cult

B and I paid one hundred dollars to a man as a deposit on a home in St Lucia, Brisbane. Having secured the house, we walked around it, looking in each room and exploring the garden. The previous owners - a man and woman, still living there for now - invited us to come back in the morning to hike to the end of the garden. The man said it would take an hour to walk to the far reaches of the property, and at least an hour to walk back. We were surprised as the back yard certainly didn't seem that big, but we agreed to come back. The next day we arrived, prepared for a long walk. We set out, down the front steps of the house, around the side, through the back garden and further afield. We trudged through muddy patches and scaled the side of a hill. As we ventured further, our memory of where we had come from faded. We ended up arriving at a place where the man and his wife ran a cult. An entire community of people lived there, working away, oblivious to a world outside. We too began to live in the community and work. A couple of years passed when, one day, my friend (who was now a man) awoke to the whole pretense. He began vocalising about how wrong it was and immediately left. I decided to leave too, but I was more covert. I escaped the cult, running from the grounds in the dead of night. On the outskirts I was spied by a group of cult women who screamed at me and chased after me. It was then I realised that I too was a man. I sped on foot as fast as I could possibly go, back through the hills and down the tracks we had walked a few years earlier. I could hardly comprehend how much time had passed or what had transpired. I ran, exhausted yet also exhilarated, all the way back to the house we had bought, narrowly escaping the deranged cult women who threw rocks at me and followed me as far as they were able, until some invisible barrier prevented them from running further. Safe at the house, I found my friend. We no longer wanted the home and happily forfeited our deposit. We set about attempting to resume a normal life in society.