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A dark cloud covers the sun for a moment. It seems appropriate since just looking at Nightshade has darkened our mood. Both Kim and I have heard the screams emanating from inside those walls at night. They try to tell us it’s coyotes, but we know better. Someone once said it was coming from the blue tents, that pleasure sounded a lot like pain, but we all but rolled our eyes at that one.
A roar comes from our right as Crazy Jim runs through, looking like a scraggly version of Santa Claus, if Santa was demon-possessed. Jim is the epitome of a homeless drunk, with a long scraggly beard, bloodshot eyes, every blood vessel is broken on his face, and he staggers and screams wherever he goes. Since there isn’t any liquor allowed on the premises, we think he has a roster of psychiatric illnesses starting with auditory and visual hallucinations. We’re guessing he’s somewhere in his sixties and will drop dead eventually. All of us will, seeing how undernourished we are.
Of course, he’s not the only one allowed to hallucinate around here.
My eyes drift back to those blue tents.
At first, Kim and I were intrigued by the idea of the polyamorous relationships that Paradise boasted of. But that’s when we thought we could pick and choose our poison. As it turns out, women are to be submissive to their husbands. And once we were inaugurated into Paradise, all men became our husbands, all women our sisters. In the beginning, we spent every night in those disgusting blue dungeons. We average three nights a week at best now, and even that is three nights too many.
Malcolm and Patty are smart, though. They sensed the disdain coming from the women early on. A little after we arrived, all those years ago, they introduced what they dubbed as the mood farm. Opposed from the actual farm, which has never produced anything decent, the mood farm is a hothouse that exclusively grows marijuana. You can smoke all you want, but it needs to be done in a blue tent with your lover for the night. There’s always a catch in Paradise.
“Here.” Kim pulls something from the pocket of her skirt and slides it my way. “A granola bar. I found a bunch at the bottom of a trash bag. Someone must have been clearing out their cupboards or backpack. It’s kind of smushed, but I’m sure it’s still good.”
“Oh my gosh, thank you,” I say, carefully slipping the silver-wrapped treasure into my pocket. Having food outside of the bounty tent is strictly forbidden. All of the food here at Paradise is provided via foragers like Kim, and then the so-called chefs turn their findings into something palatable—although the palatable part is yet to happen.
When asked, Malcolm and Patty will tell you that the food the foragers receive is from the abundance that the supermarkets can’t turn away.
Once, I heard Malcolm say that he had an in with a local restaurant supply store and that a lot of our food came from that vendor. But Kim assured me that both are bald-faced lies.
The foragers are nothing more than a group of us who go out nightly and scavenge the dumpsters behind every restaurant, grocery store, and even the garbage cans of tract homes as of late. Kim says the best finds have often come from the wealthier neighborhoods they’ve hit. The lead forager has access to three vans and they pile in like sardines each night to do their work. There are twenty foragers as of right now, and according to Kim, they’ve been sworn to secrecy on how they acquire the provisions for us. She says there was a ceremony and that it was bad, but she wouldn’t elaborate on the details. But I know how bad bad can be.
A part of our initiation here was to offer the supreme leader our pledge for life that we are willing to live and die for him and would never leave Paradise. We abandoned our friends and family, and Paradise quickly filled the void for us. A clean slate. A do-over at life. We were so eager to be here, so eager to please. At least in the beginning.
But it didn’t matter. They wanted collateral to prove that we wouldn’t run. A sex tape is made of each and every one of us. It’s a private issue between us and a small group of others—the videographer and the participants. Once the Judicial Court, consisting of Malcolm, Patty, and the always enigmatic supreme leader, has viewed the material and deemed it humiliating enough for the participants, we’re enabled to go on with the full seven sacraments of initiation.
I glance down at my torso where the scar of the final sacrament lies.
“Have you seen Jennifer?” Kim whispers, breaking my spell, and just like that, my heart begins to race for what lies ahead.
“I’m sure she’s out here somewhere. She’s probably with Missy and Annie.”
Jennifer is our best friend. We may not have grown up with her like we have with each other, but we trust her with our lives. She and I were pregnant at the same time and her daughter Missy is best friends with my Annie—or best sisters as they’re allowed to be called.
Last week, Jennifer was brutally raped and beaten. But because it happened inside the bounds of the blue tents, it never made it to the Judicial Court. Instead, it was deemed sacred.
As punishment for reporting it, Jennifer was to spend a honeymoon period of forty-eight hours with her attacker, a brute of a man named Archer.
It turns out, Archer has a penchant for rough sex that’s led more sisters to the infirmary than any other physical activity put together. And that was the final straw. We’ve let them take away our children, our bodies, and our will, but in the end they still didn’t have us—not the real us that we buried deep inside once we set foot on Paradise soil. After that horrific incident, the three of us banded together, like real sisters struggling for the next breath to survive.
The plan is that in just a few hours, Kim, Jennifer, and I will pick up our children and take off in the night. On foot. With no money, no food, no water. Thankfully, the Colorado nights have grown increasingly warmer. If we walk all night, we should stumble upon some sort of civilization, and then we’re counting on the milk of human kindness to take us all the way home—wherever that may be now.
Kim says a women’s shelter is our only hope. I say we head to the nearest sheriff’s station posthaste.
I glance over at those blue tents and glare at them as if they were Malcolm and Patty themselves.
Kim clutches onto my arm. “Here she comes.” Her voice spikes with glee as we spot Jennifer heading this way, her long dark hair blowing in the breeze exposing the purple welts still visible on her face. I once heard Malcolm instructing the men never to touch a woman’s face because it hides no secrets. He said a woman could be taught a lesson on the lower half and he aroused a laugh from them because of it.
“Jennifer,” I pant out her name with a smile and a wave. Her lavender dress is heavily stained and tattered on one side. Her lips are still misshapen from the beating. Jennifer was lured from Utah with promises of quantum success and enlightenment. And ironically, she looks like nothing but a shadow of her former self, successful at horror, enlightened by way of a man’s fist.
She’s been so dead inside after that horrible so-called honeymoon. It’s a wonder she can stand. Her legs are black and blue and her right ankle is the size of a water balloon.
“It’s here. It’s time,” I say just below a whisper as she comes in close.
“It is time,” she says with her eyes staring vacantly ahead.
I’m about to ask what’s the matter, what’s happened, when I spot Malcolm and Patty headed this way in her wake. And on their heels are three of Malcolm’s strongmen, all with stone-cold expressions that promise nothing but trouble.
My blood runs cold.
