Over Exposure (Darkroom Saga)

by Poppet

  Grabbing my jaw in his big hand God forces me to look in his face, “I've come to tell you your destiny.”

  Fuck!

  I'm too intimidated to speak, sitting wooden and frozen in his restraining hold.

  “You are now Seth's wife, and you will be a good wife to him. Understand?”

  Blinking rapidly, adrenaline turns self-preservation to dust, bursting me off his legs to face him, shaking my head, “N-no.”

  “Do you defy my command?” he snaps, the congenial expression fleeing when he scowls at me with his hard brown eyes.

  “No! Victor is my husband! I refuse to forsake him! Fuck you! I can't just switch off my love because he's dead! It hurts to breathe I miss him so much. I won't be spread around because you're family! I'm my own person and I'm telling you I can't! I won't!”

  Springing out of the chair he grips my neck, slamming me into the wardrobe door, bombing my skull with hot hurt. “Every life belongs to me. Including yours! You will do as you're told.”

  The drumming of my heartbeat robs my breath and I'm struggling with fright, staying defiantly quiet, desperately looking for a way out of this.

  Seth says dejectedly from his perch, strain in his voice, his pallor wan, “His wife shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband's brother shall go in to her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her. Deuteronomy 25:5.”

  “I don't care what your book says! It's sick!” I scream, panic killing passivity.

  “You don't care what my book says?” he hisses in a tone saturated in threat and aggression. God's grip on my throat tightens, cutting off air, “You require rehabilitation. Your attitude is that of a heretic, and if you wish to conduct yourself as a sinner then you'll be disciplined as one.”

  With his right hand he grabs me by the hair, throwing me across the room, striding after me and punching me out the door, ordering Seth, “Tell the disciples to meet me in the rehabilitation den.”

  I'm reeling, searing pain pulsating through my cheeks, my nose too hot, my eyes stinging.

  Lifting me bodily by the throat he carries me to the elevator, striding in, his chest heaving, the veins in his forehead protruding as much as mine throb while I claw against his vicious grip.

  Kicking out, all I can do is squeal, desperate for air. The world is hazing with scorched crimson.

  I can't hear but become aware when he drops me outside the now open doors, skinning my knees on concrete. Gasping raggedly, I gulp, weakly holding my shoulders up on locked arms.

  “Get up!” shouts at me, and before I can comply he's gripped my arm and propelled me into a circle of men dressed like Vengeance.

  Facing his disciples, he shouts in a voice wavering with rage, “This resurrected angel thinks she has the authority to defy my laws. She thinks she's too good for Seth, that we can just rewrite the commandments to accommodate her whims! Pride comes before a fall and it's your place to remind her of it!”

  Looking from masked face to masked face, I'm grossly outnumbered by men built like wrestlers and dressed to deliver 'justice'. Their identities are hidden, but I know facing me is a James and an Andrew. Just the thought of James makes me suffer a wave of vertigo. One of them removes his mask so I can see his amused visage mocking me.

  Peter! The bastard!

  The doors slide open and Seth hobbles in, going down on his knees, saying words I don't understand as he comes to witness my 'rehabilitation'.

  God snaps around to face me again, shoving me back against a man who shoves me back at God, yelling, “Why was Eve created?!” He steps so close I can smell his soured halitosis, hissing hatefully, “Why Shauna?”

  I don't know! I don't fucking know why. And I also know that would be the wrong answer to give him. I want to say as a companion, as a helper, but I know he'll use that to crucify me. What I really want to shout is 'so you have someone to persecute for eternity!'

  “Why?!” he shouts, gripping my hair again and forcing my head back to look into his enraged expression.

  Built like he plays Solitaire with Harley's, he pulls harder on my hair, “To serve! Eve was created as Adam's helper. She is not his equal, she is not there to demand, she is there to do as he instructs! She is there to provide sons and to bow down to her master! Keep your mouth shut or I'll staple it shut for you!”

  The room goes all wonky for a moment when he hurls me backward, forcing Peter to catch me, spitting hatefully at my feet, “Sons! You are useless to me until I have one from you. I do not care which of these disciples provides the sacrifice, you will learn your place the hard way.”

  My clavicle dislocates when I'm roughly caught by the next disciple, thrown from hand to hand around their thug ring, rendering me agonised, watching the devil walk away, leaving me to the cult enamoured by him.

  “Victor!” I shriek.

  Why did you leave me? Why?

  I can hear Seth praying. Why doesn't he help me? Why won't somebody help me!

  Peter says in my ear, humour evident, “The mouth of a loose woman is a deep pit.” Proverbs 22:14.

  “I'm not loose,” I wheeze, against the constriction of his arm noosing my throat.

  “Our father's book would disagree with you, Shauna.”

  In unison eleven baritones chant at me, “Instead of using perfumes, they will stink; instead of fine belts, they will wear coarse ropes; instead of having beautiful hair, they will be bald; instead of fine clothes they will be dressed in rags; their beauty will be turned to shame!” Isaiah 3: 24.

  Hauling me behind him, uncaring of the pain he's inflicting, the minions speak together again like puppets with fresh batteries, “I alone am the lord your god. No other god may share my glory; I will not let idols share my praise.”

  Shunted to my knees in front of the whipping barrel, he yanks the chain off my neck, dangling the crucifix in front of my nose, saying hatefully, “Your idols are useless. This cross is not god, it means nothing. Your make-up and adornments are not sanctioned by our father, instead you defile the way he made you as if to say his creation isn't good enough.”

  The boy's choir chant passive aggression at me, damning me with their scripture, “The proudest and highest will be cut down and humiliated.” Isaiah 10:33

  Peter laughs, and it's the joy of a sadist about to get his fix, “Humiliated, Shauna. We dishonour our god if we do not carry out his commandments.”

  The mindless disciples speak in unison again, “It's no good making a metal image to worship as a god. Isaiah 44:10... His foolish ideas have so misled him that he is beyond help. He won't admit to himself that the idol he holds in his hand is not a god at all.”

  Peter lifts me, slamming me over the barrel, snatching up a switch and cracking it across my shoulders.

  It stings, severely, and I'm dizzy and disoriented, trying to push up but his hand holds me down, forcing my face against splinters, yanking up my skirt and pulling my knickers down, connecting the reed thin stick against my bum, again and again, laughing!

  My tears are useless, my humiliation unparalleled, this time my heart isn't breaking for Victor or my unborn baby... it's breaking for me.

  Whipped across the most intimate part of my body, scripture and laughter intermingle as a soundtrack; I'm horrified and shamed.

  Hurled up and backward so fast I fall flat on my back, he bends over me, punching me hard enough to stun me, ripping my shirt open and spitting on my breast.

  Zips opening fills the pounding silence punctuated with my laboured breathing and I cover my face when they crowd me, spitting, touching, squeezing, kicking....

  “For man did not come from woman, but woman from man;

  neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. 1 Corinthians 11:8. Blows and wounds cleanse away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being. Proverbs 20:30, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness 1 Timothy 4:7; For a husband is lord and master of the wife Ephesians 5:21-27. For the moment all discipline seems painful
rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Hebrews 12:11...Then servants are dealt with and told to also be submissive and under God's will, 1 Peter 2:13...”

  Peter laughs again, shouting, “You should read my book, Shauna. I remind you of the wisdom in it! Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake; Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God.” 1 Peter 2:13

  God! Save me from your followers!

  Please!

  They push Seth into the ring, someone yelling, “Do your duty! We will bear witness.”

  I'm now as broken as Seth is, and the shame of lying naked in a room of men, being watched while my ordained 'husband' rapes me, I turn my head, sobbing; all I see is the smug smile of Peter, masturbating while he watches me being defiled, debased, 'put in my place'.

  Love the brotherhood... that's a loaded sentence if ever I've heard one. Is this what I am now? Their whore?

  Smiling wider, he purrs hatred in the gap between us, “Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid. You girlie, are stupid.” Proverbs 12:1

  Seth's groans, the feel of him riding me dry, oh god... let me die... please.

  Chapter 11

  A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.

  ~ Ansel Adams

  Shauna:

  It's only morning, but my day is destroyed, my heart and emotions in carnage. Led away from my mortification by a broken bride, she ushers me into the elevator, speeding me to the medical wing. It's all very Florence Nightingale the way this place operates. Women are seen and not heard, tending to men who'll never love them or show gratitude.

  My despair increases when God steps into the room.

  I stare at him, unable to halt my torrent of tears.

  “I'm here to set your collar-bone.”

  Why bother? No doubt you and your kind will keep breaking my bones and will continue to do so until my body revolts.

  The broken bride cowers, moving away backwards, on her knees, staring at the floor. Her fear of him transfers to me, the atmosphere of subjugation contagious.

  “This is going to hurt, do you want a painkiller?” he says, in the busybody manner of a real doctor.

  Nodding, I stare at my knees, sitting on the examination table where she wiped their emissions off me with surgical swabs.

  Moving efficiently, he withdraws a vial from the fridge, ripping open a new syringe and needle, suctioning the fluid into the syringe and coming to me, holding my good arm, deftly injecting into my vein.

  “So you're a doctor too?”

  “God is everything, Shauna. There's nothing I can't do.”

  That shuts me up and I look away, staring out the window at the view of only sky. It looks like a beautiful day, but there doesn't seem to be a garden or outdoor area I'm allowed to go to.

  “It wasn't that bad, was it?” he says, still using his friendly tone.

  “It was worse than bad,” I mutter, fighting the quivering of my chin when sorrow and distraught emotions well again.

  I'm stark naked, but I can't seem to muster more shame. It makes me tense up when he holds my knee, saying, “I was referring to the injection.”

  “Oh,” I mumble, wishing he'd back off, not knowing where to look. I can't even cross my arms over my nakedness with a dislocated, or broken, collarbone.

  “Give it a minute to take effect,” he says.

  I just nod again, every movement piercing lances of pain through my body.

  He looks at the broken bride, “Leave us.”

  She does, quickly. They behave like the Chinese women you see in the movies, all bowing and afraid to make eye contact.

  Sitting down opposite me, he laces his fingers, resting his hands on his stomach, “Shauna, it never pleases me to discipline my people, but what must I do if you disobey my laws? Every rule is designed to protect you, to guide you, so you'll know heaven and eternal bliss. You had no problem with Seth, you even spent the night in his bed, and yet you react as if I'm delivering scandal to your door. No man should be alone, and no woman should be alone. Accept this without petulance.”

  “I stayed on top of the covers, and it was only because he was having cold sweats and nightmares. It's normal to comfort a friend, but I don't want to marry my friends. I married the only man who ever loved me and you watched him die, doing nothing to save him!”

  He gives me a sharp look, “Nothing is impossible, Shauna. Not to me. If Seth had brought his body home you would have your husband back, but with him missing it is wrong to leave you unwed and alone.”

  “Yeah right! Are you going to make him a zombie? No thanks,” I say in bitterness.

  “Do you think the tale of Mary Shelley's monster is original? I did it first!” he enunciates with venom, anger distorting handsome into hostile. “What the fuck do you think Adam is? He was an experiment! I animated a pile of laboratory grown parts of flesh and bone, using my own fucking DNA! I animated that bastard! He was the first dead body brought to life! He was an inanimate object until I gave him animation! All your zombie stories and tales of immortality stem right back to the beginning. I'm the one who should get the credit, not your fucking fiction authors! Why do you think throughout the bible they claim I can bring the dead to life? Because I can! That is why I want my son returned! I will resurrect him!”

  Menacing, clearly enraged, he stomps back to leer over me, reaching for the bible left on the sideboard, hefting the heavy object with one hand, the strain pumping out muscle. His aggression makes me automatically flinch.

  Snapping it open in his hands, holding it while flicking through pages, his agitation has his chest heaving, “I raised the dead in Ezekiel, and you'd do well to read about my power before you challenge me to cut out your tongue for blasphemy! I am immortal, my chosen ones are immortal, how else do you think Noah lived to be nine-hundred and fifty? Look at the ages in Genesis 5 of my first creations, of when they died, Haven't you read Genesis? Did your parents raise a heathen? After the flood Noah lived a further three hundred and fifty years, and he chose to die because he'd lived through the living repercussions of what I do to heretics and unbelievers. It's called vengeance! ”

  Blanching against his anger, knowing he'd make good on such a threat, I listen to him spew biblical passages at me:

  “Ezekiel 37:5 This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.'”

  “So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

  Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath; prophesy,son of man, and say to it, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.' " So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.”

  Throwing the book at me, he snarls, “You want to read about zombies? You want to read about how I am the first alchemist, the first necromancer, then turn your ignorant attention to that book and start reading it! I raised a generation of immortals from something that was dead! Why do you think ancient people preserved their deceased? So they could rise again without looking like zombies!”

  I'm petrified, terrified to breathe, afraid to move, wrapping my head around fact and fiction. Immortals, zombies, raising the dead is necromancy, growing prosthetics is normal these days, using DNA compatible grafts to grow missing ears and noses, what he's saying really isn't far fetched.

  If you could go back in time, you too would be a god. It's technology, it's knowledge, it's t
he access to the human genome and a petri dish, even a virgin birth can be achieved the same way surrogate mothers carry babies to term for the infertile. Is this how god gave barren women babies? Is this how he won allegiance, by his 'miracles' that we take as commonplace today. A barren woman was a shameful thing, but in vitro pregnancy is just a scientist away.

  Angels had wings, because they had pilots licenses, and craft that could fly, with searchlights and 700 watt speaker systems like the cops use.

  Random terms flit through my head, 'the dazzling light that shows the presence of Israel's God'. 'I heard the noise their wings made in flight, it sounded like the roar of the sea. - like the voice of Almighty God. When they stopped flying they folded their wings, but there was still a sound coming from above the crystal dome... Then the dazzling light left the city and moved to the mountain east of it.'

  It's a helicopter. It fucking is! There are even hieroglyphs in ancient Egypt depicting them. The whine that grates my nerves, the rotary blades... those are the wings!

  Holy shit! Is god just... a time traveller?

  He sits next to me, the tension in his jaw pulsing the muscles out in his cheeks, saying with a reproachful tone, “What redeems you is I can see you take these words to heart. It's a fact for you because you cannot deny the truth. Don't defy me, Shauna. It will not end well for you.”

  My thoughts are reeling and I'm light-headed, from trauma and from the epiphany. Or maybe it's just the painkiller.

  Looking into his dark eyes, I whisper, “Who are you?”

  “Your salvation, and your worst nightmare.” His chest is still rising and falling in agitation when he grabs my hand in his, squeezing it until it hurts, “Shauna, Moses says, I wish that the Lord would give his spirit to all his people. Numbers 11:29 That's what makes them special, they have my spirit. And that's why I can raise the dead, animate the inanimate, and gave rise to a race of vampires. It's in the bible woman, even the shining children who have the manifestation of my divine spirit in them, like Moses and Enoch. Moses may have been raised among the pharaohs who anointed their royalty with crocodile oil, who praised snakes, but still he had my spirit, so he shone. Your baby can be that perfect.” Exodus 34:35