Over Exposure (Darkroom Saga)

by Poppet

  “What?”

  Stroking my hair again, cupping my head in his huge hand, he says, “Cloaking was the ancient equivalent of a marriage proposal. To cover a lady with your coat is declaring her as your bride in public. It was an understanding accepted and practised far and wide. A wife is a garment. To cover a woman with your cloak is declaring her as one of your garments.”

  The man driving, the one I can't see from this position, says, “Spread the skirt of your cloak over your handmaid for you have the right of redemption over me. Ruth 3:9. The man who spreads his cloak over you declares you are his servant, and only he can redeem you.”

  In abject disbelief, I look to Alpha for clarification, “So just because you put your jacket around me, I'm your... wife?”

  “You catch on quick, sweetie. Don't you worry your pretty little head. I'll take good care of you.”

  Only until this baby is born. Then what?

  I've gone from Purgatory to the raging furnace of Hades.

  The devil owns my soul.

  Chapter 21

  Photography can teach you to improve your awareness level

  ~ Ansel Adams

  Shauna:

  The problem with God is even though he believes he is god, he isn't. He's a scientist who is a pathological sadist. He's missing the component in his head that creates emotional connection and bonding.

  Examined in some run down dive in the middle of fucking nowhere, he declares me healthy and able to travel, bundling me back into the car. We traverse the countryside for hours before his New Jerusalem comes into sight. We don't stop once, the doors are locked and the windows kept shut.

  He just shot my second husband. The one he forced on me. The one he made me bond with. The one he forced to bring me here when I was unconscious in a hospital ward.

  Like a victim of human trafficking he abducted me from the fairest Cape to fly me around the world, to what I am positive is the Arizona desert somewhere.

  I've been through more trauma than I ever thought a human could endure, to land up here, two hours in, given sugar and fluid, thrown around, yelled at, struck repeatedly, cussed at, spat on, and now I'm stripped, very pregnant, and I have to make a choice.

  Do I bring this baby into the world and let him do to my child what he did to Victor and Seth?

  If I thought losing them was hard, I know that I'll need a prison cell with rubber walls if he murders my child after he's brutalised and conditioned it to become his 'priest'.

  Fiddling with the camera angle he comes striding back my way, as naked as I am. Terror doesn't begin to describe my wedding recess when 'the bride returns to the bridegroom'.

  “Shauna, I won't fucking repeat myself! I. Said. Get. On. Your. Knees!”

  “What are you doing!” I screech, holding my hands up defensively, my hysteria bouncing off the walls of this white tiled room with a simple plug hole in the centre, as if it was once used for slaughtering, as if there's going to be lots of blood. The only item in here with us is a rudimentary bed.

  “Obedience begins in the womb. It's time for the baby to know authority.”

  “What?! You are fucking mad!”

  Lifting me up by the hair, smashing me headfirst into the tiles, ramming my forehead until my eyes throb, he says calmly as if he's talking about eggs over easy, “You have no clue what it takes to break a mind. I've broken yours before and it's about to be broken again. My children do not question my authority because their abuse begins young. The husband shall be blameless, and she shall bear her iniquity.” Numbers 5:31

  ~~~

  Victor:

  Jude walks in, the expression of doom he's wearing enough to get me to put down the plans to Alpha's compound. “What gives?”

  Leaving the groceries on the counter, he walks straight to the fridge, extracting two cold ones, coming back and sitting opposite me, leaving mine in front of me.

  “Seth's dead.”

  Sitting back, folding my arms, I ask, “Why? What did he do?”

  “He didn't do anything, Victor. There's a reason why Seth was never made a disciple. Do you remember when we all turned fifteen Alpha started taking sperm samples every year?”

  “Yeah?” Where's he going with this?

  “He was testing fertility. Only virile sons made it to the legion. The rest of them mysteriously left us. The only one he kept was Seth.”

  “Because making a woman pregnant is the greatest gift she can receive from God. Yeah I know. So, what you're saying is Seth died because he can't have kids?”

  He wipes his forehead with the heel of his palm, looking conflicted. Finally looking me in the eye, he blurts, “Right. I'm gonna come clean. I can't handle this espionage shit. I can't hide it from you because you're my buddy and I need you to have my back. We gotta have trust and I can't deal with this clandestine shit. I found... footage. I go and look at his computer often. I check the feeds around the compound, more so of late because we're preparing to infiltrate it to get your babe back. I also hear stuff, little mutterings between the brethren.”

  “For shit's sake Jude! Would you just spit it out.”

  “She's pregnant.”

  “Who is?” What shit is he taking that he's pinging around like a bloody Frisbee.

  “Shauna. She is very pregnant. And you know what he says to do to pregnant women...”

  I nod, cutting him off. “Yes I do. He expects us to do it to them too. Well, not me, because I'm the living dead now, but back when he owned me I did exactly what he ordered.”

  Kicking back, I grab the beer, twisting the cap off and swigging down deep slugs. Fortified, I look at him, “Just start at the fucking beginning. Don't stop until you reach the end. This isn't your fault, so just give me the intel.”

  ~~~

  Jude:

  I don't know how to tell him. Getting up and moving to the terabyte back up hard drive, I switch it on, waiting for the computer to boot up.

  “I'm staying out of this. You just sit here, watch all the files in this folder. When you're done, it's the most recent one I need to discuss with you. This isn't going to be as simple as a rescue mission.”

  Moving out of the way, I vacate the chair for him, letting him view the recorded footage of her time in captivity. I've watched it all and don't have the heart to recite what's transpired. She's been indoctrinated, brainwashed, only to resurface a semblance of personality, but now, I'm not so sure. How much can one chick take before she cracks, permanently.

  Grabbing the Glendfiddich, I put it next to him with a tumbler, walking away to give him privacy.

  It's all there, every last detail.

  At six I head out, doing the KFC drive-through to grab us dinner, returning to my secret home where I've kept the son of god alive for months. He no longer retains a shred of weakness, fully restored to the strength and invincibility he embodied before the coma.

  Opening the door, the house is in darkness, and Victor's just staring at the screen, tears running down his face. The sound of her latest excursion in Alpha's evil sepulchre reaches my ears as I close the door. There he takes the living, subjecting to them to such macabre cruelty that they die, yet live on, lost inside their own suffering.

  Leaving the lights off, using the ghostly illumination coming from the computer monitor to navigate, I plant the paper bag on the desk, sitting opposite him, waiting to speak.

  I can only imagine the turmoil he's experiencing.

  She's back in the movie room, tied down, forced to watch abominations with scripture narrated at her over the violence and cruelty.

  Switching it off, plunging us into darkness, his voice is hoarse, “Do you know what that does to a developing foetus? Do you have any inkling how stress traumatises that developing brain and nervous system?”

  I nod, knowing as much as he does.

  Wiping his eyes, looking violated and angry, he folds his arms, clearly restraining himself from lashing out physically, “That much cortisol to a developing infant is detrimental a
nd that bastard fucking knows it. That child will have damage to the frontal lobe, desensitising it from stressful situations once its born. Without the brain stem and frontal lobe developing normally that child will have no concept of self-preservation. Emotionally it will be stunted from birth, and it won't be rational. It will never react normally. It also weakens her.”

  Nodding, I state the obvious, “Lack of empathy will be inherent at birth. This is how cunning he is. He creates monsters before they even take their first breath. You are that child, so is Seth. He adopted me, so even though no one wanted me I can assume I wasn't brutalised inside the womb. It's called toxic stress for a reason, Vic. That baby's neurons won't map normally.”

  Victor hisses, the tone of his voice strangled, “You don't get it. Why do you think he has broken brides? Why do you suppose he has the disciples abduct women? He 'adopts' orphans, that's the story he tells you, but most of his army are from the very women his followers kidnap, rape, and torture. You call yourself an orphan, but which one of his core group of retired disciples fathered you? For all we know he could be your father. He uses those women to breed his army. I remind you of his curse: You shall beget sons and daughters but shall not enjoy them, for they shall go into captivity.” Deuteronomy 8:41

  I'm still waiting for the shoe to drop. Shauna is pregnant not with his child, or his brother's, but by his own father.

  Pushing away from the desk and standing, he points to the monitor, shouting, “She's just an incubator to him. He doesn't give a shit about her. Why? Why the hell did he watch her for so long? The reason why I took three bullets and Seth took one to the brain is crystal fucking clear! He is obsessed with my woman! She's mine! Why the hell did he kill both me and Seth to take her away from us? Why does he need Shauna?!”

  Oh boy.

  Standing myself, I switch the lamp on, walking to the filing cabinet and extracting a folder. I drop it on the desk in front of him. “Because of this lady.”

  Flipping the folder open, he rifles through the photos and info. “I vaguely remember this woman. She was my nanny until I was eight.”

  “What happened to her?” I ask, testing his scope on the subject.

  He shrugs, giving me a foul look, “I don't know. One day she just wasn't around any longer. That was normal. Women came and went regularly. The broken brides are expendable to Alpha.”

  Taking a deep breath, I tell him, “Your dad has files on everyone. And I do mean everyone. Her name is Evelyn Ward. She was his wife and your mother. He refers to her as Eve in his notes. According to his records, he harboured the notion that Eve fell pregnant with your brother by another man. That's why he named the baby Seth, after the generation of chaos. He let her be your caregiver, but when she got in the way of your training, trying to protect her own children from his volatile temper and zealous adherence to brutal scripture, he beat her to death. He's drawn to Shauna because she looks just like that woman. Subconsciously it's probably what drew you to her too. You called Shauna your angel, you wanted to redeem her from her sins. You were acting out a childhood fantasy, Victor. On some level you knew Eve was your mum, and by saving Shauna you acquitted yourself of guilt. That's why you only began to rationalise your own actions after she was 'free of sin'.”

  Sitting down abruptly, he skewers me with a look of pure contrition, “I was too young to protect her from him. She was a dirty angel. Fuck, I grew up with those words. Until turned from sin every woman is a dirty angel. He admitted they were angels back then. How could I have been so blind that I couldn't see inside my own psychosis?”

  Smirking, I open the take-out packet, “You should get fatally shot more often. It was like a sanity injection.”

  Taking his chicken burger from me, he jerks his head toward the computer, “We have to get her out. Asap.”

  Before taking a bite I lower my hands, resting my burger over polystyrene, “About that. Victor, you saw her state. I don't think she's going to be your Shauna ever again. He's shattered her psychologically. She isn't salvageable–”

  “And you would just leave her there? To an early death after she's provided his new generation? To be raped repeatedly by that asshole? Beaten when she speaks, brutalised to know her place in the pecking order, only to be turned over to the disciples when he's done with her? Are you out of your fucking mind!”

  Thinking of James, I see his point. Hell, if Vic could have a mental breakthrough, maybe she can too.

  Willing to put my neck on the line, I nod, turning to business, “Fine. But how the hell do we get the Apache to the States? We have to go in under the radar. He can have no inkling you are alive, or that we're advancing. We no longer have access to his infrastructure, his boats or planes–”

  Smiling at me with the deviant darkness of the Angel of Vengeance, he leans forward, coiling his immense build to glower at me, “I'm his son. I have my own army. Did you forget that? Only a fool underestimates my reach.”

  “Speaking of which,” I say around mayo and chicken breast. “I have records of all his bank accounts. We need to do a transfer, one he won't notice because he's too busy violating his pregnant project. John's Satanarium was just handed over to James, because John was murdered by insurgents. He's been supplying east Texas with Manna for the last decade. I say we wipe out the funds from his bank account. He's dead, Alpha won't know what happened to the profit and he can't interrogate a corpse for answers. We'll have enough to start over, far away from the legion.”

  “I'm glad you're on my side, you make a formidable foe,” he says.

  Likewise.

  I'm between a rock and a hard place, but this needs saying. “Vic, you will still respond to mental triggers. He's conditioned you in ways he never did to the rest of us. Your instinct is to obey him. Just make sure you don't cap me when this is over. Stay vigilantly sober from your indoctrination.”

  Leaning back, grabbing two new drinks from the bar fridge, he gives me a chilled bottle, “Jude, this may be a little late, but thank you. Having you on my team, saving me and now my wife, I don't know how I can repay you.”

  Uncapping the Amstel beer, I mean it when I say, “You want to thank me? Kill him. Make him dead!”

  Chapter 22

  The negative is comparable to the composer's score

  and the print to its performance.

  ~ Ansel Adams

  Shauna:

  As he strapped me down I knew he was going to play the images again, subjecting me to things no person should ever witness in their lifetime.

  I have no money, no documents to get in or out of the country, I don't even know where I am or how far it is to the nearest town, absconding is impossible.

  Abandoned through the demise of the two men who somehow found it in their hearts to love me and help me heal when broken and despairing, this time there is no salvation or glimmer of hope.

  There is no relief from this hell.

  He doesn't know that he's taken away my reasons to live. I'm ready to submit to the madness so that I'm terminally insane when he harvests my baby. The one the bible says he owns. Numbers 18:15

  My heart is so broken from my excruciating morning that I no longer wish to live. He wants me to pray, and I will until I lose my mind.

  I will pray for death.

  I don't know who the man is, the one who shot Seth, but in my heart I curse him. He will get what's coming to him and he will die a slow painful death. He will bear my scars and anguish. He will be subjected to my pain. He will suffer. I will never forgive him.

  I have spent many moons in this crypt, reading the black book of destruction, and I abide by the words: If you forgive people's sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven. John 20:23

  I watched Peter die, that will have to be my consolation, because I cannot forgive him either.

  If there was ever an angel of vengeance, he will come.

  Looking into the unholy eyes of god, I curse him too.

  Vengeance will be mine. T
his tyranny will end. The drunk will become sober. They will realise you are a fraud and a liar, that you are not - and never were - god.

  Your own angel will cut out the rotten fruit from the tree of life and free mankind from your hatred and wrath.

  Today the sacrosanct part of me submits to death, but before my baby draws its first breath I condemn you to the same fate.

  You will die with me.

  ~~~

  Alpha:

  Watching from the comfort of my study, her glazed eyes fill my dwelling with joy. Now that I've broken down her defences and crushed her allies as I did when I took my flock through the desert, she is changed. Defeat is obvious. Without my sons to get between me and her, she succumbs without a fight.

  She did not scream or beg or cuss. She let me lead her with the docile hopelessness of the firstborn lamb. I own them all. I finally have Eve back and this time I know my son is my own.

  The wheel turns. She is like Lilith, incarnating again and again,, thinking she can elude me with her evasive action, the way Sophia did in the very beginning, hiding herself in Eve, but I took her light when I raped Eve.

  I see you. You hid behind your sons, but they belonged to me. You belong to me!

  You thought you could escape! You cannot escape God. I will always find you. There is no avoiding your judgement. Your sins surround you and I cannot help but see them. Hosea 7:2

  Pulling off my shirt, relaxing with my abode finally quiet, the men all sent out, back to their quests, I take a swift perusal over the feed coming to the study monitors. Their tasks and hidden quarters are clear as a hundred eyes blinking at me.

  How is James doing? I'm not sure he is the right son for the Sinnergog, but his eagerness to win my favour endears him to me.