Chapter 1: The Chosen

Sue awoke not quite feeling herself, except who else could she be. The thought made her chuckle. She’d become a day older from yesterday of course, but also, officially, a year older, most significantly, eighteen.

This was a day of emancipation, of being freed of the shackles of youth, of no longer being owned by her parents, made to do what she was told as long as she resided under their roof. She had legitimate rights as of this day to be independent of them, to finally be her own woman. And she had plans to do just that, including no longer being under their roof. Two suitcases hidden under her bed and awaking before she ever had, the night still occupying the sky, testified to that intent.

Quietly, nervously, she got out of her bed, a single too narrow to fit anyone else like for instance a lover, the size she presumed to be the same size as a bed in a prison cell. And hadn’t this been her prison cell however larger it might have been and without bars or a lock on the door, although she did have bars securing her window from escape even if it was supposedly in order to keep predators out of the house? Just like not having a lock had its own imprisoning purpose, preventing her from privacy, of unwelcomed invasion at any point her parents decided.

Of course it wasn’t actually a prison. She had a life outside the house, including school and work and play amongst her friends, but even that had its restrictions. Coming home drunk and stoned a year or so before had been detected by her mother who seemed to have an unfortunate knack for seeing through her or knowing her every move, a reason for her quiet and nervousness at the moment, and had resulted in an endless month of what felt like real imprisonment. Sue never did that again.

Something she learned early in her adolescence was to play the obedient daughter, her rebelliousness quashed painfully by her mother, not just spankings but actual whipping by a belt which ended when she became a good girl apparently, until the night of her drunkenness, the painful spanking and whipping preceding the imprisonment. Her father had done the same to her two older brothers, the oldest, Sue’s secret hero, not taking the blatant hint and continued getting ever harsher punishment until he was sent off to some private high school, no doubt Christian considering her parent’s intensely repressive obsession, from which he ran away, not to be heard from again, hopefully not dead, just incommunicado. The middle child avoided further punishment by supposedly being a good boy much more easily than she could ever be a good girl, fitting into the parents’ expectations, making them proud, the asshole.

Sex had worried Sue, being detected by her mother and being punished for it. Her earliest masturbation had been detected by her mother. Her mother had actually smelled it! So after, she always did it while sitting on the toilet, finishing in the shower, and remaining quiet throughout.

When she began making out, being extra careful because of her mother’s seeming extraordinary detection ability, it had been with an older boy who had a car who either let her out blocks away to let her air out the scent so to speak or she would work after at the library filing books, her part time job. She managed to escape detection. Things ended with him when he insisted they go farther than she wanted.

Her next lover who had also been a couple years older than her whom she met at work, a student at the nearby university, she let go much farther. He shared a house with several other students and had his own room in which he took her virginity. A careful shower at his place removed any proof of her transgression against her mother. He would be the one to pick her up that morning, whisking her away to an apartment her work money, the cash she stashed away, had helped him to acquire.

Once dressed, luggage carefully lifted enough so as not to drag on the floor, one in each hand, she creeped out of her room and down the stairs, the slight creak of old wood planks sounding like alarms to her ears, finally ending when her feet reached the bottom and she moved swiftly as she dared to the front door a few feet away.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she heard muttered calmly behind her making her heart lurch.

She turned, seeing her brother standing in the entrance to the kitchen. Her brother being a large man, over six feet tall and thickly muscled from being a jock, and since his college let out, construction work, filled the space.

“Fuck you Frank,” she growled quietly, saying words she’d wanted to say for years.

While she unlocked the door and opened it and the screen door in front of it, he laughed. “I knew you weren’t the sweet princess you pretended to be.”

Clumsily getting through the doors, another voice further disturbed her heart. “Need help with that?”

Her handsome lover stood on the stoop, his thick dark hair particularly unruly, his blue/gray soulful eyes gazing at her.

“Jeez John, I thought you were going to wait in your car. Where is your car?”

Instead of his old Ford Fiesta, a van sat at the curb, side door open.

“Change of plans,” he smiled sadly, lifting a cloth to her mouth in which she smelt chemicals before not smelling anything or sensing anything.

Another strong chemical awoke her: smelling salts. Her head throbbed at her awakening. A slim gentleman kneeled in front of her, gentleman because he wore what looked like an expensive suit and tie. “Can you sit up?” he asked quietly.

She managed, cringing. “What’s going on?” she asked.

Instead of answering he handed her a Dixie cup with three gel caps and a large cup of cloudy white liquid. “Take these and drink all of the liquid. It will take care of your headache.”

She obeyed, the liquid familiar to her, Gatorade, in order to allay the throbs.

Taking the cups from her and setting them down, he guided her out the side of the van onto the edge of a narrow paved road. The woods, a forest really, surrounded by soft green mountains making it a valley, sounded almost painful penetrating her sensitive head with its chaotic mesh of bird songs and the chittering of squirrels and other furry little beasts, creatures welcoming a new day, the sun just past sunrise.

If she could find anything amusing it was the little red wagon, a child’s toy from some earlier generation, with her two bags stuffed into it.

“See the path entering the woods?” the man pointed, and indeed she saw a slim path not much wider than the wagon of smooth dark earth without any vegetation. “Whenever you’re ready, take it to its end. There’ll be no other place you can find sanctuary here, no other place for you to go except for what awaits you there. Hungry?”

“I guess.”

After closing the side door, the man opened the passenger door and grabbed a brown paper bag and paper cup with a plastic lid for hot substances, handing it to her. “The coffee’s probably tepid and the breakfast sandwich barely warm,” he shrugged.