Paradise Abductions

by Mia Rodriguez

  Chapter 30

  When I arrive at the slave quarters, I still have Betsey's hideous smirk on my mind. Now with the Mister gone, it's revenge time. Who knows what she's got up her sleeves. I'll just have to be ready for anything.

  The next morning I get my steel reserve up to go to the Barstowe Household and face whatever Betsey has in store for me. I'm not going to allow her to abuse me. I'm just not. The church bells ring as I'm about to step outside the shack.

  When I hear their rhythm, I gasp.

  Uh oh!

  It's going to be a Returning to the Great Master ceremony. Someone's about to get murdered.

  I rush to the church along with the other girls. Sitting in my favorite seat, I wait with dread to see who the Elders are going to kill.

  After everyone is seated, the death march on the organ starts playing. Its resounding thrusts of heavy pounding hurt my ears. Highest Holy Grinder steps out of the side of the sanctum where his office is at.

  "What a glorious day!" he chirps happily. "A truly glorious day!"

  Would it be such a glorious day for you if you were the one about to get killed?

  A helper-boy stops playing the organ to let Grinder speak. "Today, the Great Master has chosen to take one of the family-wives to his kingdom! Let's thank the Great Master for his generosity!"

  He makes us kneel to say a prayer of thanks for the murder of someone. The disgust in my throat threatens to poison me. When we get back on our feet to wait for the slab of white marble in the middle of the front to rise up with the victim, I put my hand to my heart. The death march starts playing again.

  It's excruciating to see the floor open and the cement slab coming slowly up. I force myself to look and not pull my eyes away.

  It's Harriet.

  I didn't know that today was her thirtieth birthday. She's not lying on the slab as most wives do with drugs coursing through them. Instead, she's sitting on it with a huge grin on her face. She wears a snow-white gown that covers her whole body. Two barefoot feet peek from under it. I guess that's one of the new procedures Grinder has instituted. Now we die in white gowns.

  "This isn't usual," Grinder states, "but Harriet has asked to speak to you, and I decided to grant her last wish on this earth before she goes off to our glorious maker."

  "Thank you, Highest Holy Grinder," she says, tears in her eyes. "You are very generous."

  "The floor is yours," he states.

  "Friends, fellow-followers, Elders, and Masters, all I want to tell you is that I thank you for letting me be a part of your lives. I hope I've been a good servant who's tried to do right by all of you but if I haven't, if I've offended you or not lived up to the person the Great Master wants me to be, I'd like to apologize."

  Don't apologize, I want to cry out. Don't apologize for other people's selfish motives.

  "It's been my great honor and gift to live in Paradise Village--the holiest place on earth. The one the Great Master smiles at when he's looking down at earth. The True Faith is the only one that serves him as he demands. We are the chosen ones! Our responsibility is great--to serve the anointed ones. To make their great burden easier. Yes, we're privileged."

  I want to shake her to make her understand that all that she believes in is total garbage. It's twisted logic crammed in her brain with years and years of brainwash. Why would our creator treat us like secondary creations?

  "Family-wives, let me just say that the Great Master will reward you for all you've done like I'm about to get rewarded. He'll make your eternity with your husbands a true paradise."

  I want to gag. If I have to spend an eternity with the Mister and the Elders around me, it won't be that much different from getting stuck in the other place with the evil creature.

  "Highest Holy Bledsoe is waiting for me. I'm proud to die for the Great Master. I'd die a million deaths for him."

  Bledsoe had been her first husband and according to what the Elders tell us, that's the spouse you're stuck with for all eternity if you've been a perfect True Faith follower.

  "One life is too small of a thing to give for what the Great Master has done for us."

  Why would an entity that created you want you to cut your life short instead of finishing it?

  "Give me the holy drink," she states, "I'm ready to meet with Highest Holy Bledsoe."

  I'm horrified as I see Grinder pour the poison from the jeweled encrusted flask into the grail. He hands it to Harriet who cheerfully drinks it up. She lies down with a wide grin on her face.

  The congregation waits for her to take her last breath. It doesn't take long. I'm so sick to my stomach that I can't wait to run out of here.

  Poor, poor Harriet. My heart breaks for her misguided sacrifice.

  "Wife-Harriet is a true example of what a wife should be," preaches Grinder from the pulpit. "I hope all of you listened carefully to her inspiring words. Right at this moment, she's with the Great Master himself! What a day!"

  When's this bag of hot air going to let us go?

  "Today is a big day! And in more ways than one. Before we finish our service I need to share something with you--something that'll change all of your lives!"

  Uh-oh!

  What total garbage does he want to feed us now?

  What horrible change does he have for us?

  "The Great Master has spoken to me!!!"

  Uh-oh!

  "He told me that without question I'm his son!!!"

  What?

  "The Great Master told me that I'm a direct descendent of his! My blood lines come from his. I'm his son!"

  Bledsoe was never this crazy!

  "As his only son, I'm blessed in everything I do, and my people are blessed too if they do everything I tell them to do. You are my people!"

  When I was a child and my mother told me about Jesus, I don't remember he ever acting anywhere near like Grinder. I don't remember him enslaving girls and murdering them. I don't remember him wearing such expensive, jewel encrusted clothing or even wearing an expensive crown and scepter.

  "Followers, remember this day because the True Faith has just moved into a whole new realm."

  He finally dismisses us but only after we kneel and thank the Great Master for his son. Eeek!!!

  Miguel walks me to the Barstowe household. He's very quiet until we're alone on a deserted street.

  "He's gone nuts," Miguel mumbles. I'm relieved he's talking to me again.

  "He's taking the game to a new level," I explain.

  "What game?"

  I tell him about the night that Smythee was in the isolation room, and I had heard Bledsoe admit to everything being a set-up. Miguel doesn't look surprised.

  "I know about their game as you call it," he says quietly.

  "You already knew?!"

  "You forget that I'm around the Elders all the time. They forget I'm there and their tongues get loose."

  "You really do know a lot of secrets, right?"

  "Some," he says uncomfortably. "I wish I knew something that could get us out of here, but I don't."

  I sigh. "What can be done?" I ask sadly.

  "Unfortunately, nothing and now with Grinder becoming a zealot . . ."

  "He's going overboard."

  Miguel nods. "The problem is that he really believes in the True Faith."

  "What?"

  "He actually believes he's the true son of the Great Master."

  "He's not faking it?" I ask in complete disbelief.

  "Somewhere along the line he started to believe all that stuff he's professing. He brainwashed himself."

  "How do you know?"

  He rolls his eyes. "I'm around the guy a lot. The other Elders are a little nervous about him, but they decided it may be a good thing for the spiritual leader to be a true believer."

  "They're allowing him to say he's the son of the Great Master?"

  "They didn't know what Grinder was going to say today. I'm s
ure they're as shocked as we are. The guy is going nuts before their very eyes."

  I breathe out a long breath. "They're probably going to let him keep sinking into his craziness, right?"

  Miguel's face looks unhappy. "Right."

  "As long as we're the ones mostly affected by that nut, they don't really care, right?"

  "Right."

  We hear a far-away noise and zip it as we continue moving towards the Barstowe household. It's a bone-chilling walk with my mind in a worried frenzy. Betsey impatiently waits for us outside the house.

  "What took you so long," she snaps.

  I stare back at her without answering.

  "There's a lot of work to be done around here," she snarls. "Monica, you'll need to scrub every inch of the floors in every room. I don't want them just mopped! I want you on your hands and knees. And I'm warning you, they have to be cleaned to my satisfaction! I'm not living in this pigs sty anymore! Your lazy days are over!"

  She eyes me with her deformed smirk, daring me to go against her. She knows that she can go to the Elders if I disobey her. The Mister will be furious with me if the Elders have to intervene in a matter like this. I will hardly be given a chance to defend myself.

  "After you finish with that," she sneers, her face bursting with glee. "I have a whole list of things for you to do."

  The revenge has begun.