Page 49 of Deathless
What’s Torr got to do with you?I demanded.
His mother was a failure.Her tone became disappointed.She was recruited too late and could not see the truth. She snuck away multiple times to see a man who was not one of our breeders. At our colony, she pretended to use the breeder but never did. When her pregnancy began showing, she led everyone to believe she had conceived in our way, the only approved way.
I thought back to what Torr had said about his early life. He barely remembered anything before he was twelve years old. If he did, he never mentioned it.
She went to be with her man to birth the child,the Dark Mother went on.Girl or boy, she would not have raised her child with us.
Good for her,I declared. Whoever Torr’s birth mother was, I was insanely proud of her in that moment. She probably couldn’t leave the cult voluntarily, but she did what she could to keep her baby safe.
I was a mere spark of consciousness back then, but I could see all. I knew what she did. The Dark Mother sounded spiteful.I let her think she could keep up her double life for ten years. As my power grew, I inspired my true daughters to interrogate her. They worked her over for hours, but the bitch didn’t crack. She was released just to use the bathroom, but she made a run for it. She hit one of my daughters with a crowbar and stole a car, then drove straight to her man and son.
And they evaded you.I couldn’t help the glee in my mental voice, the pride and pain I felt for Torr’s mother. How I wished I’d known her.For at least two more years, right?
Oh, I let them believe they did. Every so often I would ransack Rochelle’s mind and give her terrible nightmares. It was how I learned to perfect you as my vessel.
You’ve got a knack for that shit, I’ll give you that.
Eventually, she caught on that I was real, I was in her mind, and I would never let her escape me. So she talked her husband into leaving their son behind, because she was afraid of what I would do to him through her.
Smart woman,I thought.
I was not capable of taking a vessel at the time, and even if I had, I never would have chosen her.
I wanted to roll my eyes at how much this deity was sneering like a high school mean girl.
But I was capable of fucking up her mind, so that’s what I did.
I hesitated before asking.Is she still alive?
Wandering the streets of Blakemore with extremely advanced dementia at only 52 years old, but yes.
If only I could close my eyes to squeeze out some tears. If only I could hit something, feel the ache in my chest that I knew was there, scream until I felt a satisfying, painful rawness in my throat.
You’re so fucking cruel,I said with despair.How can you really believe you’re making a better world?
Because I’m rooting out true evil and everything that enables it.
She just wanted to keep her son safe!
And let him grow up in a world where he can take what he wants without consequence, simply because he’s a man. She would enable him, no matter what he did, because he’s her little prince who can do no wrong. Sound familiar?
The need to cry and scream was building up inside me with no outlet. Yelling inside my own head was nothing like being able to use my body to express my rage. There was no catharsis, no way to process all this emotion. I was stuck in an endless loop, tied up and shut away while someone else took the wheel.
Men can live alongside women one day.The deity said it like she was conceding a point to me in a debate.But that day is centuries from now, when all of their current programming is long removed. Their violence and oppression will be long forgotten, and they will revere women as the divine beings we are. Only then can we permit men to exist with us.
I didn’t know why I even bothered to argue. This being didn’t care, didn’t see reason or ethics at all. She talked about thedivinity of women while puppetting my body, while telling me about how she tortured a woman to the point of dementia. She called infanticide a test and a lesson.
Nothing to say?the Dark Mother taunted me.Good. I was waiting for you to be quiet. The less you think, the faster this goes.
Faster what goes?
The binding of myself to this vessel. The longer I’m in this body, the more your physiology adapts to my being here. Your skin, bones, and blood will become my permanent home.
And what happens to me?
Oh, you’re coming along for the ride, Aurora,she informed me gleefully.I could shut you down and end this swiftly for you. But I enjoy your amusing little head noises too much. For as long as you’re with me, you will bear witness to my new world. You will be deathless.
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