A Wicked Haven

by Barry Smith

  “Great praises to you all for accepting the Lord Savior,” says the girl, as she turns to address them. Then calling for the nun who’s standing at the back of the church, she says, “Bernice, can you bless these boys?” The girl then heads back into the room, while the boys made their way towards the back of the temple, where Bernice places a Sapphire of Life necklace around each of their necks, and offers them a bowl into which one boy pays for them all with his video game money.

  “Bless you, my children. And here, please, take a brochure on our Missionary. I think this is a fitting program for such young men as yourselves” she smiles, as the boys walk out the temple. Ryan, who has been observing all the while, thinks the entire transaction is strange, but unwatched, he seizes the opportunity to sneak through an altar door, opposite the one the school girl entered.

  On entering the room, Ryan finds another door which leads to a back hallway; as he walks stealthily, along it, he hears voices drifting in the air.

  He peeks into a room, and sees two Brothers of the Missionary watching Archbishop Patrick Gallegher preparing to baptize a woman. Both Gallegher and the woman are both immersed waist high, in the waters of the baptismal font; she is completely dressed in white, and has an expression on her face, one that suggests hope and peace.

  Guiding her deeper into the water, Father Gallegher says,

  “Have you come to repent my child?”

  The woman smiling, nods in the positive.

  “Now I say unto you,” as he continues to baptize, “that you must repent and be born again; therefore, come and be baptized and wash away your sins, and be cleansed from all unrighteousness. Follow the Lord and immerse yourself.”

  Then raising his right hand, he says, “By the mandate that has been entrusted to me, I baptize you in the name of the Lord Savior, to be washed of all your iniquities, and to be accepted into the kingdom of Zion.”

  He then proceeds to place his right hand on her back for support, and the other hand on her forehead, before dipping her into the water, backward.

  As he immerses her into the water, he continues speaking, “Our father and Lord Savior, judge this woman for the sins she continually commits.” The woman, who is beginning to run out of breath, tries to loosen the Gallegher’s grip on her and come up for air.

  “Does the Lord Savior have faith that she truly repents?” continues Gallegher, completely ignoring the frantic movements of the woman, “Does this woman laugh in the face of the Lord Savior?”

  The woman, already on the edge of life, slashes and scratches the air, wildly fighting to come up for air but Father Gallegher only wrapped both his hands around her neck, and pushes her deeper into the water. The surface of the font comes alive, with hundreds of air bubbles escaping the water, as the woman’s arms thrashes around in the water.

  Ryan, appalled by the actions before him and wanting to put an end to them, reaches for his gun.

  “Shit!” he curses when his hand met an empty holster, and he remembers he had left it with the nun at the front. He made to barge in on the scene while unarmed, but that is when he notices the guns at the hips of the Missionary Brothers.

  Gallegher, facing the ceiling, then says, “We ask you, O Lord Savior, to judge this woman’s worthiness in serving thee and inheriting the Kingdom of Zion. Or is she to face Purgatory through immersive slumber?”

  At that point, the thrashing stops and a dead calm falls upon the water; it was only then that Gallegher releases his grip, and the woman’s body comes floating to the surface, a frozen face having replaced the initial one of hope.

  “The Lord Savior has spoken.”

  Then turning to the Brothers who are standing nearby, he says, “Take her away.”

  He then climbs on to the bank of the font, and heads for the very door from which Ryan is spying behind.

  Ryan, still in disbelief at what he has just witnessed, press himself against the wall, as the door swings outwards to hide him, and Gallegher walks past him.

  When Gallegher has walked out of sight, Ryan peeks through the door again, on the boys who are conversing.

  “Now, remove her Sinchip; they’re reusable,” says the older-looking one who seems to be training the second Missionary Brother. The boy in training pulls out a device with two symmetrical metal talons, while the other boy parts the woman’s hair, looking for something in particular. The boy in training places the tool on the woman’s head, and the metal talons dig into her skull, and a crunch sound is heard. Ryan soon hears a mechanical suction noise, and when he removes the tool, in between the talons, now sits a small microchip.

  Ryan, who sinks more and more into confusion and bewilderment with each revelation, continuing lying in wait, wanting to see what else would happen.

  The boy in training also removes her ‘Sapphire of Life’ necklace, and helps his brother put the lady’s body on the gurney. As the older Brother took the body away into a back room, the trainee heads Ryan’s way. Ryan, who has decided to follow the boy that holds the Sinchip, sees him knock on a door. Another Brother answers, and the Sinchip exchanges hands. When the exchange is complete, the trainee continues on, and the Sinchip carrier closes the door and goes back inside.

  Ryan’s escalating curiosity made him fearless to investigate further. He creeps forward, and knocks on the door a few seconds after. The same Brother opens the door, and sees no one; then stepping out into the corridor to survey his surroundings, he is delivered a swift blow to his jaw that renders him unconscious. Ryan then pulls the boy's unconscious body into the room and shuts the door behind them.

  Still dragging the body along the floor, Ryan notices the room is dark, but is faintly illuminated by flickering lights he cannot yet make out. After he has propped the body against a wall, Ryan turns to find an entire wall lined with multitudes of monitors.

  “What the fuck!” whispers Ryan, as he peers at the screens.

  Each monitor relays feedback from what he believes to be hidden cameras, as the videos play from a first-person point-of-view. Each monitor has a name underneath its screen, and are grouped by a red number. Those who have been labeled ‘1’, are on furthest ends, with ‘2’s following before culminating with ‘3’s in the center. The monitors relay the activities of people who have absolutely no idea that they are being spied on, as they relay activities from their very eyes; one shows a person shopping, another a person watching tv, a third feeding her baby, and so on.

  On a desk, in front of the monitor wall, is another cluster of monitors that have blinking red lights. The disturbing point-of-view relayed appears to be lots of running, and lots of chaos.

  “What exactly are you, Disciples of Zion?” asks Ryan, before he hears someone moaning behind him. It is the Brother he has knocked stirring to consciousness. Filled with rage and confusion, Ryan goes over to the young man, and strangles him until he stops breathing.

  After exiting the room, Ryan finds an exit door that he found himself outside, on the side of the church. Once outside, Ryan tries to understand all that he has seen.

  “What the hell…” he thinks, as he visually takes in the enormity of the Grand Temple’s architecture.

  After all that he saw, Ryan’s curiosity then desires more. As he walks further back, he sees that the Temple’s structure is strangely connected to a large warehouse that has smoke rising from one of its chimneys. The warehouse was incognito with the industrial environment of Shrimp King’s Wharf, which happens to be on the back side of the Temple.

  Ryan swiftly crouches and sneaks around to the back of the building, in a bid to investigate it. Ryan concludes that, with all of the pipes and pumps that protrudes from its walls, the building is more than a warehouse, but a factory.

  “But a factory for what?” thinks Ryan.

  Hiding behind flower bushes, Ryan sees that the back of the warehouse is heavily guarded, and so, he makes his way over to the other side, where there is a lone armed Missionary guarding the door.

  “I don’t have
my gun,” says Ryan to himself, ”So I am going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

  He sneaks up on the Missionary from behind, snaps his neck with brute force, and takes his keys before throwing him into the bushes.

  Inside the warehouse, nothing seems out of place; Ryan passes by a window where a jewelry maker is cutting a blue gem, the ‘Sapphire of Life’ that the Disciples wear. He also notices an extensive inventory of cases of sapphires, throughout the facility.

  When he reaches the back of the warehouse, it is then that he hears synchronized grunts, almost similar to a military cadence ‘Call and Response’. He climbs onto several boxes, to look through a window into the room, from which sounds came; there, he finds the unexpected.

  Inside is an entire training boot camp facility, with obstacle courses and weapon’s training. In the section where the cadence call is coming from, several Missionaries are doing martial arts in unison, being led by a ninja dressed in all white. After ending the demonstration, the ninja removes his mask to reveal the face of Father Covay.

  “I thought he is at the City Hall?” says Ryan, asking no one in particular while watching the Disciples display incredible martial arts prowess.

  ***

  Back in Trouble Town, Brothers of The Missionary, Mitchell, and Tyler Covay have returned to the house where they had cereal being thrown on them.

  When the very same father has answered the door, they ask,

  “Have you had enough time to think about the Kingdom of Zion and accept the Lord Savior into your Life?”

  The man replies, “You tie wearing faggots just don’t get it…”

  Before he could complete his sentence, Mitchell pulls out a short sword, and stabs him through the mouth. They kick his dead body to the side, barge into the house, and round up the rest of his family before shouting,

  “Convert or face Condemnation.”

  ***

  Another pair of Missionary Brothers are walking down a street when five InfliXion members come up behind them, whistling and making catcalls. Seven more gang members join from the front, thus, surrounding the boys.

  “Where are you going?” shouts one thug, “Don’t you want to hang out with us and have some fun, or are you in a hurry to find a place and pray?”

  The thug then, caressing his own crotch, whistled, “I’ll give you another reason for getting on your knees.”

  One of the Missionary boys then steps forward, and kneels obediently in front of the thug who has spoken, bowing his head in front of him.

  “That’s a good boy,” grins the InfliXion member, while his mate's cheer, “Look up at me. I want to see those pretty little eyes when I make you swallow my communion.” The boy looks up, and the second the thug took out his penis, he dismembers it with a blade that has been hidden in his pressed palms.

  “Aaaaaaahh,” screams the man, as he falls to the ground bleeding profusely between his legs.

  The other gang members fall silent, staring in shock, before pulling out their weapons and training them on the two Missionary Brothers.

  “You two motherfuckers are going to pay for what you have done,” shouts one, as he switches the safety off on his gun.

  “Who said we were two?” replies one of the Brothers, with a sly mile.

  Suddenly, about a dozen Missionaries parkour from the darkness and the surrounding roofs like the ninjas they are, catching the InfliXion members off their guard. The Brother, who is still on his knees, then rises to his feet and says,

  “Convert or face Condemnation.”

  “Fuck you!” curses one of the gangsters, as he comes charging at the boy, and an all-out brawl breaks out between both parties. Outmatched by the Brothers of the Missionary’s martial arts skills, most of the thugs die fighting, and while the surviving few are captured.

  ***

  Back at the warehouse, Ryan is still peeking in on the Training Academy when suddenly, he hears someone shout, “There he is!”

  He looks back to see the trainee Brother, and two Missionary Guardsmen, chasing after him. The pursuit serpentines through the warehouse, eventually ending with Ryan turning a corridor, and finding himself trapped at a dead end.

  “This way,” his pursuers are gaining on him. In a bid to avoid capture, Ryan kicks down a door next to him, and enters the unfolding room. The two Missionary Guardsmen, seeing him enter, follows suit and enters the room which is full of towering stacks of storage boxes, one of which Ryan has hidden behind.

  “I need something with which I can defend myself,” thinks Ryan, as his eyes roves up and down, in search of a possible weapon.

  “This should do.”

  He reaches for a wrench that lay on a shelf, but in his haste and panic, he cuts his hand on an exposed nail.

  “Damn!” he swears silently, while applying pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding.

  The Missionaries have scoured the room, for several minutes, in search of Ryan, before one of the guards hears a liquid drop hit the ground, from a corner. He ventures closer to the source of the drip, wanting to investigate further, only to have a stack of the boxes tumble on top of him. Some of the boxes breaks open, spilling hundreds of ninja daggers as they did.

  “Hey! You okay?” asks the other guard, but he has no response.

  Inching towards the scattered boxes, he keeps calling out to his comrade when Ryan, like a springboard, leaps over the boxes with a battle cry, and attacks him. Blows and kicks are thrown, but the Missionary guard’s skills is more than Ryan can take. He throws Ryan to the wall, knocking him down, but Ryan, who is already beginning to be worn out, immediately stands to his feet.

  “I can do this all day,” stammers Ryan, as he retakes his fighting stance. He however, did not notice the initial guard, whom he had pushed boxes on, get up and blindside him. He knocks Ryan in the back of the head, and renders him unconscious.

  ***

  Ryan later wakes up, with a sensation of the ground moving underneath him. He finds himself being dragged by both guards, down an unlit corridor. He is pulled into a room that has a single control panel on one of its walls, and wide steel doors with black and yellow caution stripes, along with its center, on another. One of the guards walks to the panel and pulls down the lever, and the steel doors open vertically with a menacing sound.

  The steel doors split open, one moving up and one moving down, revealing a dark, smoky room that exudes immense heat.

  “Let’s send him to meet his maker. Put him inside the incinerator with the rest of the trash,” orders the guard standing by the panel to the other still holding Ryan’s leg.

  Ryan is heaved up and thrown, through the steel doors, onto a padding of soot and ash. He looks up at the ceiling, and sees rows of burners, emitting flames and glowing like the turbine exhausts from a jet. Overwhelmed by the fumes and suffocation, Ryan begins to cough, as he felt his consciousness slowly drift away.

  After Ryan is thrown in, the guardsman, who’s standing at the control panel, proceeds to shut the doors but before that, he quotes,

  “He said unto them, those who attack the house of the Lord must face the wrath of God, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.

  As the guard reaches to push up the lever, a bullet punctures his skull. Entering through the right side of his head and exiting through the left, it splatters his brains upon the controls.

  The other guard, turning to find where the bullet had come from, is shot at the back of the head, staining the steel doors and Ryan’s face with his blood; his body collapses to the floor to reveal Bryce, holding a smoking gun out in front of him.

  “Looks like I’m right on time,” smirks Bryce.

  Ryan’s labored smile turns into one of relief, but then quickly morphs into fear when he sees a shadowy figure approach behind Bryce.

  “Bryce! Behind you!” he manages to yell, “The Enforcer!”

  The Enforcer walks up beside Bryce and then stops, as Bryce says,

  “Ryan
, meet Falcon, also known as the Enforcer, also known as Niall Pinkerton.”

  As he stumbles out of the incinerator, Ryan mumbles quizzically,

  “What…When…How…?”

  “Hey, hey, hey! Calm down, big guy!” replies Bryce, cutting him off, “I’ll explain later, we got to get out of here. If we’re discovered, we will be completely outnumbered.”

  ***

  At the Guilty Pleasure show after Dax Brayton’s performance, Sage is performing a Flame Spectacular Finale. Towards the end of her number, Sage is elevated, high above by one of the automation platforms, connecting like a bridge to an upper catwalk.

  Down below, dancers are performing when suddenly, a few people in the balcony seats starts pointing because they notice a man with a leather chain mask, running across the catwalk.

  It is the Numerical Slasher.

  He reaches for Sage, pulls her towards himself, and cut her completely open with a knife.

  As the audience scream in terror, the assailant grabs part of a rope hanging from the catwalk railings, loops it into a noose around her neck, and pushes her over the side.

  Sage’s body falls but when the rope has been fully expended, the body jerks upwards violently, spewing her bowels from her abdominal gash, and goring the stage with entrails. The stage impact of her organs spray the front row of onlookers with blood and gore; complete and utter chaos consumes the club, as dancers run off the stage, and guests dash for the exit doors.

  Dax, who initially sat in his dressing room, hears the panic and screaming in the Guilty Pleasure Showroom. He goes out to the door, wanting to see what all the commotion is about.

  As dancers run past him, he tries, futilely, to stop one of them to ask what has transpired.

  Seeing Phoenix, Jett and Chloe approach among the horde, he sighs loudly,

  “Thank goodness, it’s you three! Can someone please tell me what the fuck is going on?”

  “Come on, we got to get out of here!” says Phoenix, while glancing over her shoulder, “They killed Sage on stage before our very eyes.”