“I know. You have.” He released her and flopped down on the floor again, leaning his back against the wall.
Surprised, she sat on the floor opposite him, with her back against his bed. He didn’t look at her, but stared again at his toes. “I don’t know where to even start.”
“Somewhere. Anywhere. Just start by saying something honest.”
He nodded. Sniffing, he finally said something she could have never suspected he’d start with. “My name isn’t Jim Zavarian. Well, not legally. I mean, the way I got it wasn’t legal, so I don’t know if it’s legal in the eyes of the court.”
Her mouth opened and her eyes bugged. “Umm… that’s not what I expected at all. You what? Why? Fuck.” She rubbed her hands through her hair. “What the hell are you talking about? How many names or aliases do you have?”
“Umm… a few. Maybe half a dozen.”
She swallowed as she shut her eyes. What the? Who was he?
“I was born Jim Sylverton.”
“Why didn’t you keep that name?”
“My dad. This all starts with him.”
“Okay…?”
“He was a… a grifter. A charlatan. He led a cult. Well, strike that, he leads a cult. I have no idea who my mother was. Or is, except that she was a member of his cult. He has several kids. So I have lots of siblings. Because I look just like him, he favored me. NO. That’s the wrong word. He took a perverted, sick interest in me. A narcissistic desire to see himself, I suppose.”
Again, her mouth opened and closed like a floundering fish. “You come from a… cult?”
His tone was cold and hollow as he replied, “Yes. But not really. It’s totally fake. I mean, he knows he’s a fake. There isn’t any truth to his preaching and he has no belief in any of it. He uses his voice to convince people to give him everything they own. Houses. Money. Jewelry… all of it. And the worst part is, they do. He is that good at it. Excellent, actually. He brainwashes them to join him and donate all their earthly wealth for the glory of the greater good. He uses and abuses it at a whim. There were communes of dedicated devotees. Imagine it. He’d buy up acreage in the small towns, out in middle of nowhere, and work the land by assigning tasks to his followers. They happily farmed and gardened and bred animals for free according to his orders. He controlled their money and their fortunes. He indulged his greedy perversions and bought whatever he wanted for himself. He wasn’t discreet about spending the money on himself while they saw him as their only vehicle to God. He spun all kinds of wild tales to explain how he was chosen as the beacon and instrument of God to communicate with them, the ordinary people. He called himself the Receiver and made them believe he had selected only them since only a few were pure enough to walk on his pathway.”
“You… are you telling me the truth?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Where were you in all of this?”
“Sometimes I was there. Sometimes not. He didn’t take much interest in me when I was young. There were plenty of caregivers who gladly looked after his kids. Luckily, mine was crazy for being one of his followers, but she was an older lady and very lonely. She never had kids of her own so she really took to me. She sent me to public school, which kept me comparatively normal, and I didn’t live on the commune all the time. Summers there were the best. I liked it when I was very young. I ran free and ate food from the greenhouses and did as I pleased. But unlike most of the commune children, I was not home-schooled. I got to go to public school where I thrived. Reading was my favorite pastime and I tried to read everything I could to get a bigger world view. But as I got older, I knew something was wrong and I hated to see how people idolized him.”
Speechless, her hands dropped into her lap and she fidgeted with her fingers back and forth nervously. “Oh, Jim…”
“Let me finish. It doesn’t stay so innocent.”
“What do you mean? And what about all the different names you took?”
“We moved a lot. Across the states. My dad got bored easily and we used to get investigated by the police after he committed multiple felonies. Fraud. Extortion. Rape. You name it. We moved around with a population of core members to start up somewhere else. Dad gave us a new last name, paying some lackey to do all the paperwork, and presto. There it was. There were so many, I don’t remember them all.”
Jim showed no reaction and his face was deadpan, his voice hollow. “That was a red flag. I knew something was wrong. You don’t change your name if you have nothing to hide. By the time I was ten, I knew he was a criminal and his entourage was comprised of idiots. I used to think they were pathetic and they deserved what he gave them. But later, I realized they were lost and desperate souls and he cruelly preyed on their vulnerabilities. They sought answers and hope from the wrong places. They mistook the devil for a friend and paid him for the pleasure.”
“What happened? I mean, how did you…” She was overwhelmed with all the questions and queries she wanted to ask but didn’t know where to start. She found it so hard just to comprehend his past.
“I ran away when I was thirteen. I just left. First, I was Jim River. Then Jim Lake. Jim Winter, and so on. Being young, I just picked the name according to whatever I was looking at.”
She jolted off the bed
