Cultist

Chapter 1, Beginning

(Daniel's POV)

I don't remember a lot of my childhood, mostly because I don't think I was supposed to. I remembered bits and pieces - white clothing, hair bleach, purple juice we weren't allowed to drink... so many of my friends had drank that juice, or rather been forced to when they didn't comply. The elders would often tell us the juice was for our enemies, and some of our friends were traitors. My closest friend, Gabe, was one of these traitors. One day Simon, the man in charge of my group when I was younger, found a bible hidden under Gabe's mattress. When confronted about it in the afternoon, Gabe confirmed it was his and told Simon that he wanted to believe in God and Jesus from now on. Therefore he was dubbed a traitor. Me and my other friends made the juice for him, it was purple and most likely laced with poison.

On the days we weren't making death juice, we were being subjected to harsh conditions. Simon used to say that all of these tests would strengthen our bond with Zeemuug and make us happier, healthier and better. Most mornings Simon and another lady named Janet would take me and some of my other friends to a room with titles on the floor, walls and ceiling. Everything was white and bright, there were shower heads but I never saw water come out of them. When we went into this room, we had to strip naked and Simon would tell us not to talk, and keep our mouths shut. One of my other friends, Lizzy, actually screamed during this and she died two days later because he ingested the bleach they would dump on us. They said it cleansed us, and after about two weeks of this, I believed them.

Later in the day Simon would shove me into a pitch black room with no windows and a cold, hard floor. The door would lock behind me and I had no choice but to sit there and breath. Inhale and exhale. It was so dark that when Simon finally opened the door after 3 hours, my eyes hurt from the light. After two weeks of this, breathing was really the only I could do to keep myself together.

Until the next week, when I was introduced to the Warm Bath, they took that away from me as well. Simon brought me into a room by myself one day. There were fluorescent lights attached to the ceiling that burned my eyes a little bit. He led me over to a huge glass tube, it had hinges on one side and a lock on the other. He pushed in a combo on the keypad that I didn't get to see and opened up the tube. He told me to step inside and I did as I was told. He pushed buttons on the machine connected to the tube. There was a metal grate underneath my feet which started to make sounds as he pushed more buttons. Red liquid spewed out from the grate, drop by drop. It started to fill up the tube. The liquid touched my pants, it seeped through. It was warm and smelt like wet copper.

It kept rising and I started to struggle, trying to get away from the blood that was pouring into the tube. Simon just kept pushing things on the control panel and told me I needed to breath. The blood rose, it was making me sweat. It came up to my knees, then my waist, then my chest, and right under my chin. It was getting harder and harder to breath the more the tube filled up. My whole body felt like it was on fire, like I was dealing with the worst fever in the world. Simon kept saying the same thing; just keep breathing. Just keep breathing. When the blood reached my mouth I was coughing and gasping for air, trying to move but my head was already pushed up against the ceiling. My arms were getting tired from paddling through the thick liquid, I wanted to stop, but then I really wouldn't be able to breath. Blood got into my mouth and I coughed more. The filled up past my lips and over my nose. I couldn't breath anymore, my vision was becoming blurry. I felt like I was going to die. I heard a draining noise, followed by air filling my lungs. I heard Simon telling me to breath again, as the blood slowly drained out of the tube.

We did this everyday for that week, and each week I would have to take 5 showers just to get the blood stains off my skin. I always wondered where all of that blood came from, and I wondered if any of it was from Gabe or Lizzy. A huge part of me honestly didn't want to know the answer to those questions.

All this stuff made me hate being 10, and when I turned 11 it didn't stop. We had to do many other horrible things. We were screamed at by adults for hours on end, we were stuck listening to the same cheerful song on repeat while we slept. When I turned 12, more sorrow entered my life. We have to cut out hands with knives every single day until we stopped feeling pain. We had to sit in a hot room with weird messages shouting at us for days at a time. My 13th, 14th, 15tb, 16th, 17th and 18th years were mostly the same. More horrible things would happen to me and everyone else I grew up with every single day. It didn't stop until I almost couldn't feel anything anymore. And every year, near our birthday, we would have to stand in the Warm Bath and wonder where all that blood came from.

When I was 19 I was shipped off to work with a man who worked with our group. His name was Cameron. Cameron was a drug dealing pimp who used to tell me no one would ever love me. When I asked him why he told me I was a monster designed only to kill and hurt people, and he was right. He used to assign me to round up hookers and hand them over to the elders in order to please Zeemuug. I did as I was told, because Zeemuug was our savior and pleasing him meant pleasing the elders and myself. Cameron started beating me when hookers started denying me.

I was reassigned to another group that was recruiting children from schools and community activities. A girl I knew named Jen used to do the same thing. Although Jen seemed very different. Our childhoods were the same, however I think something snapped in her much earlier than it did in me. Something was wrong with her, something that easy was absent from my psyche. The children were very easy to manipulate, and they always seemed to like the idea of Zeemuug. Sometimes we didn't get intrusions to help them reach ascension, sometimes we had to deliver them back to the compound where I grew up. I used to wonder, if they were going to have to do the same things I did when I was younger, or if they just ended up dead, there blood poured into the Warm Bath for their friends to stand in.

I constantly hoped my parents would come and rescue me, but I knew they weren't coming back for me. I was put up for adoption I think, I can't really remember. One day I was in my mom's arms, the next I was basically shoved in a tiny crib and fed by a woman in all white who never smiled at me. I never even knew her name. I hadn't left that compound my entire life until I was shipped off to work with Cameron. I learned basic things when I was in the compound, and I learned more life skills from Cameron. I learned about sex from him too, but he told me I would never do anything with anyone but him because no one would ever love me.

It was a bright, sunny day in mid July when I was assigned to a new place. A place that was tucked away. A summer camp known as Camp Campbell, where unbenounced to me, would be where I began to question my entire life.

A/N here's just a quick little note. I just wanna go a head and give a shout out to CanItTimmy because they basically gave me the inspiration to post this story. I always had a danvid fic in my head but it wasn't until recently, when I read their fics did I actually feel like I wanted to post it. Go check them out 100%!

Also just another small note there will be some violent or scary scenes in this fic for example, the whole warm bath idea is pretty fucked up and if ur triggered by any of that then just read with caution. Lots of my head canons for Daniel's past are a bit much and I understand if ur not ok with that, just anything that talks about his past I'll state like "in my past" or "in Daniels past" so read with caution.

And with that I really hope u like this fic and read it's it's my break out Camp camp fic and I find that my first fics in a new fanbase often do well (I.e Voodoo doll, Back For More, funny shit sort of) so just I hope you enjoy! Bye!