All Your Fates (Currently editing/updating)

Chapter 5: "Only the Good Die Young" ~ Carrie Cutforth

Music Track List:

Only the Good Die Young ~ Billy Joel

****

David's POV

I drove up the hill in Van Nuys lost in my own thoughts and trying to keep my eyes from obsessively flitting back to Emma in the backseat and making her more uncomfortable than she already looked. And then I saw it before us in the distance: a massive white rotund marble stone structure surrounded with ionic polished pillars and topped with an open flat disc gold roof so that the smoke plumes ascending from the sacred fire of Vesta could assure all in the City they were under perpetual divine protection of the Goddess. If it weren't for the giant neon sign blinking "Temple of Vesta," I could have imagined we were in ancient Rome.

I followed the road down to the freshly tarred parking lot and followed the directions of the parking lot attendants, all dressed in similar white cotton suits as mine, to pull round to the back, I guess to the Virgins Only entrance.

I parked in the shade of the Temple, and then just sat their frozen. Not knowing what I could say or do to stop this madness – but I knew too little about this world to consider our options.

And then I realized. She hadn't gotten out of the car yet herself. I swung my head around and there she was: staring at the temple with big wide eyes full of despair and perhaps regret for her future. Maybe...maybe...

"You know...you don't have to do this. I know this society has all these rules and conventions and laws that seem normal or natural but just because something has always been a certain way, doesn't mean it's the only way," I rambled, being careful not to look at her.

I could hear her shifting in her seat in response. She's listening, I told myself.

"What if I told you, Emma, there were other ways, other worlds, where women do vote and drive and own property? And they don't have to vow a life full of virginal service to do it. They can swear, and they can fuck, whoever they want," I said bluntly, my eyes flitting to hers, "And they can be leaders and be badass....and you might not believe this but...you are pretty badass."

"Why are you doing this to me?" Emma interjected, and I turned round to see her holding her face in her hands.

"Because I love you Emma. I've loved you from that first moment...and I'll always love you...no matter what world we are in," I said feeling my soul light and airy and boisterous to having finally confessed to her aloud.

And she answered my confession by bolting out of the car. As I got out and pursued her towards the temple, she spat back at me with unexpected venom: "So from the moment you escorted me from my parent's house to the Holy House of Virgins when I was fifteen never to ever see them again, you are saying you loved me then. And when you publically reprimanded me in front of the entire congregation for backtalking Father Amos, you must have been in love with me then too, huh?  And then again when I was nineteen, you had me confess all my mortifying secret sins to the Counsel of Athos behind closed doors...all those times and throughout all that you were just burning with love for me?" her voice rose in a hysterical crescendo.

"No! I mean, yes. I mean. Forget all that. Forget anything I ever said or did before this moment. Life doesn't have to be this way. Let's run away together and start a new life. Away from all this. We can start fresh...our own civilization...with our own rules..." I cried after her, but her face kept contorting in more and more pain the closer she got to the steps leading up to the pillars and I knew I was losing this battle.

"Is anything the matter?" the red-faced man in a white cotton suit standing at the entrance pillars asked us while fanning himself with a tract from the heat.