Chapter 6 Scarlett
Scarlett
I could feel those eyes again. The warmth of the sun resting on the waves of the sea.
He was back.
He had been gone for so long, I thought maybe Pastor Masters had made him disappear like he made others disappear who weren’t worthy enough.
But I felt them lingering on the back of my neck, warming my skin. Curious, studious. He was looking for an answer I was sure he would never find. Not here, at least.
I wondered how long he was going to study us before he rendered his verdict. Whatever verdict that might be.
Maybe he was an Elder and they were keeping stock of the Favorites, of how well the auction was going. I knew that there were a few Favorites mixed into the crowd. Selena, Vassy, Mariah, and some others, along with those who were bought at the auction who needed to be saved by God.
Maybe he was curious to know if the value was worth the price. Or maybe he was looking for an expansion. The auction was getting quite large, maybe they wanted more of them. More buildings, more churches.
I couldn’t imagine more.
Or maybe it was much simpler than that.
Maybe he just wanted someone special to go back with him. The Favorites of Elders were almost like royalty. Elders could pick anyone to be their Favorite, even me, and being the Favorite of Pastor Masters’ son put me in direct line with them. Perhaps he was considering taking me.
A small part of me hoped he would. If I was the Favorite of an Elder, the Leaders here would never come near me again.
There was no other reason why he would stare at me for so long during service. He had to be an Elder, yet…that still didn’t feel right, and normally, when I had a feeling in my soul, it was right.
But maybe I was wrong this time. I could be wrong.
We were singing now. They were. I wasn’t allowed to sing, but I remembered how much I loved to do it when I sang quietly in my room.
I hadn’t said a word in so long though, I didn’t think I could sing anymore. I couldn’t even remember what my own voice sounded like, but I could hear the little me humming sometimes. She loved soft melodies. Melodies that held weight to them. Melodies that meant something.
They were singing the hymns found in the old hymnals placed somewhere on the pews. Songs from long before I was born, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he was singing too. I wondered, if I tried hard enough, if I could eliminate enough of the voices I recognized to hear him among them.
If he picked me as his Favorite, I hoped he would sing to me before he began. Maybe then I could concentrate on something other than the panting and grunting of the old men as they stroked themselves.
Or maybe I wouldn’t mind. From what little I had heard of his voice he was younger than the Leaders. Maybe his grunting and panting wouldn’t be as terrible.
When the sermon was over, we waited a few minutes before we got up and joined Pastor Masters at his podium. A couple of minutes passed before those familiar shoes came into view. The exact same as last time.
The scent washed over me like a breath of fresh air.
I had never been to the ocean. We lived so close to Puget Sound and yet I had never seen the water in real life, not that I could remember, anyway, but then again, it wasn’t that hard to never see the outside world when one was shuttled to and from the church in a dark van to a house with black windows.
I’ve learned to like that darkness though. It wasn’t as terrifying as the lights that shined in the rooms in the Back Hall. It wasn’t as terrifying as the flashing lights from the cameras either.
“Welcome back,” Pastor Masters said. “I thought we had lost a member after only one service.”
Azrael leaned on his cane this time, as if he had pained himself in the last few weeks of his absence. “I travel for business,” he revealed evenly. “I come when I can.”
And despite everything, I felt my stomach fall. I liked his shoes. His voice. His smell. I disliked that he wouldn’t be here as often. The aura around him was different than anyone else I had met. I felt as if the god in this church was afraid of him.
Maybe he wasn’t just any Elder, maybe he was the Head of the Elders, the Founder. The person who started this all.
“What do you do for business?” he asked.
I knew that tone. It was the tone of opportunity.
Pastor Masters smelled something in the air, and he was trying to grab hold of it before it disappeared.
All the Leaders of this church were important in the community, the Pillars were, as stated, pillars in the community as well as in the church.
They were doctors, lawyers, attorneys, and so on.
The corruptible rich, I had once heard someone whisper in passing.
The people with so much money, they sought their adrenaline highs in other places because drugs and fast cars weren’t doing it anymore.
They needed something else. Something like what only this church could provide.
“I transport things all around the world,” he answered easily.
I stilled, staring at those shoes. Our driver had just died and now Azrael was claiming he transported things? That couldn’t be a coincidence.
Although what was it Pastor Masters always said? God works in mysterious ways. Maybe this was one of those times when God answered a prayer.
He never answered mine, but at least He was listening to someone.
“Oh?” Pastor Masters was quiet a moment. “Then perhaps you and I should talk.”
Was that why he was actually here then? To put himself in a place of power so that Pastor Masters would have no other choice but to put him through the tests?
Maybe he was testing out the rankings, how they worked, how well Pastor Masters weeded out the people he could trust from the people he couldn’t.
Azrael was testing the foundations of which the church was built, and maybe he didn’t actually have a job that makes him travel for work, maybe he was actually traveling back to where the Elders were to report back everything he found.
I wondered if Pastor Masters would ever catch on.
But if he was an Elder, or worked closely with them—a spy sent from the top of this untouchable mountain to see if we needed to be chipped away—then why did he feel so different from the others? Why did he smell of the sea when everyone else smelled of ash?
~ ~ ~
October 20th, 2019
It’s been five months since I first felt his eyes on me. Since I first saw those shoes.
Was it wrong of me to wonder if he had asked about me? He watched me so often. Through services, and sometimes blatantly in front of Pastor Masters and Thomas. Had he asked about me at all?
I was only allowed to wear certain clothes in church, but I did my best to look good, we all did. It was one of our jobs. The better we looked, the better our owners looked, but we still had to look respectful.
Today I chose my long pencil skirt and my deep green sweater with the dark blue collar. My hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and today I decided to add a single braid.
I wanted to catch his eye. I wanted him to want me enough to push to see me just so I could see if his actions were as different as the weight of his eyes.
He had to be different. Nobody with an aura as deep and dark as that, nobody who smelled of the sea and pomegranates, could be like the people in this church.
It’s because he hasn’t seen me in the Back Hall yet, I was sure. Once he did, he would be sure to pick me as his Favorite, and maybe then he would petition the Elders to release me from Thomas and take me to wherever the Elders lived.
I wanted to be treated like royalty, even if the rules were a little stricter and the punishments a little worse, I knew that being the Favorite of an Elder, even of a spy of the Elders, would be so much better than being a Favorite here.
Maybe, if I was convincing enough, he would choose to fight to marry me.
Then I would never have to see this church, or their Back Hall, ever again.
I wouldn’t be forced to be shared after the marriage like Thomas had promised over and over again.
Maybe I wasn’t his type though. Maybe he wasn’t an Elder or a spy for the Elders at all, and just someone who came in and saw an opportunity. Maybe he was one of those who only liked to look.
That wouldn’t be allowed for long. I had been shown to people who only looked and never touched themselves. Once Pastor Masters found out they only liked to look and didn’t masturbate, they didn’t come back to church.
He had to touch himself, he had to orgasm, or he would never come back.
My mother taught me that word when I was really young.
She told me all about what we did for the men, what our jobs were, and what was expected of me when I got bigger.
She told me that our jobs weren’t done until they orgasmed, and the only way to know if a man orgasmed was when their semen came out of them.
When I asked her if women orgasmed too, she said no. We didn’t have the right things to experience that. It wasn’t how we were created. We were only created to aid in worshiping the men.
When I was a little older, I realized, though, that there were women Pillars too.
My mother then confessed that there were certain women God had chosen to give the gift of orgasming too.
It was one of the other reasons why I wouldn’t make a good Pillar, because I didn’t have what they did.
She said the hair and the fact that I couldn’t orgasm was sign enough that God made me to be a Favorite.
That was fine because the idea of ejecting semen out of me scared me. I didn’t want any white stuff coming out of me.
Thomas liked to orgasm a lot though. Not just on Sunday nights, sometimes he came in the middle of the night or the middle of the week to have me undress so he could orgasm.