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“Your view of men is interesting, little one. You make us sound like we’ll turn into pumpkins if we don’t get laid by midnight.” He chuckles. “You do realize sex isn’t like food or air. We can survive without it, and most of us have for long stretches of time, including the last two years.”
“You might be able to survive, but if there’s a woman around, and she’s not, you know, doing that for you, you’ll start to resent her.” Leon constantly told me he had needs and it was my job as the only woman around to meet them. I get that the men here aren’t Leon. I do. But I also see how…sexy they all are in their own ways. They’re all men who have had plenty of sex and would surely like plenty more. If I don’t give that to them, it’ll cause problems. I know it will.
“If any of us chooses to resent you, little one, that’s on us. That’souragency. It doesn’t change your agency. You always get to say ‘No.’ You always get to put your needs first. That’s part of what it means to be human.Yourchoice always trumps everything else.”
“Even my choice about having children?” I’msonot ready for that. I’m only twenty. I should be a sophomore in college.
“Especiallyyour choice about having children.”
I shake my head. “No. It’s not my choice. Not when the survival of a species depends on it.”
“Still your choice,” Rev says. “Always your choice.”
I bug out my eyes at him. Is he being dense on purpose? “How can you say that? Don’t you want humanity to go on?”
He strokes his goatee. “I do. I truly do. But, Cora, this is the power you have, and it’s a power none of us here will ever take from you. Whether humanity goes on or not, that doesn’t affect your agency. It doesn’t nullify your choice. Don’t you see? Your agency is sacred. It’s power.You,and youalonehave the power to be the gatekeeper for the future of mankind. If you say nay, that’s the end of that.”
For a long time, I stare at him. I stare so long the kerosene in the lamp runs out. Darkness closes around us, but it’s not the darkness I’m used to fearing. It’s a thoughtful, safe darkness.
The things Rev is saying, they feel like a revelation. As I consider them, my thinking begins shifting like a bowling ball on the return when you’re turning it, looking for the holes.
Having agency means I’m the only one who gets to make choices forme.It’s something I used to believe, used to even take for granted, because I had a good family who let me make choices and who taught me that I had a voice. But for so long, I didn’t have a voice. I didn’t have a choice.
I forgot my agency.
Rev rolls to his side so we’re lying face to face, and he holds me close. I drag in his scent of mint and Earl Grey. “It’s late, little one. Go to sleep.”
Fat chance of that. He’s given me so much to think about I doubt I’ll sleep a wink. But I embrace the quiet darkness. I use it as a canvass for my thoughts.
“Rev?” I say after a while.
“What is it, little one?” His voice is sleepy and soft.
I correct myself. “I mean, Daddy?”
His chuckle is a velvet rumble. “Yes, baby?”
“Did you have agency? When you did the bad things? Or did the demon steal it from you?”
“Mm. That’s a good question. The answer—it’s not a nice one. We both had agency. The demon had control of me, but I was the one who gave it control.” He rubs my arm. I would say I can’t imagine a man so quiet and patient doing the awful things that put him in prison, but that would be a lie. Icanimagine him being bad. But now he’s good, and that’s all that matters to me.
“Do you think,” I ask in the darkness, “since the Working chose you to survive? Do you think that means it…forgave you…for the bad things?” I hold my breath waiting for his answer, because I did a bad thing, too. I killed Matthew. And I didn’t have any excuse as bad as a demon inside me.
“Honestly? I don’t know if the Working is in the business of forgiveness. But I’ll tell you what, little one. When I walked away from Big Mac, I didn’t look back. Not once. You know why? Because I paid my debt.” His fingers glide to my scarred upper back. “Did you know that if you were an angel, this is where you wings would be?” He kisses my forehead while his fingers do something they haven’t done before. They feel my scars as if they’re reading Braille. “These marks prove you’ve paid your debt.” His voice does that thing where each word holds significance. “You’ll carry them your whole life, and in this way, you’ll atone for what you had to do. And they’ll remind you that you shouldn’t look back, either. Only forward.”
He knows.
Of course, he knows. He’s the Reverend. And he’s my daddy. And I’ll take his advice and only look forward.
Chapter 17
Rev
I wake beforemy little one. I don’t know if it’s my age or something else, but since leaving Big Mac, I haven’t needed more than a few hours of shut-eye each night. If I stay in bed six hours, I spend a good half of it with my eyes closed just waiting for the Working to show me things. Usually, it does. Little blips of Knowing will come to me in pictures and ideas, doled out like sunflower seeds thrown to a sparrow one at a time until, after many nights, I begin to feel full. If I’m patient, and if I let the Knowing come without forcing it, I can piece things together and find meaning in the seeds.
So it goes Sunday morning as the dawn creeps through the curtains and nudges the darkness out of Cora’s little bedroom. The room may be little, but the bed is big. Big enough for more than one man to care for her in the night. I try to shut down the fantasy of occupying this bed with my two little ones, showing them how to pleasure each other until they pass out from exhaustion. But the fantasy isn’t coming from me. It’s coming from the Working, and it won’t let up. And it’s not just Scrap enjoying Cora with me in my fantasies.
It shows me our girl on my lap in the common room, riding me while I guide her hips. Scrap suckles one of her nipples while Brawn enjoys her mouth on his fat cock. No longer will our resident giant have to stroke himself raw where we all can see him to fulfill his exhibitionist streak. He can jet his cannon between Cora’s sweet lips while she comes on my cock, and when it happens, the others will cheer, not in a bawdy way, but with groans of pleasure and dirty words of praise, and Brawn will know a kind of satisfaction he’s never had before. It shows me Grim on top of her on the sagging couch by the fireplace. Using every muscle in his thick, pale, Ukrainian body, he plows into the sweetest, purest pussy imaginable. His hands grip her ass, pulling her into his thrusts, and a family man who hasn’t known any kind of touch, let alone a loving touch, in years will finally know what it is to make love to an angel. When they find completion in each other’s arms, again, the rest of us will cheer in our lust-dazed way. It shows me Shep in the kitchen, framed by the pass-through window, banding Cora to him with one strong arm while he thrusts into her from behind. She’s moaning while she reaches for Doc’s hard dick. She needs it in her mouth like she needs air, and he happily obliges. When they all come, again, we all cheer.
