37. Res
37
Res
I t goes without question that my brother has to die. So do my mother and father.
Even hating my brother like I did without knowing why, even feeling misunderstood by both my parents as I often did, I would have fought for them before Christmas. If I’d known Jaxson was planning to carry out his blood atonement against them, I would have begged him not to. I would have let him do whatever he wanted to me if it meant sparing them.
Instead, when he informs me that my entire family has to die, I simply turn to him and ask, “Are you open to adding a few more names to that list?”
We carefully plan what we’re going to do, though saying we is generous. Jaxson seems far more interested in letting me take the reins and observing or giving his inputs for logistics, much like I ended up doing with him just two months ago when he took over my Halloween event. Much like him, I too clearly don’t know the meaning of doing too much. Because what I have planned for my parents, my brother, the Bishop and the entire Deacon board who unanimously condemned me a decade ago is the very definition of it. I suppose the flair for dramatics is another thing me and Jaxson have in common.
Overall, the planning process only takes a day seeing that I don’t have a job anymore. Well, I do have one, but my new boss was standing next to me while I made the plans for murder. It takes another few days to get the paraphyletic agent I need to make my plan work. And it takes a few more weeks from that for all of the deacon board to be in the city from all their holiday trips and convene their weekly meeting where the entire board, including the bishop is there.
From there, it’s only a matter of putting the paraphyletic agent in the coffee, the water, and the food specially catered for their first meeting of the year from a local favorite restaurant that no one will be able to resist. It takes not even ten minutes for the agent to take effect and the entire board to become little more than silent sitting ducks. Jaxson’s men tie them all up sitting straight up in their chairs with devices to force their eyes to stay open.
My mother is carried into the room and tied to her own chair, though by the end of all this she’ll be moved.
“Ready?” Jaxson asks me as we stand outside the room.
I don’t immediately answer. My heart is racing in my chest. My palms are sweaty. My nerves are tingling. My stomach is in knots. That could mean a lot of things. All I know is that I’ve never done anything like this before. That the conditioning I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to completely break is telling me that if I weren’t going to hell before, I’m definitely going for what I’m about to do.
The only solace I take is that if I’m going to go to hell for this, everyone in that room will be right there with me. Maybe, if I ask Satan nicely, he’ll admire my handywork here and let me continue the torture in hell for eternity.
“You don’t have to do this part if you don’t want to,” Jaxson says. “We could just move on to the other part of your atonement.”
I shake my head, steeling my nerves. “No. I need to do this. I need to reclaim this.”
Jaxson grins and kisses me on the lips before walking into the room.
The benefit of the agent we used is that while it paralyzes most of the body, it doesn’t paralyze the tongue. Not completely anyway. So I hear Bishop Mavis slur loudly, “What the fucking hell is this Jaxson?”
If Jaxson was going to humor him and answer, he doesn’t have time to before I walk into the room.
“Res?” David slurs, his tone shocked.
“David,” I say as I sit in the empty chair at the end of the table.
“Res, baby,” my mother says, the agent taking particular toll on her with her arthritis.
“I’m not your baby,” I snap angrily. “If I were your baby, you wouldn’t have let the man who abused me as a child back into the house.”
“Is that what this is about?” she asks. “Honey, you didn’t remember. And he stopped. He didn’t—”
“He stopped because I made a fuss whenever he came near me,” I point out.
I have a bunch of memories of David trying to get close to me again. Trying to touch me again, and me drawing attention whenever it did happen. All those memories recontextualized in light of what I now know.
I add, “At least you had the sense to never let him babysit me again. But that’s not why we’re here today. We are gathered here today, beloved, for you to atone for your sins against me.”
“Against you,” Deacon Lashonda says. “We’ve done nothing but—”
I cut her off.
“If you don’t mind, please spare me the lectures. I’ve already got them memorized,” I droll. “You’ve done nothing but try to help and guide me, but I was unwilling to take the guidance. Too arrogant. Too willful to submit. Most things that befell me were my fault, and if they weren’t, God allowed it so that I could learn something about myself and therefore it’s still my fault. Not the fault of the person who wronged me. Not the fault of the pedophile who all of you willingly sheltered, hm?” I ask.
That hits a nerve. Everyone begins to speak up at once how it wasn’t their fault. How their hands were tied.
It used to annoy me, when I actually bought into this, that people got positions on the Deacon Board and then didn’t leave them until they died. I thought they meant well and were just out of touch. Now, I’m glad they all want to die in their positions. It means that ten years later, just about everyone here was here when they decided to humiliate me. It means that a good few of them were present on this board when they decided to keep what my brother did to me under wraps. Even if they weren’t, I have no doubt that they knew about it. That they’ve likely enabled other predators just like my brother.
“You can save your justifications and defenses for God at the gates of heaven. Here, I’m your judge, and I’ve already decided you must atone for your sins. And the only way to do that is with blood,” I declare.
That causes yet another slurred uproar. Well, uproar is generous. More like a bunch of slurred madness.
“I don’t understand why they’re upset, Snow White,” Jaxson says to me. “If they’ve truly done nothing wrong, they’re just going to be let through the gates of heaven, right? In fact, what you’re about to do with will surely make their god take pity on them for being persecuted in the name of righteousness.”
“See,” I say to everyone in the room. “I’m doing you all a favor.”
I stand from my chair. I take one last moment to try to talk myself out this next part. Jaxson is right. I don’t have to do it. Most women would find what I’m about to do a humiliation. But that’s the whole point of this. The point is to do this on my terms. Without shame or embarrassment. Besides, the Deacon Board and my mother are dead men and women walking. Well, dead men and woman sitting as it is.
I unzip the front of the warm off-shoulder dress I chose for this occasion for the ease of which I could take it off. It falls to the floor. I’m wearing nothing underneath
Jaxson walks up behind me and plays with a lock of my dark hair. Runs a hand up and down my naked back. This was the part of my plan he wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about. For the first time, I won an argument when I reminded him that he didn’t have the same reservations a month and a half ago when he fucked me in front of his men before forcing them all to commit suicide. And saying that I won the argument is a stretch. More like Jaxson decided to indulge me this one time and one time only.
“Since you all have been so concerned about my chastity and virtue while giving the literal pedophile access to me, how about you get an up close and personal look?” I say.
Jaxson places a kiss on my shoulder before unzipping his pants. His cock is already hard as it pokes into my ass. Despite him not liking that I’m doing this, he’s getting off on it. Sadist.
I reach my hand behind me to cup Jaxson’s face and turn my head to capture his lips.
“Fuck me nice and sweet for them,” I mutter when I pull away.
Jaxson doesn’t delay. He shoves his cock up my cunt.
By some miracle, I’m wet. Even though I’m standing here. Naked. In front of Loving Eden’s Deacon Board. The pastor who baptized me at six. My mother who bore me and raised me. My father who loved his son. My brother who tried to reconcile with me after being sent away.
I can’t help but let out a moan as Jaxson relentlessly fucks me, my cunt growing slicker. The obscene sounds of sex fill the room. A fine sheen of sweat coats my body. All while these people who watched me grow up are forced to watch. As I give them exactly what they asked for and demanded. Intimate knowledge of my body and what I do with it.
“You fucking Delilah,” Bishop Mavis yells. “You slut. ”
“Should have sent you to that damn reform school, Lashonda suggested. They would have set you straight,” my father says.
And for one brief moment, I want to back out. For one brief moment I want to stop this and beg for forgiveness.
But then I force myself to look up at everyone in the room. See the horror and disgust in their eyes as they watch. More horrified and disgusted at me, a grown woman, embracing her sexuality and being fucked, than they are at pedophile being sheltered amongst their children. I listen to the curses that fall from their lips, hurled my way as they’re forced to watch a man fuck me after I consented to it like this is the worst thing I could have ever done.
Any lingering hesitation and embarrassment disappears. There’s nothing humiliating about this. Not for me. I’m the one in control here. I’m the one with the power. The control and power I’ve always wanted but been afraid to take.
Not anymore.
“Fuck you,” I growl back.
I close my eyes and arch my torso forward, emphasizing my breasts and hard dark nipples as I brace against the table.
Each thrust of Jaxson’s cock shoots pleasure through me. More pleasure zings through me knowing that there’s an audience. Knowing that they’re disgusted. Known that they think this is depraved. Hearing them continue to hurl obscenities and swear that God will curse me and that I will rot. And I’m doing it anyway.
Now I realize what Jaxson saw in me when he first laid eyes on me.
He saw the mirror image of himself .
My muscles clench as my orgasm threatens to overtake me but doesn’t quite make it in pushing me over the edge.
“You can do this, Snow White,” Jaxson says in my ear, laying gentle kisses all over my neck, shoulders, and back as he fucks me. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. Remember, you are sinless. Now, come for me.”
I needed that reminder.
Suddenly I feel myself being pushed faster and faster to the edge. My hand finds its way between my legs and furiously rubs at my clit. Then there’s a rush as I’m falling. Figuratively with my orgasm. Literally as my body folds on itself, I collapse on the table, and my legs give out.
Jaxson grabs my hair and forces my torso up. Moans leaving me as I feel every inch of him on every inch of my body through my overly sensitive cunt and then liquid heat as he comes.
He lets go of me, and I fall back against the table, thoroughly fucked. Sated for now, but excited for the next time.
There will be time to bask in my terror later, though.
Once I’m sure I can stand, I pick my dress up off the floor and cover myself up again. With a nod to Jaxson, his men enter the room and remove the devices that forced everyone’s eyes to stay open. Another unties my mother, picks her up, and carries her down to the sanctuary. He situates her so that she’s sitting up with a bible in her hands.
I sit next to her, the distance and insulation of the sanctuary not enough to completely drown out the sound of a gun firing. Killing each Deacon Board member one by one .
“You know, I used to think of you as an unwitting victim in all this,” I say to her. “I thought you were just doing the best you could with the tools available to you. Taken advantage of because of abandonment and lack of structure from a dysfunctional childhood. But I was sure where it counted, you would stand up for me.” I turn to look at her, even as she’s unable to move still. “But you don’t get to get the benefit of the doubt when you were more concerned about protecting the pedophile than you were about protecting his victim. So I detach myself from this. From you. From how you raised me. From our family. You were dead to me as of Christmas. Now, it’s just going to be literal.”
One of Jaxson’s men come up behind my mother. I stand up and give my mother one final kiss on the cheek.
“Rest knowing your baby is going to be just fine without you.”
I walk away, not even flinching at the sound of the gun firing as a bullet is put through my mother’s head.
Jaxson is waiting for me. He doesn’t ask if I’m okay. Just grabs my hands and leads me out the front steps of the building to where our car is waiting, confident that his men will finish what needs to be done.
We get in the car, but don’t take off immediately. We wait as the team Jaxson and I put together files out and disperses into their own vehicles. Then we drive off.
We’ve turn out the lot onto the street the leads directly to the church and is deserted most days except for Sundays and during events. We’ve barely gone a few yards when an explosion rocks the street, and Loving Eden bursts into flames. That would be from the fire we set downstairs near the gas furnace.
Later tonight, news will break about Loving Eden catching fire. During the police investigation, email exchanges will be found between the Deacon Board and my brother, after the discovery of child sexual abuse images in his office. Of him abusing not just me, but other children also. The emails will warn him that they’re going to meet to shun him come their next meeting and then turn him over to the authorities. Rather than face the consequences of his actions, the police will reveal that David bought a paraphyletic agent, used it on the Deacon Board, and then shot them all dead with a single bullet through the head. He then took his mother’s life. The poor woman there to support and pray for both her children in the sanctuary with her bible. Then, the police will report, he would pour gasoline near the furnace, set it on fire and shoot himself.
He’ll be survived by me and Abigail. Both of us will be counted as lucky to have escaped the annihilation because when a figure matching David’s profile went to my apartment, he found no one there. What this figure will have managed to do was find my gun, the one Jaxson took from me months ago, safely locked away in my closet, so that he could take it with him. And that gun, along with another will be found near my brother’s dead body.
When the police finally track Abigail and me down, I’ll reveal that neither of us felt safe knowing David and our family could harass us to speak to them about David’s crime against me, so we went to my boyfriend’s house instead. Abigail will verify the story and that she saw me go into Jaxson’s bedroom before taking a nap—a nap secretly induced by pregnancy safe sleeping medicine. Jaxson will verify that I was with him in his bedroom the entire afternoon, the security cameras will show no one left the house, and the case will be closed as an awful community tragedy.
But that’s later.
Now, Jaxson huffs and says as he turns onto the main street and away from Loving Eden, “You certainly have a flair for dramatics. You’ll fit right in with the Sovereignty.”
I laugh. The first real laugh I’ve laughed since Christmas.