Loving the Cult

by Nicole Tillman

  “I think I've got it,” I say as I lay a hand on his shoulder to stop his animated movements. “You don't believe in monogamy.”

  “No, I do not.”

  “Okay, I get that, but I don't see the connection. What do monogamy and racism have to do with each other?”

  “Everything.” The soft light in his eyes has dulled, and it's as if I'm talking to a robot. He has his back arched so that his chest is proudly on display, his lips pressed into a hard line, and his eyebrows pulled together. This man, this side of Jameson- he believes in the cause.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  My next question is important. I know that whatever he says, I will play into the solution somehow. There has to be a reason why I was brought here, and I'm about to find out why.

  “Jameson, how are you going to fix this? How do the people here think they are going to change anything?”

  Jameson's eyes flutter for a second and his sympathetic gaze returns with something new. Guilt. He doesn't open his mouth to answer¸ he just stares at me.

  “How do they think they are going to fix it?” I repeat. “What is the big plan?”

  The sight of his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat catches my eye, and I realize that whatever he has to say isn't good news for me. He's nervous. He knows that he's about to set me off.

  “If we erase color, we can heal the world.”

  “That's not an answer!”

  In a flash, Jameson moves his hand over my mouth, muffling the rest of my argument. His hands are warm, but unlike the times before, his touch isn't harsh. He's gentle, but assertive.

  “Do not yell,” he whispers.

  The heat in his hands seems to be leeching out into my face. Either that, or I'm just overwhelmed by his close proximity. He smells wild, like he just stepped out of a muggy forest.

  That thought causes my heart to stop trying to beat its way into his hands. Of course he spends time in the woods. That's probably where he picks up his women...

  I'm silent until Jameson removes his hand. As he registers how my eyes have gone cold, he backs up and gives me room to fume.

  “What are you thinking?” He asks after a moment.

  “I'm wondering why the hell I'm here. You still haven't told me.” I keep my voice low, but there's an extra sharp edge there that I just can't conceal. “How do I play into this stupid vision of yours?”

  Jameson sighs in frustration and decides not to answer me. “Look, it's simple. Monogamy is useless. Marriage is just used as a means to control people. We need to be educating the masses, spreading the seed! If we erase color, we can heal the world!” He repeats the stupid line and I wish I were dealing with an average man capable of having a normal conversation instead of a lunatic.

  His furrowed brows still hint at an internal struggle. The words coming out of his beautiful mouth have the kind of conviction you would expect to hear, but his eyes don't back him up. They betray him.

  “You don't really believe that, do you?”

  Quietly, so quietly, he answers.

  “It doesn't matter what I believe.”

  “Yes, it does, Jameson!” I try hard to reign in my voice when he casts me a disapproving glare. “It matters to me, because I'm stuck here with you.”

  “Yes, I suppose you are,” he responds sadly, as if he pities me.

  “So? How do I fit into your vision?”

  Again, he looks so lost as he glances around the room for anything to help him. He's lost, nervous, and more than a little aggravated.

  “Jameson, just tell me.”

  Cracking his knuckles a few more times, he jumps up and locks the door with a key he produces from his pocket. It's then that I know it's worse than I had feared. I've been calm for the most part. I have yet to give Jameson any reason to think that I'm about to run. But whatever it is he's about to tell me, he thinks I'll try to bolt.

  “Jameson,” I say in a whispered plea. “Why am I here? How do I fit into all of this?”

  With his back against the door, his heart pounding in his chest, and his eyes locked onto mine, he answers.

  “You'll bear the seed.”

  My heart understands before my brain does. I think it's stopped beating completely when I feel the pain in my chest and tingling in my extremities.

  There it is. The answer I've been looking for. I've been taken for a very simple, very primal, very archaic reason.

  This place isn't a ranch, not really. It's a farm. It's an experiment. And I play a very large part in it, just like the women I met at breakfast.

  The way to eliminate racism is to get rid of the different races. The easiest way to do that, aside from mass genocide, is to interbreed.

  So, like show cows, we are going to be bred.

  And Jameson is my bull.

  I try to process this, but just can't get my brain to wrap around the idea of being used for breeding stock. I need to know more.

  “But, if you're trying to dilute genes, there's no point in using someone like me. Why not pair up a white boy with a black girl?”

  “We have,” he says, apparently happy that I haven't flown off the handle. “But it's also important for mixed races to blend.”

  “So, hypothetically speaking, our child would be... what?”

  “He or she would be generic.”

  Generic is not a word I would ever use to describe a child. Children are born beautiful, unique, and full of promise. The idea of any child, especially my own, being referred to in such a passive way, sends my blood boiling, and whatever confusion or panic I was starting to feel is long gone.

  I don't just hate this place now, I'm starting to hate him. Him and his stupid cause, his stupid beliefs, his stupid family. I've never heard of something so far-fetched in all my life. And that's saying a lot.

  “Generic?” I growl through clenched teeth. “What gives you the right to classify someone, especially a child, as generic? No one deserves that!”

  “Hey, it's meant as a compliment!” He argues.

  “Well, it shouldn't be!”

  Again, I've raised my voice too loud and Jameson steps forward to silence me. But I don't want to be silenced. I want to scream at him at the top of my lungs until his eardrums burst and blood flows from his ears. I want to grab a handful of his brown hair and bash his face into the floor.

  “Don't touch me!” I say, scrambling to get out of his reach, slipping past him as he lunges for the tail of my shirt.

  “Then be quiet!”

  “You're a fucking monster! Do you know that? You're all monsters! How can you believe in something like that? You can't expect to change anything with ass backward beliefs like that. You are out of your fucking mind!”

  I manage to swerve a few more times around the furniture in the room, but Jameson eventually reaches over a table and grabs my shirt, jerking me to the side. The change in direction startles me and I fall to the floor, but not before the corner of the table jabs painfully into my side and I cry out.

  “Dammit, woman!”

  “Please.” I can no longer be strong. Before I can stop them, tears stream down my face in defeat as Jameson jars me around in an attempt to get me to my feet. “I don't want to do this. I want to go home.”

  I feel pitiful. I normally have such a firm hold on my emotions, but between being kidnapped, taken to this strange place, and Jameson's cryptic answers, I've had enough. I wish I could just click my heels together and be home. If I felt out of place in my life before, I feel like even more of an outsider now. I don't belong here. Actually, no one belongs here. This place shouldn't even exist.

  “What do you have to go home to, huh? Nothing. You were alone, Tess. You were alone in life. Now you're part of something bigger. You'll do something greater, be someone greater than the shadow of the person you were before. You can have a family here. You can be part of the Children of Neutrality.”

  I want to push him away. I want to knee him in the stomach and kick him until he bleeds, but I can't. I don't ha
ve it in me to fight him, let alone overpower him.

  Instead of moving, I just shake my head. “I don't want this family.”

  Jameson lets out a breath and if I'm not hearing things, also releases a quiet laugh. The next words out of his mouth are the last thing I expect him to say, but the first words that give me hope.

  “Yeah... sometimes, neither do I.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Thankfully, after my meltdown, Jameson decides that it's not safe to take me downstairs for lunch and dinner. He's sure I'll have some kind of outburst and he will have to punish me. I'm beginning to understand that he doesn't actually want to hurt me. It's just expected of him.

  This place is even more backwards than I had thought. They may think they are doing right by the world in regards to the color issue, but there's so much more that they are blind to.

  For one, the treatment of women. It doesn't seem to bother them that women are beneath men. It's confounding. They want everyone to be equals when it comes to race, but they don't bat an eye when they reprimand a woman for speaking her mind.

  The women are here to serve the cause. That's it. Our sole purpose is to move the process along by producing mixed babies that will grow up to be bred with another product of blended genes. I feel like a lab rat being placed in a genetic experiment and, in essence, that's exactly what I am.

  When the room finally grows dark, Jameson is called away to a meeting. I don't ask about it, but he offers me information anyway.

  “I shouldn't be long. Council meetings only run for maybe half an hour. You should get some sleep. I'll try not to wake you when I get back.”

  After he's satisfied with a nod and forced yawn, he leaves, locking the door behind him. I don't even try the door. From watching him lock it with a key earlier, I know there's no way to open it from the inside and there's no doubt in my mind that he has the only key. Even though the accommodations are comfortable and he's been gentle with me throughout the day, I'm still a prisoner.

  Padding silently across the floor in my socks, I press my ear to the side of the door frame and can hear a crowd of men making their way through the hall. That means that all the women here are locked away in their rooms, just like me.

  I could pound on the walls and ask for help, but what good would that do? They can't help me anymore than I can help them.

  I look to the window and an idea takes shape. A stupid idea, but an idea nonetheless. I have to get out of here, and this may be my only shot. Slipping on my shoes, I know I have to be quick. He said he could be back in a half hour, but he could decide to return any minute to check on me. The faster I move, the greater chance I have of making it out of here.

  I don't bother strapping the curtains back. Instead, I take the entire curtain rod off the wall and throw it to the floor. Of course, the windows aren't locked. There are no ledges and we're on the second floor of the building. It would take a crazy person to jump from this height.

  Luckily, I'm just the right amount of crazy.

  The window slides up the tracks without so much as a squeak. I expected I would have to break out the screen, but it's a relatively new window and I'm able to remove it easily and bring it inside.

  “You can do this,” I whisper to myself as I crouch in the open window. “Just tuck and roll.”

  A part of me knows that this is useless advice. It's a straight drop to the ground. At least twenty feet separate me from the flower bed below, but it's twenty feet that I have to fall.

  Letting out one last breath, I steel myself for the pain I'm about to endure. Better a little pain now, than a world of pain in the future, right?

  “Okay, okay... just don't scream.”

  I've never done anything so reckless in my entire life. Even though I have a better pain tolerance than most, I still don't relish the idea of being injured. This could kill me. I'm well aware of that fact, but it's something I just have to do. I can't sit around. I have to take every opportunity given to me.

  I take a deep breath and step up into the window sill.

  “Just hit, stand up, and start running.”

  Lifting up on my tip-toes, I lean over the ledge, peering at the flower garden below. It's beautiful, but it's about to have a Tess shaped hole in the mulch between the rose bushes.

  Taking the deepest breath I can, I tilt forward. Finally, after sending up a silent prayer, I let myself fall.

  As the wind whips my hair into my eyes, I realize I won't be able to keep quiet. I'm going to hit, it's going to hurt like hell, and I'm going to scream.

  If the fall doesn't kill me.

  They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Well, I don't feel particularly strong right now, laying in a flower bed, covered in mulch, gasping for breath.

  There's no point in trying to stand. My lungs refuse to accept oxygen and my vision is so blurred with tears, I can't see a thing. So, I tremble against the thorny cushion of a rose bush and wait for the shock to wear off. I don't think I'm severely injured, but I'm definitely hurt.

  “Well, well, well, what do we have here?”

  Son of a bitch...

  And there goes my getaway plan.

  “Get Jameson down here, he'll want to see this.”

  I don't have to be able to see him to know who's traipsing up the sidewalk to kneel by my side. Just from the way he says Jameson's name, I know it's Bradley. I can tell he's smiling, laughing at my pain. And he'll still be laughing when Jameson arrives.

  “You're a stupid girl, aren't you? That fall could have killed you.” I close my eyes as he brushes a strand of hair from my face. “Or maybe that's what you were hoping for? Maybe you think it's so awful here that you decided to take the coward's way out.”

  Finally, my lungs decide to cooperate again and I can breathe. I want to let go of the sobs and whimpers caged in my chest, but I know that's not an option. I can't break in front of this man, because he will no doubt find some way to use it against me, to weaken me even further.

  I no longer feel like passing out from lack of oxygen, but I could very well pass out from the pain shooting through my legs and hips. I would welcome blacking out. Anything to get me away from him.

  Carefully lifting my hands to my face, I'm thankful that my arms aren't broken. I thought for sure that instinct would take over and I would throw my hands out to catch my fall. It seems I landed on my ass instead.

  It's not ideal, but at least there was a little more cushion...

  “Goddammit, Bradley, what do you-”

  The moment Jameson's voice trails off, I can hear him running to my side. In seconds, his hot breath washes over my face as he cradles the back of my head in his hands, checking for injuries, before moving onto my less vital parts.

  “Jesus, Tess.”

  “Looks like your little bird took a bit of a spill,” Bradley quips. “Is your company really that unsatisfying?”

  Jameson's warmth is gone in a flash and I can hear Bradley cursing as he's tossed around the yard. Opening my eyes, I crane my head to the side to find Jameson holding Bradley down with one hand, while his fist solidly connects with his nose. Before he can get another blow in, Bobby and another man I don't recognize pull him away, giving Bradley a chance to regain his footing.

  I open my mouth to protest, to scream a warning, but can't force the words out fast enough. Bradley lands a solid punch to Jameson's sternum, causing him to double over in pain.

  What kind of family is this, Jameson?! Brothers don't harbor this kind of hatred for each other.

  Bradley seems content with his one shot and backs off, casting a glare in my direction as he dusts himself off.

  “Hit me again Jameson, and next time I won't settle for one.”

  Jameson coughs, but it's more of a laugh than anything. He's calling Bradley's bluff. Even I can see that if it were a fair fight, if Bradley didn't have someone to hold his adversary down, Jameson could end him.

  “Let's go,” Bobby suggests as he pats Jameson on the back.
“Do you need help getting her inside?”

  “No,” Jameson answers, straightening his shirt. “I've got it.”

  “You sure?”

  “He said he's got it!” Bradley is already halfway to the door. “C'mon, Bobby, you can come talk to Joan with me.”

  Jameson barks out another laugh, turning his back to me to watch the three men trot through the door.

  “That's big of you, Brad. You've got a problem with me so you run to my mother. Good to know you're just as pathetic as I thought!”

  When Jameson turns back to me, his eyes are clouded. At least I think they are, because I'm having problems focusing my vision as my chest constricts again. This time, it's not my lungs seizing, but my heart. It can't take this much adrenaline, and there's definitely a lot of it flooding my system. Either that, or it's just overwhelmed by what Jameson has just revealed.

  Bending down, Jameson scoops one arm under my knees and another under my back before effortlessly lifting me from the dirt. After a scream that leaves my throat sore, he stops to ask if I'm alright to be moved.

  Looking into his eyes, I summon my power of speech that I seemed to have lost for the last few minutes and ask him the only question that matters to me right this instance.

  “Joan is your mother?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  On the way back to the room, Jameson refuses to talk, but it's not as if that makes any difference. I know what I heard, and I know it's the truth. That horrible, awful woman is Jameson's mother. Joan, the woman who had Jameson slap me in the hallway at breakfast. Joan, the woman who had me abducted.

  It's disgusting. I feel like a goldfish, picked out by an unfeeling mother, and delivered to her eager child all wrapped up in a nice clean tank with no promise of tomorrow.

  After Jameson lays me on the bed, he finally breaks his silence. “Do I need to get the doctor?”