That Time I Took Down A Cult by Rebel Carter

Author:Rebel Carter [Carter, Rebel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter

Twenty-Two

“He said the game booths. Those are towards the back of the festival grounds,” I tell Wrath. We’ve just arrived at the Sweet Tooth Municipal Park, which sits just outside of downtown and serves as the perfect spot for a festival meant to lure in Outsiders. It’s impossible to resist with the Ferris wheel and two roller coasters rising up out of the trees along with the lights and signs from the maze of mirrors and the haunted house.

Sweet Tooth’s Autumn Harvest Festival is famous. There’s going to be no less than five tour buses pulling in tonight. Before I knew the truth, I always thought the festival was a celebration, a way to share in the Blossoms’ good fortune and bless them on their way to a new life.

I was blind.

How could I not have noticed that none of the Blossoms were ever seen again? That any time their husbands returned to town, it was without them. That there were no families born to Blossoms. No babies or daughters and sons returning to Sweet Tooth with their fathers. There was nothing, just letters and supposed calls. The odd parent that swore they were visiting their daughters in the city and coming back with word of happy days.

Lies, all of it.

This night wasn’t about celebrating with the Blossoms, it was about fleecing the Outsiders. It was about putting more coin in the coffers of the Founders and letting them play god. As soon as night falls the park is going to be lit up like the Fourth of July, with the perfect avenue of downtown to funnel Outsiders and Sweet Tooth residents this way after the float parade and marching band take Main Street.

It’s going to be the picture perfect small town night where nothing bad can happen but that’s a lie too. I’m the bad thing that’s going to happen. Anger runs bright and hot in my veins and I have to take a calming breath to bring my heart rate down. Holding my smiles is starting to get so hard.

It was never this hard before.

“Are there churros here?” Wrath asks, looking around hopefully. “I had those a few times and I quite like them.”

“A churro? Yeah, they’re past the games. Come on,” I say and grab Wrath’s hand. Even though it’s not the prime time hour for the festival, everything is set up and the game booths are lively with plenty of takers already enjoying themselves. The food stands are just past the games but as we pass them I slow down. There’s a crowd at the Dunk o’ Fun water dunk tank where people are lobbing baseballs at a bullseye. If they hit the bullseye trigger just right, it will drop in poor Mrs. Landry sitting on the little perch into the water below. Mrs. Landry was my cooking class teacher in my last year at school and she shivers while she sits looking half drowned.

I lift my hand in a wave to Mrs. Landry. She was always kind to me and showed me how to chop an onion without crying.

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