Uncle Timothy opened his office door, apologized for being late, huffed a bit with his girth, and ran his hand through thinning hair. He'd had a call at home, he said, placing his cellphone on the big oak desk with its dark stain and clawed feet. His apartment was an attached unit, but separate from his house. Elizabeth thought of how nice it would be to have a second home of one's own, away from the ocean of family. Uncle Timothy's chair creaked when he sat. Elizabeth looked at her lap.

"Let us pray." Uncle Timothy asked God's guidance in carrying out the command as it was recently revealed in Timothy's vision.

A rolling muscle cramp curled up Elizabeth's midsection; she knew what a vision meant. She placed her open palm on her tummy, felt the row of pearly blue buttons. She'd felt grown the day she'd picked out the fabric and the buttons. And more grown when she'd finished the dress. Her grandmother inspected the hem and pronounced it perfectly even. "Look at those stitches," her mother had said with pride.

But in the office of the Prophet, she felt she was a child.

"Elizabeth," Uncle Timothy said with a broad smile, "this is a happy day. God has revealed your eternal partner to me. You will be wed next year to Travis Lyman, sealed for all time and eternity."

__

Elizabeth Warren is a fourteen-year-old living in the "Community" with her father, four mothers, and sixteen siblings. The prophet, Uncle Timothy, controls all facets of the cult. He assigns young girls to marry far older men, with whom they will have numerous children. When he has a vision that Elizabeth will marry her nineteen-year-old cousin, she has no choice. Demanding submission of both body and soul, the prophet destroys lives under the guise of correcting souls.

Smart but poorly educated, Elizabeth at first submits to her fate. Observant, she realizes no one is happy: two of her moms love one another, but are not free to express this; another is pulling the family apart in her effort to get free. As Elizabeth better understands the prophet's manipulation of community members, she joins forces with her twin brother, her older sister, and two good friends to free her family from the psychological and spiritual abuse of an evil man. With their prophet two steps ahead of them and holding all the power, Elizabeth realizes they need outside help, which requires telling the dark secret of her life.

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Victoria is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer and has been included in Best Short Stories from The Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest. Her books include a collection of feminist short fiction, Acts of Contrition, and a chapbook on grief, The Mortality of Dogs and Humans. Her new novel, Keep Sweet, is the story of a teen girl trying to escape a polygamist cult. Formerly the managing editor of the journal Inlandia: A Literary Journey and a teacher librarian, she discusses both writing and library book censorship on her Substack, "Be a Cactus." She is currently writing a novel about book banning.