ENTRY ONE
Paradise Comes For Us AllWhen I sleep, dreams and memories fuse, leaving only nightmares.
He has me by a fistful of hair, the only thing preventing my body from collapsing into the pool below me. Each word He utters breathes against my back, detonating in my ear, a viscous blend of corrupt gospel and glossolalia.
He preaches and I’m helpless, waiting for my baptism. The bodies of the already baptized orbit us, staring out with vacant, violet eyes, each of their faces contorted in a grin of pure ecstasy. A third eye stares out from their foreheads, the crimson black-hole of the bullets that has embedded themselves into each and every one of their skulls.
He sees me looking and his voice hisses in my ear, a blistering hot stone landing in a freezing pot. “They’re in Paradise now, honey. Don’t you see? Don’t see where I’ve sent my children?”
His hand pushes on my skull. It forces me down, bringing me only a few inches from the water. Looking closely, I can see that it’s polluted, tiny luminescent flecks sifting through the liquid. It makes the whole pool look like a miniature galaxy, marching to its own rhythm.
“All it takes is a short dip, honey. You won’t even need to hold your breath…”
I can see the glint of His pistol when I look to my left, reflecting the water off of its platinum surface. ‘The Fist of God’ is etched along its immaculate surface. It wavers in his hand, still smoking from his last shot.
In reality, the police are supposed to show up by now. In reality, He would be bullet ridden by now, the life fading out of his eyes, leaving only the violet.
In the dream, I’m still in his grasp. Every breath I take disturbs the water below, my own translucent reflection inches from my face.
“We’ll be together again, soon. I swear on that.” It’s the final words He utters, a bright, blinding smile creeping up His face.
And then He drops me.
I scream as I collide with the water and I scream as I wake up, my lungs going raw like an infant, food desperate.
*****
Did he ever kiss you?When I log onto the forum, I’m surprised to find Riley’s responded.
She had been like origami over the last month, a constantly folding slippery entity, shifting and metamorphosing from one excuse to the next, each one more elaborate. Pauses, hesitations, excuses, outbursts of anger. I hardly minded, I had been the same. I had masked myself into a foliage of excuses: embarrassment, hatred, sadness, fear.
But, blooming open had saved my life.
Persistence on The Correspondence is key. It isn’t merely a cheap talk phrase anymore, I now know from experience. Perhaps far too much experience, as others are keen to remind me almost every week. And maybe they’re right. I had been paying it forward for nearly nine years now, more than enough to account for services rendered, plus any surplus of interest tacked on.
Still, I can’t stop.
Riley’s reply comes in the form of an attached document, followed by a simple staccato ‘here’, typed below. Opening it, I don’t expect much, but that feeling quickly gets betrayed by a rush of text.
Riley’s tell-all. Two monolithic paragraphs that flow out in looping jets of run on sentences. They are not so much gentle streams of consciousness but rather whiplashed sentences snarling through several thoughts, discarding a dozen ideas before finally settling on something, only for it to finally end.
It felt good…
I trusted him…
We all did…
I was just one sheep…
I should have had more agency…
I would kill him if I could.
It’s a start. Rough, but quality is never the key, and through the sentences there are grains of truth. Universal constants that lance through all of the writings that get posted on this forum. The same that had occurred in mine, the same that had occurred in everyone else’s.
The shrill alarm of the teakettle causes me to surface out of the forum once more. Breakfast is shimmering and ready on the stovetops. The Smartpans have done their jobs; bacon that is unethically crispy and eggs where the yoke has consumes everything else until its nothing but a brilliant golden nova. I shovel it on to a plate, setting on the table to cool while I pour my tea.
The day is going to be brilliant, that much is certain so far. In my backyard, the sun is searing over the tops of pine trees, reducing them to jagged silhouettes. It’s burned the mist away as well as scared the deer off. They always came around this hour, but the stretching summer daylight is beginning to usurp them. But what the summer can’t usurp is the ambience of the forest. The next house is two kilometers down the road, separated from me by a tangle of coniferous trees and the gush of streams. Perhaps one day the urban sprawl will catch us and ensnare us, like most of the countryside over the last two decades, but hopefully by then I’d be long gone. Resting peacefully, undisturbed.
That’s what they had asked, a decade ago. When the police had finally finished their interrogations, when they had finally determined I was mentally stable again. Finally, they had asked what I wanted.
This. The house, the countryside. A clear, easy death. Simple enough.
No uploads? They had asked.
Nothing. I spat back, clenching my teeth.
There are places. Reserved for the rich. Places where immortality can be entice–No.My hands tremble for a moment. Immortality. The words stains like an ink drop. Whenever I picture it I can only imagine it coming from his voice. The trembling drawl of his mouth next to mine. On my head, my hair tugs back, the specter of his hand pulling on it.
Immortality. With him. Forever.
I don’t remember dropping the teacup, I just hear it shatter upon the floor. Standing up slowly, I realize I need another half hour in bed.
Second guessing myself, I move to the living room, opting for the couch.
I’ve had enough of dreams for the day.
*****
I can remember sitting in the hospital, days after my rescue. My mind was still in turmoil at that time. The cult deprogramming occurred daily, but it was like building sandcastles. Every palisade that was constructed was swiftly dissolved against the ebb and flow of the Children of the Halo, his teachings coming in like the tide.
I was waiting back for the test results. The rescue had been…messy. It had been unknown if I had been properly baptized or not. The holy water had splashed on me. Sometimes that was enough for a positive diagnosis.
They had explained to me that the baptism was fake in a sense. That there was no ‘real’ promise of heaven. What they revealed instead had sounded like computer jargon. Nanites. Uploaded minds and hidden servers. A sort of afterlife usually reserved for the rich. A digital immortality. Initially, it had all blanked on me.
Technology tends to race ahead when you’ve been isolated for a decade and a half.
At the time, I had felt all the more relieved. Knowing that it was all smoke and mirrors helped snap me out of it, in a sense.
But now, looking back, it, it only made me more terrified.
It only made it more real.
*****
I sit back at the table an hour later, my screensaver evaporating, showing Riley has typed in another post. The thread is a private one, just her and I. It’s been a trend, these private threads. I have one with nearly every member of The Correspondence. Here, communication escapes the elaborate confines forum protocol, the aesthetics and formalities being scrubbed away, leaving only gossamer, tenuous strands of intimacy.
Why me? I had asked Adam one day. It was our own private thread. One nearly as old as the forum itself.
Why what?
Everyone seems to confide in me. Yesterday, Zach. Today, Janita.
You don’t like it?
No, it’s not that. But I’m hardly a psychologist. I don’t even have a Bachelor’s Degree in anything. Fuck, I just finished highschool.
Why even start The Correspondence then? What did you expect?
Spammers. Trolls. The like…
You thought the internet remained some anarchic wasteland?
You know I’m not well informed on pretty much anything.
Perhaps. But there is one thing, Claire. And it’s the one thing you share with pretty much everyone else on this forum.
Including Spammers and assholes?
Oh please, we booted Red a year ago. The place is scrubbed clean. But, if I can flew my ‘serious’ muscle for just a moment…if anything, Claire, it’s because you posted first.
That hardly matters.
It does, more than you could ever think.
And what do you mean by that?
Think on it.
Our conversation had ended there, with little chance of revival before being buried underneath Adam and I’s usual cavalcade of dry humour and gossip.
Replying to Riley, I’m almost tempted to ask the same thing. But this time, I feel the answer is obvious. While everyone in The Correspondence share similar experiences, Riley and I’s are near duplicates.
The same cult. The same bastard.
There have been others, several in fact, to come onto The Correspondence who had been a part of The Children of Halo. But Riley is...
I can’t put a finger on it. The looping text she has sent me is alike all of our first confessions. A hissing steam valve of raw emotion. But there’s something in the subtext, something absence in the writing.
This is a great step, Riley. It’s a foothold on the path to recovery. I really appreciate you for sharing…
You never answered my question.Riley’s reply blemishes my screen, the page autoreplying before my own text can conjure up. I frown as I read the words, the woman’s blunt demeanor having been grating to other members of the forum. I find it endearing, in a weird sense…but then my eyes read upwards, to the question itself.
Did he ever kiss you?The words splash again in my mind, the haze of the morning now lifted so they have their proper impact. Ripples of memory tremble in my peripheral vision, sights that I’d rather not witness again. His voice, its whiskey laced rasp–
I can listen to other’s experiences. But mine…
There are only so many times you can type in the same confessions. Let the old scars bleed free once again.
I opt to finish my breakfast first, letting my cursor flash upon the screen as I eat. Twice, I attempt to fish out a reply before quickly finding comfort in the delete key. Finally, with the eggs and bacon reduced to a few pieces of charred and yolk shrapnel, I settle in, beginning to type.
He did, Riley. But he resisted often, even though he clearly wanted to. Said he had to wait until I was properly baptized, otherwise it just wouldn’t be fair. I was ashamed in hindsight, but that’s what we all were. You can ask Lindsey and Sarah on the forum, they were both in The Halo as well. We recognized what happened was not our fault. Not at all. It was pure brainwashing, and we were not weak. We were abused. It’s what a cult does…
My fingers stop for a moment, refusing to type any further before I read my current progress. For some reason it feels off. Disjointed. Untrue. Even though I’ve typed it several times before, along similar lines, to many other forum members.
This time, it’s artificial.
Backspace. Delete. I default to the simple.
Yes.Riley’s reply comes almost instantly.
But you never got baptized right?Flashes, again. This time I wince. This time the memory is physical, as though my hair is actually being pulled. I have sit up for a moment, ensuring I’m not confined to any chair.
No, but he almost got the chance. I was lucky.A tiny animation fizzes onto the screen, showing that she’s typing. It pauses once. Twice.
And then:
I wasn’t.I don’t feel my leg hitting the chair, I just hear it clatter to the floor as my back presses against the wall, blocking my retreat from the computers and Riley’s reply. This time, it isn’t fear that bubbles up. My fists clench, slamming at the glass door behind me. “Fuck.”
Hands run through my hair, settling to clench the back of my neck, afraid that not actively using them will cause them to shift themselves, cause damage. Slam a cabinet. Smash a plate. Hit the fridge. Hit him, if I could. Squeeze him. Bash his fucking brains out. If he was here. If he was anywhere in this world.
“You asshole…you fucking asshole…I swear…” My vision swims with boiling hot tears, and I keep muttering, my head shaking as I force myself to lean over and type into the keyboard. If the last reply is artificial, this one is outright duplicity.
Riley. I’m at a loss for words.That’s hardly enough, Claire. My finger taps over the F key, waiting for my mind to come up with any sort of response. Slowly, each word taking effort, I begin.
I’m tremendously sorry. I can't express that enough. But I know that it’s still an ongoing case. I know they’ll find the server. There’s only so many locations in the world. They’ll find it, and rip it from its socket, and then he’ll be gone forever and you’ll never have to worry…Riley’s reply, again, beats mine.
I don’t know what to do. The police say they have leads, but it’s only a word. It’s a word they’ve been saying for the last nine years. The server can be anywhere.I’m still muttering as I type back.
It’s somewhere. He’s not all powerful, he’s not omniscient….
In Paradise he is.
They’ll find him, Riley. You’re young. You won’t die soon. You’re still with us. They’ll find him by then, I assure you. Another pause, another animation.
Claire, I’m sick. And it's not the flu type. The doctor’s aren’t sure. They don’t know if it’s the nanites finally doing neural damage or if it’s something else. Riley, listen…I know I don't have long. Months, perhaps.They’ll find it. Another empty promise.
The Paradise server could be anywhere. There’s an infinite amount of locations.Don’t call it that. It's what I want to type, but I stop myself. This is her therapy.
It’s somewhere. It can’t hide foreverI know he’s waiting. And no, not forever, but what if long enough that I die…that I spend even a minute there, with him.It won’t happen Riley. You’re strong. You’re one of the stronger people on this forum. And I swear to you, you’ll never be with him again. You have a new community now.The Correspondence. My forum. Our forum. Initially it was started solely for victims of the Children of the Halo. His reach across the world had been plentiful enough, even after Florida, his home state, had gone under the water. And when the organization had come crashing down, there had been more than enough escapees to start a message board.
But all cults are similar entities. Parasitical organizations that thrived in similar conditions. Soon, others joined. Victims from other organizations. Despite the differences in aesthetics, we had realized we all shared the same fundamental experiences.
But even amongst us. Amongst those who had been apart of the Children of the Halo, no one else had been baptized and was still living. Baptism, in his terms, usually meant that death was short to follow, and ‘Paradise’, even more shortly after that. The nanites tended to transport the mind fast, shooting the mind off into his little haven. Through baptism, when the body died, the soul was ‘saved’. Death wasn’t death anymore.
It was something far, far worse.
In this sense, even amongst all of the members of the Correspondence who have been apart of the Children of the Halo, no one else was quite like Riley.
All of us had been spared what she has to endure alone.
I can assure her they’ll find the server. I can state that they’ll sever Paradise before she dies and is uploaded. But it’s all words, false promises. I’ve been fed those enough in my lifetime.
For the first time since starting The Correspondence, I am at a loss.
*****
A cult isn’t something you realize you’re in. It’s not a thing you actively reflect upon.
To a victim, it’s a totality. Just how the average human doesn’t ponder their sheer existence in the universe on a daily basis, neither does the person in the cult.
There is no cult to them. It just is.
I can still remember when he first ensnared me. A silken voice that had wafted out on to the streets when I was walking out from school, suspended for the third time.
I wasn’t a rebel student by any means. Quite the opposite. But to any ignorant teacher, some girl standing up to a bully, when taking out of context, is just ‘one bitch slapping another.’
He called out to me from a church. The thing about churches is that their exteriors are all the same clinical bullshit. It’s only inside, when you get to the pulpy flesh of the sermon, that one can realize that things are quite different.
So to me, what was difference between Children of the Halo when compared to His Holy Cross or Sacred Heart?
He called out to me from a church. He asked if I wanted to indulge in some food and drink. All on the house.
He called out to me from a church. He told me that Paradise was a place and that he held the key. It was real, he had been there, he knew that it existed.
He told me that he could take me there.
It was between that and going home to face my mother and father. To endure their wrath for the third time and feel the smug superiority of my brother washing down upon me from the staircase.
He called out to me from a church. I only hesitated for a moment.
The choice was obvious.
*****
Water still makes me anxious. It was far worse at the beginning, when I had first been rescued. The hospital had to force me into any shower or bath, had to compromise when asking me to drink. It took more than three years for me to even consider being near a pool, and even then, the feeling never completely smoothed over.
After talking to Riley, it’s amplified again. I keep the faucet on for half a second before coming to a decision that I can do dishes later.
An indefinite time. Just later.
I almost don’t recognize the banging at the door as a knock. I rarely get visitors. And usually it’s announced before hand. Unexpected never happens. And nobody ever visits on a Sunday.
I pause, hovering half over my chair, fingers still on the laptop. Silence cakes over the house for a moment before the knock comes again. Three sharp raps, a liberal pause between each so they come across more as lumbering footfalls than any sort of first banging against a door. My body flinches with each strike.
Could he?
I shake my head. He’s ‘dead’, in the physical sense. I stretch my legs, moving towards the door, flinching only slightly as a third volley of knocks reverberates down the hallway.
Peering through the eyehole, I get a fish-eyed view of an unfamiliar face. Some man shifting from foot to foot on the front porch. Slightly chubby, dark curled hair, a slight lazy eye. I hesitate on the other side of the door, watching him for a moment. He continues to shift, pacing around the porch, biting his lip. When he stops, it’s again in front of the door. This time he speaks.
“Claire. Claire? Are you home?”
I don’t reply. For a moment I consider calling the police. They were on a first name basis with me, given my past, and could be here in minutes if the situation spoke for it.
“Claire. It’s me, Walt.” I freeze, exhaling sharply. It’s a name that’s all too familiar. “I’m sorry if this is alarming, but I swear I can explain everything.”
I step back from the door. My mind races, shuffling through a dozen questions, before again defaulting to my usual. “Walt?”
I can see a trickle of relief wash down his face when I answer. “That’s right, the same one from The Correspondence.”
“Yeah, I figured that part out just fine.” I say, still making no move for the door handle. It’s not due to any innate characteristic of his, but rather the general distrust that crept along with any face to face encounter with another. I flourish when I’m speaking on the forum–Riley being the exception–the barrier of abstraction doing wonders. Face to face conversations, with all of its nuances, with another person simply having the ability to touch at any time, can still be too much. There had been nothing wrong with Walt. He had been a solid forum member and a fellow survivor of The Children of the Halo, despite having been all but absent for the last year and a half. I can’t blame him for that. We all have different coping mechanisms. Sometimes people had to move on to completely recover.
“I’m glad you still remember me. Sorry I haven’t been logging on, had to do some soul searching of my own accord,” he spins around for a moment, gazing across the forest that engulfed the area. “Quite the place though, Claire. You’ve been doing well.”
“Uh, well, thanks.” I say.
“Pardon? I can’t hear you?” Walt presses his ear to the door. He looks nothing like I pictured. I have an internal image of every forum member, despite if they show a real photo of themselves or not. Trying to recall Walt’s brings no fruit to bear, just voids. Still, he wasn’t meant to look like this.
“I said ‘thanks!’” I say, a bit louder. My voice feels far too loud in the house. I rarely have company over, and the place wears the silence well. Any sort of noise is unsettling, a ripple on a pond that shouldn’t be disturbed.
“Ah, of course. Well, I know this is unexpected and all, Claire. Really unexpected, and I apologize for that. But, there’s something I really needed to talk to you about. Something important, and I felt it could only be done face to face. So, really, really sorry if this is a bit unnerving, but I hope you could entertain me? For just ten minutes?”
I bite my lip, a dozen excuses squirming on my tongue.
“Claire?”
Oh c’mon. “Yeah. Yeah, sure.” I say, nodding to myself, perhaps to reassure. “Go ahead.”
“Hahahaha, well I mean, this is nice and all Claire,” Walt’s laugh is deep and loud, an echo of his fist upon my door. “But could I maybe come in? Or at the very least have a face to face conversation?”
“Um…”
“Claire?”
My hand shoots out, and before my mind can rethink it, the lock’s unlatched and the door swings open, leaving just a meshed screen between us. Walt grins, seeing me, his gaze coming up and down, as if he’s drinking me up.
“Hey, um, sorry about that.”
“Oh don’t be, Claire! Sorry about the suddenness of all this. I reckon you don’t have too many people dropping by around here?” He gives another look around, the forest still slick with the morning dew.
I shake my head.
“Shame, it’s a beautiful place. Truly.” Not muffled by the door, Walt’s voice is lacquered in an accent of some sort. ‘Truly’, under the snarl of his tongue, becomes ‘True-leee’. It butters up his words, making them bounce friendlier off his lips.
“It’s quiet…I like that.”
“Indeed. Hell of a place, Claire. Hell of a place.” He looks past me, and I follow his gaze. The main hallways leads right to the back kitchen, which gives away to the massive back porch, a straight shot from end to end of the house.
“So…”
“So?”
“You’re here.”
“Hahaha, that I am!” He scratches his head, and I notice again that his feet are shifting. “I suppose I should explain myself. Firstly, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to quit The Correspondence so unexpectedly.”
I shrug. “You didn’t leave on bad terms. No harm there.”
“I suppose so, Claire. But still. You and a few others helped me out a lot. Helped me realize more than a few things about The Children of the Halo…” His words die out, and I realize he’s expecting a reply. I wonder for a moment if I’m appearing aloof, or even rude, and quickly curse myself. Although, the nuances of conversation often escaped me now, more used to the orderly regiment of forum talk, there’s no need to treat Walt like a stranger. Two years ago, he had been another Riley, simply looking for help.
“I’d say ‘realize’ is an understatement.”
“Ha, perhaps it is. Well, secondly, I wanted to thank you,” he says, resting his palm on the door frame as he leaned forward. “Now I know I’ve said it plenty of times on the forum. Probably more than anyone else. But it’s not the same, not the same at all, as when you’re looking at someone face to face.”
“No need, Walt, I do it for everyone.”
He chuckles. “Speak up, Claire. No need to whisper anymore, I don’t see anyone else around to hide secrets from, eh?” His grin widens, crawling up towards his ears. “But–where was I–oh, on behalf of the forum, I thank you, for all of your hard work, Claire. For helping push us onwards.”
I try to match a grin with his, but the best I can do is a meek smile. “Thanks, I mean…”
Walt’s voice flattens a bit, his accent withering slightly, the tone now not quite matching his grin. “You’re supposed to say ‘you’re welcome’.”
“Oh. Well…”
“Go ahead.”
I frown, feeling I should protest. But I shouldn’t be rude again. There’s no need. “You’re welcome?”
“You’re a shy one in real life, aren’t you, Claire? Not at all like your online self.””
“Can’t say I get out much.” My feet shift across the floor. I try meeting Walt in one of his eyes, but the other is always looking past, veering off in another direction.
He doesn’t reply for a moment, and silence again stretches over the house. From the kitchen I can hear my internet ping with another forum update, more than likely a reply from Riley.
“And now I want to help you, Claire,” the flatness is still present, and even though I’m not looking at Walt, I can still picture the grin, fixated in place like a statue.
“I don’t think that’s necessary.”
“Please, I insist. I can’t think of any other way to repay you. You’ve done wonders for The Correspondence, Claire. It’s time somebody gave a little back.” Looking back at Walt, I can see him trying to maintain his smile. But it flickers off and dies away, like a light bulb caught in its last breath.
“What’s that?”
“Well, it’s in my car. In the trunk,” He steps aside and I can see that his car is backed up to the edge of the driveway, its rear tires kissing my walkway. “Would you mind just stepping out on to the porch? Just for a second?”
I don’t reply, simply staring at the car for a moment. In my peripheral, Walt’s smile is again going through its light bulb motions, attempting to flash back on.
“Claire, please?”
My nod feels strenuous in response, but it comes out nonetheless. Opening the screen door, I shuffle outside, feeling the nip of the chilled morning. Finally, Walt’s smile comes back full bloom.
“Alright, yeah, perfect! You can just wait here. But watch closely.” Walt hops off of the porch, and skips across the path. I notice his trunk is already popped, as though anticipating this grand reveal, as if the whole thing has been rehearsed, right up until this moment.
His fingers sweep under the lid and he pulls up.
I gag.
It’s a primal instinct, some subconscious reaction that occurs before I can truly comprehend what I’m seeing. But there it is. My retinas glossing over it, twitching across the image, almost as if it were trying to determine its authenticity.
The second time I gag, it’s because the realization hits me. A single swift punch to the gut, my breakfast swirling out of my stomach.
The bodybag in the trunk of Walt’s car is zipped open just enough so that I can see the woman’s face. A milky spectre surrounded by a corona of dampened black hair. She tilted in such a degree that her violet eyes meet mine directly.
Violet.
I vomit right then and there, a single spurt upon the porch.
And then I’m running. Walt’s shouts chase me through the house, but I’m already rushing down the hallway back to the kitchen. My eyes are half closed, but that makes it worse. The violet remains seared in the blacks of my eyelids. Like staring at the sun for too long, it throbs in the blackness, staining my mind.
The door.
I look back. It’s still open, a narrow frame in which the car and the body are still in sight, and Walt…
Walt is sprinting back up the pathway.
I rush back towards the door, every sense save for my sight dulling into their rough equivalents of white noise. It’s all numb until only raw vision remains, the sight of the hallway stretching in front of me, the door not getting any closer. My running becoming useless. Walt coming up the porch.
I make it. Outstretched arms collide against the door, slamming it into place. In an instant, my hands snap the lock. In the next, the whole frames shudders as Walt’s weight crashes upon it.
“Claire, please!”
I stay for a second. The run has felt like a marathon and my body reacts accordingly, already winded. My hand clutches the lock. I can imagine that the mere act of letting it go will cause the whole thing to fail, for it to snap open and betray me.
Another second. My hand eventually goes limp. The crash echoes in my mind. But in reality, Walt’s paused. The door is secure. Trembling, I begin to stand up. As I do so, another voice clicks in my head. It’s my own, speaking with the sharpness I can only dream of having in any regular conversation.
Don’t look through the keyhole.
I nod my head in agreement.
Call the police. Now.
I move again, towards the kitchen, my feet shuffling along the floor. Letting my mind linger for a second, and again the image of those violet eyes flood my mind. Nausea overwhelms me, I make a grasp for the staircase railing.
Move, Claire.
I lurch forward again, looking up towards the kitchen.
Walt’s on the back porch.
He stands there with a bat in his hand. As we meet eyes, he tilts his head, his expression dripping into a frown.
“Can’t you see I’m trying to help you, Claire?”
“Fuck off,” I say, still out of breath. My eyes travel over to my cellphone, a little splinter of metal beside me laptop. Walt follows my gaze. He shakes his head.
“You won’t be able to get to that before I break this glass.” He taps his bat on the door. “But try it if you like.”
I curse again, trying to steady my breathing. My mind’s racing, playing the future out again and again. Each one is a progressively worse outcome, the bat always slamming into my neck.
“I wasn’t lying, though, Claire. I really wasn’t. The Correspondence did help me out. It showed me what the real cults were, and how they acted. How they preyed upon people. And, it’s like how you said. How can you blame people for joining? Their life is a mess. The cults prey upon you when you’re at your most vulnerable, planting their seed when the conditions are perfectly ripe for it sprout.” Walt’s voice comes across as sing-song now, the kind of intonation that one has when they’ve been reciting a speech over and over. “But The Children of the Halo doesn’t prey! It helps. How can we be so blind, when he waved immortality right in front of our faces? Who are we to reject that?”
“It’s a farce, Walt. There’s no real paradise.” My feet bite into the floor beneath me. My mind races through other possibilities. Nothing.
“That’s where you’re wrong! He showed me it. I thought it was impossible. But I found her, the girl in the car. I didn’t know there were any baptized still living…but there she was,” his smile widens, and he looks skyward, licking his lips. “Through her, I was able to see it. Don’t ask me how, but I caught glimpses. Just like camera flashes. Paradise. Just like he promised. And he’s there, alive as ever. And all of those girls you all called friends. And they’re all there together. And they’re so happy Claire. And in there, with him as king, we can all live forever…”
Nausea, again. Hands find the stair railing and I’m barely able to stay upright. I shake my head, hoping the memories stirring awake will fling out if I shake hard enough.
“I see you, Claire. How is this anyway to live? You’re miserable. Your existence dredges on. The same sludge daily. The endless crusades on that forum. Heck, if you want to witness the real cult, just look at what you’ve created! The correspondence sucks out all of your time, all of your energy. You’re a husk, but here’s no need for it to consume you anymore. Just accept the baptism. Accept his embrace. He only wants to free you.” More reciting, it’s not Walt speaking. Not anymore. Every time he opens his mouth, I can only hear him, uttering another one of his mantras.
“It’s a cult,” my eyes meet his again. “It’s a fucking god damn cult.” The words choke out, and I realize I’m pleading. A simple, vacuous phrase. On the forum, perhaps, with the security of my keyboard, I can type something that may have an impact.
But here, on Walt, they reflect right off.
He shakes his head sadly. “I’m sorry to hear that, Claire. But just like how a parent knows what’s best their child, he knows what’s best for all of us. And that’s why I need to save you. For even those unworthy can receive the baptism.”
Hardly a baptism. “It’s an infection,” I breathe out, wincing.
“You poor thing.” He raises his bat again, and that’s when I choose to sprint.
I make it into the kitchen when the glass erupts inwards, a crystalline explosion that doesn’t just fall downwards but jettisons towards me. I’m forced to shield my eyes with one hand, my other grazing past the counter, feeling for the phone.
I brush against my laptop, sending it to the floor. I can hear Walt step inside.
My fingers brush against the phone. I grasp against its narrow shape, just as Walt’s bat slams against my back. I hit the floor, and the darkness claws up to greet me.
*****
“I’m making it,” He told us. “I’m making Paradise, under God’s blessing of course.”
Back then we were all indoctrinated. All helpless, thoughtless sheep. Only capable of smiling and agreeing. It was groupthink, but with Him as the sole entity at the reigns.
“Made under the sweat of my own brow! It’ll bea beautiful thing. And it’ll be forever. You see, most things wither and die. But this doesn’t. It’s not physical. It’s something else entirely. When our bodies wither and die, when this world fails us, Paradise will be there to catch us. And let me tell you, it’s never going away.”
We nodded, we clapped, we praised out our hallelujahs.
And when we die. You’ll all be there with me.” He grinned at all of us, soaking in our compliance. And then, as a punchline: “For eternity.”
*****
When I come to, the nightmare is now a reality.
He has me by a fistful of hair, leaning me over my own bathtub. It’s filled to the brim, a miasma of clear and red liquid, undulated and spiraling in its own fractal currents. The girl from the trunk lays beside me, one long knife wound like a fault line runs across the centre of her chest. Her head is missing from her body. Instead, it stares back at me from the bottom of the tub.
Walt’s voice wafts from behind, slithering into my ear. “Had to make sure I got all of the holy water. Every last drop of it. He says most of it’s up in the head, making sure it’s ready to take our souls to paradise the moment we die.”
I want to reply, but my mouth’s clamped shut with a strip of duct tape. I want to put up a fight, but my hands are bound. Still, I struggle, trying to force my head away from the tub, trying to kick him anywhere, everywhere.
In response, he slams my head against the porcelain edge of the tub. The spasm of pain nearly causes me to go limp and my vision blurs, the world becoming smudges of colour. Yet his voice remains clear as crystal.
“I can’t kill you yet, Claire. Not until you’re baptized. Not until you’ve been given the ticket to heaven. It’s right there, can you see it?”
As my eyes coalesce, they make out the tiny pinpricks of light that permeate the water. The nanites slowly detach from the blood, spreading, forming a galaxy similar to the one I stared into a decade ago.
They say it takes two seconds for them to reach the brain. Another for them to plug themselves in, seeping in to entrap your conscious. To ‘save’ and upload your virtual soul once your body fails. After that, surgery can’t help you. Like Riley, you can only pray that they’ll find the host server, somewhere, if anywhere, on the planet and shut it down.
The police have been searching for a decade.
“A reunion. A beautiful reunion. He’s missed you, Claire, I know he has. You were always one of his favorites. So much prettier than the other girls.” Walt’s face dips besides mine. With one hand holding me by the hair and the other clutching a firearm, he laps at the water with his tongue. I can see his eyes, and they shine a dull violet, his mind already swirling with nanite infection.
I try to throw myself away from the tub yet again, my vocal chords screeching against the duct tape, my whole body attempting every possible motion to lash out at him. I pull my head away, ignoring the starburst of pain as more than a few hairs are snapped from their roots.
I can’t.
I won’t.
If that water hits me…
I try and remember what I typed to Riley, but it’s inadequate. My words are useless to sate any fear, instead it exacerbates them, only making the horror crescendo further.
I scream. Whether in anger or in terror, it’s irrelevant. I scream until the tape feels like its ready to rip straight from my mouth.
He slaps me. I only scream harder.
He wrenches me upward, more hairs snapping as I try and pull away, but he wins the exchange. He brings me up so we’re face to face, his breath washing across my face. I notice the nanites have fixed his lazy eye, so that twin violet irises beam down on me.
When he speaks, his voice goes flat again. Six simple words. “It’s time to be cleansed, honey.”
And with that, he shoves me face first into the water.
This time, as I wretch my mouth open, the tape rips clean off. The water–the nanites–behave like liquid shouldn’t, flowing aggressively. Where water seeks to passively fill any space, I can feel this flowing aggressively, seeking, already flowing through my eyes and ears and nose, drowning me, curling up into my brain, mixing together with the thoughts already present. Primal thoughts of pure unbridled terror.
I try and push my head upwards, but I hit the resistance of his palm, holding me in place. I push again, and suddenly, the resistance slackens. Above me, I can suddenly sense another presence in the bathroom. Shouting. The sound of a door breaking down.
Walt’s hand shoves me sideways, and I slam against the side of the tub. Above, there’s a gunshot, but it feels like its coming from halfway across the globe.
Another gunshot in response, this sound of this one exploding in my eardrum. Simultaneously, my back suddenly blooms with a fresh jolt, a sudden throbbing black hole of pain, numbing every other sensation of my body.
A yank. I’m pulled up and out, my face leaving the water. For a moment, this new presence forces me to stand, and I feel as though I have bird’s eye view of the bathroom, as below me I can see the body of the girl, and now Walt, both lying on the floor, blood pooling together.
It lasts for a second, giving me enough time to catch a glimpse of several police officers flooding the room, before the pain overwhelms me. My knees collapse and I fall to the floor.
“Jesus Christ, she’s been shot…how…”
“The break in alarm was going off for ten minutes!”
“Should have taken five–“
“Put her on her stomach, bullet wounds on the back.”
“Claire, Claire, can you hear me? Can you roll over for me?”
I don’t even have a chance to respond, the action is done by another pair of hands and I’m on my stomach. I cough, a wet phlegmy sound, and blood spatters from my mouth.
“Fuck! Logan, make sure that ambulance is coming.”
My mind is clicking, still comprehending the last thirty seconds, the thoughts trickling more slowly than they should. Lying down, my face is pressed sideways…making me face to face with Walt.
He looks at me, his own mouth pooling out blood, breathing shallow. I can barely seehim as he utters his finals words.
“See…you soon….”
He slumps, and I look past, my body feeling far too heavy to do anything else. My vision blurs, and refocuses again and again, a lens constantly out of sync. But it’s enough to catch my reflection, gazing translucently from the porcelain tub. Even if she is a blur, the violet eyes are too easy to make out.
Mind clicks, for a moment every stops. Vision clicks. The world goes black. And in it’s absence, my eyes find new sights.
I see an ornate golden room. I see pearlescent furniture.
Click.I see Him. He’s smiling.
Click.The bathroom comes back into focus, the cool tiles pressing against my cheek.
“Stay with me, Claire. Stay with me.”
Click. “I missed you, Claire. I really, really missed you…”
When He grins, it’s all teeth.
Click.My mind catches up. When I gasp, I cough out more blood. I know then, that I can’t die. That I need to…
Click.My vision doubles. Two images superimposed upon one another, my bathroom, and then…Paradise, each one fuzzy, both fighting for clarity.
Click.“Claire god damn it, look at me…”
Click.“Claire…”
A hand comes to my cheek. And I don’t know if it’s His or if it’s…
All I know is that I need to fight.
I need to fight.
I need to.
I need.
I…
