Taken: Original Sin Book 1

by Hart, Stella

  I stumbled upon them a few weeks ago when I was sent to the men’s section of the shelter to scrub the floors. Cleaning in this section was quite a rewarding task, because not only was I directly serving the men, their floors were also marble-tiled and dirt came off them easily, making everything beautiful and shiny. The men were allowed to have electricity, too, and the lights made it easier to see what I was doing, unlike in the female section where I spent the vast majority of my time. We were only allowed candles there.

  That day, Eric had sneaked Rebecca into his quarters while most of the other men were working on the ranch outside. I heard the sounds of their joining as I walked by. Knowing something wicked must be occurring, I pushed the door open slightly to confirm this, and I saw them naked and writhing together on the wide bed.

  I was about to turn around and run up the hall to alert someone when I saw Rebecca’s lips curl up in a blissful smile. For a moment, I was transfixed. It had been so long since I saw anyone smile like that. It made me ache as it reminded me of all the beautiful things from the past that once made me smile. Kittens, bouquets, sunshine, music.

  I could not begrudge her that smile, and I decided not to tell a soul what I had witnessed that day. I knew the two of them would eventually be judged and cast into eternal flames anyway, when they died and faced His wrath.

  Now I knew I had made a grave error. I should have done the right thing and told on them, like the next person who saw them together did. In keeping the dark, sinful secret to myself, I had let the evil fester for weeks, possibly making the whole situation even worse.

  But still, I could not bring myself to admit it out loud. I was afraid of what might happen. They might decide to put me to death too, even though I was the Prophet’s daughter.

  “No,” I finally said, averting my eyes from Elena and Lauren’s curious gazes. “I didn’t know.”

  “Neither did I,” Lauren whispered. “It’s so terrible.”

  Elena chewed on her bottom lip. “Yes, it is,” she said. “I had no idea either.”

  I wondered if they were lying too. I wondered just how much feminine sin we were all hiding for fear of retribution.

  I turned my head to the left to gaze out upon the moonlit fields and sporadic copses of live oaks and bald cypress trees. In the distance, I could see the white plantation mansion I lived in until I was seven years old. I had not set foot inside it in the eleven years since the Great Reckoning, but sometimes I felt like I had been in there just a few days ago.

  This bizarre feeling always came over me the day after the Elders gave us extra-large doses of our regular daily vitamins, which protected us from the negative effects of our lack of sunlight. When they gave us such big doses, it made me feel very strange, and the next morning I would not remember what had occurred the day before at all, save for the first few minutes after I took the dose.

  My brows furrowed as I stared at the house. Perhaps I had been in there recently, after all, and I simply forgot about it because of the pills. But why? Why would my father or the other men ever allow us in there? It wasn’t safe. The only place we were truly protected was down in the underground shelter.

  My father called out above the roaring flames. “All women who have reached fruition, step forward!”

  Elena and Lauren immediately stepped forward. I did too, although I still wasn’t used to being referred to as a woman. Despite growing the private hair and prominent curves of a grown woman several years ago, I had not begun my monthly bleeding until the day after my eighteenth birthday six months ago, so I had only been considered a woman for those few short months.

  “Prepare yourselves,” Elder Landry said, stepping over to the line of women with a sharp knife. Behind him, one of the other Elders followed, holding a large snake. Its forked tongue darted out menacingly and its cruel beady eyes glinted in the light from the fire. I shuddered. Snakes were the Devil’s minions.

  My father beamed at us from the pulpit. “You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide,” he said.

  My legs began to tremble. I had a lot to hide. So many shameful secrets. I wasn’t sure if they were bad enough to count as unforgivable sins, but I would soon find out.

  Elder Landry nodded at the man behind him. He took the snake over to the first woman in the line. She trembled as he held the reptile close to her, and I heard a petrified sob rip from her as it darted its tongue out again, right near her face.

  That was all it did.

  “She is clean,” the snake handler said. He moved on to the next young woman.

  As snakes were the Devil’s minions, they were able to recognize one of their evil allies if they were held close enough. If this happened, they would bite the person and infect them with their venom in order to return them to their dark master. If the snake did not strike out and bite, however, that meant the person was still a subject of Him, the only true God.

  The man went down the line with the snake. When it was my turn, I could barely muster up the strength to remain standing. My legs were shaking so much that I worried they might give out any second. Please, I silently prayed. I know I am weak and fall prey to sinful thoughts on occasion, but I believe I am still pure of heart.

  The snake regarded me with beady eyes and stayed motionless in the handler’s grip. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Praise Him. I wasn’t so far gone that I had to die and sink into the fiery pits below.

  When all the women had been tested and none had been bitten, Elder Landry held up the knife. It glinted ominously in the orange firelight.

  “Hold out your arms,” he said.

  He went down the line like the snake handler had done only moments ago, and he sliced into the tender flesh of each woman’s left forearm, letting a small amount of blood trickle out. The men watched with smiles on their faces.

  “Embrace the pain,” my father boomed from his pulpit. “Even though you have been found clean, the seeds of sin always lurk within a woman’s body. Bloodletting and pain will force some of that natural wickedness to leak out.”

  I endured the pain of the cut by clenching my teeth together as hard as I could. Finally, it was all over, and we were directed to return to the safety of the shelter.

  My friends and I helped each other wrap our bleeding forearms in bandages, and then we bade each other goodnight and returned to our quarters. I let out a moan as I collapsed onto my bed, partly from exhaustion and partly from the aching in my left arm.

  We were all taught to endure silently. Women were responsible for the birth of all sin in this world, and therefore it was our job to withstand any and all pain. Not only that, we were supposed to enjoy it. I did not enjoy this, though, and I was having trouble staying silent.

  I required a distraction from the pain.

  Slowly and tentatively, I reached into the gray pillowcase behind my head and pulled out a book I’d hidden there the other day. It wasn’t comfortable to sleep with it there, but it was the only place I thought it might be safe from prying eyes.

  I already knew how to read when New Eden was created, and the girls who were born here over the last decade were all taught to read as well. However, we were only supposed to read His Word or recipes so that we could cook properly for the men.

  Temptation had made its way into my world last week. Some of the men had ventured out into the Wastelands to find other survivors to trade with, and they had returned with several enormous boxes of ingredients for the kitchens. I was tasked with unpacking the boxes in the kitchen, and surprisingly, I saw a colorful book tucked between two bags of flour.

  One of the outsiders from the Wastelands must have accidentally put it in there. At first the sight of it terrified me, because I worried I would burst into flames if I so much as touched it. After several harrowing moments of indecision, I finally grew bold enough to pick it up, and something deep in my mind compelled me to take it and hide it in my room.

  I knew I should feel guilty for that, but it was just a book. A purely fic
tional story written before the Great Reckoning. The characters did not seem evil from what I’d read so far, so what harm could it do?

  There was something strange about the book, though. Inside the front cover, it said the number ‘2006’ under the date of printing. I knew that couldn’t possibly be the real publication date, as the Great Reckoning happened in 1999, so it was clearly a misprint, but it was odd all the same. I vaguely remembered keyboards from the old world, and mistakenly typing 2006 instead of 1999 was quite a silly error to make.

  Hiding my head under the blankets, I squinted at the pages in the dim light and continued the story. It was about a man and a woman who were pretending to be in a loving relationship with each other in order to please the woman’s overbearing mother. It sounded bad, as they were deceiving their families and friends, but the material was written in a way which made it funny. I was greatly enjoying it.

  I kept reading. The man and woman seemed to be falling in love now, and they wanted to be together. The words describing it were so strange to me. So illicit. I loved our God and I loved my fellow Path of the Covenant members, but romantic love was a thing of the past. My father said it was a sin which consistently led people astray from the righteous path.

  It didn’t seem so bad, though, from the way this old-time author was talking about it. In fact, it reminded me of a little crush I once had on a teenage boy who came to visit us on the ranch one day in the old times, when I was only seven years old. Mason Ashwood.

  I still remembered it like it was yesterday. When I first laid eyes on him, my heart fluttered, my stomach had butterflies, and my knees wobbled like mad. For a dizzy moment, I was rendered totally speechless.

  What I felt for that boy didn’t seem evil. It seemed pure and light and innocent. I’d thought of him often in the last few years, and it saddened me to think of how he’d very likely perished when the bombs dropped so long ago.

  I turned the page. Moments later, I muffled a scandalized gasp. The couple in the book were now committing an act of the flesh, and they were not married. Worse, the woman was enjoying it, which was a terrible sin. Only men were allowed to obtain pleasure from copulation.

  The writer had gone into great detail, too, portraying every single second of the act. Every private body part was described, along with the thoughts and pleasurable responses the characters were experiencing.

  I slammed the book shut and hid it back in my pillowcase, my heart racing. Ardent heat was spreading throughout my body, radiating from somewhere deep in my belly. I’d felt this hot tingling sensation several times in the last few months, especially whenever I thought about attractive men. I knew it meant lust was growing in me as the Devil lingered nearby, waiting for me to serve him instead of my own God.

  I tried to pray to keep the feeling at bay, but my mind conjured up an illicit image before I could stop it. I saw my childhood crush, Mason, as a fully-grown adult. The way I imagined him, he was the most handsome man in the world. I pictured his piercing hazel eyes with slight crow’s feet around them and his once-bare jawline with a dark smattering of stubble on it. Then I pictured his body with more muscles and a deeper tan. For a fleeting moment, I imagined he was the main male character in the book I had been reading.

  The images multiplied. Now I saw myself as the main female character from the book, and I saw Mason doing all the lustful things to me that the scandalous chapter had described.

  The heat in my body intensified. I couldn’t take it any longer. I had to do something or else I might explode.

  Reaching all the way under my blankets, I bunched my white nightdress up and widened my trembling legs. With halting movements, I pressed my hand to the area between my thighs and slid my fingers into my thin cotton underwear.

  I wasn’t supposed to touch this area, let alone imagine my hand was actually someone else’s, but that was all I could do right now. My mind and body seemed to have been possessed.

  “Mason…” I whispered. My fingers circled faster in the forbidden area. There was something there, some sort of swelling which needed to be rubbed in order to relieve the terrible yet strangely wonderful pressure within.

  Pleasure bloomed in my belly, and I was struck with the sense that my legs and arms might shatter from how good it felt. Just when I thought I couldn’t take any more, an even more pleasurable sensation ripped through my body, making me gasp as stars danced before my eyes. My legs quivered, and I slammed my free hand over my mouth to stop another loud gasp from tearing free.

  The pleasure faded. It was replaced with a sense of shame so strong I almost wanted to throw up. How could I have done this? How could I have let this happen?

  I was disgusting. Sick. Immoral. I let the Devil in, even after witnessing an execution for a similar kind of lust only hours ago.

  I leapt out of bed and kneeled on the floor, looking up at the ceiling with my hands clasped together. “Please forgive me,” I implored in a frenzied whisper. “I know I have sinned. I am so very weak. So very unclean.” Tears gathered in my eyes, and I swallowed hard and went on. “I’m just a woman. I am not naturally strong or pure like the men. Please give me another chance to serve you properly, without sin clouding my judgment. Next time I promise I will be stronger. I will resist temptation.”

  I closed my eyes, imagining what would happen if someone had caught me. My hand may have been cut off as punishment. Worse, my father and the Elders might have decided to send me out into the Wastelands, where I would succumb to the toxic waste before burning in the flames of hell for all eternity.

  I slapped myself in the face, hard, and as the pain spread over my cheeks, I made a vow to myself.

  I would never give in to lust again.

  2

  Mason

  Blowing out a deep breath, I wiped the sweat from my brow and stepped out of my hired truck. It was almost four-thirty in one of Louisiana’s coolest months, but the air in Amiens was still heavy with heat and humidity.

  I headed into the small general store to grab a drink. I thought about questioning the owner for information on the nearby New Eden ranch, which I was currently headed to, but the only person in the store seemed to be the girl at the till. She was a pimply-faced teen who probably knew very little.

  With my thirst satiated, I got back in the truck and headed through Amiens. It was a quaint little town, and most of the residents lived on wide lots which backed up to the bayou. They all had their own private piers, but that didn’t mean any of them were rich. Most of the piers were warped and splintering from year after year of sizzling southern sun.

  I couldn’t actually see all of that right now, but I remembered it clearly from when my mother made me visit this town as a teenager. It was only a few miles over from the place she grew up. I must’ve spent half my fucking childhood in this state, touring around and checking out everything that made my mom feel nostalgic.

  After winding the window down, I stuck out one arm and groaned with relief as I headed down the main road which led away from the town. A breeze was blowing through the air now, and considering the air-con in this hired truck didn’t work for shit, this was the coolest I was gonna feel for at least an hour.

  I could practically hear my friend Thad chuckling and making snide comments in my ear. You aren’t actually gonna go through with this fucked-up plan, are you? It’s okay to admit defeat, buddy.

  That wasn’t going to happen, though. I wasn’t the type to give up, especially when Thad was involved.

  A couple of months ago, I made a bet with him. It was part of a game we started years ago when we were idiotic college students. Essentially, one of us would bet the other he couldn’t bag a woman who was considered by most people to be thoroughly unattainable in some way, and if he actually managed to score, he’d get a payout.

  For example, one girl Thad slept with a few years back was a church pastor’s daughter we knew from college. She’d always claimed she wanted to stay a virgin until marriage, but apparently, that wasn’
t true at all. Thad managed to hook her, and he said she was one of the wildest freaks in the sack he’d ever had.

  It was the intoxicating thrill of the hunt that kept us going with the bets, even though we’d long since realized that playing the game meant we were shitty people.

  After losing a quarter of a million dollars and my renovated lake house in the last bet with Thad—I misjudged that one pretty bad—we made another deal. I was going to head to the New Eden cult compound in Vermilion Parish to try to score with one of the girls there. They were some of the most unattainable women on the whole fucking planet.

  If I succeeded, I’d get my lake house back along with a million bucks of Thad’s endless trust fund.

  I already had a sort of ‘in’ with the leader of the Path of the Covenant group (which started out as somewhat of a doomsday cult) as my parents had done business with him a long time ago. We’d even been there visiting on the day the cult members were attacked at the leader’s ranch, which had now become New Eden.

  That afternoon, masked gunmen had shown up at a spiritual retreat Jacob Chastain was holding for his church members at the ranch, and they’d killed all the women and teenagers, leaving behind the men and younger children, who’d apparently (and very fortunately) been away from the marquee tent where the others were attacked and killed.

  Even though my parents and I left a few hours before the attack happened, it still haunted me sometimes. I’d lie awake at night and wonder what would’ve happened if we stayed longer and I lost my parents at such a young age. They were probably the most decent people in my life. If they hadn’t been around to guide me through my rough teen years, I wouldn’t be as content and successful as I was now.

  I wasn’t religious, but sometimes I’d think to myself: Thank fucking god we left early that day.

  No one knew why the church members were attacked or who carried out the heinous event, but after it happened, Chastain reformed his congregation. All the members moved out to his enormous ranch and formed some sort of weird commune.