by Hart, Stella
I didn’t know what to think of it yet. Good or bad, sinful or righteous… I was not sure. All I knew for sure was what happened. When he caned me, I felt something strange. Something different. Usually when the other men whipped me, I would end up experiencing an intense feeling of release. I’d feel lighter, purer, deeply satisfied with the knowledge that sin was leaving my body. But when Mason beat me, the feeling was something else entirely.
It was a warm tingling which started in my most private, forbidden areas. Soon it built to a heavy pressure inside me, one which left me breathless and soaked in sweat. It wasn’t because I was being beaten. It was because I was being beaten by him.
It all felt very similar to the illicit feelings I had when I touched myself to thoughts of Mason and that sinful book I had hidden in my pillowcase… except it couldn’t be illicit. It was an effect of Mason punishing me, which I deserved.
So it had to be good. That had only just occurred to me.
Did that mean God brought us together? Was he sending me signs that we belonged with each other as husband and wife?
It seemed right to think of it that way. After all, Mason kept showing up in my life, time and time again. It had to be some sort of sign.
I wanted to go to him and ask him if he really meant what he said before he beat me that evening—all those things about us knowing each other forever despite being apart so long—but I wasn’t allowed to spend time with him. He was still relatively new here, and my father didn’t like women speaking to the men all that often, even if they’d been here since the creation of New Eden.
Still, I had so many questions for Mason. Not just about us. How did he survive out there? Where was he when the Reckoning happened? What did he know about the Wastelands that our other men didn’t?
My mind circled back to the part where it thought of Mason and me as an ‘us’, and I let out a soft giggle.
Lauren turned to me. “What’s so funny?” she asked, brows knitted.
I didn’t need to look in a mirror to know my face was already scarlet. “I… I was just thinking about something that happened yesterday. Someone dropped something and it made a funny sound.”
“Oh, right,” she replied. Then she shook her head slowly. “It’s strange. I actually don’t remember yesterday at all.”
I felt bad for lying, because I could sympathize with the odd lack of memories from certain days. I wished I made some other excuse for laughing, but it was too late now.
We worked in silence for the next few hours, returning articles of clothing to their respective owner’s rooms. I was never supposed to feel envy, but when I saw the men’s suites, it made a twinge of pure resentment shoot through me.
They had so much. Enormous rooms. Beautiful furniture. Luxurious swathes of fabric. Marble-tiled bathrooms. Electrical devices and lighting.
How could our God be so unfair? Why would he give such wonderful gifts to the men while punishing women so much? I knew from His Word that we were responsible for all the sin in the world, but surely everything we endured was enough to earn us a light in our bedrooms rather than a candle. Or something to ease the load of our work for even a couple of hours a day.
With a sigh, I shook my head and tried to clear the negative thoughts from my mind. I shouldn’t be thinking like this. What on earth happened to me trying to be good?
“We should go to the church on our way back to our section,” Lauren said, snapping me out of my reverie.
“Why? Would you like to pray?” I asked. It probably wasn’t a bad idea. I should pray too, given my objectionable thoughts of envy.
“No. We need to check the schedule. Faith Formation is in a couple of days, remember?”
“Oh, yes.”
Faith Formation was a bi-weekly event for the young people of New Eden. Children sometimes had a hard time sitting through hours of prayer and sermons in the church, so during these evening events, we would all gather in a large common room and stage short plays for them. Not only did this engage and amuse the children, it also taught them valuable lessons based on His Word.
“I bet you’ll be with Danny again,” Lauren said as we hurried toward the church.
“Yes, probably.” I suppressed a sigh. Whoever made the Faith Formation pair schedules usually put me with Danny Miller, because everyone knew my father wanted us to get married in the spring. I couldn’t stand it. It felt so wrong to think of marrying another man now that Mason was here.
Surely my father would see that God had brought us together for a reason. He simply had to.
“Looks like I spoke too soon,” Lauren said when we arrived in the little alcove near the front of the church. The schedule was right before our eyes, written in white chalk on a blackboard. “Look who you’re with!”
My eyes widened. Whoever created the schedule had placed me with Mason this time around.
“Praise Him,” I whispered, so quietly that only I could hear. This must be another sign that Mason and I should be with each other.
“Things must’ve gotten mixed around because of Mason’s arrival,” Lauren said. “See, Danny is with Martha now. But I’m with Adam Landry, same as last time. So not everything has changed.”
I pressed my lips into a thin line as I thought about Adam Landry. He was the son of one of the Elders. Elena used to have a crush on him, back in the time when we were allowed to have silly crushes and impure thoughts about boys. Back in the time when girls didn’t have to marry their crush’s father instead.
But those times were gone, and so was Elena.
“I wonder who Mason will be paired with in the spring,” Lauren said, cocking her head to the side. “You’ll obviously be married to Danny. But what about me?”
I frowned. “What?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “Now that I’m a widow, I have to be remarried, remember? So maybe Mason and I will be paired with each other. I wouldn’t mind that. He’s very handsome.”
My face turned hot again. I couldn’t stand the thought of Mason marrying another girl here. Lauren might be my closest friend here, but even she shouldn’t be with him.
He should be mine.
Lauren looked at me, a small smile playing on her lips. “You wouldn’t mind that, would you?” she asked, her words soft and coy.
“I… I…” I tried and failed to find the right words to say I was not okay with it. How could I? We weren’t supposed to covet men like this. We were supposed to accept whomever we were married to without complaint. If Lauren was paired with Mason in the spring, I would have to get past it and focus my attention on my own husband.
Lauren’s smile grew wider. “A-ha!” she said triumphantly, amusement sparkling in her eyes. “I knew you liked him. It’s so obvious to me. You’ve practically been fawning over him ever since he arrived.” She leaned in closer. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”
My shoulders slumped with relief. She didn’t really want to marry Mason. She was just teasing me; trying to get me to admit my feelings to her.
“I just think he’s handsome, that’s all,” I said lightly. “Same as you and every other woman here.”
She shrugged one shoulder. “If you say so,” she said, still smiling.
I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. If Lauren had noticed how I felt about Mason, how many others had noticed? What if they could somehow read my mind and know my lustful thoughts about him? What if God spoke to my father again and told him about the time I touched myself to the thought of Mason? Worse, what if it came to him in a vision, and he had to see it all unfold in front of him? He would be horrified. Disgusted. Ashamed to call himself my father.
“Jolie, are you all right?” Lauren asked, concern washing across her face. “You’ve turned pale.”
“I’m fine.”
She sighed. “Are you sure?” she asked, brows knitted. “You’ve been a little strange lately. Like your mind is always elsewhere.”
I didn’t meet her eyes. I couldn’t tell her my impure thoughts about Mason. I cou
ldn’t tell anyone.
“I’ve just been thinking about Elena a lot,” I said instead.
It wasn’t exactly a lie. I was consumed by thoughts of Mason most of the time, but Elena was on my mind for all the rest. I missed her so much.
Lauren’s lips turned down at the corners. “I think about her too,” she said softly. Then her face brightened slightly. “I have an idea.”
“Yes?”
“Why don’t we go to her old room? No one else has taken it yet, and her things are all still there. It might make us feel better to be in there for a while.”
“That’s a good idea.”
We hurried down the hall which led to Elena’s old bedroom. It was just as small and dingy as the rest of the women’s rooms.
Lauren opened the small cupboard and pulled out one of Elena’s long gray dresses. “She always looked nice, even in dresses as drab as this,” she said with a wry smile.
“She did,” I replied, sitting down on Elena’s old bed with a heavy sigh. I grabbed her old pillow and brought it to my face to take in the sweet scent of her hair. Then I looked around the room, trying to imagine that this was all some sort of dream. I could wake up to find that nothing had ever happened, and Elena would come waltzing through that door, rosy-cheeked and alive. How nice that would be.
Something caught my eye a moment later. Frowning, I scooted closer to the head of the bed and peered at the wall. In tiny letters, someone had scratched three words into the stone.
Please help me.
My heart quickened. For several minutes, I simply sat there, staring at the writing and trying to make sense of it. Did Elena write this? It certainly looked like it, but why would she do it? How long ago?
It couldn’t be a message begging for someone to help her leave New Eden. There was no hope of the words being seen by anyone outside of the commune. If anything, the scrawled message was deliberately hidden, etched out behind the bars of the bedhead and placed low on the wall. Usually the pillow would cover that area, so if I hadn’t taken it away to smell it, I wouldn’t have spotted the words at all.
Elena must have written it when she was possessed by the Devil. She was too terrified to tell anyone about the possession but also too scared to keep it to herself entirely. And so she scratched out those words, probably with a hair pin by candlelight in the darkest depths of the night, hoping our God would see it and help her.
“What are you looking at?” Lauren asked. I quickly sat up and looked at her over my shoulder. She had turned away from the cupboard and was staring over at me, forehead wrinkled with curiosity.
I hurriedly replaced the pillow. For some reason, I felt like I shouldn’t share the message with anyone else. Not even Lauren. It was private. Elena’s innermost thoughts. I shouldn’t have looked at it.
“Nothing. I was just fluffing up the pillow,” I said.
“Perhaps we shouldn’t have come in here,” Lauren said, sitting beside me. As she spoke, she wrapped her arms around me in an affectionate hug. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I nodded slowly and whispered my response. “Maybe I have...”
* * *
“In the old times, we had lots of sinful literature like books and magazines, and we also had devices called telephones which people could use to communicate all their private thoughts to friends far away. These objects could be used by evil people to make good women stray from their true path and commit some of the worst sins… lust and adultery.”
I stood in the center of the stage, slowly and clearly enunciating each word so the children in the audience would understand. Faith Formation had begun, and it was time for me to perform my play with Mason.
We’d spent some time together rehearsing our lines over the last couple of days, but my father had been there watching us the whole time, so I hadn’t had a chance to speak with Mason about anything other than the play, much to my chagrin.
Fortunately, my father wasn’t here in the common room this evening. He and the other Elders hardly ever attended Faith Formation. They always said they had important business to attend to, but I thought they simply found the plays boring.
I couldn’t blame them. I found them quite boring too. There wasn’t a large selection of plays to choose from to represent each theme, which meant we’d all seen every one of them a hundred times, and none of us were proper actors, so it wasn’t exactly entertaining. The scripts were stilted and quite stupid as well, to be honest. I didn’t remember much from the old times, but I recalled enough to know that no one back then ever spoke the way they did in these plays.
I went and sat down on a chair in the middle of the stage. Beside it was a sheaf of papers; a prop used to represent a magazine from the old times. In my hand was a cup from the kitchen, which was meant to represent a telephone.
I picked up the papers and put them in my lap, and then I held the cup to my ear. “Hello, Amy,” I said. “I am calling you to tell you about this magazine I have been reading. It is nothing like His Word. There are all sorts of sinful images and words within it.”
I paused for a few seconds. Some of the children’s eyes widened. A few others leaned forward, curious to learn what the magazine said.
“In one of the articles, it has photos of men and women with no clothes on, and it says that premarital sexual relations are a good thing. It says women should act like whores and have relations with every single man they see, young or old. Day or night. It also says that adultery is good. So even though I am a married woman, this magazine is telling me that I should have relations with other men while my husband is away. What do you think I should do?”
I paused again, pretending to wait for a response. “You really think I should disregard His Word and do what the magazine says?” I said in a shocked tone. “It does sound very exciting, but isn’t that how the Devil slips in? He makes things seem so wonderful and tempting, and then he—”
On my right, Mason stepped onto the stage. He wore black pants and a dark red button-down shirt. “Hi,” he said, waving at me.
I looked at him, trying to ignore the blush spreading over my cheeks. Hopefully, if anyone in the audience noticed it, they would just think I was embarrassed to be up here staging this silly play in front of everyone.
“Sorry, I have to hang up the telephone now,” I said into the cup. “I have a visitor.”
I put the cup down and stood up. “Hello,” I said to Mason. “I’m Mrs. Smith. You’re my new neighbor, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “Yes. I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation with your friend.”
“Oh? And what do you think?”
He took a step closer to me. “I think your magazine is right. Your friend, too. You should always listen to friends who want to lead you astray. Staying on the straight and narrow path is boring.”
I took a step back. “But His Word says sexual pleasure is a sin for any woman. It also says I should be faithful to my husband, even if I did not choose to marry him.”
A devious smile curved up Mason’s lips, and he took another step toward me. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think there is nothing better than a man like me touching a woman like you, married or not.”
He pulled me into his arms, and I trembled. The strange tingling feeling was back, spreading throughout my body, and he wasn’t even punishing me. How extraordinary.
“I can’t,” I said, dramatically wrenching myself free. “It will feel good, but that is what the Devil wants, isn’t it?”
“The Devil isn’t real, and there’s nothing wrong with feeling good,” Mason said, stepping close to me again. He leaned down, his nose only inches from mine. “If your husband isn’t here to see, it won’t matter, will it?”
“I suppose not,” I said breathlessly. “But does this mean you love me the same way our God does?”
Mason chuckled. “Who cares about love? I’m just looking for a woman to fulfil my needs.”
“And what are your needs?” I asked.
Even though it was part of the script, some deep part of me genuinely wanted to know the answer to that question.
Mason slid his left arm around my waist, and our faces moved even closer together as he roughly pulled my body toward him. I gulped, trying to ignore how intoxicating his scent was. The children in the audience gasped.
“I need a beautiful girl with hair so long and silky I can run my fingers through it,” he replied, moving his free hand up to my head. He slowly stroked his fingers through my hair, and goosebumps immediately broke out over my skin.
Many people had touched my hair before, admiring its length, color and luster, but Mason’s touch felt different. Wrong and right at the same time. Brimming with hot desire, dripping with passion, overflowing with promise.
“My woman must also have a beautiful body which she isn’t afraid to show off for men like me. I don’t like modest, God-fearing women who cover everything up,” he went on. “My woman should be dressed like a whore and willing to give every part of her body to me whenever I want it. Are you willing, Ms. Chastain?”
He’d said the wrong line, calling me by my real name instead of Mrs. Smith, but no one seemed to have noticed except me. He leaned in again and tightened his grip around my waist as his lips hovered over mine. In this moment, we were as close as two people could possibly get to kissing without actually doing it.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the audience was captivated. Shocked and scandalized. I couldn’t blame them. We weren’t supposed to get this close during the play, even to represent the sin of lust.
“Yes,” I said with a nod. My heart was racing so fast I thought it might explode right out of my chest. “I’m willing to be your whore. Take me, Mr... what did you say your name was?”
“Mr. Devillier,” Mason said before burrowing his face into my neck.
This time, some of the older members of the audience gasped. I gasped too. Mason wasn’t supposed to touch my neck with his mouth like that. It wasn’t part of the script.
I didn’t care. I never wanted him to stop.
The tingling was gone now, replaced by a new and even more pleasurable sensation burning through me like wildfire. I was left breathless with desire and wonder. Paralyzed with guilt and fear. Two utterly conflicting feelings, warring with each other in my mind and body.
