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Cruelly cropped out of this image are FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker (co-presidents of the Freedom From Religion Foundation).

Some religious people are so brainwashed that they think atheists are just waiting for a personal trauma seismic enough to jolt them into belief when in reality, the opposite is far more likely.

In any case, the delightful phrase, “there are no atheists in foxholes” is not designed to challenge atheists but to validate the worldview of religious people.

"It's not an argument against atheism - it's an argument against foxholes." - James Morrow, Towing Jehovah

#James Morrow #atheist #atheism #foxholes #FFRF

The sun never rises

I touched the electric field a few times. It stung, but it made things a little more real. It made me remember that I had somehow actually gotten there. I had actually been put in their prison, and there was nothing I could do about it. It reminded me that this wasn’t a dream and that they had, in fact, finally found me. All of my hard work, gone in a flash.

I never honestly thought that they would have put me in here. I mean, I remember when… No… And I saw him and… No… It was just he stood where I was standing then, and he… No… He knew more than I even pretend to know, and still, he had more power… No… And he still… No… I wonder where…. No, I know where…. And they think that I belong there too, because of what…

I never wanted to be a danger; it didn’t matter what I did. I have never been a danger to the Society. I have lived a perfectly normal life outside of the Society for years. I never once mentioned them or my power. Speaking of my ability, it’s useless without them. I can feel who they locked up here last, and that’s just the icing on their sadistic cake.

I don’t know how long they left me alone, but when someone came in, it had to be the king of the sadists with a smile on his face. James Morrow. “This is torture. You know that, right. Locking me up in here. When he was in here last.” I ran my hands through my hair. I was trying to focus on yelling at James but had no idea if I could achieve that. I hadn’t been able to sit. I felt his energy, even more than I felt my own. I felt it coursing through my body. I felt it taunting me. I felt it tormenting me.

“You can sense him?” James asked, sitting the food that he had brought in with him on the floor. At the time, I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not.

“No matter how much I try, it won’t go away.” And trust me, I was trying. Every trick they had taught me. Every plan that was to push this all out of my head, I had tried. It just made it worse, maybe it was because… No. That still makes it worse. I can almost feel him crawling on my skin. I have showered countless times, but it doesn’t help. It doesn’t help. He just stays on my skin. Pulling himself toward me, making me think of all of the times that I… No. Stop. You must stop.

“The collar doesn’t help?” His eyes kept looking at me for a few seconds. They never landed on me for too long though. Maybe I wanted him to be sincere. I wanted him to care, even if it was all just pretend. I needed to know there was still a small part of him that cared about me.

“No, it never did.” It was shocking his ability to forget how hard it was for me. It was shocking for me to see that he couldn’t remember anything. Maybe it wasn’t surprising, just hurtful. He got to forget the hard parts, he got to forget all of the details that haunted me, and I had to live through them all.

“We hoped that being gone so long, you would at least have dulled your ability.”

“Does it look like my ability has dulled?” When has my ability ever dulled like that?

“Well, no, but we just didn’t know and were hoping…” He looked away from me. Of course, some of it might have dulled just not the part that I wish would have dulled. It wasn’t their mental stability that was at risk if they were wrong.

“Hopes in this place should be considered a currency.”

“What’s that to mean?”

I shouldn’t have let that slip from my mouth, but instead of backtracking like I should have, I continued. “That if we were willing to pay for things in hopes, I would be a wealthy, very wealthy royal.”

“I never asked, do you still have your title.” He looked toward the door.

“I have no idea, Prince James. None.” It was a small stab, I know, but it couldn’t be helped.

“You haven’t talked to your brother?” What an annoying question. Did James know me at all? I thought once that….

“We never talked before. We weren’t exactly close.” My hands were turning white from how tightly they were held together.

“But…”

I decided that it was best to interrupt him before he spoke again. “We weren’t close.”

“Whose fault was that?”

“Are you seriously trying to blame me for the fact that my brother and I weren’t close?” He was just making things worse and worse for him and our relationship if there was ever such a thing between us. He was making sure that I couldn't care about him, ever again.

“Who…”

I was not going to let him ask that question again. “I was 17 years younger than him. I’m barely a spare.”

“And you don’t know where you fit into all of this.”

“Oh,” I said, taking a seat. This was going to be great. “and now you’re going to play that game. Great. That is exactly the game that I wanted to play.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Tell me something useful.” That was all that I wanted. I didn’t want the game that he wanted to play. I tucked my feet under me. I wondered if he even noticed that I did that. “What am I doing here?”

“What do you mean?”

“What happened?” I asked, leaning back on my hands.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t lie to me.” I glared at him, but only for a moment before I turned my attention back to the ceiling.

“I’m not.”

“Stop lying. I just want a straight forward answer. What am I doing here?” I closed my eyes. There was nothing he would listen to, and I knew that. I stood back up and walked over to him. I looked at him in the eyes. I wanted him to lie straight to my face. He wanted to pretend that he knew what he was doing.

“I’m not the one that should explain it.” I tapped a few times on the electric field. “Doesn’t that hurt?” It almost sounded like he actually cared.

“A little, I guess.” I shrugged. There was a small sting in my hand, but it wasn’t bad. I had felt worse, and I knew that very clearly. It seemed to almost, almost, help me stay in the moment.

“You guess? I feel that you should know. It is your hand, after all.”

I sighed. “I do know, I am just not concerned about it.”

“I’m worried about your safety.” Please, the only thing that he cared about was whether or not I could still be of any use to the Society, something I couldn’t be if I was in any way hurt. However, that theory holds a little less water when he remembered my training.

I bit my lip hard, turning it white, I am sure. “You didn’t worry about my safety while I was away.” There were so many things that he could have done if only…

“You think that I didn’t want to come see you. Is that what this is? You think you can be angry at me because I didn’t look for you?” His hands moving just a little more widely and I could almost see the start of a second person.

I swallowed hard. “I think nothing important, and I think you know that.” I paused, but not for long enough for him to say anything. I wasn’t ready for him to say anything. I just wanted to yell at him for a little. “All I want to know is what is going to happen to me.”

“I can’t explain it.”

“You could.” I rolled my eyes. All he would have to do is tell me what is going on, but he didn’t want to, and I didn’t know why. Actually, I still don’t, other than some nonsense that he likes to spew about the Society's rules and duties. Was that it? Was it merely that he liked following the duties and the rules so much that I didn’t even exist to him?

“You should eat something.” He bent down and picked up the try that he had placed on the ground. He pushed the food tray into the tiny slot. I allowed him to change the subject. I let him think, even for a moment that he had won, I would worry about whether he actually did win later.

I couldn’t help but laugh. It was probably a bad reaction. “A red apple. A bit of a sick joke, isn’t it?” I asked, tossing the apple up and down a few times.

“You don’t have to eat it,” he said quietly. He remembered something from my past, our past.

“Long ago. Before all of this. They weren’t my favorite fruit, but I did enjoy them.”

“There were a lot of things you cared about once.” He made it sound like I don’t care about anything now.

“Once. Once is such a long time ago. Once is a lifetime ago.” A lifetime ago. Yes. A lifetime ago. I was something once. I was different once. Now, it’s a memory of a memory. A hopeless dream of what might have been. A life once lived. Now, I live a very different life. No, less right, but different. Very different. There are things that I miss about this life. Some things that shouldn’t be forgotten but at the same time… A life with far less adventure. A life with far less excitement and danger and responsibility. A life where no one expects me to be anything more than I am, and I don’t have to live up to any crazy standards.

“You used to write and love doing it. Remember the time you wrote everyone’s history paper in a night, just so that we had to have a dance, but then you crashed at it…” He stopped looking at my face. “Alright, bad example, but there had to be another time when things worked out well because you wrote.” I didn’t say anything. I thought that he would know so much more, but he disappointed me every time. “Can you not think of one example?”

He wanted to hear what I had to say. “I wrote because that was the only way I felt my voice would be heard,” I said, looking away from him. He didn’t understand.

“You know you aren’t the only Second Born Royal that has felt that way. I have felt that feeling of loneliness, that feeling of hopelessness. All you have to do is talk to us, and you would find someone who understands you.”

“You act like I am somehow oblivious to this fact. After all, there is a whole Society filled with them. It’s why you joined the Society after all, isn’t it?” That was probably a little harsher than I should have been, but I honestly didn’t have the fortitude to keep my mouth shut.

“Then what are you trying to argue?”

“You make it sound like I shouldn’t feel as badly as I do, because there are others like me.”

“How did this get turned around on me?”

I laughed. “Always does.” Even when things were right, they seemed to always be able to be turned around him. I always made sure of that, before it was always just for fun.

There was silence. He just kept looking at me. His eyes wanted to say something more, but I don’t think that he knew how to say what he wanted to say. I didn’t either, pretended that I did, but the truth was that I was like him. I was stuck in this time, this place, these words that I had lost a long time ago. “You will eat something,” he told me sharply.

“I’m not going to eat until you or someone else tells me what is going on.”

“You act like you’re being held as a prisoner.” Was I not?

“Well, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck,” I said smartly.

“That is hardly fair. You only look like a prisoner because she is terrified you will leave again. We can’t afford to search for you again.”

“You know you would never find me again.”

“It couldn’t be that hard. I caught you once before.”

“I was caught off guard. I had gotten complacent. It won’t happen again. I promise you that, if you let me go, I will not make that mistake again.”

“That hardly gives me the confidence that I require to let you out,” the leader said, walking into the room. She had her black hair pulled into a bun. She looked younger than I remembered. Maybe it was merely because I was older. I stood up and flattened my wild hair. I quickly tried to rub my clothes flat.

“Ma’am, I was hardly expecting you.”

“How do you always get that reaction from her,” James asked, looking at her.

“She does respect this Society regardless of what she actually says.” Hardly, I have no respect for the Society..

“Ma'am, will you please tell me what I have done to deserve this?” I knew that the best thing that I could do in this case was to keep my mouth shut and just ask what I needed to ask.

“James, would you give us a minute.” She smiled, looking at him. James nodded, but dragged his feet the entire time before he got to the door. “Now that he is gone, we can have a conversation just like we did before.”

“Ma’am, I hardly think it appropriate to speak as we once did, considering the circumstances that we are currently in. I think that it is far more appropriate to speak as though we are strangers.”

“That is hardly necessary.”

“Ma’am, with all due respect, I think that for this purpose, it is best to be as formal as possible.” She nodded and only nodded, so I continued. “Might I again ask what I am doing here?”

She cleared her throat and pulled out a clipboard. “We have been searching for you for ten years. You left the organization with both your memories and your powers still intact.” Not by choice. “You could be a danger to the royal families, the Society, and the world.”

Stop the charade was what I wanted to say, “Of course,” was what I did say. “There is only one or two things that I have a problem with there, but I am sure that you will be continuing to explain them to me.”

She looked up from her little clipboard. “I know what you are saying, and I agree that your circumstances require a touch more observation than what we have currently been giving them.”

“Then, may we, if you don’t mind, talk about why I am here.”

“You know the official reason,” she said, sharply.

“Ma’am, do you want me to pretend that is the only reason, because if that is what I must do, I shall do it? I was just hoping for a touch more candor.”

“You would like candor?” she asked, a slight bit of annoyance in her voice. She took a step toward me.

“If it pleases you.”

“I would also like candor.”

“About, ma’am?” I asked her.

“How did you escape?” Easy?

“Could we not start with something a little easier, ma’am?” I asked, swallowing the nothingness in my throat.

“I didn’t know that there would be something easier,” she said, and for a moment, only a moment, I wondered if she was messing with me.

“You know it’s not an easy answer, and you are just mocking me, and I don’t know why.”

“You forgot to add the ma’am.”

“Why are you being sharp with me, ma’am?” I asked, looking at her through the force field. She seemed to want to punish me for things that I could hardly be blamed for.

“You promised honesty.”

“That I did, and I would keep it that way, but the question requires more information than I am allowed to have.” Allowed to have? As of there was anything that I wasn’t allowed to have. Allowed to do.

“Explain.”

How do I explain this? Tell her the truth without getting myself into more trouble. “I can’t explain, and if you truly are still the woman that I knew, then you would accept that fact.”

“I could accept that fact if you were the woman that I remembered.”

“I am still that.”

“Are you?”

“Who else would I be?”

“You tell me.”

“What is that even to mean, ma’am?” I asked her. She seemed to have an answer to something that I wasn’t asking, or maybe she had a response to something that she was asking. Either way, I just didn’t know the game she wanted to play.

“It means that you don’t seem like the girl I used to know.”

“I am, though.”

“I can’t see it.”

I didn’t say anything for a second. “So, can you at least tell me who is presiding over my trial?”

“No one is.”

“How can that be, ma’am?” I asked, my mouth dropping to the floor.

“I have taken executive action with you.”

“What do you want with me?”

“We need you again.”

That’s a story that I just don’t care about. What good would I be to an organization that turned its back on me years ago? “Why?” The word dripped out of my mouth like the poison that I would rather be drinking.

“You could train them like no one else could.”

“James knows all the ways that I was trained. He could easily train them.”

“It won’t be the same. You could give them an advantage; the other side would never see this coming.”

“You think I care?”

“You have to care the royals…”

I interrupt her before she has a chance to finish. “The royals are always in some kind of danger; it’s why the society was created. They were in trouble before me, they’ll be in trouble after me. Nothing is going to change that.”

“You didn’t have that view before.”

“I didn’t need that view before. There was someone else that protected me from the world.”

“You’ll stay in here if you don’t agree.”

“I know. What’s your point?”

“You’d rather live behind this force field forever than rejoin an organization that you wanted to be a part of when you were younger?”

“Of course, I would.” I paused and let that statement sink into her brain before I continued. “Besides, we both know that if you let me in here by myself, I will escape again, and this time you will never find me.”

“We also both know that I will make sure that you can’t escape.”

“Let the games begin.”

#secret society of second born royals #James Morrow #oc character #fanfic