by Nicole Snow
It was just like any other sermon. The Prophet had whipped himself up, and he was yelling gibberish. Then he hitched and fell, shaking and rolling off the pulpit. It was the congregation's signal to hug our neighbor and dance with him, basking in the Lord's all cleansing light.
Forgiveness. Purity.
They were supposed to come naturally. I was supposed to be the good girl, lost in heavenly thoughts rather than earthly desires.
Well, the heavens had given me bad luck today. We'd sat next to the most eligible young man in the commune, and Daddy turned to embrace Miss Crampton instead of me, cradling her waist like a drunken fool.
He wasn't watching when I brushed against Ryan and felt his hot breath on my neck. I knew it was wrong, but I continued, bathing in heat and light I could understand.
Was it worth the beating I had coming now?
Yes, a small part of my mind whispered. You're a grown woman, Cassie. Twenty years old. Plenty ready to be a wife to a man like Ryan, a man whose very touch makes you tingle like nothing else.
I shrugged away a sheepish smile. Too slow for him to miss it, even while he was drunkenly half-focused on the road.
“Whore! You're thinking about him now, aren't you?”
Blushing hurt, especially when he was totally right. His power to read minds through his drunken rage has always been awesome and scary. Even after all these years alone with him and Heather, I still don't have a clue how to handle my father, how to escape his wrath...
“It was a mistake,” I said weakly. “It won't happen again.”
He knew it was a pathetic lie, an excuse, and so did I. I didn't regret anything about the way our bodies melded. When Ryan leaned in and brushed his lips over mine, hooking me to his chest just a little tighter, I knew damned well it was a sin.
Just as much a sin as the feelings I got alone in the darkness, whenever my fingers wandered beneath my gown and crept up my thigh, straight to the soaked, steaming mess between my legs.
“Bringing you out here was the damned mistake,” Daddy snapped. “Half the heads in the congregation were watching by the time I ripped you away. Do you know how hard it'll be to live this down? Half this town already thinks I'm nothing but a fucking drunk and a grease monkey.”
I know. And I don't care.
Daddy stared at me, taking his eyes off the road, as if he could hear the sarcasm hidden in my brain. He bared his teeth.
“Mark my words, Cassie. I will straighten your ass out. You're not too old for my discipline until you're another man's problem.” He paused, inhaling a hot, angry breath. “Now I wonder if that day will ever come. No man in his right mind would want you for a wife. Not after today.”
“Daddy, please! It was one day. You know how fast the gossip dies and turns into something else around here.”
“I know Ryan Reynolds is a little rat,” he growled. “The boy's plenty old to have a wife, but he's not going to take one because he's ruined two girls who are even bigger whores than you. He wants to make you his third conquest, and you're too damned stupid to see it.”
“That's not true! Cindy and Meghan never did more than kiss him. They told me themselves. And for everything you're worried about, they're happy and married. No one cares about the past.”
“You don't think the Prophet does? He saw everything. The Prophet always does. If you paid a lick of attention during the service, you'd understand, girl...”
Daddy's mouth was moving, but I couldn't hear him anymore. I'd listened to the same speech before – childhood tales where our savior was an all seeing boogeyman. Overhead, the thick gray clouds exploded, pounding the windshield with noisy rain. The droplets were so big and loud and frequent it looked like we were heading underwater.
Yeah, I'd given the Prophet an eye full once he stopped thrashing around on the ground and sat up, staring at his flock. I'd never say it out loud, but in truth he was an even bigger drunk than my father, if he wasn't on something else entirely.
The hardest thing about living in Beacon Grove was pretending.
Everybody except for a few righteous wackos lived by the scripture and sermons to one-up their neighbors. Not because they were pure believers. It was no different with the fat man with the long, gnarled beard who waddled up to the pulpit a couple times a month and spewed nonsense for several hours.
I didn't know much about the outside world. Interacting too much with the corrupted was forbidden, but one thing was clear. If God's word truly existed somewhere in the great beyond outside our town, it had fled us and gone elsewhere.
“Cassie! Didn't you hear a single fucking thing he said this morning about sin and avarice, or were you too busy rubbing yourself against the boy to listen? Are you listening to me now?” He demanded.
Yeah, I heard it. And I'm still not sure what it means.
How can pleasure and pain be the same?
“I heard him just fine, Daddy. You forget I'm the one who was sober.”
Looking at me sharply, he narrowed his eyes. Crap. I know I shouldn't have said that, shouldn't have let my instincts get the better of me...too late.
When Daddy got pissed off, he got reckless.
His foot stomped the accelerator and our old truck roared into the blinding rain. I was too horrified to even look over and check the gauge to see how fast we were going. I just knew we were going fast enough to kill us instantly if we hit another vehicle or – God forbid – ran off the road and smashed into one of the huge trees.
“Daddy, please...don't do this.”
“Shut your fucking mouth,” he said, hoarse cruelty in his voice. “You think you know better than me ever since you sprouted boobs. Hell, Cassie, you think you know better than our Prophet, better than God himself!”
He coughed, face reddening. I swallowed hard, listening to the faint sound of his teeth grinding through the storm.
God, maybe he's right.
Clasping my hands on my lap, I started to pray, just like Mama taught me when I was a little girl and we followed the Prophet to Beacon Grove. But I prayed to her, prayed she was somewhere up there beyond the exploding clouds above, prayed for her to stop the demon in the driver's seat.
I opened my eyes just in time to see the winking headlights through the haze, a car heading right toward us. “Daddy! Watch out!”
His hands twisted the wheel like a captain on a boat desperate to avoid collision. The force hit hard, planting me against the door, screaming and blubbering like an idiot the entire time.
By some miracle, we avoided the other vehicle and didn't fly straight off the road into a flooded ditch.
“You don't know better than me, you fucking bitch. Let that be a good reminder. I made your bratty little ass and I can destroy it too. I can end all this.” He exhaled slowly. “Some days I wonder what I did to make God take Charlene and leave me with you. The cancer should've rotted you from the inside out. Not her, not my wife...”
Reaching under his seat, he pulled up a silver flask and popped the cap. I was too busy wiping tears from my eyes to say anything before he took a big swig.
“This is all I got now,” Daddy whispered slowly, wiping his mouth. “All the good Lord and the Prophet have left me. All I fucking care about. I want your stupid ass married and moved out so I don't have to deal with it anymore. If you could keep your legs closed for one minute, maybe that would happen.”
Damn! I'd never bedded anyone! I wasn't a whore, no matter what he said.
The rain died down just enough to see a little further, but it was a small consolation. Once that bottle opened, Daddy didn't stop until it was drained. I watched, wide eyed and scared, as he tipped it to his lips and poured the cheap whiskey down.
He threw the empty flask at me. Smelling the venom drops that blasted out and stained my white dress made me want to heave. Bouncing my knee, I let it tumble to the floor.
Was he just a monster because he missed mama, or was it the drink?
Whatever it was, I wouldn't let him lie, woul
dn't let him call me a whore.
“I'm still a virgin,” I reminded him. “I wouldn't disgrace myself the way you think, Daddy. You're wrong.”
It was worse than that. If another year or two passed, I'd be the oldest virgin in the entire flock.
“Wrong?” He chuckled. “You've already disparaged me, girl. My mistake was thinking you'd get older and wiser. Ha! Something went wrong with you. Heather knows her place, and she's only a couple years behind you. She sits quietly and listens to the Prophet at sermon. She doesn't fidget and look like she's off in la-la land the way you do. If she hadn't stayed home sick today, maybe I'd have something to smile. Instead, I only have your disgrace.”
I tightened my hands. The rain picked up again, as if the world was mirroring my anger.
At least I wasn't full of fear anymore. I was tired of hearing about her, my perfect little sister, the girl he latched onto after Mom's cancer. If anything, my sis was brainwashed, drowning her grief in this ratty town and all its hypocrisy!
“I've got a better chance at landing a husband than Heather,” I said softly. “You made her too shy. She won't even mingle at sermon, and she kept to herself at school too. How's Miss Silent going to do a damned thing I can't?”
I knew I was testing the limits. Foolishly, perhaps, but I'd had it up to here with the myth he'd created, his blindness, his cruelty.
“You don't know a fucking thing, Cassie. You think you do, but you don't, and one day somebody's going to show you as much.” Daddy shook his head. I could practically hear the whiskey sloshing around inside him. “We're past talk. Now shut the fuck up and let me focus on the road.”
He pushed the truck back into motion and started down the road, slow and uncertain.
I pursed my lips. “You mean like you've been doing the whole way home?”
My voice dripped sarcasm. Normally, I knew when to keep my mouth shut and let him ride the drunken wave. Today...today, something was different.
When my father jerked the wheel, I screamed. We tipped harder than before, down into a small ditch. The whole vehicle died with a loud thunk!
The truck's right wheel sank deep into muddy water and stopped, leaning dangerously into a flooded ditch.
“Daddy?” I looked at him, and saw a bomb about to go off in human form.
“Told you I'm done talking, bitch. Get out.”
He can't be serious.
My father always went nuts during his drunken tantrums before, but never anything like this. I took one look out my passenger door. There was no way I'd be able to get out without landing waist deep in cold dirty water.
“Why? What're you–“
“Shut up! I'm only talking in the only damned language that gets through to you. Get. Out.” He stared at me with scary focus, rage blazing like pinpricks through his drunken haze.
I didn't move. A second later, Daddy did it for me. He slammed me against the passenger door, holding me there as I flailed with one arm. His hand reached out and unhooked my belt, then tore at the door's handle.
I was yelling, begging for him not to do it before I started to fall. It was no use.
Daddy's hands shoved hard, hurling me outside. I landed in the small pond with a deafening splash. The water was even colder than I expected, an early autumn iciness that shocked my whole system.
I grabbed at the edge of the truck, desperate to get out. It wasn't that easy. He'd closed the door, and now I grasped for some rusty part of the truck to pull myself up. I ended up digging my fingers into the dirty groves on the half-submerged tire.
Strong hands reached into the muck, grabbed me by the wrists, and yanked me up. Daddy pulled me out, but not because he regretted anything. His face was too hard, too murderous, too unforgiving. He threw me over his shoulder and carried me to the road. It was barely much drier back on ground with the rain smattering across my body, leaving us both soaked from head to toe.
My brain hardly recognized what was coming next, but my heart already knew, going ballistic in my chest. Oh, God. Not this. Please.
“Drop the dress or I'll fucking do it for you,” he growled.
My father stood me up on the wet pavement and then threw me against the driver's side door, keeping his arms around me so I couldn't bolt.
He hadn't beaten me for months. I hadn't given him much reason to, but his drunken stupors were getting worse. From where I was slumped, clawing at the truck in the rain, something had obviously snapped inside him.
The demon was in full control, the thing that had taken over since he brought us to this place after mama was buried. And once it came out, there was no putting it back until it fed on pain.
“Please! Don't do this, Daddy. Not here.”
He paused, his brutal energy much stronger than his wiry body. He felt like an honest-to-God bear, just waiting for the right moment to tear into me.
“Stop struggling! You can never cooperate, can you, bitch? Don't know why the hell I keep expecting different...”
His hands went for my shoulders again. More screams poured out my throat as he ripped my dress, kicking it to my feet, exposing the skin he meant to punish.
The rain spattered colder against my bare skin. I wondered if I could get any wetter without drowning, and then there was another sound.
My ears perked up, dreading the next moment. His belt, stretched flat in his hands, snapping when he flexed them apart.
“Head down. Eyes on the ground. Don't you dare get up until I tell you to.”
I nodded, too tired and sick and broken in disbelief to fight.
The first lash cut into me so sharp it broke the skin. Blood started to trickle down, distinct from the icy raindrops because it was so warm.
He rested before he hit me again, gathering his fury. Behind me, he laughed, and that hurt more than the belt striking my flesh.
“You never learn, Cassie. No matter how old you get, how many times you stumble...the Prophet's right. The evil inside you has already eaten you up, and I just can't drive it out.” His voice broke, almost like he was about to cry. I didn't buy it – he was enjoying this. “I'm sorry. As a father, I'm not giving up on you, no matter how much of a bitch and a whore you become. I'll be doing this into your thirties if I have to. You may embarrass yourself, girl, but you won't shame this family!”
His fist fell, bringing the belt over the last cut.
Pain. Blinding, stormy, slow moving pain.
It shot up my center and ripped through me, turning the dark gray world to white and red.
I choked out more cries, begging him to stop. None of them did me any good. He must've hit me at least half a dozen times before I heard a growl like the end of the world.
A car pulled up, and it was waiting behind us.
Grunting, the harsh leather fell. He gave me one more slap against the cheek with his free hand before turning around. God, my humiliation just became complete. Someone else was probably staring at the abysmal scene, watching the drunken maniac I called my father beat me senseless.
I slid down to the ground, bracing myself weakly on rusted metal. Scrunching into a fetal position, I rested my face in my hands, wishing I could cry like the rain. My blood ran cold, frozen by the water and grime all over me, stealing the last of my fire.
Just once, I wished someone would take me away. Someone from another town, who wasn't afraid to interfere with Beacon Grove. Someone who wasn't bothered by the crazy isolation and legal threats the Prophet used to keep corrupted outsiders away.
I didn't care if people from the great beyond were evil and corrupt like the Prophet claimed. They couldn't be worse than the congregation, could they?
“Hey, Mister. What the hell do you think you're doing?” Daddy's voice was low, surprised. “Be gone! We won't be poisoned by your –“
He barely had time to squeak before he went flying into the truck next to me. Before I could jerk up in surprise, the stranger was on him, flinging him against the metal like a crude toy.
Again and
again and again my father hit the truck, face first, and then several more times after he stopped shaking. The huge man holding him never looked at me until Daddy fell to the ground, limp and broken as a severed puppet.
I should've tried to help him like a good daughter. I practically heard him screaming at me through his bloody face, telling me do something. His dying face blinked once, huge eyes pleading. He looked at me like he saw Heather – not the bad girl he hated and condemned.
What the hell are you doing, Cassie! I heard his voice in my head. Your sister would attack this man killing me. Don't you want to save your own fucking father?
In truth, Heather would've done something. She would've run straight into the flooded woods, but I was too damned shocked and hurt to do that.
“Oh my God!” I whispered, breaking into full tremors. “Please...please don't hurt me.”
I couldn't bring myself to look up for more than a single second. What I saw terrified me.
There was a huge, powerful, soaking wet man glaring down at me, his arms folded across a neat leather jacket. I hung my head, seriously wondering if he'd kill me next.
Sure, the outside world couldn't be all be evil and corrupted like the Prophet says, but watching this man kill my monstrous father gave me some serious doubts.
Oh, God. He really did kill him, didn't he? He's really...dead?
Dead, dead, dead!
The body next to me didn't look like it would ever get up. My father's eyes were vacant. They'd never demand anything again.
I whimpered when he reached for my wrist, pulling me up with a power greater than my father's, except he wasn't trying to hurt me.
What did I see? After the last ten minutes, my brain struggled to make sense of anything coming in through my eyes.
The giant was smiling, firm lips set in a strong, square jaw, but those eyes did all the talking. They pierced right through me, bright and brown and blinding, the eyes the Prophet should've had if he weren't just a doped up figurehead.
He looked a lot like the way I imagined the warriors in scripture. Warriors, or else the soldiers I'd heard about. What little slipped through to Beacon Grove about the outside world said the great beyond was filled with trained killers, men who slaughtered other sinners to prop up their own impure society.