THE SEX REBEL OF JESUSLAND, mini-chapter 80

80. ANOTHER VIDEO

This time the Brotherhood video had no words. Joshua Grant’s hands were tied behind his back. He sat facing the camera on a chair.

Four men in woolly black masks took turns slugging him in the face. One of them had to hold him up, because most of the blows knocked him and the chair over. Joshua’s feet were free. At one point he charged at his assailants, managing to slam into one of them and knock him down. This time they left him on the floor and kicked him.

At the end the shaky camera zoomed in for a close-up to show Joshua’s beaten face. His eyes were swollen shut. His nose and mouth were bleeding. He spat at a hand in front of his face and the hand cuffed him. His mouth was open. He tried to bite the hand, and the hand cuffed him again.

“They can break his body,” intoned the announcer, “but they cannot break his spirit. Let this be an example to us all, how one Christian man, one of our foremost Blesseds, can stand up against evildoers, even when he is helpless in their hands.”


81. THE SPERM-GERM

She got it all wrong. She thought she was getting rid of an infection from Adam, the unwanted, unwelcome intrusion of his wriggly sperm-germ.

She asked a colleague of hers in her eighties, who remembered Roe v Wade from her youth -- decades ago when women enjoyed a brief respite from their ancient secondary status -- for the name of an underground abortionist, because a friend of hers needed one. The colleague said she’d have to ask around, and then a day later there was a name and a number on her desk. Eve called the name, made an appointment, and wrote down the address in her personal appointment book.

Two days later she entered a house in a suburb, and waited in the kitchen. She lay on the kitchen table while the man did his work. He was bald. He did not smile. He spoke only to give her instructions. First he asked for the money. Then he told her to lie down on the kitchen table.

“Open your legs. Wider.”

First he lubricated himself and put himself in her. There was nothing she could do about it. So this is how a V-doll felt, perhaps several times a day.

He heaved upon her, heaved and heaved, like a man hooked up to an oxygen tank. He smelt of flour. She tried to vanish inside herself. She didn’t know where to put her hands. They wanted to fend him off, but they lay at her sides. He was going to take something out, but first he put something in.

Suddenly she wondered: should I go through with it? I will be killing God’s seed. Surely I will not remain unpunished for such a willful act? This is a sin and a crime. I should stop this. I am not being a woman. I am shirking my God-given duty and destiny as a woman.

But she was on a kitchen table, and he was wiping himself, and she had just paid for this sin with her body, and she had come this far, and events had taken her in their wake, her will was suspended. She felt powerless, even though this was an act of personal power, her own little screech against her womanliness, her own little step to hew to the path of her career mapped out by her ambition, the road of power she had chosen back when she was slapped down by the Patriot Board at Rachel’s hearing.

Then he did whatever it was he did. She stopped brooding. She didn’t want to think about what he did. Her scientific interest froze at the very idea.

It was sore, and this made her wonder again, but then she stopped herself. She thought of Rachel’s little Mary, how happy that baby always was. How could such an unhappy mother have such a happy child?

She felt nothing after she put on her clothes. She nodded at the bald man who smelt of flour. She walked out of the kitchen, through the corridor and out of the front door to the station. But when she felt the train move, she felt a hole open up in her, as deep and wide as the hole left by the early death, years ago, of her six-month-old daughter. God had punished her then, and He was punishing her now.

Or was she trying to hit back at Him for punishing her then? He took her little girl baby away from her then, now she had taken the next child away from Him.

How could she? What possessed her? Even after she had spoken to Rachel. It was not Adam’s sperm-germ. It was the word of God growing inside her. She had killed the word of God. A mortal sin. She had broken faith with the Lord, and gone against life itself. The life He had chosen. She had deleted the word of God in her, flung it back in His face. Who was she to refuse the will of God? She bowed her head, waiting for His vengeance to fall.