“But the night is young,” Christopher says with a wave in the air like he can wash away someone’s exhaustion.
Jonathan leans over, his cheek touching mine as his warm breath falls against my ear. “We can organize for a little pick me up?” he suggests in the persuasive voice he used to manipulate all of us. Charles Manson. Jim Jones. David Koresh. They all have one thing in common: the ability to command. Their heavy gravitas twisted as a recipe used to control the masses and make people wild with the need to be in their vicinity. It’s all part of their plan. Offering their lives, their devotion, their very breath. They revel in their control, manipulating every part of the lives blindly placed in their hands, and relishing in being able to get them to endure what would break most people. My mind flits to my past.
Dark water movesin front of me, a silent, heavy presence waiting to claim my sin. Jonathan’s hand grips my shoulder, steadying my trembling.
“Confess, and I will absolve you of your sins, Eleanor.”
I lick my lips and draw in a steadying breath. I miss the days when sin was treated with lashes. I’d long learned to compartmentalize pain to where I no longer felt it. The second Jonathan realized, he switched up his techniques. It doesn’t matter how much I try to detach from reality, my body’s physiological response can’t be controlled. I need to breathe to live.
He sighs at my silence.
The heavy metal shackles around my wrists and ankles clunk against the cracked tiles as I shift. I’ll definitely have bruises later. My gaze flicks around at the men surroundingus, bearing witness to this cleansing. What was my great sin? Pleasure? Perceived pleasure? “Sins of the flesh,” Jonathan called it.
As women, our virtue is all we hold that is precious in this world. Without it, we are worthless, but in less than a year, I will be wed to one of the men staring at me with covetous gazes, more than ready to take and destroy my innocence. Joke’s on them; my innocence is lying in tatters on the floor of the classroom where we were taught to follow the commands of the men and punished for hesitating even a breath. It was swept away in the wind during a particularly brutal whipping in the center of the compound for all to see. It was decimated when I realized not even my private thoughts were safe in the confines of a journal—which broke so many rules. We weren’t meant to read or write, Jonathan ensured that.
Knowledge is power, and power is only for men.
But tonight, I stand at the edge of a large pool facing my mortality, not as a consequence of hesitation, but because I flushed when Marc paid me a compliment. Attraction is in our nature; it is part of our chemistry. Mama taught me that. Mama taught me lots of things.
The problem is I’m not promised to Marc. My fate hasn’t yet been decided.
Jonathan jumps into the pool, fully clothed in his white pants and shirt, like he’s the Messiah. Two men grip my arms and lift me into the water. The weight of the shackles drags me down to the bottom with no hope for escape. My heart thrashes wildly in my chest as I suck in a shocked gasp at the freezing cold liquid surrounding me. My chin settles on the surface as I gaze at Jonathan.
“Your defiance only brings you pain,” he declares. “I will bring you to heel, Eleanor.”
Good luck with that. I know how to touch myself in the middle of the night and escape this world, if only for a moment of utter peace. Somehow, Jonathan knows I’ve clawed this slither of control, of escape, of pleasure that steals my breath and locks my limbs, away from him. It’s the opposite of what I’ve been taught. And I’ve never been happier.
I swallow the knot of anxiety as he watches me tip my head back to avoid swallowing the water. “Confess.”
I bite the inside of my cheek and glare at him. He sighs like he’s exasperated, but I see the hint of excitement in his eyes. He slams his hand down on my head and pushes me under. I fail to take a deep breath beforehand and panic flares in my chest as I inhale liquid too.
His fingers tangle in my hair, and he drags my face out of the water. I gasp in much-needed air, choking as tears stream down my cheeks hidden by the water surrounding us.
“You are making this more difficult than it needs to be,” he snaps before repeating the dunking.
My chest burns, my stomach twists, and my limbs become heavier until, after what feels like an eternity, he pauses and tilts his head as I fight to stay conscious. Perhaps he will kill me. It would be the ultimate escape from a life full of pain.
He leans forward, his cheek brushing mine as his lips graze my ear. “Confess, or I will allow every man in this room to ruin you, Eleanor. Then you will be worthless in my community and removed. You will be left adrift in a world that will reject you. Your mother and brother will never see you again. You will be ruined for this life and the next. The devil has a special place in the pits of despair for those without moral direction. You think this is bad? Wait until your soul is being tortured for an eternity. Now, confess.”
The devil has long since stopped scaring me. I know Jonathan is, in fact, Satan in disguise. But to lose access to myfamily? The only people to care and love me for all I am, and am not? That is a true threat.
I drag my bottom lip between my teeth and will feeling into the numb flesh. Jonathan pulls back and arches a brow at me.
“I confess,” I whisper, my tongue heavy against the words.
“To what?”
“To being tempted in the ways of the flesh. For reacting to a man not deemed to be my future husband. To having impure thoughts and coveting a man’s affections.”
Jonathan’s eyebrows pull down as he studies me. “Good, Eleanor. I cleanse you of these sins so you may once again walk in purity and become the woman you are meant to be for our community. You are destined for great things, Eleanor.”
What is he talking about? Great things? “I am?”
He grins, causing my blood to freeze in my veins. “Of course. You are destined to be mine.”
I refocus with a hard blink.I can’t afford to blank out in a room of vipers. Christopher chuckles at something Jonathan says, and I glance down at the table. There’s a line of white powder on a silver tray. Oh, how dignified they make their illegal recreational drug use look. I’m not clueless to how sex trafficking works. I lived around it for years. They get the victims hooked on drugs, which keeps them under control and pliant, almost passing as willing participants.
I rarely drink, never mind taking drugs. I refuse to give up control. If I do drink, it has to be somewhere I deem safe, not in a club with a bunch of evil men.
