37. Res
37
Res
A ll cults and religions have a persecution kink. Persecution to them is the highest form of sacrifice. Thus, they get off on people disagreeing with them, on people calling them liars, on people not wanting to be their friends, on people not hiring them for jobs, or any other action that can be seen as an attack. They especially get off on the possibility of dying or almost dying for their beliefs and achieving the status resulting from the highest forms of persecution: martyrdom.
A person becoming a martyr for what they believe in is the quickest way to get a cult following on their side. But even better than dying for what you believe in is dying and being resurrected or getting so close to death that death is a mathematical certainty and then living against all odds. It’s even better when the death is public. There’s a reason Christianity is as massive as it is. All because an innocent man who proclaimed to be God’s son was publicly crucified and killed only to rise from the dead three days later. Supposedly.
Even if the Sovereignty doesn’t strictly believe in the resurrection, that story is in the zeitgeist of the religious world and something that can be used against them .
Regardless of all the evidence against him, Abdiel has been the Oracle for thirty-seven years. As far as most of the Sovereignty will be concerned, everything revealed about him in the meeting on Saturday will be a coordinated attack, a betrayal that years of indoctrination will have inoculated them against. At least, not without a bit of a mystical spiritual element to it and scratching the persecution kink itch.
We only have so much time to stage everything. Less than 24 hours.
I get Magdalene and Abner’s help to find someone to do the assassination attempt and one of Abdiel’s S-Team loyalists to blame the assassination attempt on. I make sure Landon, with his passion and recklessness, is right there near his brother’s side to sell that something actually went wrong, playing an important role even though he’s not going to know the entire event is staged.
I ensure that the Sovereignty’s best orators and preachers are in optimal seating to witness. I make sure Jessie is ready with the story to confide in her close friends and confidants, who will have rumors spread all throughout the Sovereignty within days, if not hours, that Jaxson went flat on the operating table three times. That even though they got him back, he is on the brink of death, and the doctors doubt he’ll make it.
All this will have happened after Jaxson, along with Lilah, Adah, Magdalene, Landon, members of the S-Team, and many more come forward with accusations that Jaxson’s father is a false Oracle. A false prophet, tainted by the anti-force, who admitted, in front of witnesses and on camera thanks to Jaxson’s men diligently watching and the recording of an anonymous victim that he killed Raphael. All this backed up with records from Bathsheba showing how he did it.
Naturally, there will be doubts, but in exactly three days, when rather than dying, word gets out that Jaxson is making a miraculous recovery that doctors can’t explain, the more astute and creative of the Sovereignty priests will start to put a story together. They will start to hint that Jaxson’s survival is only due to the Supreme Force and helpfully fill in the blanks about Zachariah’s vision that Jaxson’s father would be heir was not in reference to him, but in reference to an unborn boy child from an adulterous relationship. That the only reason a false prophet was allowed to take a seat that wasn’t his was that it was the Supreme Force’s way of protecting its true anointed.
It's a biblical story practically leaping off the pages. An almost one to one parallel of a man the world calls Christ and that the Sovereignty knows as the first Oracle. A tantalizing and logical story to people born, bred, and manipulated to read into coincidences as signs and contrivances as the will of an omniscient and omnipotent god. None of them would ever suspect or believe that this was staged and planned by a girl from the South, who was raised in a cult evangelical Christian church and majored in behavioral psychology and specialized in studying cults.
“Our patsy died,” Magdalene says to me when she and Ruth come to see me at the apple orchard house being used for Jaxson’s recovery. A recovery that isn’t even altogether false.
Even with a bulletproof vest, being shot in the chest is a bitch. Or so I imagine it must be from the dark purple bruising on the entire left side of Jaxson’s chest and the stiff way he’s been walking the last few weeks. That, along with the fact that two of his ribs did actually break from the impact. Or it might be the actual gunshot wound he received, which has only been agitating him because of his refusal to rest.
I’d be more annoyed by it if not for the fact that the infection and fever he got as a result were enough to sell Landon on the idea that his brother is actually recovering from a gunshot wound the one time we staged a visit because he was insistent on not being kept away. I wish I could tell him the truth. But Landon, like his mother, is earnest and buys into the doctrine, lore, and mythos of the Sovereignty hook, line, and sinker. His refusal to play along could ruin everything. Not to mention that the more people who know about this, the more at risk we are of any opposition finding out.
Magdalene already let Ruth in on the scheme. The only reason I’m not worried about it is that Ruth was also in that blackmail video that Magdalene gave me and Jaxson months ago, and that Ruth helped Magdalene cover up her pregnancy and make the entire Sovereignty think she had a stroke.
“We were able to make it look like he all of a sudden had an aneurysm,” Magdalene adds.
“And the rest of the Sovereignty?” I ask.
“According to Jessie and Abner, they’re buying into the idea that Abdiel was a false Oracle and that Jaxson was always meant to hold the seat. There are still a few disgruntled priests not buying it,” Magdalene says .
“You know who they are?”
Magdalene hands me a written list. I'm going to make a copy and hand it to Abner to deal with.
The mistake that Jaxson's father made in his takeover was letting Raphael’s supporters live to cause dissension. It’s a mistake I don’t plan on making. At least the most vocal of them have to mysteriously die to set an example. It helps that they won’t be able to blame Jaxson since he’s got an airtight alibi.
Once Magdalene and Ruth leave, I go check on Jaxson.
Having never had the luxury of a lot of time to sit and do nothing, he’s got a bad case of cabin fever. To fend off his boredom, he’s doing whatever work he can get his hands on that can be done from the confines of his office. Meetings with Shelly over his business holdings at first. Then a talk with Mason, who told him that he’s taking a step back from the Sovereignty to spend time with his mother and has no interest in becoming the Oracle. Actually sending a group of Sovereigns down to Macon to charter a new altar and recruit members while sending another group to Atlanta to set up the possible groundwork for an altar there. Then, upon remembering that the High Treasury Priest was conspiring with his father to embezzle money from the Sovereignty for his trafficking scheme, having him removed and putting Shelly in charge of the Sovereignty treasury.
I pass by Nala on the way, pausing to pick her up and pet her. She stays in my arms for a total of five seconds before jumping out, likely having gotten her fill of being held and petted by either Jaxson, J, or Abigail, the latter two of whom I had flown into Chicago three weeks into our retreat.
I saw J two months ago, but he’s changed so much in a short time, already taller than the last time I saw him. I’m certain that by the end of the summer, he’ll be taller than me. Abigail is the one who has changed the most, though. When I last saw her in late February, she wasn’t even showing her pregnancy yet. Now she’s seven months along and radiating with happiness over the impending birth of her baby. She’s especially less stressed than she was a few months ago because since she’s mostly taken over High Demand, I’ve turned over all the proceeds from ads, merch, and the occasional sponsor to her. After just two months, she’s got enough money to get her own apartment and has started filling and decorating the baby’s room with pale yellows, greens, blues, and pinks.
Personally, I’d prefer if Abigail moved to Chicago. But according to her, her parents have come around, and she didn’t lose all her friends in the scandal involving my brother and Loving Eden. She’s got a support system, so I’ve backed off trying to persuade her otherwise.
When I get to Jaxson’s office, I walk right into J, who is leaving. He barely sticks around long enough to apologize before running off down the hall to his room.
“What was that about?” I ask Jaxson as I enter the room.
“Embarrassment, if I had to guess,” he answers, looking down at some papers with a baffled look. Baffled for Jaxson, anyway. To anyone else, he’d probably look as neutral and emotionally reserved as he always is .
“Over what?”
Jaxson sets the papers down to let me see. They’re legal documents. A set of adoption papers and a petition for a name change.
“I don’t see what’s so embarrassing.”
“Look what he wants his name to be.”
I read further down and see that after all this time, J has finally chosen a name for himself. I grin at Jaxson.
“Aw,” I say.
“There’s nothing aw about it. Now everyone is going to think I’m one of those egotistical narcissists who name their children after themselves instead of giving them their own identity,” Jaxson says disgruntled.
“I think it’s sweet that he admires you so much he’d choose your name to be his name,” I say.
“I can’t imagine why,” he says with such self-deprecating honesty that I can’t help but be a little concerned.
“Why not?”
“We both know I am no one to be admired,” he states bluntly. “I’m not concerned that I’m not. I made myself to be that way in pursuit of power and my own ambitions. It’s a statement of fact. So forgive me if I’m not particularly thrilled that J is under the illusion that I’m someone to aspire to be without knowing just how unadmirable I am.”
I tilt my head at Jaxson and say, “I think this may be the first time I’ve heard a person be genuinely humble while sounding like a genuine self-important asshole at the same time.”
“I rest my case. ”
“J doesn’t see your flaws,” I explain. “He sees the guy who took him in and let him be his true self with unwavering, if sometimes prickly, support. Of course, he admires that enough to take your name.”
Jaxson says nothing in response to my statement as he straightens the papers and then puts them in a folder to send to his lawyer to file later.
“You do know people actually admire you? Your family especially. If they didn’t, they’d have put up way more of a fight about you sitting your father down and taking over as Oracle.”
“Am I supposed to be thrilled by that, Snow White?” he asks with a raised eyebrow.
I simply laugh and point out, “I’ve got you pegged now. You don’t have to admit it for me to know that you care about your family a lot more than you let on.”
“Caring is a stretch of your imagination.”
“Well, you certainly don’t hate them all as much as you pretend to.”
Jaxson doesn’t answer that statement either. I look over at the folder with the legal papers Jaxson just put away, and a thought occurs to me.
“So if you adopt J, does that make him my stepson now?” I ask.
“Last I checked, you hadn’t accepted my marriage proposal. So that makes him nothing to you.”
“Last I checked, you weren’t giving me a choice in the matter.” Then, “What about J’s dad? You can’t just adopt a child that belongs to someone else. ”
“Let’s just say that Darryl Wright and I came to a very terse agreement that benefited me the most.”
I frown wryly. “You didn’t kill him, did you?”
“J, inexplicably, doesn’t want his father dead.”
“Maim, torture, or otherwise torment?”
“As entertaining as it would be to hear him scream while I make him atone, I have more pressing things to do than waste my time with scum like him.”
That only leaves one option.
“You paid him off,” I state, just as unimpressed as I was before.
“There would have been no amount of money that was sufficient if he actually wanted his kid. I did him and J a favor,” Jaxson states. “Besides, it won’t do him good for long once the IRS comes knocking at his door for back taxes and tax fraud.”
I don’t bother to ask if the back taxes and fraud are legit.
“Speaking of atoning,” Jaxson says, standing up and pulling me into his arms. “I have a surprise for you.”
“A surprise?” I ask skeptically. “Historically, you don’t have a good track record with surprises for me.”
Jaxson chuckles in my ear and says, “Don’t pretend that, in the end, you didn’t like them.”
That may be true, but that still means I’d have to go through the initial terror and degradation, and I’m not sure I have the energy for that today.
“Don’t worry. You’ll like this one,” he assures. Then he calls out, “J. ”
“ Yes , Jaxson,” J says, sounding annoyed at being bothered, as teens always are when the adults in their lives call on them.
“Lauressa and I will be gone for a couple of hours. If you need anything, ask Abigail.”
“Will do.”
Abigail is more likely to need J for something at this stage of her pregnancy, but at least she’s an adult who can talk J out of doing something stupid if needed.
I put on my good walking boots that I left at the back door earlier when I went to look at the blossoms on the apple trees. Then Jaxson grabs my hand, leads me out the same back door, down the large deck, and to the barn a football field away or so.
I smile to myself as we walk, enjoying the light late spring breeze, for the first time in a while being able to see a future for myself.
So much of being raised in a high demand religious cult is not knowing if you’ll have a future because some higher power will decide he doesn’t want you to have one on a whim. Being told that there are things you can do to gain favor with him, but the goalposts are constantly moved. Constantly exhausted and trying to do everything you can for not just your salvation but the salvation of your future children, but ultimately nothing is enough and everything can be for nothing.
Now, I still know the future isn’t guaranteed. I know that I could drop dead tomorrow from something that’s still out of my control. But the only difference is that I know there's nothing that I can or can't do that will change that. I’m free to live my life as I choose, no matter what anyone has to say about it. And that freedom means a future.
I can see hosting more dinner parties with the people Jaxson still refuses to admit he cares about. I can see my niece or nephew running through the front door yelling “Auntie Res,” while their longsuffering mother follows behind her. I can see J going off to college one day but always coming back for the summer. I can see myself going on more walks with Jaxson through this orchard with a little boy or girl skipping between us.
“Lauressa.”
I snap out of my thoughts, seeing that not only have we arrived at the barn, but we’ve made our way inside. On first glance, there’s nothing out of the ordinary. Just a regular barn filled with equipment to maintain the orchard. But then I look closer at the wooden floors. There’s something off about them.
Jaxson proves my suspicion when he bends down and knocks on a precise spot in an even more precise rhythmic manner. He stands back, pulling me with him as a good five-by-five-foot portion of the floor sinks into the ground and then slides to the side, revealing a set of concrete stairs.
My heart races, even though I know I have nothing to be afraid of. But the last time I went down cellar doors, I was kidnapped by Jaxson’s father. I can’t help being a little apprehensive.
Jaxson must sense that because he kisses my hand and asks, “Do you have faith in me, my Oracle?”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation.
He nods and leads me down into the cellar.