Chapter 6: A Horny Trap

You must think that I am a hypocrite, a bullshit guy who always said he was falling in love with a girl, adored her so much but never actually put her in his story, not even a scene. And now I had had sex with her (and my) best friend. What a pig!

No, you are wrong. She was always the apple of my eye. Every stupid thing I did, I did for her. I kicked her bad boyfriend off the planet to save her (or to take over her?). Okay, I did fool around with Beth but that was what everybody does these days, don’t they? You can call it sexual liberation or whoring that is up to you.

I hadn’t put Alicia into a scene of my story because, in real life, we rarely met and I was completely a stranger to her. Why? Maybe I always evaded her in school. I did that for reasons though. It’s because I always got frozen before her. I can’t think straight when she was around. I often ended up like an idiot in a conversation with her. And she was the kind of girl who always had a boyfriend. I didn’t want to be seen as a fool and didn’t want to be tortured by seeing her love life. So I made sure that I was away from her social group.

But today was the day that everything would change. Now her sponsor-boyfriend was gone for good. I was the one who took the most responsibility for it. Plus, as suggested by my parents, I needed to find a prepacked of concubines since it is better than an arranged marriage and shit.

Everything was rationally right. This might be good timing.

At school, I was looking for Alicia all morning. I hadn’t talked to Beth since last night and did not call her as I planned to do, so I had no idea about what classes Alicia would take today. I just kept walking, turning right and left. I didn’t believe in destiny bullshit but I felt like if I keep walking around, I would finally bump into her.

I passed the hallway full of students to the small garden between the buildings. I spotted the band of club activists nearby with all their huge billboards. One of them had boards hanging in front and back of his body. An interesting costume! I did not read what was said on the board. When I got close to them, they yelled at me, but I did not hear it carefully. One of them grabbed my arm.

“Hey. I’m in the middle of something right now. I mean, OK, I care a bit about global warming. I’ll be more careful about using water and electricity, OK? So, please let me go.” I tried to pull my arm back.

“No, we aren’t from the environment club. Who cares about the Earth these days? It will be fucked up anyway, no matter what.” A dude said.

A girl who was holding my arm now shaking it. “Yes. Right, Thomas. The end is coming. The Sa’arm are coming. We are a group of intellectual people. We are inviting everyone to join our discussion on the salvation of mankind.”

“You mean discussing about The Confederacy?”

“We are discussing the Lord in the stars and, of course, Confederacy angels that the Lord sent to bring the chosen ones back to him.” The same girl explained.

“Wait. What? Who is the lord? The only lord I know in a galaxy far, far away, is Lord Vader.”

She gripped my arm harder. “Stop blaspheming! We are talking about God. The creator of the universe.”

“Oh, okay. Sorry. So you guys are from a religion club?”

“No.” A guy with boards in front and back answered. “We are now reformed as ‘the Heaven’s Gate Club. We try to gather the chosen ones as much as possible, so the Lord will send a team to bring us to his holy kingdom.”

I squinted my eyes, looking at them with a suspicious face. Interested in their cult, I said. “Okay. Tell me about your beliefs.”

The guy who seemed to be the leader of the group stepped forward. The girl released my arm as he waved a signal to her.

He said. “The signs are clear. Sa’arm is coming. They are the scourge of God and now is the judgment day. God will test us, one by one, if we are worthy to live in his heaven. The CAP test defines your role in his plan. If you are doing it good enough he will send his angels to save you and reward you to pick your slaves. You and your subjects will live in his kingdom where there is no hunger or pain, only happiness and pleasure. We will serve him by fighting against the Sa’arm and we will prevail.”

“So the Confederacy is a god now?”

“No! God is God. The Confederacy is his domain. But he will pick only the ones who are worth it.”

“And what if I am not picked, I’ll go to the hell?”

“No! Worse. The hell is coming for you here on the earth. Behold, fear and tremble before the Lord, for only he can save you.”

“Okay.” I made my face like I was terribly afraid. “So what is the goal of the Heavens Gate Club?”

“We aim to open the gate to the heavens, of course. We will gather the chosen ones as much as possible and we will pray, so the Lord will hear us and send his angels to pick us up.”

“How do you know that I’m a volunteer?” I asked cautiously.

“We don’t know. We were about to ask you. Are you a chosen one?”

What I should tell them?

“People in the test center said that you shouldn’t let anyone know if you are a volunteer. It’s dangerous. Some people want to kill volunteers.” I told them.

“Don’t be afraid. We are all good guys and girls, and we won’t do any harm to people who are chosen by God. Some of us are the chosen ones ourselves.”

“May I ask you a couple questions, so I’ll know that you and your lord are good people?”

“Yes, of course. But don’t doubt our Lord because he is God. Therefore, he must be absolutely good.” After he finished, his group repeated his words. “Yessss. He must be.”

Then I shot my question. “How do you deal with polygamy in the Confederacy lifestyle? I thought it contradicted the commandments. The holy book told you to have only one husband or wife until you die, right?”

“Rules were made by God and it can be changed by Him as He pleases. Some religionists say that God allows them to have up to four wives. Maybe they were right all along. And in this era, God says you can have many wives or husbands up to your CAP score.”

“Good answer! So, God made rules and everything in the universe.” I repeated their words and they nodded. “Then he made Sa’arm too, why? They are bad people, right? If God is absolutely good, then why did he make the worst ever thing in the universe?”

They all looked at me with their suspicious faces hearing what I said. The girl answered. “Because he wants to punish all non-believers and unworthy people. However, God is merciful. If you are unworthy, failing the CAP test, but you believe in him, you can still have a chance. Show him and his chosen ones that you are obedient. Then the chosen ones might choose you as his or her concubine and you can escape hell with him or her. But if you are a non-believer, you will be certainly left here to face the wrath of God.”

“Yesss. Right. Good point.” Others cheered.

“Then why did God create non-believers in the first place? Why did he create unworthy people so he would abandon them in the end? Why did he even make us do the CAP test? If he is God then he must know everything already, right? He must know if I am good enough and how many wives I can have. Let alone that he should create only a worthy believer because it is the best way to minimize pain, suffering, and death. If he is capable of doing that, then he must do it because God is absolutely good. If he refuses to do that then he isn’t absolutely good and isn’t God.

“All the non-believers and unqualified people are the evidence that he did not do it, then why? Assuming that he is a god and absolutely good, then the only possibility that he did not do it must be because he is incapable of doing it. If there’s something he can’t do, it means there’s something more powerful than him. Then he isn’t a god, anyway, because God must be the most powerful.”

The smiles they used to give me turned into something else. I hoped that in the end they would not put me at the stake and burn me alive or something.

“Free will!” Someone spoke up and others said the same. “Yes. Because he wants to give us free will, so we can choose our destiny by ourselves. And don’t ask further why he gave us free will. He is the Lord, our Master, a greater being, who are you to understand his incomprehensible mind.”

I kind of expected this kind of answer for the problem of evil. This problem pointed out that the existence of evil made God hardly maintain his 3 qualities that he is the most powerful, omniscient, and absolutely good. By the way, I had an alternative answer for it; that God himself is actually evil.

“Well. You might be right. I might be too stupid to understand his will. But I don’t have to be that smart to say that, by human standards, his agenda is quite sadistic. He created us all. It said he loves us. He gave us free choice to love him or not but in the end, he will torture us to death by the most evil he ever created if we don’t love him back. I think he is a narcissist and psychopath. Are you sure that you want to be in his kingdom? I can imagine. It must be spooky like a hotel in The Shining.”

“Stop blaspheming. You will be eaten alive in hell, you ignorance none-believer!”

I shook my head. “Well, I don’t think that I am not a total non-believer. I mean I think there’s some probability that the creator of the universe might exist, but should I love him? Worship him? Surrender to him? Follow every rule he says? I don’t know. He doesn’t seem to do anything good for me. He did what I hated the most which was bringing me into existence without my consent. And the way he treats us, like ... putting us through his test, sounds like an experiment on humans to me. So, where is the consent form? Or at least ask for our consent. He violates the Declaration of Helsinki and the Nuremberg Code. I don’t understand why we didn’t hang him next to the Nazi doctors in 1946. This asshole might be super tricky to find, I guess. I’ve never ever seen him in my lifetime, not even once.”

Then they screamed and rushed to catch me but I was one step ahead already, sprinting away as fast as my feet could kick the ground. It’d be damned for whatever they aimed to do to the person who was chosen by God, like me.

Other students looked at me running for my life, being chased by a hateful crowd. This was just my ordinary day at school. I went inside a building and aimed to get some more distance by taking the stairway to the second floor. They were slowed down by the stairs. Some cardio a day always helps. I found the right moment to turn right into a classroom and hide behind the door. A couple groups of students inside looked at me curiously. I sent them a signal by touching an index finger to my mouth.

The crusade army ran passed the classroom. I walked from behind the door after hearing them stomp away. Looked back to say ‘thank you’ without a voice to everyone in the room for their cooperation. Doing that while walking through the door might not be a good idea, and I bumped into a girl.

“Ops. Sorry.” I apologized.

Or maybe it was a good idea? I looked at a beautiful marble statue figure with a heart-melting face. Her hair was radiant like sunshine. This can’t be anyone but Alicia. What a coincidence.

“Oh, crap.” She was using her phone, so she didn’t see me before we bumped. It was just a gentle bump by the way, no one got hurt and nothing fell from anyone’s hands. Then she looked at me.

“Oh, hi, Neetz. Be more careful.” She told me and walked away.

“Ah ... ehhh ... ummmm.” Her aura made me become a retarded boy again. I shouted when she was a couple meters away. “Wait, Alicia.”

She stopped and turned back, waving her phone. “What’s up? Be quick. I am in the middle of something right now.”

I held my breath for a second, encouraging myself to walk to her and I told her bluntly. “It’s about Michel, right? You can’t contact him, I guess.”

She seemed surprised. “You know that? Do you know his whereabouts? He went missing for days. I haven’t been able to reach him since the night before last.”

“Yes. I know where he is right now. He is up there Alicia. He was picked up by the Confederacy two days ago.”

“No way. He can’t go without me. I am his concubine.”

“Afraid he can. The sponsors pick up their concubines at the pickup site. If you weren’t there, he’d go without you.”

“But he promised.” She said and made me know that deep down she knew, too. She knew that the words were nothing but wind and smoke, can’t touch it, can’t hold it, and it’s always gone.

“Promise is nothing without a legitimate contract,” I said.

“Bullshit. You’re bullshit.” Her defense mechanism kicked off. “He might be kidnapped by the Earth First shitheads or something but no way would he leave without me.” She was starting to cry.

“It’s true, Liz” Beth’s voice appeared suddenly from nowhere. She was behind me. “You know that he was getting close to those two girls, Konomi and Kate, right? Go check on them, they are gone too because he took them with him as his concubines.”

“No!” Alicia yelled strongly with her tears running down her cheeks. I saw her tremble with a breaking heart.

“I told you this ten thousand times, Liz. You ought to believe me and move on!”

“No. You all are liars. I can’t believe that you stabbed me in the back, Beth. Fuck you. I’ve had enough of this shit.” She turned back and walked away for a few steps then she turned to us again and gave us the finger. “Neetz, I know you have a crush on me, that was cute, but this crosses the fucking line. Stupid you to think that your made-up story will get you in my pants. Fuck you loser!”

Then she stomped away.

“Wait, Alicia. I did not ... ah ... eh ... fuck!” I was shocked. Now, she hated me.

Beth, however, seemed to stay cool.

“Just give her time, Neetz, and she’ll be fine. Let her cool off and think. She is stupid but not blind. She just needs time to understand things.”

“Shouldn’t you go after her, Beth? She is your BFF.”

“No. She isn’t. It’s you, you are my BFF.” Beth answered and laughed.

“I thought BFF needed to be a girl or gay.”

She bites her lip. “Well, considering the incident last night. Maybe you are gay. I don’t know.”

I took that, for what I had done. But I doubted that I turned gay just because I couldn’t shoot my jeedz inside her. I meant I have no problem with gay or other alternative sexual preferences. Actually, if I have a choice, I might choose to be a lesbian. The country I came from was very open mind to gender varieties. Many LGBT people can be themselves openly in society without anyone looking down on them or being obstacles in their careers.

I thought of LGBT people the same way I think of other people, so I didn’t feel shame when she told me that I might be gay, I didn’t think that they were an abomination like some people think. I would contemplate sexual preferences, examining myself and recalling all the genres of porn videos on my computer, and know that I was not gay.

Interestingly enough, in Western countries, talking about LGBTs can be so sensitive. Though the states were trying to develop laws to protect and help them, it was also proof that LGBT people were not treated the same as other people because if they were treated properly then there would be no laws in the first place. Western society still suppresses LGBT people in real life, so they compensate for it by overly protecting LGBTs in the media. This is just like what white people do to the black people. They tried to compensate a horrible treatment in the past by overly protecting black people in the media. The proof is all over Netflix shit. They even avoid calling black people black, calling them colored people instead. What’s that for? If you avoid calling someone black because you think it will disgrace them or discredit them, making them ashamed for what they are, then it means you think that the black race is inferior and you are a fucking racist. I don’t believe in the Nazi idea, so I’ll call black people black, just like I call white people white, and call myself a yellow monkey.

I think we went too far from our track. Okay, I’ll get back on track.

I did not respond to Beth about being gay but instead took the chance to talk about last night.

“Are you still angry at me about last night, Beth? I don’t know why it happened like that. I really wanted to shoot all my semen inside you in a proper manner of orthodox sexual intercourse but my body didn’t obey my command. I’m sorry.”

“The meaning feels okay, I guess, but your word choices are a bit weird,” Beth said with a suspicious face. “And yeah, I might have been a bit angry back then but after I got back to my room, I found out that I actually felt ashamed of myself and I feel sorry for you.

“How come?” I confused.

“It just felt like that I used you as a fuck toy or something. And I was the one who pushed all the momentum, you know. So, it’s like ... did I rape you? I’m just pissed off at myself, not you. And god, it turned out to be your first time. I just felt ashamed. I can’t be there anymore.”

“No, Beth. I was the one who was ashamed. One of the most beautiful girls I know laid down with me and I just couldn’t keep myself from being stupid and..., you know, doing what I do, piss off other people. I screwed up potentially one of the greatest moments in my lifetime.”

“No. You are just too innocent for this world.” She said and hugged me by surprise. “I exploited you, like a bitch.”

“No, you didn’t. And even if you did, I let you do it by consent. I liked it. It was a sweet exploit. It’s like a crack. I can become addicted to it.”

That made her smile and then, without any warning sign, we kissed each other simultaneously. We were delighted by feeling each other. We kissed until we heard a familiar voice.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Que? What the hell are you two doing to each other?” Ted recently spoke some Castellano, I believe he got that habit from Miss Camila. His face seemed surprised and happy.

So, we ceased our kiss, stepping from each other arms with red cheeks. Ted had his eyebrows raised up. “What’s happened?”

I made a long story short, pointing at Beth. “It’s her. She took my virginity.”