Chapter 1

Interlude 1

“Derek Evan James! What do you think you are doing?” The outraged voice seemed to knife right through me, freezing me in place and sending chills down my spine. I turned my head to meet the angry gaze of my mother, my mouth dry and my heart pounding out a staccato beat in my chest.

“Nothing?” My squeaked denial came out as a question, though I had intended it to sound like a strong declaration of innocence. I knew it wouldn’t work no matter how it came out, but I had said it anyway.

I stood up from my crouched position where my eye had been glued to the old-fashioned keyhole. Inside, a girl about my own age had passed through the door only moments before.

In our compound, girls and boys were separated, not allowed to mix at any time, and seeing a girl on the boy’s side of the compound was a real treat. I had been unable to resist staring as she passed by, and when she turned into the office and closed the door behind her, I was at the keyhole in an instant, trying to figure out why she was there at all.

Inside the office, one of the senior brethren had risen from his desk and stepped forward to greet the girl, taking her hand in both of his and drawing her to him. She had seemed tense and more than a little afraid as the man pulled her to him and began to unbutton her smock.

Then mother found me spying.

The worst part of getting caught was not that I was embarrassed in front of my mother, or even the thought of the beating that was to come. It would not be the first time I had felt the lash at my father’s hand. The worst part was that my mother, in a fit of righteousness, denounced me publicly. That meant my punishment would be public.

Twenty lashes, tied to the punishment post in the compound’s meeting square. I don’t know what hurt more, the lashes or the look of righteous glee that I saw on my mother’s face.

I shook my head, trying to dispel the memory of that day, the horror and shame of my public humiliation made the long scars on my back itch and burn. The eight years that had passed since that day seemed as though they had been a blink of an eye and the pain, a pale memory of the agony I had actually felt that day, seemed to ease.

I got up from my desk and headed into the kitchen, grabbing a soda from the fridge and tried to get my mind back on the calculus homework the daydream had interrupted. The flashbacks were less frequent these days, but they could still take my breath away.

Shaking my head, as though that would help to rattle my brains and settle my nerves, I headed back to my desk and the waiting homework, only to be caught halfway there, by a knock on the door.

I was living in a studio apartment, just on the edge of campus, and I had no friends who would drop by unannounced. Heck, if I was being honest with myself, I had no friends, period. Even my neighbors were barely nodding acquaintances, so whoever was at the door either had the wrong address or was trying to sell me something. I had half a mind to ignore the knock and hope they went away, but it came again, more insistent this time.

Setting the soda bottle down on the desk, I retraced the three steps to the “kitchen” and into the entry way. Taking a quick peek through the peep hole, I couldn’t see anyone and thought it was, perhaps, some other student who had too much to drink, playing a prank. I had been the subject of several pranks since I started here. I was a weird kid in a school filled with a riot of hair colors, piercings on top of piercings and tattooed faces, but I was the weird one.

People suck. That had become a sort of mantra for me. When people acted like assholes, or were just self-involved idiots, I would whisper that under my breath, one for each breath I would take, and it would help me swallow my anger. I had a lot of anger these days, rage tied up inside of me, gnawing at my insides and trying to get out. I honestly feared what would happen if it did.

I turned to go, but heard another sound. This was a scratching; sort of a clawing sound and it was near the bottom of my door. Another look out the peep hole, this time to see if anyone else was near, and I slowly unlocked the three deadbolts, then twisted the knob.

It took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. There was a child, or a small woman, maybe, considering where we were, laying on my doormat and she was naked, but for a few tatters of what might have been a blouse or shirt. There were bruises and cuts, scrapes and gouges in her arms, legs and side. I could see what I thought were small, circular burns, some leaking fluid and, when I bent closer, I could see over the curve of her side, long, weeping and bleeding wounds as if she had been whipped severely.

I am still not sure why I did it. I knew better than to get involved and if I just called the police, they would come and have an ambulance take her away. Something kept me from doing that though, and I think it was her injuries. I couldn’t turn this girl over to the authorities when, in my mind, the authorities were the ones to do this kind of thing.

This was not the first time I had seen wounds like this. I could identify the origin of most of the wounds by running my fingers down my own limbs, feeling the scars that told my personal history.

I picked her up, as gently as I could, but knowing I would cause her pain, and kicked the door closed behind me. Carrying her into the kitchen, I laid her on a small rug that was clean, but had seen better days. I returned to the door to lock it securely, then fetched a clean sheet, the bucket from under the sink and some good, antibacterial soap.

The girl was shivering, her body in shock, probably, but things were going to get worse before they could get better, I knew that. Heck, I was shivering too, but I had been through years of therapy at this point, useless for the most part, but I recognized the sympathetic reaction for what it was. I literally felt for this girl, for what she was going through, because I could remember it all.

Interlude 2

“How was school today, DJ?” My father was sitting at the kitchen table when I came home from school that day. In my father’s hands was the only book I had ever seen him read, the Tome. The Tome of Spiritual Guidance Along the Path of Enlightenment, or Tome for short, was the holiest of books to the members of our sect, commonly called the Path, and my father was nothing if not a devout follower of the Path.

“It was okay, I guess.” I didn’t really like school all that much. We spent most of the day learning facts and figures, and only one class on the Path to enlightenment, but it was so hard for a ten-year-old boy to sit still for eight hours a day!

“You have chores,” my father reminded me, looking up from the Tome with a smile. I must have been frowning because his brow creased and he laid the Tome reverently on the table, his hands absently caressing the worn leather cover.

“Problem?” he asked.

“Dad, in school they say that we are the Chosen.”

“That’s right, DJ.”

“Well, Brother Schiavo also said those that are not the Chosen are unbelievers and that when we are raptured, they will toil for us. What does that mean? Isn’t toil like work?”

“The scripture says that only the followers of the Path can be lifted to heaven, son. The unbelievers have been living a life of sin and, after the rapture, will be forced to work off those sins and turn to the Path before they will be accepted into heaven. So yes, DJ, toil is work, but it is also repentance.”

“If unbelievers have to toil, but believers don’t, what about when we get to heaven? Will there still be chores?”

My father tried to smother his laugh, but I could see the amusement in his eyes.

“DJ, chores are not punishment, they are simply the tasks we must complete while we wait to be called. When we are in heaven, alongside the prophet, the chores will be done by the unbelievers as they work off their sins. We will be allowed to bask in the light of the prophet, spending all of eternity helping the prophet lead the sinners to the Path, but it will be a joyous labor.”

I thought about that for a minute.

“I sure wish we had some unbelievers here now. I think it would be cool to have my own personal slave to mow the lawn and take out the garbage.”

There was silence in the room.

I had seen my father’s patience tested, and even seen him annoyed, but I had never seen him angry. And never, ever had I seen what I saw in that moment.

His face turned bright red, a throbbing vein in his temple seemed to beat in time to an unheard drum. His teeth were clenched in snarl so unlike his normal placid expression and his entire body seemed to quiver. His fists were clenched, one crumpling the cover of the Tome on the table before him and that, more than anything else, sent danger signals racing through my brain.

I never really saw it coming. There was a flash of movement, more felt than witnessed, and an explosion of pain seemed to grip my face and head as my body flew through the air. I impacted a kitchen cabinet, the world still spinning and blackness seeming to creep into the edges of my vision.

When I looked up, he was standing over me, his expression one of rage. I saw him start to draw back his foot as he howled at me.

“SLAVERY IS AN ABOMINATION BEFORE THE LORD!”

His voice seemed to fill the entire house, shaking it to its rafters. Then, his foot connected and I saw no more.

As I worked, cleaning the wounds, I recalled my own mother, scrubbing out my cuts and torn skin with a stiff brush. She had told me, time and again, that mortification of the flesh was a gift of pain from me to God, and that it showed good character if I could remain silent. Crying out was weakness, and being prideful; calling others to see how greatly you suffered as if it were a contest! ‘Be Silent!’ she would growl, ‘The Lord Is Watching.’

The girl whimpered and I stroked her hand, one of the only places without any obvious injuries. The wounds on her back were a couple of days old and a few of them were infected. When my cloth ran across one that was especially deep, the scab came off and the puss underneath the heated, swollen and red skin, began to pour forth like corrupted lava.

The smell ... oh, that smell. It was the smell of evil leaving the body, my momma told me so.

That smell sent my mind reeling and I began to see visions, odd, swirling, flowing visions of tiny creeks and rivers flowing through a land of red. I saw fibrous trees that moved and squatted, bunched and stretched. There were armies of small round soldiers with no arms or legs, but the battled endlessly to overcome the corruption.

This seemed to go on for hours, my head wracked by spasms of pain and my heart seeming to want to leap out of my chest. I watched, helplessly as the creeks and rivers became clean again, their flowing waters purified. I watched as the great rents in the land were stitched together and became whole again.

And then I slept.

When I woke up, the visions, or fever dreams, or just nightmares, were done. I was laying on the floor in my kitchen, flat on my back and looking up at the water-stained ceiling. I could hear someone else breathing and, when I turned my head, there lay a naked woman staring back at me.

She blinked and I scrambled backwards until I fetched up against the wall with my back, the events of the previous night coming back in a flash. The doorbell, the bleeding body, the dreams!

The girl was still watching me, her expression placid. She was of oriental stock, but I didn’t know enough to even guess what type or, you know, where her people came from. She was still nude but had pulled the sheet over her so she was not naked.

What was striking to me was that her face was unmarred and very pretty. I would have sworn that she was battered, both eyes blackened, her nose broken and a cheek too, I was sure. Her lips had been swollen and cut, several teeth obviously missing and, when I had looked, it appeared she had bitten off a bit of her tongue on one side.

Now she smiled at me and her lips were perfect, her teeth were bright and healthy and her eyes sparkled. There was no bruising and her cheek, once misshapen, was perfect again.

My eyes scanned what skin I could see, mostly her shoulders, lower arms and legs, but all of the was perfect. I couldn’t see a single blemish on her and that, as much as anything else, had me questioning my sanity.

When she began to sit up, the sheet slipping down around her waist, I gasped, but not at her nudity, though that was a magnificent sight to see, but at her condition!

She had come to me with slashes across her breasts, a cut in her stomach that exposed muscle beneath the layer of fat and, most horrendous of all, someone had savaged her small breasts, burning and cutting, even tearing or ripping off one of her nipples. The sight had brought tears to my eyes but the tears there now were of wonder.

“How...” I tried to speak, but my throat was dry and my jaw was tight. My arms and legs trembled and I was as weak as I could remember being, at least since I left the church.

Now the tables were turned and this girl, as naked as the day she was born, was supporting me, helping me to a chair.

She searched my tiny kitchen and returned with a glass of orange juice, helping me to hold the cold glass and sip. Before I knew it, the glass was empty and I swear I could feel the energy coursing through me!

She, the naked girl, pulled up a chair and sat down so closely that our knees touched. I know I cringed, and I know that hurt her feelings, but the lessons of our childhoods cling, remaining long after childhood is gone.

“Thank you,” she whispered, staring into my eyes. “Thank you for saving me, and for healing me. I thought I was going to die.” Now tears were rolling down her cheeks and she reached out to me, taking my hands in hers.

Somehow, she ended up in my lap, curled up into a tiny ball and pressed tightly against me. My arms were wrapped around her and we cried together, she and I.

Lisa Oshido was a freshman metaphysics student here at our sister school, the University of New Mexico in Las Cruces, and was living on campus, or that had been the plan. She was from a small town called, improbably enough, Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, where her father’s family had lived since the end of World War II.

Just after the end of the first quarter, when the quarter finals were all done and everyone was letting their hair down, Lisa was partying at a house off campus and woke up in a darkened basement.

She had been raped and beaten, tortured for three days before being thrown into a van, taken back to the campus, and kicked out onto the grass near where I lived. She had crawled and mine was the first apartment, ground floor, on that side of the building. She had tried banging on the door, but didn’t have the strength and, after ringing the doorbell, had collapsed.

“Then you saved me. I woke up, the pain slowly fading, and you were there, kneeling over me. You were glowing and I could feel the power flowing from you into me. I must have fallen asleep again, because when I woke up, you were sleeping beside me.”

Interlude 3

Penitence was done in one of three ways, depending on the severity of the act requiring punishment. The lightest level was the Prayer of the Penitent. The penitent would kneel on jagged, thumb-sized rocks and repeat the Litany of Light as given to us by the Angel Tul. The length of time depended solely on the mercy of the Chosen who watched the eternal flame that cycle.

Light is essence of purity and light illuminates the Path.

Light guides us to holiness and light banishes the evil that hides in shadows

Light is life and light is faith and through the holy light of our father, we will ascend and be blessed forever.

The next level was Confession of the Penitent. Unlike the worshippers of the false god, we did not confess our sins in private, under the veil of secrecy, to a man with feet of clay. Followers of the Path confessed their sins to the body, to the whole of the Chosen, and in their mercy the penitent found the humility needed to face God as a sinner.

Those celebrating the Confession of the Penitent would do so unclothed, tied to a post in the center of the compound. The penitent would confess their sins to the whole of the Chosen as they were lashed with a whip. The type of whip, the number of lashes and even the timing between lashes were decided by the Deacon himself. This punishment could lead to death and, when that happened, the penitent was said to have been judged by God and found wanting.

The Wrath of the Holy was the final, and most severe, of the trials and was used only if the deed was judged to be so evil that it threatened all of the Chosen. It would begin with lashes, though no confession was allowed and the penitent was gagged to prevent the heresy from spreading.

After lashes, if the penitent survived, they were bathed with stiff brushes, in blessed water to which cleansing salts had been added, and even the most stoic of evil-doers had been known to scream themselves mute before the task was done. All of the Chosen were required to stand witness to the first and second steps.

The last step of the Wrath of the Holy was the banishment. The penitent would be banished from the body of the Chosen. This was done by a select few Chosen, men of proven piety, who would leave with the penitent, guiding them away in chains to toil in the fields forever. The men would return but the prisoners never did.

I found some clothes for Lisa to wear, just shorts and a t-shirt, but it was enough. She could cinch the waist of the shorts down and my shirt fit like a minidress, so she felt more comfortable.

She was unstable still, moving from bright and cheerful to crying and cringing in a heartbeat, but she was doing better.

“Hey, um, look, DJ, can I call my parents? Tell them I am okay?”

“Huh? Oh dang, yes, of course! I should have thought of that. And the police maybe, and what about your roommate? Is there anyone else you should call?”

She made a patting motion, trying to get me to slow down. She was calmer about this than I was, and she was the kidnap and torture victim, not me!

“It’s okay, DJ. Look, my head is all fucked up right now, I know that, and I am holding it together, but I am going to need a lot of help. My parents probably don’t even know I was gone, but they will help me. My roommate is a bitch, we don’t get along or hang together, so no worries there. I doubt there was a police report if no one noticed I was gone, but I do need to report this.”

By this point, I could tell she was feeling a bit overwhelmed. She was crying again, ugly crying, with snot coming from her nose and deep, painful sobs as her whole body shook. I handed her tissue after tissue, there if she wanted someone to hold or to hit, but far enough away not to crowd her.

I felt completely, unequivocally, unequipped to deal with this. Then I remembered Ms. Jackson. She was the counselor assigned to me when I started here. I had asked for, and of course they gave me, a counselor to talk to when things got tough. I still had so many issues ... nightmares, panic attacks and recurrent pain, even if most was phantom pain from well-healed injuries. I was a mess, but trying.

“Lisa, my counselor, she’s pretty good. She knows about dealing with trauma, and she could help.” I held my breath, not knowing if the suggestion would be accepted or seen as something else, an accusation, an insult...

Lisa, when her crying slowed, shrugged, then nodded. “Okay, um, okay, but I want to call my mom first. They can come and get me, get me out of your hair.”

I handed her the cordless handset for my landline. I didn’t own a cellphone or a comm unit, I still couldn’t bring myself to really trust them.

“Mom? Yes, yes, it’s me. Look, I am in trouble, but not, like, immediate trouble. I just need someone to come and get me, please?” she listened to the person on the other end for a moment, then handed me the phone.

“Can you give her the address, maybe directions?”

Her parents showed up with the police and I had a gun stuck in my face when I opened the door. I was strangely calm about it though, and it wasn’t until later that I realized that guns didn’t scare me. Angry men with whips, well, I might have messed myself.

Once the confusion was cleared up and I was not an immediate suspect, the police wouldn’t let anyone leave until they had a basic report to go by.

Kidnapping, rape, torture, imprisonment, then abandonment, but all without a trace of evidence? No injuries, no blood, no scars?

I don’t mean to make it sound like they were unhelpful, not at all, in fact, they were the ones that called the Hero League office in town and asked for help.

The knock at the door half an hour later was answered by a police officer, something that caused a spike of anger in me, though I knew it was unreasonable. This was my home. This was my space. It had been invaded by all these strangers and it felt like I had lost my sanctuary. I didn’t like it a bit.