Over Exposure (Darkroom Saga)

by Poppet

  Seth holds my hand but his grip is tight, his face drawn with concern. It's a Sunday, the day we walk around on eggshells waiting for the bomb to go off. It's the day of sacrifice, and this journey is out of the ordinary.

  If I've learned anything, it's this: Anything out of the ordinary is a reason to freak out.

  Seth rubs my distended belly with his right hand; the possessive gesture imparts comfort and I burrow closer. I've reached the point where my pregnancy is a living obstacle. I have a pouch that looks like I've spent the last three years developing a beer gut. It starts under my boobs and sticks out all the way down.

  “What's going on?” I ask quietly, so the driver won't hear.

  “I don't know. He's summoned both of us which is unheard of. A woman at a brotherhood meeting is a worry. I'm afraid for you Shauna.”

  Staring out the window at the crepuscular sky just beginning to lighten with the golden glow of a new sunrise, I hope it isn't another lesson for me. The view and tranquility of this location is at odds with my trepidation. The dawn of a new day - a fresh beginning, the smell cool and crisp, the cheerful applause of birds twittering, it's like rebirth. God loves his symbolism, so what is he implying by doing this at such an early hour? I don't think my body can handle much more. Or my mind for that matter. I've lost one baby to this religion, losing another will decimate me.

  There are many cars randomly parked around the shed we're heading for. The whole place looks abandoned and dodgy, decrepit and haunting, the eaves so high and blackened with age, the wood weather-beaten and scarred with pockmarks.

  Our leather clad driver pulls up in front of a massive barn door, the engine switching off, the enveloping stillness eerie. The silence and lack of activity prickles my pores, my sixth sense exploding as it reaches into the shadows for evidence of ambush.

  Moving, he opens the car door and Seth ushers me out. Standing on tilled clay, the cold wind strokes my cheek with frigid tendrils. The unnamed disciple whispers across the gap to the entrance, creaking the striated barn door open, releasing the low chant of hallowed baritones with the motion.

  Seth takes my hand, pulling me along with him as we navigate the uneven ground, entering the lofty building. The barn door slams shut behind us, announcing our approach to those within, disturbing motes of dust which billow in animated suspension, lit like ethereal essence from the candles illuminating our passage. They're fat, stumpy, handmade, the scent enough to make me queasy.

  Pausing with me, Seth whispers, “Do not speak, no matter what happens. He'll do unspeakable things to you if you do.”

  Clutching his arm, I stare up into his tortured gaze, “I'm scared.”

  Nodding, not voicing 'me too', he walks me deeper into the cimmerian gloom, taking us closer to the masculine vespers echoing benedictions and maledictions through the barn, their circle coming into focus the nearer we encroach.

  The vacuous space is more dark than light, the shadows eclipsing all but the sacred circle of worshippers, devout and dedicated to their cause with such conviction that they robbed me of both my husband and child, without remorse.

  The man who brought us goes out a side door, vanishing into sanctified miasma. It's nefarious and soul withering to witness such big men on their knees, dressed in black leather so tight they look like super-heroes, the only colour on them the noxious red horns sticking out the top of their BDSM styled head masks.

  Turning away from the dancing candles leaping light across musty panels and the ring of miscreants, I hide my face against Seth's chest, inhaling the glorious scent of his cologne. It's a chilly morning and he's wearing a thick navy sweater, the smell and texture is a small pocket of comfort in this uncertainty.

  The spiritual rite wanes, silence shrouding the room, making me turn back to face them, watching as the pious take turns washing their hands in ash and lighting candles on an altar far away on the other side of the strewn floor.

  Is this because Jesus was born in a barn?

  A new wave of horror distils my blood. Is that why I'm here? Are they going to...? Holy hell!

  Glancing up at Seth, he is solemn and silent, staring at the gentlemen who are his brethren and his persecutors.

  Stalking away from their glowing shrine they each draw symbols in the dirt with the ash on their hands, then reconvene in a semicircle, facing three chairs on a platform.

  Alpha walks out of the door, down the side with another man. Looking right through me the stranger strides to the awaiting gap in the arc of men. They stand in the same shape as a rainbow.

  I've become so neurotic I look for symbolism in everything now.

  Standing on the platform, Alpha looks at me, “Shauna, come and sit with me.”

  It's not a request, it's an order.

  Seth gives me a hug, stooping to whisper, “You are my sceptre, my chalice, if we should part please know if I die today, you still own my allegiance and devotion.”

  “What?”

  His words destroy the fragile hold I have on calm, filling my veins with swift flowing alarm.

  “Now Shauna!” bellows behind me.

  Snapping back to face the evil audience, I scarper, wanting to stay with Seth but too afraid to disobey. This entire situation is nebulous, the objective utterly obscured by my ignorance.

  A man reaches out for my arm, taking hold of it and guiding me to the chair on Alpha's left. He's placed me in the seat of the unrighteous. I have a bad feeling about this.

  From up here the stygian atmosphere seems impenetrable, the depth of the building impossible to discern. The darkness reminds me of my own dark days in the cell of torture, the same pitch doom God placed me in when I was in 'storage'. The ambiance is an epidemic which still stalks my soul, my sleep, my quiet interludes and ruminations.

  Waiting for an order I look out over their heads to where Seth stands. I'm not sure if it's out of loyalty, stupidity, or paralysing fear. Another goon guides him to the centre of their trap.

  Why am I up here and you're down there?

  Alpha twists, giving me a suspiciously warm smile, “Sit.”

  He's up to something. It's patently clear. The last time he was this nice to me he locked me in his ivory tower where he violated me, splintering my sanity, the abuse taken to such extremes that I left his realm shattered. I'm barely holding it together as it is. The glue placed in my mind and heart has yet to harden. I'm still malleable and fragile. He knows it. I know it.

  Planting my arse on the wooden high-backed chair, I wring my hands, the tension rising inside the room to such a degree I'm finding it laborious to breathe. It's musty and dank in here. This is an abysmal situation and I wish I knew what the fuck is happening. I haven't seen Alpha for weeks, and that's just the way I like it.

  Sitting next to me, he stares haughtily down at Seth, saying, “Seth, does your pregnant wife know what you do at work?”

  Kneeling down in front of us, Seth looks at the floor, “No father.”

  God looks at me, his expression triumphant, speaking to me in a smug tone, “He cuts babies out of their mothers. He pulls babies out of the womb with a hooked needle–”

  My ears block when debilitating terror ravishes my mind with the images he subjected me to. The blood, the agony, the brutality of being pulled apart from the inside out, the movies he consistently blasted into my pinned open eyes inside the darkroom, looped in satanic circles... He showed me Vengeance beating me until I bled, then images of a foetus in the womb, then Vengeance raping me. I looked unconscious in the movies, I wasn't even aware he could film me when he had such surprise attacks. His assault was ruthless and violent, the images flickering persistently between my naked body being ruptured with the angel's penis, fisting me, bruising me, splicing to abortion, the woman's face when she's strapped down and a man viciously yanks out an undeveloped baby, the blood and horror mingling, me-her him-me him-her her-him the screams melting together, mine and hers becoming one, the images fusing, flash flash flash flash flash...


  Click.

  Like his camera. The flash. The sound.

  Back then I was like a negative, slowly developing into the woman I became, but now I just feel over exposed. Burnt. Ruined.

  Clutching my swollen belly when a pregnant woman is dragged into the circle to lie at Seth's feet, a cramp rides down to jello my legs.

  What? Why?

  “Show Shauna what you do to women,” says God to Seth.

  Looking into God's crazed fervour, the greedy expression, the anticipation so obvious it's fucking despicable, I want to beg him not to do this. I want to shut my ears and eyes and blot out this suffering. This awful horror.

  “She's too pregnant,” argues Seth. Sweat has broken out to sheen his brow and he's looking so pale and afraid. He looks like he did when he was having nightmares.

  Is this why? Was his vocation haunting his sleep? Was his conscience guilty? All that time I thought it was his father's cruelty riddling his slumber with monsters, but what if... he is the monster.

  I don't understand! How can that tender man who looks forward to being a father abort them during the day? I can't blink, I can't think, I can't function. This is too much! It's evil!

  I barely overhear God accusing Seth of being Satan.

  But he's not! I know he isn't. How can this be real? Maybe the stink from the candles causes hallucinations because my reality is disintegrating again, stripping my mind of the carefully constructed rescue attempt. I can't watch him do this and not be back in the pit of pain myself. Watching this will wreck me! Don't you get it? You are breaking me! You are BREAKING ME!

  They throw about biblical arguments, Alpha's tension transferring to me when he bunches as if ready to burst out of his chair to pummel Seth.

  “While they look on helplessly, their babies will be battered to death, their houses will be looted, and their wives raped. Isaiah 13:16. They will kill your children. Yes, they will take your sons and daughters from you and burn them alive, Ezekiel 23:25,” shouts Seth.

  “Show Shauna how you worship me!” bellows from beside me, and I flinch, cringing against the cruel angles of the chair.

  “Father please,” begs Seth, his voice strangled and tight, his anguish clear as my tears. “My wife does not belong in this heavenly court. It is an abomination.”

  Frozen by his words, I gawp at him, willing him to stare into my eyes and say that. How can this be the same man who comforted me, who soothed my terrors until they hibernated away from my lucid awareness, who freed me and showed me not all men are authoritarian assholes.

  God picks my hand out of my lap, holding it in his, stroking it with his free hand as if trying to lend me strength.

  Why has he changed? Why is this happening?

  I'm not listening, but jump violently when God shouts, “Do it!”

  Shivers convulse through my bones when Seth does what Alpha demands, bending down on the filthy floor and extracting a scalpel from a bag that's magically manifested down there.

  When he cuts her, extracting the baby into the world too soon, I need to vomit. The tears are blurring everything and I force my fingers against my lips, rubbing my own belly with my right hand, trying to erase this profanity. My husband just- he just – oh my god. I can't handle this! My heart is thudding, my emotions being evicted in a torrent of exorcism, my tears and sobs withering my throat. I may not speak, I am not permitted, but how do I stay silent when I want to scream this rickety hellhole to the ground.

  Seth's mumbling and I don't know what he's saying because all I can hear is the blood pounding in my head, when God launches out his chair, prowling aggressively at Seth.

  Shaking my head I strain to hear God's tirade, “You are not my son, you never were. But I kept you, raised you, fed you, and this is how you repay me? Prove you love me then, prove you do this all for me. Cut open your wife and offer me your firstborn son.”

  He is! He is! Anyone with eyes can see he is your son. He looks so much like Victor it was easy to transfer my love from one to the other. And they both look like you!

  Then his words sink in and I can't help myself. Clutching to the chair, I wail, shaking my head, ready to beg them not to do this to me.

  Oh God, please! Don't do this to me!

  “No, please, no,” I mumble, seeing the focus of all of them on me. You can't have my baby! You will have to kill me first!

  Shoving up, a pierce of agony stabbing through my womb, I stumble off the platform when a man with his altogether too familiar laugh catch me. Twisting my arm behind my back I know it's Peter marching me, forcing me, down on my knees, into the dust, filling my nostrils with the smell of placenta and blood.

  There's such a loud bang that I collapse with instant weakness. The disciple I'm positive is Peter drops next to me, his grip sliding off me.

  Staring wildly, I see a man with a gun. Crouching over my baby I try to protect it from the next bullet, but nothing happens.

  Instead, Alpha says, “He is the hand of God and he acted on my behalf.”

  Looking into the slits where Peter's eyes stare out, I keep my gaze on him, watching the life fade from what I can see of his eyes.

  He deserved to die. He killed Victor! He framed my husband for his crimes. The stress made me lose the only part of Victor to survive his death.

  Glaring at the mask I wish I could spit on him.

  The words floating in conversation over my head pull me back, when God says to Seth, “Prove you are my son, in your mind and heart, cut open your wife and offer me your firstborn son the way I did my own.”

  Shaking my head, I can't stop crying. When Seth looks at me with an expression of resignation, I know he's going to do it.

  Hysteria edges closer and I scream my objection, wailing my grief.

  You're breaking me! Why save me just to destroy me?

  “Noooooooooooo!”

  Alpha blocks my view of the wicked man who's going to cut me open, whispering, “Stop screaming, stop crying, lie absolutely still. I will never let him do this. I'm testing him.” Desperately fighting down the sobs and jagged inhalations, he presses closer, “Lie down, be still, and know that I am your merciful god.”

  Staring into his espresso dark eyes, his compassion is disorienting. His final whispered words are, “With one blow I'm going to take away the person you love most. You are not to complain or cry or shed any tears. Don't let your sobbing be heard. Ezekiel 24:16. If you react you will press the baby directly into the blade. I need you to be completely still. Understand?”

  Oh my god.

  Suffocating on grief, I do as he's ordered, lying down, trying so hard to be still, to not move, to trust that this time he will be compassionate.

  Closing my eyes, I pray to any deity who has an ounce of love, If he kills my baby please let me die. Let me die today! Please don't make me suffer anymore.

  G-od, please, p-please. Oh ghaaad puhleease!

  My pink blouse with the pastel daisies lifts, sliding up over my swell, exposing my skin to the frigid air.

  God said: With one blow I'm going to take away the person you love most. Who? My baby or Seth? Or is it moot because he's already taken the one I love most. My perfect Victor.

  It makes me open my eyes, watching Seth.

  Seth looks back at me, anguish and remorse in his eyes, unshed tears shimmering on his eyelashes.

  Visually pleading, I beseech him to put the bloody scalpel down, to rather die than let harm come to me, but he just looks away guiltily, pressing the cold edge to my skin.

  Balling my fists, I'm ready to grab his hand and stick that blade in my throat. Lying still is the hardest command I've ever been given.

  I need to scream my torment and suffering when God mumbles scriptures and slams Seth away from me. He hit him so hard blood spurts out of his nose, a red blemish blossoming on his cheek.

  Scrambling away with God leering over him, they shout scripture and bullshit at each other until God yells, “You are guilty!”

  A loud bang deaf
ens my ears and I hurt deep in my soul when Seth drops. Unmoving, his face is turned to me, the hole in his forehead declaring he's been put to death, and I can't feel because I am all emotions at once, in the tornado and chaos of relief, grief, fear, desperation, anguish, trauma... madness.

  The pain in my belly is acute, my breathing shut off, when Alpha turns to me, his anger softening, taking off his leather jacket and folding me into it, lifting me into his arms, carrying me away from the destruction of my trust and love, taking me into the fresh air and the newly born sunshine.

  I'm shaking so hard that speaking is difficult, “Baby. It hurts.”

  “I know it hurts, but we're going home. I'll take care of you.” he coos at me like I'm a fragile fledgling fallen from a nest.

  A car is idling when he gets into it with me, draping me on his legs, cradling my head against his chest, stroking my hair and staring at me in a way I do not understand.

  You killed both my husbands. You are the cruelest god who ever walked this earth. You let me love only to strip me of it. You deplete me. You leave me desolate. You grind me down like the altar to Asherah. You leave my soul dust, a chasm in my chest, an abyss in my mind.

  I should kill you.

  Covering my belly with his hand, he smiles, “This is my son you are carrying. It was never his. I have covered you with my body and you became my garment. It is an oath.”

  The pressure of his hand is warm, but I manage to say, “Stress, wounds, baby.” Squeezing out the tears when I clench my eyelids tight, I hiss, “Hurts.”

  The communication finally penetrates his thick skull because he barks at the driver, “Step on it! Take me to James' surgery!”

  Relieved, I sag, crying my sorrow with heart wrenching sobs.

  The man in the front speaks over his shoulder, “A man must not take his father's wife; he must not withdraw the skirt of his father's cloak from her.” Deuteronomy 23:1

  God nods, “Indeed. They all witnessed it this time. My jacket was placed on her in front of them all, they cannot deny now who cloaked her. She is my wife.”

  The meaning of his careless conversation sinks in and I twist away from his chest to look at 'god'.