost wish Nora would see Sorawn for herself and get a good grip on reality!”

From inside the kitchen, Nora and Bethany were huddling together for comfort and Nora was near tears. “I canÆt believe she is saying that!” said Bethany, then added, “I don’t have an appetite anymore. Let’s go wash the car.”

They headed off, picking up beach towels, rags, sponges, WindexÖ, and a pail full of soapy hot water, and then stepped outside where they couldn’t hear their parents give a verdict.

“I hope it’s just PMS,” Bethany said in reference to their upset mother. Nora just shrugged and didn’t say anything. Her stomach was in a tight knot and she felt queasy. She didn’t like talking while her and Sauron’s love life was reaching impending doom.

This must have been what it felt like for him to have the Ring dangling on a mere thread over the lava where it was forged.

“Skai, it’s hot today,” Bethany commented awkwardly, wiping sweat off her brow with a rag.

“Yeah. Like Mordor.” Nora let out a depressed sigh. “Good ol’, Orc infested-hey!” A smile lit her face, depression gone as she had a revelation. Then she ran off.

Bethany ran after her, calling, “What is it, Sis?”

“You’ll see!”

Nora came back carrying a long stick.

She proceeded to draw a circle in the ground large enough for both of them. She motioned for Bethany to step inside, and then chanted the Ring Verse in Black Speech:

Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg thrakatulûk, ash nazg gimbatûl agh burzum-ish krimpatûl!

The world spun around and suddenly they were no longer in Arkansas