How the Cult Lady Broke Her Big Toe and Her Nose All on the Same Day

or the journal of a former cult member in 21 movements

April 14: Today Kim, Scott, and Jerry showed up. They were here a few days ago. Kim is now trying to make every visit. Crack squad hadn’t worked together before, Kim was yelling at everyone. Going over who was doing what.

Scott was on camera. Jerry on back-up camera. Kim did what she always did, just yell into my face. Didn’t want to deal with it today so I went inside. They tried knocking over and over, but heat got to them. Left after 45 minutes.

April 2: Jim Giles knocked on my door today. He was cordial, clearly the good cop. Kept telling me how much they missed me. “We miss you. Everyone back at the Commune needs you back. We aren’t the same without you.” True.

I told him it was over. Not coming back and that’s final. His lip got swingy. Jim started getting upset. Told me to watch out.

April 23: They wore t-shirts today. Multi color printed t-shirts. Probably cost them $15 bucks a piece and they were bright neon green. Had my face printed on it with a giant ‘X’ going through it. “Ferret busters” was printed above my face.

Didn’t get a great view. The dog was outside. Barking like mad. Has a hookworm infection so his top lip curls up showing his teeth. Looks scary, but he’s really just happy and excited.

They stood at the gate for 15 minutes. Couldn’t figure out how to get close. One of them just went back and sat in the shade by their car. Even members of a cult are subject to exhaustion. READ FULL STORY HERE

Unclaimed

            The old man sat on the edge of his bed, staring down at the white and blue linoleum. He had been staring at it for about two hours and now the imaginary ants had come out and started walking in patterns along the ragged blue streaks in the flooring. He tried to makes sense of their logic, but the path they took was erratic. He always liked to find the confused looking ones. These ants would pause shift their bodies to the left and right, bob their heads up and down, eventually figure out where they were and recommence their walking.

            Eventually he lifted his eyes and looked over his shoulder to the bed closest to the hallway. Two days previous, he pulled the curtain shut around the bed and tapped the curtain to the wall so it wouldn’t gape open. Even in his old age he was surprised he got this done without help, but he was paranoid and it needed to be done. Logically he knew that it was of no use but he kept thinking it might prevent the ghost from coming back. The idea to seal off the body squirmed its way into his mind earlier that day, or maybe it was the ants that marched the idea into his head.

            The body had been lying in the bed for close to three days. No one came to claim it and he wasn’t sure if the staff even knew. But maybe they did, they could have slipped him something into his food to force him to go to sleep so they could check on the body every night. He looked at his bedside table where a tub of pudding lay opened. The imagined ants twisted a nerve or synapse that caused him to shiver. READ FULL STORY HERE

The Destroying Angel: The Sequel

Jimmy Cartwright had been incarcerated for ten years. And he had no other prospect of exoneration since the only subsequent followups following his life sentence were dismissed appeals. Charged with the double homicide of his wife and daughter, he would “rot in his cell until the day he dies.” This was the recitation pretty much every true-crime TV special or streaming series used to punctuate the final moments of their piece. At least that’s what Jimmy was told about these shows.

Jimmy didn’t say much. He never did say much anyway before his trial, but in the fight for his life he was reticent. Neither vocally trying to save his hide nor saying anything that would implicate him. Mute. This was just the way his lawyer wanted it too; a gregarious attorney who sought to make sure the spotlight was always on him and not Jimmy. And the news cameras all obliged with obedience. The attorney was handsome, rich and spoke with an enchanting rhythm containing chimes of both a Vermont twang and a Virginian inflection. The case itself was not without salaciousness, even sans the winsome counsel, as it was only one of a couple dozen cases where a guilty sentence was pronounced without cadavers or partial remains. A landmark case with a lawyer who landed his mark with the media like he was campaigning for an Oscar.

But that felt like an existence ago. Jimmy settled into his new monotony, not caring about whether people speculated he was guilty or innocent. Then again, he didn’t care what people thought in the first place. The onus of the judicial system was too strong, which he knew, and the media needed him because of the mystery of it all, a crude verity which he knew as well. After appeals dried up, his hot-shot legal eagle stopped visiting, which was satisfactory to Jimmy. He never liked the pretty boy anyway. However, according to what guards told him, the media still consumed the cryptogram that was the case, since the bodies still had never appeared all these years later. Because of Jimmy’s inobrtusive nature, he wasn’t the type to give you a gut feeling about his guilt or innocence. Some men are clearly guilty just by the way they stand or the words they use on the stand. Reverse on that spectrum are individuals you can quickly sense are innocent from their tears or how they lose weight over the course of a trial. Those intrigued by the case could never figure out where to put Jimmy in the whole equation. It had a result or resolution but the calculus of it all still needed to be solved—worked backwards. Ultimately, more criminally-driven conundrums kept coming with the years and the interest in his case faded. READ FULL STORY HERE