by Lucas Mangum
“I hope you’ll forgive me.”
Her eyes get shifty. Then she turns and starts to walk away. I gather up all the strength I have and croak out something I’m dying to know.
“Did you . . .” She stops walking. She turns back to me. “Did you break?”
She gives me a wry smile. It’s the saddest expression I’ve ever seen, even worse than my mother’s on the night I left.
“Everybody does. Eventually. You will, too.” She lowers her gaze, then adds: “I really am sorry.”
“Why are you here?”
“With you? I told you—”
“No, this place. Why are you here? Why did you stay?”
She crosses her arms and glances off to the side. A muscle works in her jaw. Her eyes are dark. She doesn’t speak for a long time. When she faces me again, it’s as if she’s staring inside of me, examining every nook and cranny of my soul for any indication I’ll judge her. I let her look and don’t speak. She’ll see what she needs to see. There’s no need for me to guide her, and I lack the strength to do so. Finally, she nods and her expression softens. Her arms fall limp to her sides.
“My father died when I was two years old,” she said. Her mouth twitched into a grimace. “Suicide. I guess he had depression or something, but whatever the reason, I think he just couldn’t handle taking care of someone other than himself. Not because he was selfish or bad, just broken in some way that made caring for himself alone tremendously difficult, and adding a family on top of it was just too much. Overwhelming.” She lifted one shoulder. “So, he took his own life. Stuck a Beretta in his mouth and . . . well, you get the picture.”
I try to shift my weight and wince, which she mistakes for me being uncomfortable with her story. She apologizes and glances down at her feet.
“It’s okay. I want to hear this.” While I still hear exhaustion in my voice, I feel a slight lifting of my burden by hearing Marley give voice to her own. “Please, go on.”
She looks up, but only a little. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
She nods and faces me again.
“Anyway, it was just Mom and me after that. We did okay, but things were tight, and she was always stressed. Sometimes, I think she wanted to die, too, from the pressure of it all, but she stayed alive for me. She tried meeting men here and there. Some of them even stuck around for a while, but once they found out her ex killed himself, they usually skipped town. I guess they thought there must have been something wrong with her if her husband wanted to die bad enough to force the issue.” She shifts her stance and takes a slow breath. “We got on okay, but from the time I was little, until the time I left home, I never stopped feeling like Mom deserved much better. I aimed to do just that when I started dancing at the place that didn’t care I’d lied about my age. Of course, I told Mom I was waitressing.”
One corner of her mouth lifts into a wry half-smile, and I get the impression she wants me to laugh. I only grimace. It’s too painful to do anything else. Plus, I don’t find anything about her story terribly funny. My heart goes out to her, and I’m shocked at feeling such sympathy. Used to be, I only had myself to look out for and didn’t have time to care too much for others, not even Momma when I knew full well Daddy beat her, too. Self-preservation was all I could afford. In that way, I suppose I was like Marley’s father, only too stubborn to take my own life. This new attribute of caring for others had started, obviously, with my unborn child and the realization he deserved better, which prompted my exodus from my home. Now, this newfound care for others manifests itself in my concern for Marley. I’m perplexed by it but also strangely content with it. I wish I wasn’t tied to a tree, so I could reach out and hold her as she tells me this understandably difficult story.
When she realizes I see no humor in her story, her smile fades, and she takes another breath before continuing.
“Anyway, I’m sure you know a thing or two about what working in a place like that is like,” she says. “Men with their grubby hands all over you, sticking moldy dollar bills in your underwear and between your tits.”
“I’ve fucked men for money,” I say in order to show I understand her very well.
“Sometimes I did, too.” Some of her hair falls in her face and she brushes it aside. “Everything changed when I met Kendra McDade. Do you get jealous?”
“I don’t know. Maybe?”
She nods. “Well, when I saw Kendra, it was pretty much love at first sight.”
“It was when I saw you, too.”
She smiles at that. “Thank you. I don’t have to tell this part if you don’t want me to.”
“It’s okay.” I take a deep breath and wince. My baby boy gives me a kick.
“You sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Okay, well, I remember the first time she walked into my club so clearly, it’s almost like it’s this never-ending moment, like it plays on a loop in my head.” She blushes. “I wasn’t thinking about it when we—you know. Anyway, she had this bright red orange hair and incredibly thick lips. She was tall, slender, and milky skinned. She wore leather boots to her knees, ass-hugging jeans, and a half-shirt. A ring glimmered in her belly button. I stopped dancing while I watched her come in, and all the men watching me turned to see what I was looking at. I felt bad immediately, because that meant all the gross men who were ogling and groping me were now ogling and would likely try to grope her.” She shakes her head. “I should have known better. She had a presence about her. She parted the ogling men like a boat leaving port parts the sea. Though she excited them, she also frightened them.
“She locked eyes with me and gave me the most wonderful smile.” She shakes her head, and that sad expression crosses her face again. “She walked right up to the stage, climbed up next to me, so commanding of the room around us that our sorry excuse for security didn’t even try to stop her. She put her hands on my hips and pulled me to her so that our pubic bones touched, and then she kissed me. It nearly took me off my feet, and not just because I’d had a few shots of Cuervo. In fact, I’m sure I would have stumbled backwards had she not held me. It took a few weeks before she asked me to join her on the journey that ended with me killing a man, but the truth is, I would have done anything for her that night. I fell that fucking hard.”
Now I do feel jealous. First loves are hard if they’ve loved before, I realize. I strive to keep my expression neutral, but she reads me like a literature professor reading a classic short story for the hundredth time. Somehow, it’s as if she knows me on a fundamental level, despite me having withheld myriad details.
“Well, anyway,” she says, blushing again, “the man I killed was a man we only intended to rob. I saw the potential score as a way to set my mother and me for life. I could stop stripping and she could work a little less hard, maybe even be able to retire. I justified our crime, not just by the prospect of paying back my mom, but also by what I’d heard about the man. His name doesn’t matter, but he raped a girl, well a few girls, and his status helped clear his name. In other words, he was a total dirtbag. We got into his house under the pretense that we were escorts hired for his upcoming birthday.
“We never intended to kill him. Things just got a little out of hand. He was onto us from the beginning. He nearly punched me out and tried to strangle the life from Kendra. It was her or him. I chose him. Smashed a bust of his ugly face over the back of his head. There was so much blood.” Marley shakes her head. “I could live with killing him, and would have stuck with Kendra while we spent the rest of our lives running, but his kid walked in. I’ll never forget the little boy’s face. Couldn’t have been more than three years old. He looked so hurt, as if he knew right away we had ended his father’s life.” She lowered her head. “When I ran away, I left Kendra behind, too. I told you I have nowhere else to go, and I meant it. Maybe that man deserved to die, but his son didn’t deserve to be an orphan. I’ll never face the world outside The Homestead again. This place really sucks
sometimes, but when compared to the rest of our shithole planet, it’s like a paradise. I know that sounds strange from where you’re standing, but not if you think about it too long. You came here for a reason, too, Courtney. Just like everybody else did. And I’m so fucking sorry.”
As she stands before me, having revealed her biggest secret, part of me still wants to embrace her, but I also envy her current position. Though neither of us are truly free, she has certain advantages I don’t have. She can at least move freely about the grounds. I have no idea when I’ll be able to do such a thing again. I don’t even know if I will live through this, despite the assurances no one intends to kill me. Sure, Ambrose sees me as a challenge and killing me would be admitting defeat, akin to throwing in the towel in the face of too much adversity, but how much more can my body take? Sometime, something has to give.
“Anyway, I enjoyed our night together. I hope they let you go soon.”
“You can free me. We can run off. Together.”
“I can’t. We can’t.” She reaches out to touch me but hesitates mere inches from my breast before withdrawing her hand. “I’m really sorry, Courtney.”
She leaves me here, hanging in the scorching afternoon sun.
5
I MUST HAVE FALLEN ASLEEP. The sky has become fire. I’m again the prophetess, but no longer a whore; I’m a martyr. All the vegetation around me is dead, blackened as if the fiery sky has scorched it. In the ashen grass, twin snakes slither toward me. I watch them, unafraid. Snakes never bothered me, despite my father’s warnings about their satanic nature. I found the idea that a common reptile served the devil absurd, even as a child, even as a believer.
The snakes crawl up my legs. Their scaly flesh is cool and coarse. They hiss as they crawl up and up. One stops at my cunt and starts pushing its way inside, its cold head parting my fleshy folds, chilling the inside of my vagina. There is no pain but gooseflesh flares across my pubis, lower abdomen and inner thighs. The second snake stops at my baby bump and bites into my belly.
Daddy stands six feet in front of me, naked and stroking himself. His skin is a sickly gray. He’s emaciated; all the bulk I’ve become familiar with has wasted away. His hair has gone spider-silk white and scraggly. Despite these changes, I recognize him on a fundamental level. I’d recognize him anywhere, no matter how he’s transformed, no matter how he’s decayed. His eyes are rolled back in ecstasy. Drool so thick it could be mucus leaks from his parted lips and he licks it away.
He lets out a dusty moan as he reaches climax. He comes first in little squirts of blood then begins to discharge shreds of soggy flesh. From his open mouth fall his teeth in no discernable pattern, like acorns from a tree. His eyes explode, spraying gray fluid that leaks down his cheeks in viscous tears like spoiled yogurt. His drool turns black. His genitals fall from his crotch and land with a sound like a wet towel dropped against a tile floor. From the hole gushes more blood, more ruined organs. The ropes come loose and I fall into the spreading lake of bodily fluids.
Exodus
1
I AWAKE UNDER WATER. HANDS hold me in place. I’m drowning, my lungs about to explode through my ribcage. Then, up, up from the depths; risen following immersive baptism. I gasp the air. I’m in a bathroom, soaking in a vintage tub with chips in the white porcelain revealing cold gray iron beneath. The hands release me. My tears and the water dripping down my face mix together and become indistinguishable. Danvers and three women are standing around me, beads of liquid glistening on their hands like fresh dew on pale leaves. Ambrose stands in the doorway with his arms crossed and a thoughtful expression on his face.
No one says a word. Though I wonder why they took me down from the tree, though I wonder what they’re doing to me now, I refuse to speak to them. I vow to remain stoic, unmoved.
They will not break me.
Danvers looks back at Ambrose. He nods. The women lift me, naked and shivering, out of the tub and wrap me in towels. They lead me back to my room and sit me on the bed like a naughty child condemned to timeout. All but Ambrose leave. We stare each other down. He unbuckles his pants and pulls out his cock. I go to my knees to service him, letting the towels fall to reveal my body. If I do a good job, maybe he’ll consider me ‘broken’ or at least decide to free me. I reach up for his flaccid penis, and then he hits me. Right in the face. With a closed fist.
I land hard on the ground. I taste blood. Stars explode in my field of vision like white fireworks. Something warm sprays against my ear and trickles into my mouth. It tastes sour: it’s urine. I spit and try to shimmy away. He steps forward, still pissing on me. I sit up and scoot backwards and wave my hands, deflecting the spray.
“Fucking stop it!”
The flow of urine ceases. He marches over to me, grabs me by the hair and throws me face-first on the bed. I think he means to rape me in the ass, but instead he spanks me with so much force I think he’s broken the skin. I sink to my knees. My stoicism breaks and I start to cry.
Without another word, he leaves me.
I crawl into bed and wrap myself in the sheets. I don’t fall asleep for a very long time.
2
IT GOES ON LIKE THIS for days. Tree. Submersion. Humiliation.
I’m not sure what their definition of ‘broken’ is.
I’ve been reduced to a sobbing mess. I’ve blacked out. I’ve begged them for mercy and offered complete submission.
But this never stops.
They just say I’m not ready.
Whatever the fuck that means.
My door is guarded when I’m returned to my room. There’s no window. No way out of here. I’m trapped.
On top of all this, I’m fucking pregnant.
I’m in pain. Bloated. Exhausted. Itchy. Covered in welts. If they don’t mean to kill me, they have a funny way of showing it. I don’t know how much more I can take. I don’t know how much more my unborn child can take. I’m fucking terrified for my child. For me having to endure more of this. The body has its limits. Mine can’t be far off.
Suicide crosses my mind, but I won’t go that route. My baby must live. Therefore, I must live. It really is that simple. My brain knows this. And I am a survivor. I’ve fucked and fought to protect myself since I was twelve years old. I have no doubt that had I not fucked my father, he may have one day killed me. He may have killed my mother, too, but I doubt she will ever acknowledge it or find it in her heart to thank me. I saved both my life and hers. I hope he doesn’t end up killing her now I’m gone. I thought I was saving my baby’s life by leaving and taking shelter here. I thought I could endure whatever these people did to me because I’ve put myself through so much. But again, the body has its limits. I’m sure to reach mine soon.
If only Ambrose had the same desire that burned in all men. He doesn’t even get hard when he abuses me. I almost admire that.
Sometimes, I think about praying. That’s worse than suicide, I think. I prayed for much of my childhood for Daddy to stop hurting me. He only ceased through my doing, not God’s divine intervention. So, what can I do here? How can I stop this? I’m at a loss.
But not all is lost. I’ve still got this life growing inside me. I’ve still—
But then, I’ve doomed the child by coming here, haven’t I?
I must fight back. Somehow, I have to get free.
But how? How, other than death, the ultimate freedom?
Why hasn’t Marley come for me? Was she deceiving me from the start?
I can’t believe I let myself fall for her. Really fall for her. I’ve never fallen for anyone before. I’ve had fleeting feelings of attraction, sure, but otherwise, sex was only ever a weapon to me, a nuclear bomb in my cunt that could level any obstacle and reduce it to ash.
But with her. With her . . .
Love at first fucking sight, long thought a myth, confirmed its existence when I laid eyes upon her that first day in the yard. And that night we were together. Even hearing her story about how she killed for someone el
se she loved and her subsequent remorse for her victim’s child. God. It almost made the suffering I’ve experienced in its wake worth it. It was the first time I felt truly close to anyone, vulnerable yet safe. It’s hard to explain. Surely no one could make you feel that way if their intentions were malign. Maybe I was naïve. After all, this is all new to me.
God, I want to die. If not for my baby, I so willingly would.
But this child. Something about this child—
Everyone spends a significant portion of their life looking for meaning. Most people, at least everyone I encountered growing up, settle for religion. I always knew there was something more than that. For me, this child presents the chance for me to break the curse. My parents weren’t always monsters; I know that on a fundamental level. They became monsters because monsters raised them. I will not be a monster to my child, and I will not subject him to the monsters here. He will grow up safe and secure. He will not feel like he has to manipulate, fuck or fight everyone in order to survive.
He will look in the mirror and see the face of God.
3
ON THE SEVENTH DAY, WHEN they lead me to the tree, someone is already hanging from it. It’s Marley. Her hands and feet are tied. She’s naked and covered in bruises. Ambrose stands beside her, his belt in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other. Danvers stands on the opposite side, watching me approach with the other two women.
They throw me to the ground, and I taste wet dirt; it’s rained recently and I didn’t even notice. They hoist me to my knees and one of them grabs a fistful of my hair and forces my head up so I’m facing Marley. Our eyes meet. She chews her lip. I turn to Ambrose.