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Mason

Jolie stared back at me,mesmerizing green eyes fixed on mine. “Please stay,” she mouthed at me before darting up the hall and disappearing beyond a corner.

A hazy mix of desire and confusion loomed in my chest. While I was enamored with her beauty, I had no idea what the fuck was going on in this place.

When Jolie first saw me, she had an almost star-struck look on her face. Clearly, she remembered me, and I received solid evidence of that only seconds later when she gasped, ‘It’s you. It’s really you,’ before falling to the floor as if she was a subservient peon and I was her king.

When I pulled her to her feet so I could get a proper look at her, I let my eyes wander over her, still unable to believe I’d run right into her so soon after my invitation to the shelter. Her thick honey-blonde hair hung in two braids behind her back, and her eyes were fringed with naturally dark lashes, which made the sea-green color of her irises stand out even more.

While her beauty was exquisite, the thing I noticed the most about her was that she was clearly terrified of breaking the rules. Her hands shook the whole time she was with me, and her eyes constantly danced around as if she were afraid another person might walk in and catch us together at any moment.

Despite her palpable fear and the long, loose dress she wore, I was still drawn to her like a moth to a flame. The fabric of the dress might be thick and drab in color, but it did nothing to hide her sensual curves. It simply wasn’t possible for a woman with a face and body like that to hide herself. Men would always take one look at her and picture what lay beneath before imagining what it would be like to strip away the modest garb and reveal every gorgeous line and curve.

I was no different.

I longed to feel her pale skin beneath my hands, and I longed to bring light to those troubled, fearful eyes of hers. My cock hardened and strained against my pants at the heady thought of peeling back every layer until I had her at my fingertips, trembling and vulnerable yet eager to learn what passionate men could do to girls like her.

But first things first. I needed to know exactly what the fuck was going on here.

I knew this place was weird and old-fashioned before I arrived, but since I stepped into the shelter with Jacob, I’d been simultaneously astounded and horrified by what I saw. This wasn’t just your regular ‘living off the land and honoring the old ways’ type of commune.

For one, the living conditions the women had to endure were nothing short of archaic and torturous. Jacob had taken me through the men’s quarters, which were wide and bright and filled with artwork and marble tiles, but I’d caught glimpses of the female section when Jolie led me through the labyrinthine halls after she agreed to speak with me.

While the men’s section was well-lit by the golden glow of lightbulbs in chandeliers and sconces on the ceiling and walls, the women’s section was dark and musty, lit only by black candles stuck in cast iron holders along the dark concrete walls. The floors were the same—dark gray concrete, lying in sharp contrast to the expensive marble tiles and polished dark wooden floorboards the men enjoyed.

We’d passed one room which seemed to be some sort of laundry room, and I’d spied great big tubs with washboards sitting in them. Fuckin’ washboards. Like this was the nineteenth century or something. I could only imagine what the kitchen and bathrooms were like. Or the bedrooms.

The most alarming thing I saw on my way through the halls with Jolie was a dim room with what appeared to be chains, manacles and whips hanging off the walls. We walked by too fast to see exactly what it was, but I could only assume it was some sort of punishment dungeon. Why else would something like that be down here?

I also heard cries and what sounded like whip-cracks coming from another room right next to that one. This room had a painted red door with an enormous lock on it. The thought of Jolie or the other women being subjected to any sort of abuse made my stomach churn. I hoped I’d simply misheard, but fuck… I couldn’t be sure.

The subservient way Jolie spoke to me and acted around me further confirmed my theory that something really fucked up was going on down here. I’d never felt so goddamned uneasy around a woman before, because she was so clearly afraid of displeasing me.

Like a lot of men, I enjoyed submission from women in the bedroom, but this was something different entirely. These women were submissive in every area of their lives. They acted like they existed only to serve men, and they seemed more than happy to do so.

I was starting to get an idea as to why, though. When Jolie led me into the stone room with all the weird movie stills, a few pieces of the giant jigsaw puzzle fell into place. She seemed to think all the pictures on the wall were fucking real. Even the shots taken directly from Independence Day, which was a goddamned alien invasion movie.

Before that, she’d also acted shocked to see me, which I initially attributed to the fact that we hadn’t seen each other in over eleven years. But then she kept saying weird shit like ‘I can’t believe you’re alive’ and ‘I thought New York was impossible to live in’. At first I figured she was just wording things strangely… but then she made it clear she believed something had actually happened beyond New Eden Ranch.

Something terrible.

Something apocalyptic.

After coupling that with the abject terror I saw in her eyes when her father caught us together, I began to form a picture in my mind. A sinister tapestry woven with dark threads of deceit.

What if the men here had convinced all the women that some sort of cataclysmic event had happened outside? That would explain that weird room with the ‘photos’ and would also explain why the women never left the shelter. They were too frightened, probably believing the world was some sort of barren dustbowl by now. They’d probably also been told that they must follow all the rules the men had invented for them down here or else they’d be cast out into the toxic wastelands, or some other such shit.

No doubt the men had also fed them a giant pack of lies to explain why they were able to go outside whenever they wanted. I had no idea what they’d said, exactly, but it seemed possible that the women would swallow it, considering they were all babies, toddlers or children when New Eden was built. They’d been raised to believe whatever they were told without question.

How convenient that the church had lost every single older female member not long before the commune formed, along with all the teenagers, male and female. Pretty much anyone in the Path of the Covenant church who was old and wise enough to turn around and say ‘No, this is all bullshit, what the fuck are you doing?’ to the men who’d decided to create this place was no longer around to do so because of the terrorist attack on the church.

Surely that was no coincidence.

Either the men had decided to take full advantage of a random attack, exploiting the young survivors with lies in order to build their new society exactly the way they wanted it with men on top and women below (literally as well as figuratively), or they’d engineered the attack themselves to get rid of any likely dissenters in those early days.

Both options were horrifying.

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