Skin

Chapter One When the rain isn't so much falling--be it in bucket loads or like cats and dogs--but rather slamming into the car like an avalanche of stone, you know it's time to pull over. When you can't see much more than the slaphappy wipers splashing through rivers on the windshield, when you're suddenly not sure if you're on the road any longer, and your radio emits nothing but static, and you haven't seen another car since the sky turned black, and your fingers are tense on the wheel in an attempt to steady the old Accord in the face of terrifying wind gusts, you know it's so totally time to pull over. Wendy leaned over the steering wheel, searching for the yellow lines that separated the two-lane highway. No real shoulder that she could see. What was to keep another car from rear-ending her if she pulled over here? She'd seen the black clouds pillaring on the horizon as she headed across the Nevada desert. Heard the tornado warnings on the radio before it had inexplicably fried. The fact that this wasn't tornado territory had the announcers in a bit of a frenzy. Wendy had ignored the warnings and pressed on into evening. She'd given herself two days for the long haul between San Diego and western Utah. The call from her mother asking her to come had frozen Wendy for a good ten seconds, phone in hand. Had to be Thursday, this week, her mother had insisted. It was now Tuesday night. Wendy wondered if she'd see the rest of the Brotherhood cult or just her mother. The thought of either was enough to keep her awake at night. The tribe, as its leader Bronson called it, was a somewhat nomadic group of twenty or so members, going where God led them. God had evidently led them to the remote Utah-Nevada border now. Wendy had been born into the cult and had managed to escape eight years earlier, on her eighteenth birthday, the day she was to wed Torrey Bronson as his third wife. Twice she'd hired private investigators to locate the tribe and report on her mother's condition. Twice the report had come back favorable. But the investigators had never actually talked to her mother--speaking to anyone from the outside world was strictly prohibited. Even making eye contact was good for a day in isolation. Physical contact, heaven forbid, was grounds for severe punishment. Inside the cult there was plenty of touching and hugging and kissing, but no physical contact with strangers ever, period. That was the Brotherhood way. Wendy had fallen in an Oklahoma ditch when she was seven years old and broken her leg. A farmer had heard her cries and taken her to the others who were searching. Before setting the bone, "Father" Bronson had beaten her severely for allowing unclean hands to touch her. The lashing hurt more than the broken leg. It was the last time Wendy had touched or been touched by anyone outside the tribe before escaping. And when Father Bronson had taken it upon himself to break her two thumbs and two forefingers as punishment for kissing Tony, another thirteen-year-old in the tribe at the time, he'd made it excruciatingly clear that he'd claimed her for himself alone. She'd fled the cult, but not the wounding of such a perverse childhood. Few knew the extent of the damage; she hid it well behind soft eyes and a light smile. But to this day even the thought of physical contact with men unnerved her. No issue in Wendy's tumultuous life consumed her as much as this failing. Touch was her personal demon. A beast that prevented her from expressing the deep caring she'd felt in any relationship with a man, isolating her from love, romantic or otherwise. Now, driving through nature's fury, she felt oddly isolated again. It was suddenly clear that her decision to continue into the dark clouds had been a mistake. As if hearing and understanding that it had played unfairly with her, the storm suddenly eased. ShDekker, Ted is the author of 'Skin', published 2008 under ISBN 9781595543363 and ISBN 1595543368.