Heiresses of Russ 2016: The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction by A.M. Dellamonica & Steve Berman

Author:A.M. Dellamonica & Steve Berman [Dellamonica, A.M. & Berman, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Lethe Press
Published: 2016-11-14T21:00:00+00:00

THE GIRLS WERE spayed. That is the only word for it. Four sisters, the oldest five and the youngest barely two, with dirt-crusted fingers and baggy t-shirts, huddled next to a police van. They are identical in the way of twins; different sizes but, excepting perhaps some scars and birthmarks, their bodies are the same. The picture of them standing together next to the van is like a textbook illustration of early human development. And hidden under their shirts, carved low across the belly, the one scar they all share.

None of the many news services that reported the story said that the girls had been spayed like bitches. In the articles, they were “subjected to hysterectomies,” or similar overly-clinical distortions. But the video of the police raid on the Charismatic Church of the Redeemer shows the Reverend Kenny Kendall’s eyes wheeling in their sunken sockets as he is led out in handcuffs. While there are no known videos of the sermons he delivered to his followers in their South Texas compound, if they were anything like the screeds on his website then he told his congregation that “a person in whom a seed has not been planted cannot have a soul, and so is not a person true, but an animal grown obscenely person-shaped.” It seems clear that what Reverend Kendall saw growing up and wearing out shoes in his perfect community were not little girls. They were vermin. Only a matter of years away from becoming a pestilence. What he had ordered done was a veterinary procedure.

Interviewed in prison, Reverend Kendall explains. “It took a while to realize what we had, of course. What they were. I’d imagine it takes a while for everyone, you know. And how could we suspect? None of us knew what Candace had done.” Candace Montross, the girls’ mother and former member of Kendall’s congregation. “But once Johnnie had his accident, everyone knew it weren’t his seed showing in Candace. Then the truth came out, as it is wont to do.”

Candace was taken to Camp Kendall (as locals in nearby Wharton call the church compound) by her parents at age eleven. At seventeen she ran away and hitchhiked to Houston, but found herself ill-equipped for independent living and called her parents to beg money. She was tracked down, taken back to the compound, and married to Johnnie Montross. Her oldest daughter was born nine months later. She’s now twenty-three and still legally married to Johnnie, fifteen years her senior and paraplegic since falling off a roof a year and a half ago. She’s also pregnant again, for the second time since Johnnie’s accident.

“She whored herself in Houston, obviously, and caught it and brought it back with her. Couldn’t do anything to her directly with her parents right there in the pews, a man and a woman. But even they eventually came to understand it weren’t an abortion. They were as disgusted as anyone at the idea of Candace bearing more of those monsters. All

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.