3. Logan

3

LOGAN

Day nine hundred and sixty-five of captivity.

I etch the mark on the wooden panel with the dull blade of my knife. It joins the hundreds of other tick marks on the cabin wall.

The sun rises by the hour, bathing the landscape in pale morning light. The worst of the storm's yet to come.

This calm is just the lead up. The false silence before the break of thunder. The rain will flood us out. The cold might be too much.

Last year we were made to double up in the cabins still dry enough. An already packed sardine can now fit to burst.

But nobody was under any other false belief. None of us were foolish enough to think our well-being had shit to do with it. We were the minions.

Easily replaced and holding little to no value.

We're too damn beat down to disagree. Too broken and isolated.

I turn away from the cabin door and peer around the tight space. The only other person up is an older man by the name of Hershel. He's quiet and keeps to himself and wakes early most mornings. He likes having time to pray.

Talk to his god before he's sent to hell for the day.

He's been here almost as long as I have, and he's still foolish enough to think it makes a difference.

I shake my head and drag my gaze from where he's kneeling to the bunk below his. My newest wife has spent the last couple days ignoring my existence. She's just about ignored everybody except when forced otherwise.

During mealtimes and chores. When the guards make her.

Luckily, she hasn't been here long enough to be called upon again.

I already know I am before it happens. It's Wednesday morning, which only means one thing. Xavier shows up with his rifle, exhibiting his usual bully tactics. He yells at Hershel and another cabinmate named Isadora. Both Hershel and Isadora scramble to obey his order; they'll be working in the corn fields today.

Xavier pinches her ass on the way out.

I'm collected and sent up to the house.

"Mandy wants to see you. Then you'll be put on laundry."

I comply without giving any reaction. My legs move and I walk up toward the main house escorted by another guard, but I'm not present in the moment. I'm existing in my head only. Compartmentalization I learned even as a kid.

I got better at once it I came to Camp Hell. Once I was ‘saved' by the Saints. Now I can check out of anything.

Mandy blows smoke in my face, her lips stretching into a big smile that shows off her chipped front tooth. "There's my boy. Get to it."

She drops backward into her favorite armchair and kicks her legs up onto the armrests. Her robe falls open as her thighs do and her bare pussy glistens up at me. I haven't fully kneeled before she's digging thick fingers into my hair and shoving my face in between.

She groans and rocks against me as I'm buried in her pussy. I'm doing what she's requested—a tongue to work her inside and lick up juices.

I'm thinking about anything else.

I'm wondering about the storm that's migrating in and if the sky will be clouded over by afternoon. I'm imagining the cold drops of rain splattering onto my face as I stand outside the cabins.

Not the drops of cum on my tongue as Mandy cries out her release.

"The bed," she puffs. "C'mon, stallion."

The room fills with more of her bleats. She's shaking on her hands and knees as I give her what she's asked for. I grip her rolls of freckled skin and fuck her from behind. My dick's learned to dissociate too… for the most part.

When fulfilling a role for high-ranking women in the Chosen Saints, like Mandy, there's no other way. If you can't get hard, you're of no use. You don't last long once you've got no use.

"Yes, stallion!" she bleats, her pussy squelching from all the juices. "Yes, yes, yes! Fuck me good! OHHH!"

The whole house has to hear.

Mandy loves when they do. For everybody in the Chosen Saints to know I'm her favorite.

Her stallion.

I'm dripping sweat by the end. She rolls over lazily, smiling up at me, then pulls me down for a kiss. Her breath reeks of cigarettes, and she lets her nails drag appreciatively over my skin.

"You never let me down," she hums. "Now, on about your way."

I get up off the bed and walk toward the chair where my tattered clothes lay.

It's the first time I'm aware we're not alone—the Leader stands in the doorway, leaning against the frame, his arms folded.

I stop where I am. Everybody knows the Leader's married to Mandy. She was his first wife. She's high-ranking, but she still belongs to him. As do all the women in this place.

For a second, he looks me up and down and I stand naked as the day I was born, waiting out the moment. There's no such thing as free movement in this house.

"What a show," he says finally, giving a nod. "It is no wonder Mandy's always calling on your service."

I'm finally present enough for a real reaction. Heated by blood in my veins and the muscles that clench. Compliant as I am, I'll never stop fighting. I'll never let him win.

"I have things to do," I say. "You're going to need to move out of the way."

The Leader's icy eyes light up. "Of course, Believer Logan. Do what you have been instructed to do."

I slide into the workman's pants and hole-riddled t-shirt that are the only clothes I have and stride past him.

Something tells me he watches me on my walk out.

The rest of the morning, I'm under the close surveillance of Brody and another guard named Amos. We're at the back house, far across the property, using the industrial-sized washing machines and dryers .

Doing laundry for dozens of members in the family takes hours.

There are sheets, blankets, towels, clothes to launder.

Brody and Amos watch on from lawn chairs as I haul out bag after bag of laundry and toss it into the pickup truck.

"Faster, boy!" Amos barks, then laughs.

My muscles ache as I sling another bag of blankets over my shoulders and carry four others. It's backbreaking, sweat-inducing work that would go smoother with more people.

But that would be too easy.

And the guards always get a kick out of pushing me to the limit. Most of them are forced to hear Mandy's cries when I pleasure her. Her screams about how satisfied she is. It's created some kind of unspoken resentment between me and the other men in power here.

I'm hauling one of the last bags when I notice the other believers in the distance. Those that have been sent to pick berries and apples from the fruit field. Teysha's among them.

The basket's limp at her side as she wanders like someone too dead to be alive. Her expression's dark and unreadable, her movements sluggish. A strong gust of wind would knock her over.

When a breeze does come through and blows the strap of her tattered potato sack of a dress down, she doesn't bother fixing it. She doesn't bother with anything. Even picking the fruits she should.

The whistle sounds and one of the guards comes over to check their bounty.

"What's this?" he yells at her. "You had an hour and you bring me two? "

SMACK!

His hand crashes down across her cheek and she tumbles to the ground. The basket flies out of her hand, where it lands on its side next to her. Two measly pieces of fruit tumble out and roll away.

An immediate current of rage rushes me. The laundry bag drops from my shoulder and my fists curl. I take a step forward despite the fact that I'm ten yards away.

"Hey, boy!" calls Amos. "Didn't I say hurry the fuck up?"

I'm caught between blinding anger and the sense to move on. It's like standing on the border of two worlds. Two versions of myself.

I stare at the scene far away, where the guard kicks at a collapsed Teysha and grabs a fistful of her hair to yank back her head and scream in her face, and I feel the anger shake in my bones. The dissent that spreads so fast it's taken over me many times before. All the times I've pushed back against the system.

All the times I've gotten my ass knocked right back down.

But I got up.

I always get up.

Teysha does too—she wobbles to her feet and collects her basket and two pieces of fruit. The guard shoves her some more to get her going.

I breathe what feels like fire. I talk myself off the ledge. Remind myself now's not the time.

Now wouldn't make a difference. I can't change anything.

Yet.

"Boy, this is the last time we're telling you!" snaps Amos. He thrusts a finger at the pickup truck. "Hurry the fuck up!"

The violent screams go mute. The urges melt away. I unclench my fists and pick up the bag of blankets and take them to the truck like I'm told.

Not now. But soon.

"You were right," Hershel says, looking over to me. "A storm's coming."

I grunt in answer, wiping down my workman boots with a rag.

The cabin's lit only by the melted wax candle perched on the windowsill. Shadows cover the rest of the confined space. Several of the others have already crawled into their bunkbeds for the night; it's easier to go to sleep on empty stomachs than stay awake through the evening.

No supper for us tonight.

Not unusual. But no less cruel.

"I wonder if the storm'll make them cancel the celebration," Hershel goes on when I say nothing. He strokes his overgrown beard that resembles a white cloud more than anything. "It could get real nasty for a few days."

Though Hershel's just looking for conversation, I can't bring myself to answer.

My mind's still on earlier. The laundry's been long done. The other chores have been finished up. All believers have been returned to their cabins.

Yet I'm stuck on what I'd witnessed. I'm witnessing more of it as Teysha crawls onto her bottom bunk. Her cheek's swelled up from the hit she took. Her knees are bruised from spending so long bending over in dirt, picking fruit from bushes.

Neither seem to register. Just like the strap of her dress being down hadn't.

She's compartmentalizing, clutching her gold cross pendant and muttering words.

Prayers.

She's not really here right now.

When Grace and I first got married, I was bitter and angry. I still hadn't learned the dynamics of the Chosen Saints. The first few months we were married, we kept our distance. The only time we were together was when we had to perform our marital duty. Usually at the whim of the Leader.

But after a while, some attachment formed. Our marriage had not happened out of love or a desire to spend our lives together. It had been forced under the guise of the Chosen Saints. We were stuck with each other.

We learned to make that enough. We became each other's sanity check.

As fucked up as it is to admit, I could find a crumb of pleasure after that. In the things we were forced to do, I could pretend it was good. I could enjoy Grace and feel no guilt. Come to hate myself less for what I was doing to her. Blame myself less for letting it happen.

The bright spot we found together wasn't enough for Grace.

It couldn't erase the rest of the darkness. It couldn't save her from the nights she was called to the Leader's quarters.

She was found one morning hanging from the tree outside our cabin, a belt wrapped around her neck.

I've wondered if it could've been different. If maybe there was something I could've done. I should've got in when the Leader called her into his bedroom. I shouldn't've pretended I couldn't hear Brody when he came looking for her in the middle of the night.

Would any of it have mattered?

The questions are still turning in my head when I set aside my workman boots and toss my rag. Hershel interrupts himself in the middle of his sentence as he watches me get up and walk over to the bunk where Teysha's sitting.

She takes her time acknowledging me. Her eyes are cast to the floor. Her ample chest shakes from the deep breath she draws in then releases.

Up close, I notice what I hadn't before—the tiny cut at the corner of her lip and the hints of purple blended into the bruise on her cheek. Her dress is torn and tattered and her nails caked with dirt. She looks like hell like the rest of us.

Except for the gold cross hanging around her neck. Bright and intact more than anything else in the room.

I swallow against the stiffness in my throat and ask, "You alright?"

Her bottom lip quivers and the next breath she takes in sounds torn. She's trying her hardest not to cry.

"Hey," I say. My fingers slip under her chin and tip her head up. "You alright?"

Tears blur her vision. "Y-ye… ye-yes."

"It's going to be alright," I say. "You've just got to count the days."

"For… what?"

"For when we get out of here. You'll escape with me."

I drop my hand from her chin and then return to wiping down my boots. I pick up the rag I've been using and then feel her stare from across the room. The bloodied corner of Teysha's mouth quirks before it's gone. The quickest, smallest hint of a smile I've ever seen.

But damn it. I'll take it.

"What a joyous occasion!" Saint Crystal cries out at the dinner table. She clasps her hands together, eyes shining with tears. "I am grateful for the love our Leader gives us."

The others nod their heads and sip their wine. Those who are allowed seats at the main table.

The rest of us sit in chairs on the outskirts of the room. We've been given paper plates of a single slice of deli ham and American cheese. Otherwise known as the closest thing to a meal most of us have had in forty-eight hours.

But it wouldn't be captivity if we weren't kept down in different ways.

Sometimes that's physical beatings. Other times it's starvation or isolation. It's backbreaking labor and squalid living conditions. It's everything at once.

I got used to the idea my clothes would always hang off me here a long time ago. And though I'm still a man of intimidating stature, I've lost half the power I once had.

Whittled down to the point of going invisible.

It's what we're subjected to as we wipe clean our paper plates. We obediently watch the Leader and his Saints enjoy a long, gut-busting meal. The smells of garlic and butter linger in the air, clawing away at the barren insides of my stomach.

It's past the point of gurgling.

Teysha's on my right. She's hardly touched her ham and cheese. Her eyes have filled with tears again as she stares ahead at the dinner table. The ceremonial aspect of these dinners seem to bother her most.

Some disturbance to her spirit.

I grit my teeth and turn my head straight too. We're in the front row, and the Leader has been in a mood all day. Several of the Saints, like Crystal, have picked up on it and decided to shower him with praise. Nobody wants to be the one he takes his frustrations out on.

He swirls the wine in his glass, his eyelids low. "Yes, well… you should all be inherently grateful you have been blessed to be part of my family. I have welcomed you with open arms despite your flaws."

Teysha sniffles, then wipes her face with the back of her hand.

"Shhh," I hush.

But her tears can't be turned off. A few more roll down her cheeks, and she presses her lips together to keep from making a sound.

The main table falls silent as the Leader glances into the audience of believers. He picks us out at once, his icy glare landing right on us.

"Believer Logan, do you and your wife have something to say? Would you like to participate in tonight's dinner?"

I shake my head. "We're watching as requested."

A couple of the Saints hiss their disapproval from the table. They don't like my tone or lack of deference to their master.

The Leader grins. "Interesting you say that, Believer Logan. Because I have an idea how to change that. It is time we have some entertainment for the festivities. What better form of entertainment than to watch the beautiful act that takes place between a loving husband and his bride? "

My jaw clenches and I glare at him, barely holding myself back.

"Believer Logan," he says in his slow, arrogant voice. "Up to the table. You and your lovely, tearful wife. Bend her over and then take her."