“What the hell is this!” he yelled. “This isn’t marinara! Who serves spaghetti and meatballs with Alfredo sauce? Are we all just going to live like animals from here on out?”
We were all awkwardly silent. I stared at the floor, but I knew everyone else stared at me.
“It doesn’t even look like Alfredo sauce. It looks like you warmed over whatever Antigone threw up before we gave her away!” He looked at us all. “I demand to know who’s responsible.”
Everyone stared at me, so I figured I’d spare us all the building awkwardness and stepped forward.
“That would be me,” I said. “I brought you this.”
“Why would you bring this to me?” he asked. “I have a mind that has carefully been honed and sharpened for a greater existence, and you give me swill only good for rustic hill people to sup on.”
“It was a mistake,” I said. Someone jabbed me in the side and muttered something unintelligible. “Won’t happen again.”
The person on the other side of me jabbed me on the other side and muttered something just as unintelligible. Meanwhile, Darren stared at me with steely eyes.
“But what about right now?” he asked. “What do I do with this?”
“Perhaps you’d like to wait for me to whip up something in the kitchen,” I said.
There was a collective groan from everyone in the room.
“I don’t know the rules here,” I muttered.
“You’re a silly girl, aren’t you?” he asked.
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “It’s tough times, and I didn’t ask to be here.”
There was a gasp that went up. Everyone stared at me with eyes wide in horror.
“Do you not want to be here?” he asked. “Is there somewhere better for you to go?”
“No,” I said. “This is fine for now. I’m not complaining.”
His nostrils flared, and all I wanted was to appease him so I wouldn’t die in some horrible way.
“For now?” he asked. “For now?” He stood, paced and then waved his arms around. “This is all there is forever. You are standing on the edge of evolution, and you treat it like the waiting room for some free clinic on the bad side of town. You’re a silly girl, and you have no allegiances to anything, which makes you half-dead already.” He pointed to his dinner in front of him. “I am going into the other room to work on my manifesto. When I come back, I need to have a better dinner in front of me, not this this peasant shit.”
He exited the room. The minute he was gone, the rest of his disciples fell over themselves to get the offending bowl out of the room. Starshine marched up into my face.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “He’s very angry with you, which means he’s going to punish you.”
Tigerlily started to cry, high-pitched sobs that the others tried to quiet by putting their hands over her face.
“It was her fault! He’s going to come after me, but it was all her fault! She wants us to fail! She wants us to fail! Probably works for Batman!”
“Who is this Batman? Can anyone answer that?” I shook my head at Tatiana. “We couldn’t find anything. I asked her what she thought and she just talked about working at the Circle K.”
“She doesn’t like talking about that. Why would you do that?”
“I didn’t—”
“She’s a crazy bitch!” Tigerlily yelled. “Throw her out! She’s garbage! She’s going to mess everything up!”
“Get her out of here!” Tatiana yelled with such force it startled everyone into submission.
She ushered me into another room where I could still hear Tigerlily’s hysterics.
“Listen to me, “Tatiana said. “There’s a lot of BS that goes on here, but if you want to save your life and not turn into a meatball slathered in Alfredo, you play by the rules, you talk the jargon and pretend like your drinking the Kool-Aid. I don’t know when this is all going to end, but at least you’ve got a support system that will protect you. So just follow my lead.”
“I don’t know if you know this, but I saw him kill my boyfriend,” I said. “He ate him. He’s a monster.”
“Yes! We get it! You keep saying that over and over. You lost someone,” she said annoyed. “This is just the world we live in. Unless you’re willing to sacrifice your Judeo-Christian ethics, you’re going to be serving someone who does.”
“So this is where it all ends,” I said.
She shrugged. “Not a lot different from working at Mitchellwide, I’ll tell you that.”
She opened the door for me and made a gesture with her eyes.
“Let’s get this done, lovers!” she sang. ”Let us feed our Lord with the salt of the earth raised in holy unity with the food of the gods.”
As the door closed behind her, the rest of the followers made a unified “oooommmm” sound.
I don’t know what they served Darren, because I was locked in a broom closet, but what I can tell you is that it smelled delicious, which I hated myself for admitting. I knew full well it probably had a face, a name, a family and credit score at one time or the other.
He ate in silence and no one spoke for the duration, even when he got up to leave. I heard the chair scrape against the floor and the door shut. Then I heard dishes being cleared and footsteps approach the closet. I fully expected to see Tatiana, but instead it was one of the gunmen who’d brought me to the house in the first place.
“What’s happening—” I tried to speak, but instead I was just grabbed roughly and pushed into Darren’s presence.
We were in his library—and by library I mean a room that still had remnants of its former tenants. The wallpaper had baseballs and bats on it, there was a giant poster tacked up on the ceiling of a model in a bikini. I must have kept staring up at it because Darren cleared his throat at one point.
“It’s too high for anyone to get down,” he said. “You learn to ignore it.”
I nodded.
He sat at a desk, one that was small and clearly not made for adults. His chair was short and didn’t give him the authority he probably felt he should have, but I knew it was best not to bring it up.
“I took you in as a favor,” he said. “I believe in favors. I believe that in what you put in the universe comes back to you.”
I nodded.
“I also knew a woman’s loyalty and devotion is just as easily managed as a dog’s, but you have to acquire the right woman for that job. Your master assured me that you are easy to please and rarely put up a fight, so I was happy to take you in.”
“Damn you, Robert,” I muttered under my breath.
“Pardon?”
I furiously shook my head.
“I realize you are unfamiliar with the protocol that I lead my commune, so I will not dole out my usual punishment,” he said.
I nodded.
“But I will make sure you remember your mistakes,” he said.
He snapped his fingers, and his two gunmen grabbed and ushered me out of the room. The rest of the house watched as I was escorted out of the house and outside into the van.
“Guys,” I said. “Where are we going?”
They didn’t answer me, but they did drive me to a nearby park. There was still play equipment out, although badly damaged and hardly usable. From there, they dragged me to a tetherball pole, placed a collar and leash around my neck and tied me there.
“Wait, guys!” I said as I strained against the leash. “You can’t just leave me out here!”
Both gunmen walked away, but one of them stopped and watched me for a few moments. I reached out toward him.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” I said. “I could just spend the night in the van. It’d be our little secret.”