The Cult (Part 1)

It was a hot summer afternoon in Alaska; probably in the mid 60’s, the weather always feels much hotter here than it really is. I was walking along a beach that I’d walked on hundreds of times before. Crossed all the little “rivers” that are created by the rain we get here almost every day it seems, at first, nothing seemed out of the ordinary at all.
Little chickadees were singing in the trees, great big eagles flying by overhead, and a family of ducks was floating around in the water trying to stay cool. There was a soft breeze coming off the ocean so that was nice, it made the heat a little more bearable, and the smell is always great too, there’s nothing else like it!
After around ten minutes of walking, I came to a little hill. I had to be careful and watch my step because it was slippery, and I couldn’t see what was below the grass, maybe rocks and wet pieces of wood, or maybe a large hole that could cause me to hurt myself; that wouldn’t be good at all.
Once over the hill, I was in a jungle of deep grass, and dense brush, there were poky tree branches all over the place. I had to keep my hands up, slowly moving branches out of my way so they wouldn’t hit me in the face and scratch my glasses, because without my glasses everything seems blurry and I pretty much feel blind.
When I looked to my right, I was shocked by what I seen. There were two plainclothes detectives standing near a swamp. I never really got to close to it before, because it’s not a lake; just a wet swampy area which would be a prime breeding area for disease carrying mosquitos, and I hate mosquitos with a passion.
The detectives were standing near the edge of the swamp looking at a dead body! It appeared to be the body of a man; hard to tell because it looked like it had been hanging there for a while. The man was hanging from a pole that was mysteriously in the swamp, I have no idea of how it could have gotten there, or why. I’ve seen many strange things at the beach, but never anything like that.
One of the detectives was a little crazy, but I don’t think that he had much of a choice. He leaned as far forward as he could, then leapt into the swamp, and while in the air grabbed the rope that the body was hanging from, and swung around 180 degrees before landing on the ground and cutting the body loose so they could examine it further. Law enforcement here is not known for being very good, they are jerks and can’t really be trusted, so instead of sticking around and letting them see me, I quietly snuck off and made my way back home.
Sometime later, I heard that the bodies of two women were found in some grass near the swamp, but their bodies didn’t appear to have been there for long. So it seemed like there was a serial killer on the loose in town. Since law enforcement here is mostly incompetent, they enlisted the help of the FBI.
I decided to go for a drive around town. After I was a couple miles from my home, I seen a police officer drive past me in the opposite direction near the local police department, I freaked out because I didn’t have a license, so if I got pulled over I would be arrested and hauled off to jail. So I panicked and started illegally passing people. Instead of driving home, I ended up driving up a dirt road, and parked near the dead end, and exited the car.
It was kind of creepy, because there were two brown bears that were hanging out down the road, and deep up in the woods is where a cult was, and they have been known to kill people there…….. As I was standing next to the car getting some fresh air and stretching my legs, I heard a strange growling sound, not that of a bear, but something else. Moments later a lady came running out of the woods with a gun in her hand, dropped to her knees, and shot herself in the head. I stood there for a second in shock, and then I grabbed the gun from her so I could protect myself from whatever was in the woods growling and from the bears if they came up the street and tried to attack me.
I turned to my right really quick and a state trooper pulled his vehicle to a stop. It was odd because his uniform was tan, not blue or brown which the state troopers in Alaska wear, not even black like the local police, but a tan brown like you’d see maybe a sheriff’s deputy dressed in somewhere in the lower 48. Maybe he was an imposter? Maybe he was using the guise of a law enforcement enforcer, to be able to get close to his victims, kill them, and get away with it. Maybe he was in fact was the serial killer that had killed at least three people and possibly more……..I was completely innocent, but I knew that nobody would believe me. They would see the dead lady lying on the ground, and me with a gun in my hand, guilty in the eyes of any jury, even though it wasn’t true most people don’t care about the truth, they only care about what’s simple, and they believe everything law enforcement and prosecutors say.
So without thinking too much, I cocked back the hammer on the revolver and fired one shot, dropping him instantly. Fearing that I’d spend the rest of my life in prison, or even worse get executed or murdered by law enforcement, I ran up into the woods deciding to take my chances with the cult. I kept my eyes peeled for whatever had made the growling noises earlier, but I luckily didn’t encounter anything. When I seen the compound (main house and other buildings nearby on the property) I tossed the gun into the bushes.
I leaned forward, kind of slouched down, and quickly ran to the door. I rang the doorbell; ding dong, ding dong, and then a white haired man in his 60’s or 70’s dressed completely in white clothing opened the door. I said, “I really need a place to stay, I’m innocent and people are coming after me! Can I please stay here? I’ll help out as much as I can.”
He motioned for me to come in, and I walked into the living room which was to the right, and sat down on the couch between a couple of ladies. The couch was directly in front of a large window that had a view of the parking lot area.  Soon after sitting down on the couch, the ladies on each side of me put their heads on my shoulders, they were very nice and their hair smelled good!
They traced their family heritage way back to the 1600’s-1700’s, and they were related to witches or some other well-known group like that. When strangers came, they would sometimes dress in spacesuits like astronauts wear, so they wouldn't get any diseases from outsiders, but they never wore them when I was the only outsider there for some reason.
During my first evening there, there was a scare. A suspicious van showed up so we all got nervous. They were all saying “this isn’t good” and I was like “yeah, it’s a large van, it might be law enforcement!” All of them put their spacesuits on, and the ladies and I sat on the couch with our heads down. A couple of the men quickly placed a bulldozer and a very large forklift in front of the window, just in case it was going to be a raid, so we could defend and protect ourselves, it was a very tense situation.
A lady came in and said that she wanted to make sure that everyone's eyes were okay........she noticed me since I was wearing glasses and no spacesuit.......so I was worried that I was going to get caught. She seen a newborn baby there, held onto it for a little bit, and then left. Even though she didn’t seem like she was up to anything sinister, I felt like she was working undercover for someone, saying that she was “there to check our eyes” as an excuse to come in and look around, it just didn’t seem normal.
The next day was kind of hard for me, people looked at me like I didn’t belong there, when I went to the bathroom which was like a large bathrooms that are in public places like schools and airports. A young man in his early 20’s or around the same age as I was looked at me with a mean glare, so I quickly grabbed 1 square brown paper towel, dried my hands and got out of there. I went outside and the older men in the group were making the younger men work really hard cutting grass, chopping wood, doing a little farming and other things like that, they would get very angry if they didn’t think the young men were working hard enough. They saw me standing around outside watching with beads of sweat dripping down my face, but they luckily didn’t make me do any of the backbreaking work in the hot sun!
The next evening, there was a big party, even my parents and sister came. We sat around a grill and ate some cheeseburgers. At the end they asked me if I wanted to come home. I wanted to, because I missed my family, and being on the run really sucked. I had to watch out for law enforcement, and for the people I was staying with, because they weren’t known for being nice people and didn’t seem to like me very much. But being worried about possibly being arrested, I decided to stay for at least one more day and take my chances there.
That night a lady in the living room tried to the internet on a computer and got into a lot of trouble, because ladies there apparently weren’t allowed to use the internet. The lady was crying a lot, but was never physically abused by anyone. Two heavyset “biker gang” looking guys with big scruffy beards were outside shooting a sawed-off shotgun and another rifle. They soon came inside and pointed them at me. I covered my head and begged them not to kill me. I really felt like they were really going to kill me, I was full of fear and never felt so afraid in my life and thought that I was going to die any second. But after a few tense moments that seemed like forever, they left. After that happened, I wasn’t sure if they were seriously thinking about killing me like they had allegedly done with other outsiders around there, or if they were just trying to warn me, and let me know that they were in charge and for me not to defend the woman that got in trouble.
The next day was pretty uneventful and not much happened. That evening though, I finally decided that prison was probably a better option than staying with the cult. So I grabbed the telephone and dialed an escape hotline. A robot voice started talking to me, but I was in the living room area where many of the cult members were, so I hung up so they wouldn’t catch me and be angry, I felt like I was trapped there, and couldn’t leave on my own free will; later that night, we were all sitting at the large dining table, I can’t remember what the mail meal was, but I remember that there were chips and salsa on the side. The meal was very good.

But before we could finish eating, a man that appeared to be in his late teens or early 20’s stood up from across the room on the other side of the table, and began to fire an     AK-47 across the room. We all looked around, but he wasn’t shooting at anyone, nobody was trying to enter the house. He then collapsed onto the ground and appeared to have died, and because I was the outsider, the men there blamed it on me! Thinking that I must have somehow poisoned him or something. 
I was in fear for my life once again, so I ran outside, but there was nowhere to go, I picked up a can off the ground and drank out of it. I quickly realized that whatever it was was deadly. The next thing I know is that I woke up in a dark room and was looking up at two FBI agents. I was glad to be alive, and to be away from the cultist, but I thought for sure that I was going to be arrested and spend the rest of my life in prison.
They told me that they had been in town investigating the murders, and that luckily for me, the State Trooper I shot wasn’t really a State Trooper after all, and was the serial killer. They linked him to all the deaths except for the lady that “committed suicide” in front of me, that incident is still unsolved to this day and the coroner wasn’t able to come up with the cause of death of the cult member who collapsed. The cultist didn’t actually commit any crimes against me or anyone else, so there was nothing that the FBI could do about them. They are still living deep in the woods, and I hope that I never see them ever again!  Since I killed the alleged serial killer and not an innocent person, the DA decided not to press any charges against me. The agents handed me their business cards and told me to contact them if I ever needed their help……….