A Boy From A Cult

Chapter 1

One day, Jennifer, an aspiring singer, is kidnapped by the cult. She gets locked in a room by herself upstairs in the main house, where everyone in the cult usually have meals together. The reaping is held downstairs and Jack wins the reaping. Fear grips him, as he had never expected to actually win. All these years, he had gone through so many reapings one after the other and the thought of winning one had left his mind for a long time now. Thinking back, that was foolish, because now he didn't have a plan on what he would actually do if he did win a reaping. Recently, he had adopted a "not my problem" attitude when other women were raped and killed by the others, since after all it did not personally affect him. But now he cannot do that. Jennifer belongs to him now. She is his.

Everyone assumes Jack will rape and kill her, just like the others. In despair, Jack sits down in a corner and considers his options. He couldn't just hand her over to the others because they would then see him as a weakling and he would lose his status in his family. He cannot get his hands dirty on her either. He can only ever do it with a girl who loved him and who prized him more than anyone else. He dismisses the thought of killing her, he just cannot do it, it is morally wrong. Before he can come up with a solution to his problem, Ben, who knows him better than anyone else, comes up to him and asks him what he is going to do. Jack replies truthfully that he has no idea. Before they can talk for longer, the Chief calls everyone for dinner. As Jack reaches the dining table and sits down at his usual seat, he notices the key to Jennifer's room dangling from the pocket of his friend. Without thinking and in a sudden senseless move that shocks himself, Jack steals the key from the pocket. He pretends he needs to go to the toilet and then quickly throws in the key through the small window of Jennifer's room, without revealing himself to her, and immediately returns to the dining room.

Shaking in fear that he will be caught, he silently prays that she will unlock the room and find a way to escape the house and enter the woods without being spotted. He knows that the only way for her to escape completely from the cult would be to reach the perimeter and somehow get past the on-duty guards which would be impossible to do alone. Chewing on a chicken leg, he thought, it doesn't matter if she does get past the guards or not. She just needs to escape the house and reach the woods, after that she will not be his problem anymore, she will belong to the forest. He reassures himself that he is safe because no one can blame him for her escape since she went missing before he went to her room and most likely they will not connect her escape to the few seconds of his absence when he said he is going to the toilet.

Everyone urges Jack to quickly finish his dinner and go upstairs and enjoy his long-deserved "win at the Reaping" . He tries to dawdle, trying to buy Jennifer as much time as much time as possible, but eventually leaves to go to Jennifer's room. When he goes to the room, he finds the room unlocked and that she is not in there. For a second, he cannot believe his eyes. He has done it. An emotion which he had not felt in a long time, perhaps ever in his life, came to him. Relief. After giving a silent whoop and clapping himself on the back, he immediately shouts out and alerts the rest of his family that she is gone.