Page 43 of The Cult

In the darkness, I see a light flicker on in the cabin directly in front of me where I’ll serve my two hours. No doubt, Harker is preparing the box for me. I look around one last time before I make my way up the five steps to the front door, still confused why there’s no one here to make sure I do as I must.

That’s the thing, though, isn’t it? I’ve always been a good solider, the kind of group member who doesn’t deviate from what I know is right for myself and the rest of The Golden Light. So, of course, Micah doesn’t think he needs to rouse anyone from their cozy bed to escort me to the box.

But what does it say about me that I’ve not only agreed to help Lara but also lied to the one person I’ve believed in and trusted above all others long before she arrived the other day? If Micah had even a hint about all of that, he’d know although I appear to be the same Nash I’ve always been since he saved me that night, something’s changed in me.

I stop at the front door of the cabin and look down at the doorknob barely visible in the darkness of the night. I’ve only experienced the box once before when I got into it with one of Nadine’s men. That time I needed to be punished for pride. Now I’m being punished for what appears to be a wrongdoing.

As I walk inside and see Harker, I know that’s not the truth. I’m being punished for going against everything I believe in. Micah may not know that, but I do, and two hours isn’t enough to pay for my sins.

“Where’s your guard?” Harker asks as he waves me toward the six foot by six foot metal container at the back of the building.

I shake my head as I wonder if the man in charge of enforcing punishments for The Golden Light has lost weight. Always a thin man, he looks emaciated now.

“None needed. I know what I have to do.”

He nods, and I see the skin around his chin dangle like it doesn’t want to stay connected to his bones. It reminds me of that movie where a monster was wearing a man’s skin. They called it a meat suit, I think.

Best not to think of anything like that as I go to spend two hours sealed in the box. The mind has a terrible way of taking a thought like that meat suit one and running with it. And two hours is a long time to be stuck with something like that filling your head.

“Two hours, Nash. Anything you want me to know before I lock you in?” Harker asks and then chuckles.

I shrug, not understanding the joke. He’s always been an odd guy, but I’m thinking having to punish people all the time might be getting to him. He’s forced to sit in this place every hour, day and night. He’s brought his meals, and he sleeps in a back room just feet away from where people scream out in agony when the darkness and silence of the box become too much for them. That has to affect a person.

“Okay. Then see you in two hours,” he says without a hint of care for what I’m about to go through. “Have a good time.”

He jerks the steel handle on the door and opens the box for me to walk in. The stench of urine hits my nose immediately, but I don’t hesitate to keep moving toward the center of the container. Maybe he should focus more on cleaning this thing instead of making lame jokes. It can’t be that hard to hose the place down every so often.

The faint hint of shit passes by my nose for the briefest second before I turn my head to look back at the door as he slams it shut. For a long moment, I stand perfectly still in the complete darkness, but then I hear the bolt slam across the metal beneath it, locking me in. The memory of how terrified that simple sound made me the last time I was in here flashes through my mind, but I push it out, replacing it with a thought I’ve used since I was a kid and something bad happened.

Me sitting on the front steps of my childhood house watching the sun set with my father. He called them the stoop, and he took great pride in those red brick steps leading up to the brick porch. Whenever he sat with me there, he’d pat the bricks and smile. “It took me three weeks to build this, and it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

That time I use whenever I need to distract myself included the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen. The reds and yellows mixing together to form the most perfect orange color no human could ever reproduce and the purples that joined in just before dusk rolled in made me happy. It was the kind of happy that just thinking about it can get you through anything bad that happens in your life.

I concentrate on that memory as my stomach wants to purge my dinner because of the smell of urine all around me. It threatens to ruin my beautiful sunset thought, but I won’t let that happen. I don’t blame the people who couldn’t help but piss themselves in here. This place is scary. It’s dark, and many people fear darkness, but worse, it’s just you in here, and the mind can play some pretty nasty tricks when there’s nothing but the blackness of this box to occupy your thoughts.

My father’s boasting about his work on the brick porch and steps echoes in my head, an amusing reminder of a time long gone from my life. We left that house a few years later when he died and my mother couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage and feed three children plus herself. The apartment we moved to had none of the sweetness of that house, and I quickly try to stop myself from thinking of what our lives turned into in that place.

But it’s no use.

She went from a happy wife and mother to a depressed single woman with three kids to take care of, morphing into an alcoholic by the time I was twelve. My two younger sisters and I survived the best we could, but that’s all about we could do.

Survive.

Not thrive like our teachers kept telling us was important for children. No, we barely got by, eating as little as possible so we could hopefully have more for a future meal. My mother couldn’t care for us. Hell, she couldn’t even care for herself, so how could she do it for three kids who seemed to need so much?

Without my father, our lives descended into hell of poverty and sadness. Every day was filled with want. We wanted more to eat. We wanted clean clothes that the kids at school wouldn’t make fun of. We wanted a mother who could pay attention to us.

We wanted all of that and more, but we didn’t get any of it. What we got was growing up faster than we should have. What we got was a parent who barely noticed we were even in the same room with her most days.

I shake my head to make those memories disappear, but this is what the box does. I try so hard to bring that moment back with my father, those brick steps, and that incredible sunset, but the image of my mother sitting on that secondhand brown and yellow couch stained with piss and shit from when she was too drunk to even manage getting up to go to the toilet fills my head.

She was barely recognizable by that time after nearly a year of drinking herself into oblivion every damn day. Her beautiful brown hair that I loved to touch because it was so soft turned into a dry, gray, tangled mess that framed the face of a stranger. Gone was the sparkle in her green eyes that my father used to say reminded him of a cat’s. In its place, a gloom settled in, joined by dark circles that made her look so old.

The woman I knew disappeared when he died, and a shell of a human being came into our lives. Hollow and unable to care for anyone, including herself, she let her misery dim that sweetness in her until all she became was an angry stranger who resented the entire world, including us.

As I wallow in those terrible thoughts, questions creep into my mind. Is she still alive? Or has the booze killed her? She was barely hanging on the last time I saw her, and that was years ago. Still planted on that awful couch, she pointed her bony finger at me and cursed me out for wanting to leave to find a place of my own. “You’re an ungrateful bastard, Nash!” she screamed.

I left that day without saying goodbye, so angry she couldn’t be happy for me and want me to succeed in this world. My sisters couldn’t come with me, but I hoped they’d be safe and they’d learned enough in the years I was there that they could survive.

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