“Where are you, Mommy?” I ask, my voice floating around an empty room.
She’s been missing since yesterday, soon after dinner. Daddy called a meeting for all of his mistresses, and she hasn’t come back yet.
The anxiety started when I saw some of the other women make their way back to their rooms, dried tear streaks on their cheeks. When Mommy didn’t return with them, fear bloomed in the pit of my stomach and has only grown larger as the hours pass by.
I’m curled up in a ball, my stomach aching from the concern for Mommy.
This is all my fault.
If I had just listened to Daddy, Mommy wouldn’t be wherever she is. Probably in pain. Alone. Scared for her life. I nearly choke on the next thought.
Dead.
What if he killed her?
Would Daddy really do something like that—murder an innocent woman in cold blood?
Yes. That little voice in my head whispers, deepening my ever-growing terror.
I didn’t want to lead those young girls to what would certainly traumatize them. They’re new to the Church. Their parents joined, and were all too happy to pleasure Daddy. Do things to him that I’ve never read about in the Bible.
I didn’t want to see those girls, not much younger than me, end up as mothers. Just like Mommy did with me and my siblings. I was Mommy’s first born. She had let it slip before that she was only eleven years old.
At the time, I didn’t understand the gravity of that information. The second it left her mouth, her eyes widened, and her face paled to a sickly gray color. She snapped at me to never repeat that to anyone outside of the Church—not that I’m even allowed to leave the Church. She pinched my hand until I promised her, pure terror shining in her eyes.
Mommy gave birth to two more children before her body gave out and she was no longer able to bear children. Daddy said she has completed God’s mission, and now her life’s purpose is to help raise the children.
Daddy hasn’t been happy with how I’ve been raised for several years. Probably because I’m unhappy. The more I see, the more I want to run from this rotten place, where decay is soaked into the walls.
Flowers can’t survive in a place like this. I’ve already seen so many wilt beneath Daddy’s iron fist.
A sob wracks my throat. I slap a hand over my mouth to keep the sound in. No one can hear me cry. I keep my hand glued to my face as I rock back and forth, pinching my eyes shut as I try to keep the black thoughts from growing. The tears leak through anyways, but I don’t make another sound.
She’s okay. She’s okay. She has to be okay.
“Come back to me, Mommy,” I whisper into the pool of tears in my hand. “I can’t do this without you.”
Plumes of colorful smoke waft through the foyer as screams of terror ring out, filling the room with shades of greens, purples and reds. Strobe lights flicker, inducing a terrifying effect as monsters chase after guests. They look like creatures flickering in and out of portals from Hell, their bodies being pulled back and forth between the human realm and their true home. Giggles, screams and stomping footsteps follow soon after.
They run from monsters as if they have anywhere to hide.
I linger behind the walls on the bottom floor where a group of four enters the house. I watch them closely through the peepholes, inhaling their essence.
A garden of flowers. Sweet, innocent, pure.
I smile, watching them scream their heads off and push into each other, trying to escape from the monsters chasing after them. One doll carries a kitchen knife in her hand, fake blood dripping off the sharpened point as she slowly stalks after the girls. They’ll run from the doll, but they won’t be able to escape her.
I let the group of girls move on, staying in my spot and await the next group. The first group of five that came before the four girls are on their way out. While not every single person from the first group smelled like fresh flowers, they didn’t reek of evil, either.
The second the first group leaves, the door opens, and six people stumble in. Two men and four girls. The girls are already hunched together, hanging on each other’s arms with their hands linked so tightly, their knuckles are bleached white. Nervous gig
gles emanating from their pretty mouths. The two guys behind them are attempting to act macho, though I can see the whites of their shifty eyes from here.
Satan’s Affair is a world-renowned fair for a reason. We are known to have the scariest haunted houses in the country—short of the few places that allow their employees to lay hands on the guests, even going as far as torturing them.
Those haunted houses are classless. We don’t need to touch our guests in order to scare them half to death.
The hours pass by slowly. Groups of people coming in and out, their throats turning hoarse from screams. At one point, a girl peed her pants and had to walk out with a huge wet spot in her jeans. I wanted to rip a couple people’s throats out from laughing at the poor, embarrassed girl.