The Book Of Joseph (Far Cry 5)

Part Four.

IV

" They may be united by blood or joined by fortune, but they cannot claim to be family. For the only legitimate family, the only one spared from evil, is the family of those who serve the Father."

Sermon from the Project at Eden's Gate.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

While my father was whipping me with his old leather belt that June, the Voice didn't just order me to hold back my brother Jacob.

It proclaimed that we three - Jacob, John and me - had been chosen to achieve Its destiny. And to give humanity one last chance.

Not for a moment did I doubt that I was hearing the Creator in my head. It was much more than just a voice. It was, and still is, a presence that envelops me and warms me to my core, a language that every cell in my body understands, one which I am spreading far and wide to try to convince the pure of heart to join our family.

Nothing can stop me, because this is the mission I have been assigned and nothing can contradict me, for I am the messenger.

That night, I spoke to Jacob in the tiny bedroom we shared. I managed to convince him not to confront our father. Later, he would recount how my eyes shone feverishly in the dark and how my faith had stayed his hand. I was no longer his quiet, timid little brother. The Voice had transformed me.

I had awakened.

As it was, our father never did hit us again: a few days later, two cars, one from the police and another from social services, pulled up in front of our house.

Teachers at John's school had noticed the belt marks crisscrossing his back and immediately called child protective services who had been forced to send officials all the way out to Rome to investigate.

The examined us. The scars on our backs told the same story three times over.

We climbed into their car.

I looked back at our house through the car window for the last time, then at the neighbour's yard. Amid the brush, I spotted the familiar shape of a rusty lawnmower that had been there as long as I could remember. It sat as a testament to a bygone era when we still cared about such things - a time when the lawn was still manicured, when we hosted barbecues and gave to those less fortunate than us (because there were such people).

All that was in the past now.

Soon there would be nothing, because the world I knew was going to disappear, but I didn't know that yet.

I never saw my father again.

He got into the police car along with my mother.

The officers' desire to mete out punishment of their own was palpable. I imagine they did that later, somewhere where we couldn't see. We had seen enough as it was.

My father died in federal prison in Atlanta towards the end of his sentence. Many years later, when I started preaching, I ran across a former prisoner who remembered this Old Man Seed as he was known then. The ex-prisoner told me that he had died in prison after falling down a set of stairs. Was it really an accident? Its hard to say. But I remember that my fathers sermons could be very annoying.

I do not miss my mother. She was already a ghost when we all lived under the same roof. Today she must be haunting some institution, doubtless lad to be far from the man who erased her life. She might already be dead. She will be soon anyways like the other.

We went to an orphanage at first, where doctors and psychologists examined us. I quickly understood that it had little to do with caring. This was more about determining the amount of mistreatment that we had suffered than it was about healing our wounds. Our suffering might make us violent and poorly adapted. We might represent a threat to society. And that was to be avoided at all costs.

They gave me a rag doll and asked me to point to where he had touched me, but I was one of the rare children in the orphanage who was lucky enough to have only been beaten.

They placed ink blots in front of me and asked me what I saw. I saw butterflies, dancers, squashed animals, black swans, skulls, dwarfs, and a little girl with pigtails whose stomach had been opened up. All of that was perfectly normal.

And I talked about what the Voice had told me.

The men in white coats talked to me about imaginary friends, post-traumatic stress disorder, subconscious defence mechanisms, transient schizophrenia, and emotional scars - none of which I understood.

I understood only one thing: that I had been chosen.

Throwing up their hands, they finally told me to keep my mouth shut about the things I was hearing if I ever wanted to find a family before the age at which I and the Voice in my head could be thrown out on the street.

I decided to keep quiet.

Several months later, social services placed all three of us with a childless couple who lived in a small town not far from Rome. As soon as we were in the car, winding down the small dirt roads to our guardians' house - who the social worker told us not to hesitate to call Mum and Dad - they started talking to us about our new start, our new life. We were promised love and fresh air. We dreamed about pies cooling on the window sill, laughter under thick blankets. We imagined ourselves putting up fences pushing a mower across the lawn in front of a white-painted house. We thought that we would grow up in loving hands. We thought we were living in a TV show.

But what was awaiting us was even worse than our parents. This couple did not want children - they wanted free labour.

They treated us like livestock. We worked before and after school until we fell asleep, without a single day to rest. We took care of the animals and the garden. We cooked meals, cleaned the house, and did the laundry for our guardians, or rather, our owners.

We could not complain. We did not even think of trying. The adult world was too hostile towards us. We had to handle it on our own. We were child labourers shackled to their workbench, child soldiers on the front line, more despised than beggars and day labourers one searches for on the other side of the border, in slave markets by another name.

We slept in a barn and were only fed because otherwise we would not have the energy to work.

Today, I know that was a test we had to undergo to harden us and prepare us for the heavy task awaiting us. To help us understand how this world is flawed. How it deserves to disappear. We suffered daily, beaten down, but we also became more resilient, stronger.

And one day, Jacob was strong enough.