TW // Strong language, threat
“It’s urgent.” Jake’s words repeated themselves in Rita’s head as she squeezed the steering wheel to feel a connection to something real and tangible; the car’s vibrations - as it hummed in the traffic - were calming in their physical distinction. It was something separate, constant, and consistent, to which she could anchor her discombobulated self. “What’s urgent, Jake?” She shouted, rehearsing into the void of her Ford Fiesta, the words fighting to displace the burnt-orange scent of her air freshener. “You go missing for years. And now you have something you absolutely need to discuss? Get fucked, Jake.” Each syllable was accompanied by a slap of the steering wheel. “But I guess I don’t have a choice, Jakey boy, do I? Because I’m your older sister. And with mum dead, and dad in the home, I guess I have to serve this obligation.” Her voice rose in tone to a shout, and she glanced sideways at the car which had shuffled up beside her to see the staring, concerned smiles of a family. She sighed deeply and forced a smile, hoping they would dismiss her as partaking in an impassioned sing-along, rather than ranting like a maniac.
“What do you want?” Rita’s voice was flat and heavy, the edge of a sledgehammer. Jake had not noticed her arrive and was slumped, half-hooded, in the Burger King booth when her words jarred him into an upright position.
“Oh, it’s you.” His voice crackled like an old phone-line as the concern on his face faded a half inch.
“Yes, it’s me.” Rita snapped back, still standing. Still holding her ground, maintaining her separation from the situation for as long as she possibly could. All the time I am standing, I am uncommitted, aloof. “You called me? Said it was urgent?”
“It is.” His torso curved and he slunk back to the depths of the booth as his eyes pendulumed around the bustling service station. “My life is in danger.” He’s terrified, she realised, and a throb of sympathy for her brother made her finally sit down. He eyed her from beneath his deep hood where blackened eyes and buzzed hair made him look like a prisoner of war. He is wounded, she noted with regret.
“What danger?” The anger had not left her voice; it had been honed over the years since his departure; refined and nurtured into something tangible and presentable, rehearsed into something vital.
“They’re going to come for me.”
“Who?”
“The brotherhood.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re a cult, Rita.” His voice was a thin wheeze through locked teeth. A screaming child was dragged past their table and they both paused for composure.
“You finally realised it then, eh?” Rita I-told-you-so’d after a gulp, the grin forcing its way onto her lips and her eyebrows raising in the reactive glee only a sister can muster in the face of a brother’s misfortune.
“Don’t-”
“-don’t what? We told you; we all told you. You didn’t fucking listen.”
“I knew!” He sat up and his hood drooped over the tops of his eyes.
“Knew what?”
“What it was. A cult. I did it on purpose.”
Rita frowned, her eyes moved around the food court and took in the chaos of the lunch-time scene at a motorway services: dishevelled stag-dos; arguing families; doe-eyed lovers. It was all irrelevant compared to their purpose, though. Nothing else mattered.
“You joined them anyway?” He didn’t respond, suddenly sheepish, so she pressed on, “you left your entire family with just a note, left us all. Left mum crying. Didn’t show for her funeral. You just left. And you knew what it was? You knew it was a scam. You said we were liars, that we were being selfish, and you knew we were right all along…” Tears began to roll down her cheeks as she spoke, the years of pain and anger gathered up in their crystalline spheres, “…how dare you? How dare you?” She got to her feet. “Is that all you wanted, to tell me that this was your plan all along? To destroy us, leave us for dead?”
“No.” He sat up, removed his hood. “I need your help. Please, sit.”
Rita sat, but more through the weight of emotion than in response to his request. She looked at him: speak then. He looked dreadful with the hood removed; hair poorly cut, and the bones of his skull pronounced under taut, porcelain skin.
“I had to do it. I had to know. I wanted to expose them for what they really are. But to do that I had to tell nobody.”
“-what-”
“-they’re like an… intelligence agency. They have spies, interrogators, manipulators-”
“-what are you saying-”
“-I had to do lie detectors to prove me allegiance-”
“-it was on purpose-”
“-they tortured my friends!”
“Why though? What did you hope to achieve?”
“I documented all of it. I want to expose them, reveal what they really are and share it with the world.”
“You want… to write a book?”
“Yeah, or a series of articles. They need exposing.”
“Eleven years.” Rita nearly spat. “Eleven years of lies…”
“I know, I know, it’s a lot.”
“A lot? It’s everything! Mum died!” She slammed a hand on the plastic table and some nearby parents directed their kids away, before continuing in a lower voice, “you missed her funeral. Dad’s in a home. I saw him yesterday and he asked about you. But he’s forgotten where you are. He thought mum took you out to buy some new trainers. I didn’t correct him. All this for some words. Some fame?”
“It’s not about that.”
“Oh, fuck off, Jake.”
“It’s not! These people need stopping!”
“Then do something less insane? Finish your law degree, write a blog, start a petition…”
“You know those things don’t work.”
“You didn’t try though, did you. You just jumped straight to this mad scam. This mad career arc that you had planned out for yourself. A life plan that involved none of us...” She gasped for air for some stasis after her rant, panting as she glared at her insolent brother.
“You don’t get it.”
“Absolutely.” She rose to her feet. “I don’t get it, Jake.”
“Sit down.” The force in Jake’s voice, along with his widening eyes and the reflexive straightening of his spine, went unnoticed as Rita shook her head and gathered her things.
“No, it’s over. Whatever this is you’ve got going on-”
“-Rita.” He met her eye, and she was frozen in place but their boundless, cold whites. “Sit the fuck down.”
“What is it?”
“They’re here. They’ve found me.”
“Where-”
“-stop.” He stopped her as she had begun to turn in her seat to follow his gaze into the food court behind her, his other hand crossed his lips, and his head ducked down further so it was only an inch off the table. He composed himself and raised his head by the smallest necessary amount. “Two of them, in the toilet queue. How do they know I am here?”
“They won’t hurt you. They can’t now?” The last phrase morphed into a question as it left her mouth, a question answered by the stunned, recollective look of terror that found her brother’s face as it looked up at her from his position lightly sprawled across the table. “Your phone.”
He followed her eyes to the cheap phone on the table and shook his head. “I bought it by the station.”
“You think that matters? They can still track you. You called me. Who else?”
The colour drained from his face as he ran the calculations in his head, played back the preceding forty-eight hours in fast-forward in his mind: the gambles, the snap-decisions, the inevitable slip-ups. “Oh no.”
“It’s fine.” She reassured, blindly, optimistically. “Have they seen you?”
“I don’t know.” His eyes were wide with fear, and she felt a tug of sadness in her chest at her younger brother’s suffering, something she was always keen to allay in their partnered growing. It played at something innate and animal in her.
“Keep your hood up and follow me, quickly.” She grabbed his phone and rose to her feet in a fluid motion. She began a quick march to the door, tossing the phone into a bin as she passed. She could feel him shuffling along behind her, in her half-manic, half-measured footsteps. There were too many people, and they filled every spare inch of the service station, they seemed to loom overhead with critical, judging eyes. She expected anybody they passed to reach out an arm and clutch a bicep and declare the planned escape to be over. Don’t stop what we’ve set in motion, let me see this through.
Fresh air - as fresh as the air can be alongside the M4 - filled her lungs and with it a sense of belief that they might get away. That all of their mistakes could be left behind them and life could begin again with a quick departure in her rusting Fiesta. She waited for five or six steps to come between them and the structure they had just left before breaking into a sprint. The rough chill in the air clutched at her cheeks and her brother’s hand found hers - it, accepted and squeezed in a show of encouragement - and they ran stride for stride between cars in the rough direction of her own. Only once did she find the courage to glance back, and there were no signs of a pursuer. Not yet anyway.
“Quick get in.” She barked as the doors clicked open and threw herself into the driver’s seat. Jake did the same in the passenger seat beside her. “You see anyone follow?” The keys fired the engine to life while they panted.
“No, we might be safe.”
“Maybe.” The car tyres screeched as she swung it backwards and then hard right, before spinning and then gripping the tarmac to send them noisily surging forward. A car beeped and a pedestrian shouted but in moments they were on the exit road out of the motorway service compound. Jake leaned around to peer back at what might be coming.
“Nothing.” He declared, before exhaling audibly.
Rita’s betrayal became obvious when she turned off the only route out of the services and brought the car to a swift stop down a short dead-end track.
“What are you doing?” He yelled. “What’s wrong?”
“‘…in the eyes of the lord, thou art but a vessel for His love and light...’” She spoke the words into the steering wheel, head bowed, and fingers clasped around the rough leather. “‘…Thou must begin again with each rising of the sun and each waxing of a moon…’” Tears began to fill his eyes as she spoke, and his lips could not help but silently mirror the sounds. “‘…Thou art brought here to deliver in grace and good, this Lord’s message, this true Lord’s message...’” His head was shaking now, along with his hands. He chewed his lip. Rita turned to face him. “I found you. Two years ago. I searched so hard and I found you, and you, without knowing it, revealed His light to me. There is so much beauty in His vision, yes it is dark, too dark for many, but they just don’t understand it yet. You just don’t understand it yet. This is not a cult; this is a beautiful vision of a future. But the people aren’t ready, they won’t understand. You cannot be allowed to reveal us to the world.” Her voice was trembling and bright, her eyes wide and glistening. A car pulled up behind them.
“What have you done?” He spun and looked back, frantic, panicking. “Quick, please, it’s not too late, just drive!”
“You have abandoned Him. Thrown away his glorious beauty. You submitted and now your punishment will be swift and maximal.”
“No, Rita, no!” His door was opened and in a moment he was gone, lost to screams and scrambling against the formidable two that had come for him. His door was shut - an incongruent politeness - and the sounds were suppressed before fading away entirely. Distant doors closed, an engine started and then a car departed, and Rita was alone again.
She moved the rearview mirror to relay her face and wiped the tears from her cheeks; showing herself a big, toothed grin and forcing a laugh which grew and grew to fill all of the empty space in her car.