Timberwood: Short Stories Edition - Vol. 38
With our Timberwood post-cult "clique", we have a big & growing clique full of former members who left. It seems pretty divided & segregated, if you ask me. It seems like 2 cliques in 1. That's why everything is so rocky, & why the former members can't get along. Only a select FEW outsiders keep it REAL, while the majority of the post-cult clique can't fully get Timberwood out of their system. Some of them are suspected to be agents who are still secretly getting money for & working for Timberwood behind closed doors. Others are still brainwashed & not fully awakened yet.
Me (Nola Bordelon), Kristina, Kristina's cousin Cory, Kurl, Carlos, Danielle Sanders, Trenise, Jamaal & the "Latin Boys" get treated like outcasts. We don't fit in, & everyone else in the clique call us weird, crazy, mentally retarded, slow, etc. Some of the former members even try to keep CLOSE tabs on us, acting like handlers, to try to keep us quiet, keep us in line, & make sure we don't speak too much truth.
Sometimes, we feel like we got out of the cult for nothing, & we feel hopeless & defeated; but we will NEVER go back! The majority of the people in our clique seem like fakes who play both sides. Some people in our clique can handle the truth better than others. Some of us are stronger than others.
Mr. Ken, Mr. Earl, Mr. Tim & Mr. Manuel all huddled together to buy a few houses as safe havens, so that we wouldn't have to be out on the streets. Many of the former Timberwood cult members forsook EVERYTHING, for the truth. This caused so many of the former members to become broke, poor & homeless.
As it is, Timberwood controls how you spend your own work paychecks, anyway. The active members would have enough money to buy a Porsche, a Jaguar, a Volvo, a Tesla, or a Ferrari, but were forced to either take public transit, Uber/Lyft, taxi, or drive around in cars like Chevy Sonic, Toyota Corolla & Nissan Sentra, etc. You know. A REGULAR car. The members weren't even allowed to have a Lexus, Infiniti, Acura, BMW or Mercedes. They weren't allowed to own condos & mansions. The members are forced to have all this money but look kind of poor. Not allowed to let the public know that they're rich. But the members are exploited & trafficked against their knowledge or consent.
Me, Kristina, Danielle & Trenise shared a room together at 1 of the houses. I (Nola Bordelon) don't have any children. Even our post-Timberwood clique members try to falsely paint Kristina, Trenise & Danielle to be mentally unfit, deadbeat, crazy mothers, which isn't the truth. Jamaal, Roberto Navarro & Cory are falsely accused of being irresponsible, deadbeat fathers. Crazy that nobody said anything when people REALLY WERE being deadbeat parents while IN the cult. Hence, the "child swap". Everyone babysitting everyone else's children, & not their own. Just plain WEIRD!
Ever since some of the former members had children after leaving Timberwood, they try as best as they can, to be there for their children. The children have SEVERE separation anxiety when the parents or grandparents do something like going grocery shopping without them. You can see the post-cult suffering in the children who never were in Timberwood.
One day, we took the kids to the petting zoo. The children hung out with the grandparents, while I hung out with the other "outcast clique" members. Elitist insiders would laugh at us & call us crazy. C'mon! Like, who's side are you on?
A sheep bumped into me & then yelled, "Baaaaahhhh!"
Tracie & Taschika turned towards me & yelled at me, saying, "Are you THAT stupid, Nola? Now WHY would you stump on the sheep's hoof like that?"
I looked very confused. They made jail threats & threats to get me locked up in the mental institution before I could even get my words out to explain my innocence of their false accusations. That's that abusive, narcissistic fake Timberwood cult mentality! Kurl jumped in & defended me, & they yelled at him, saying, "If you believe her delusional ass, then you're just as crazy as her! Why don't you leave Marnell Walker & then get with Nola?"
They were arguing back & forth with him. He yelled (with his Mississippi country accent), "Y'awl might as well call us the outcast clique, because y'awl pretend to be superior, & y'awl treat us like unwanted throwaways!"
Taschika tried to sarcastically play psych games & ask him, "Oh, so I guess we're the INCAST clique, huh? Is THAT what you tryna say?"
Kurl walked off & said, "Man, just forget it!"
Everything was blown FAR out of proportion & became VERY dramatic. When the heated argument started to escalate, Mrs. Lavonda said, "Let's get outta here before we all get arrested!"
The kids started crying & having meltdowns. They didn't want to leave the petting zoo. They still had more animals to explore. Everyone was embarrassed. We all had to leave.
We got back home, & Kristina wanted to talk to me ALONE in the room. I told her the truth about what happened. She said she believed me wholeheartedly. We were in the middle of talking, & her husband, Tharen, Jr. (Mrs. Lavonda's son), was angrily bamming on the door, yelling, saying, "Let's go, Kristina!"
She said, "My husband's calling me. I gotta go."
She went with him to stay by his mom for the night.
Some other drama must've been happening, because, EVERYONE was getting gangsta & ghetto, trying to fight up in that house! Mainly the females. I don't know what else was going on. After some time, the argument diffused, & everyone went to bed.
In the middle of the night, I overheard Loriano sobbing profusely in the bathroom. He was hyperventilating & crying like a toddler. He started having crying spells & remembering traumatic flashbacks from events that happened when he was in the cult. Something happened during everyone's feuding & arguing that triggered him & made him remember past events that he tried to bury. He said that it reminded him of a deadly fight he eyewitnessed while he was in Timberwood.
The next morning, Kurl came storming inside of the house, yelling at everybody, saying, "Y'awl go get y'awl some REAL jobs! Stop acting like y'awl too pretty to work! That'll solve ALL this shit!"
So then, everyone tried job hunting with normal jobs, but couldn't get hired because, whoever leaves Timberwood gets blacklisted from employment. But at least some of the former members put effort to apply for jobs, even though they still got rejected.
THE END
I don't remember what date I started this, but I completed it on Saturday 04/15/2023. I added a little more & edited on Sunday 04/16/2023. I probably started it a couple of weeks ago when I was still in Cincinnati. It's 10:23 PM, & I'm going to upload this tomorrow. I'm VERY sleepy. Tired & sleep deprived.
& yes, I spelled it, "Y'awl" ON PURPOSE!