Church Girl Gone Wild

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

 

My body felt heavy and weighted down like all of gravity was working against me. I struggled to sit up, wincing when I scraped my forehead against something rough and grainy. That hard mess was all around me, scratching me in the places where my Mulan sheets should have been. It pressed against my back through my thin nightshirt, scraped against the back of my forearms and legs. Blinking didn't help bring anything into focus. I couldn't even see my nose on my own face because it was so dark.

“Momma Rose?” I called out, praying she'd answer me. “Momma Rose!” My voice bounced around me hurting my own ears.

The only response I got was a soft tapping sound. Even though I was ten I'd still have nightmares. The kind that'd make me shoot awake with my heart in my throat. They were usually about the night two-years ago that got me and Leslie taken away and put with Momma Rose and Deacon. Momma Rose always came and prayed over me until I'd fall back asleep. But this wasn't one of my nightmares, this was real.

The fact that we'd all just had dinner and then gone to bed as usual had me three levels past confused making my head throb. And here I'd always thought a headache was something Momma Rose made up for the times when Sue was being extra annoying. Tsukiko or Sue, as we called her, was Deacon's half-past-crazy Japanese cleaning lady. At least that's the lie that he told everybody. She was really his second wife. As far as I knew, a man wasn't supposed to have two wives at the same time, but Deacon did a lot of things most people didn't do.

If Momma Rose was a warm fluffy towel fresh out the dryer, then Sue was a cold sopping wet one, twisted up tight at the ends ready to snap at you. Sue stuck her little pointy nose up in the air at us from day one. She even went as far as changing her doorknob to one that locks with a key from the outside. Ain't nobody want anything of hers, but you couldn't tell her that.

I squinted into the blackness so hard my eyes started hurting. The air was warm and heavy, like trying to breathe with a blanket over my face.

“Momma Rose! Sue? This isn't funny I can't breathe,” I wailed into the dark.

This felt like another one of Sue's stupid lessons that never made sense because she didn't speak enough English to explain. She once locked me inside the toy chest in my bedroom for no reason at all. Whenever she was having one of her moments I'd just try to keep close to Momma Rose.

This was nothing like the inside of my toy chest though. At least that was wider and there were gaps at the hinges so I could see out. There was no escaping the pitch-black box that Sue found for me this time. I could imagine her pasty bone-white face, giggling at me, doing that stupid thing where she covers her mouth when she laughs.
She knows good and well she can hear and understand me.
I'd eavesdropped on enough conversations to notice her English wasn't always jacked up. Especially not when she was asking Deacon to buy her more of that bird crap she liked to put on her face all day. Real bird poo, the bottle even said nightingale poo. Anyone crazy enough to walk around with dried bird poo on their face was definitely crazy enough to think this would be funny.
We'll see how she likes me flushing all her face-poo down the dern toilet.

Sweat rolled down my neck and shoulders as I took shallow raspy breaths. There was no telling how long it'd be before Momma Rose got up and noticed I wasn't in my bed. I squeezed my eyes shut against the tight feeling in my chest. It swelled up like a moon-bounce-castle. My heart jumped and bumped all over it.
Lord, please help me. I promise to stop listening to things I'm not supposed to and I'll learn something useful, like how to Houdini myself out of boxes.

The tapping was getting louder and closer. When it finally occurred to me what I was hearing the blood froze in my veins, thawed and rushed to the center of my chest in a tiny explosion. My eyes snapped open. I knew that sound. It sounded like winter, like wood popping and crackling in a fireplace. The air was even starting to smell like smoke. It reminded me of the whole pigs daddy would roast on his smoker every Fourth of July. He swore by alder wood because it kept the best heat. And it burned the longest.

The few shaky breaths I took made me cough so hard I gagged. Painful hacking coughs ripped their way up my throat. My stomach heaved dredging up banana now-and-laters mixed with ketchup smothered meatloaf. Vomit burned its way up my throat gushing out of my nose and when my stomach was empty I kept dry-heaving so hard I peed on myself. Embarrassed frustrated tears rushed down my face running into my ears. It felt like I was inside a pressure cooker. Sue had finally gone and completely lost her mind. I tensed; the wood underneath me was starting to get hot. She was trying to cook me to death. No, she wasn't
trying
, she was burning me alive.

I blindly pounded my fists and kicked trying to fight my way out. Smoke mixed with foul smelling banana-meatloaf scented vomit was all around me. It was running down my neck and getting into my hair. The eerie crumbled skeletons of just about every mummified Eskimo and caveman I'd ever seen on TV flashed through my head. By the time anyone found me, I'd just be burnt bones. The thought made me want to crawl inside myself and cry until I fell asleep, but it was getting so hot I could barely breathe.

Every breath made my lungs beg for fresh air. I couldn't get enough the wind to scream out loud so I screamed over and over in my head. My toes were stinging and my fists hurt. There was nowhere to go.

Cool air shot across my cheeks whipping up the smell of stomach bile and burnt candle wicks. I felt light as a feather and stiff as a board as someone scooped me up. I took in huge gulps of fresh air. Opening my eyes felt impossible. It was like sandpaper was attached to the insides of my eye lids. When I finally managed to force them open I was lying on a table with the night sky staring back at me. The moon hid behind cotton-ball fluffed clouds. Cicadas buzzed in the treetops and the trees rustled with the wind. All through a big jagged opening where the roof should have been.

“Hey honey-bee.”

A man's voice came out of nowhere with all the gruff cheerfulness of an evil Santa collecting bad kids.

He stood at the foot of the table swallowing up all kinds of space with his wide-barrel chest. He was just big and wide all over. My eyes swept the room searching for something familiar. There was no Sue and no Momma Rose; I didn't know where I was or who he was. Shivers zigzagged across my spine. The old folk always said that meant someone had walked across my grave. This definitely wasn't the time to think about a superstition like that. Grimacing, I realized it was just me and this blocky man who could have passed for that ugly purple McDonalds blob called Grimace. Grimace with big Toro the bull from Bugs Bunny nostrils.

He leaned down over me until his nose was barely touching mine. Everything on him smelled like rotten eggs, even the warm air blasting me in the face from his double-barrel nostrils smelled foul. Turning away from him I squeezed my eyes shut.

“I pulled you out, but if you say a word about any of this
to anybody
you can go back in that box any time.
And you will burn.
Understand?”

His voice crawled into my ear in a rotten whisper making me shake so hard my bones hurt.

My stomach turned and tightened until I thought I'd be sick all over again. Grimace grabbed my chin forcing me to look up into his dark-blobish face. My heart was going a hundred miles an hour. Out the corner of my eye I could see the box he'd pulled me out of sitting on bricks in a corner. I couldn't hold back the gasp that slipped from in between my lips. It wasn't a box that I was pulled out of; it was a small wooden coffin. It was still smoldering, slowly turning black. The thought of being back in there and never getting out made me nod that I understood even though I didn't.

He smiled. “We gonna have us a good time Eva. You be a good girl and you can have the world. I promise.”

He knows my name? How does he know my name?
My eyes darted from corner to corner searching for a way out. Wide wooden doors like the ones I'd seen on barns were a few feet away. The walls were knotty slats of wood, with zero windows. And from what I could tell there was no way other way out. Grimace grabbed my wrists and started tying them together with a rough rope. My hands pumped open and closed into sweaty fists. A gloomy sinking feeling wisped around me, it mixed with the drifting branches of smoke that danced out of the coffin.

“John 15:16,” Deacon's voice floated in from the shadows.

Grimace froze.

It's a wonder I didn't do a happy wiggle at the sound of his voice. I waited for him to pray the gates of hell open on this funky fool for what he'd done to me.

“Deacon,” my voice cracked over my scratchy raw throat. I squirmed trying to get my eyes on him. I wanted to see him take this idiot down.

For the first time ever, my ears actually perked up at the sound of Deacon's signature slow shuffle. As much as Momma Rose stayed fussing at me about picking up my feet. You'd think she'd eventually get sick enough of hearing his spiky ostrich dress shoes shush from room to room that she'd say something to him.

He shuffled himself over until he was shoulder to shoulder with Grimace. He stared at me with his eyes glowing like creepy glass marbles in his head. When he nodded at Grimace my expression went from hopeful to hopeless. Two dressed up religious guys in a temple of cob webs and rotting wood couldn't mean anything good. A breeze caught hold of a writing spider's web over Deacon's head. I could have sworn I saw Charlotte the spider up there weaving the words, “I'm sorry honey.”

“You did not choose me,” Deacon whispered in an intense voice that sent his sunflower-yellow bowtie bobbing up and down. “For I chose you and appointed you so that you should go and bear fruit. This is your choosing ceremony Eva. Papa Psion fought the flames for your life and has claimed you. You are his.”

“
He wh . . . I'm . . . this is my what?” My words came out in a confused croak.

A new set of footsteps moved closer from somewhere behind me at the head of the table. My brain sent nervous pings down my neck that ran into my heart charging its ways up my throat. The footsteps stopped, but whoever it was, was still outside of where I could see them. Warm drops of water splattered down over my face and a hard round peppercorn fell in my mouth. The tip of my tongue pressed the hard kernel across my lips. I tried blinking through the splashes as they stung my eyes. The rabbit came into view above me with its blood red fur at the same time as I recognized the salty-sweet taste in my mouth. I screamed so loud my voice cut was cut off by my stomach clenching into another round of dry-heaves. My sides were starting to hurt worst than my wrists burning against the ropes.

Derian, one of the men from Deacon's church stepped closer. He had the meanest darkest eyes. He frowned down at me with the poor rabbit dangling from his hand by its feet. Its insides were shiny yellow and grayish white balloons with tiny black pebbles.

“Derian, next time you attend one of my ceremonies,” Deacon paused with his lips twitching like he was fighting to stay calm. “Remove the filth from the beast or I'll have you strapped down and fed rabbit shit until you remember.”

Derian's shrug was followed by a nonchalant nod.

I looked at Deacon and Grimace at my feet, begging them in my head to just stop all of this and take me home. I'd gotten out of a box just to get boxed in. Papa Psion wrapped his fat-sausage fingers tight around my ankle yanking me towards him. It took everything I had trying to kick him lose but he wasn't budging. I gave Deacon my biggest kitten-in-distress, hurt-puppy dog, please-help-me face. He didn't even blink. And here he was supposed to be my guardian and he wasn't guarding anything.

Papa Psion's hands were heavy black tarantulas creeping up underneath my night shirt. His fat barrel stomach pressed against my stomach and my chest making it impossible for me to take a breath.

“Girl, you smell like a truck stop shit house, but it's all good. I'll be in and out nice and easy.”

He tried to squeeze his fingers in between my legs. I wiggled my hands up from their pinned position between his stomach and my chest. If Deacon wasn't gonna help me then it was up to me to make him stop. The rope cut into my wrists like razor wire but I kept wiggling. There was no way I'd lie still and let this happen. My fingers got near the sweaty flabby skin under his neck and I grabbed onto it squeezing as hard as I could.

“Stop touching me,” I hissed between my teeth.

Caught off guard, Papa Psion roared up in pain. The table rocked on unsteady legs.

Deacon's bony fingers dug into my ribs.

“You aren't special Eva. Every woman offered must go through the choosing ceremony,” he growled in between strained grunts.

My lip curled up into a furious snarl. No one had ever told me about any of this. None of the other girls ever said anything about something like this happening. If they thought I was just gonna play possum and lay there all nice and calm they were wrong. I was smaller and they were stronger but it didn't mean anything. Before I was taken away animal control would stop by my mom's and get possums all the time. But if anyone had a raccoon lose in the yard or attic they wouldn't come out at all. A special animal catcher had to come out and half the time the raccoons got away because they put up the nastiest meanest fight. Just like those raccoons, I was gonna' fight until I got loose.