The biggest problem with stupid people was that, most of the time, they had no idea they were stupid. Nobody batted an eye, but followed foolishly along after those who claimed to know the difference between truth and rumour. The biggest killer was naivety; people fell victim to this every day, too foolish to make up their own mind, to do their own research. It was difficult to feel pity for people who were stupid, knowing it was something they had brought upon themselves. It was foolish to believe things without questioning, to take the word of others before discovering for yourself.

As a boy growing up in a religious family, it was hard to take anything seriously. Rules and sins were spoken by those in power, pressed on the vulnerable as a way to elicit fear and control. If one refused that which they were told blindly, it was unlikely that one would fall victim to manipulation. This was something it had taken years for Mosiah to learn, and he was still quite young, but he was never stupid. The way of life was to keep oneself well-informed, refuting so-called facts until they were proven. For some, it was easy to be manipulated. Maybe as a very young boy, this was a sin of Mosiah's.

At sixteen years old, Mosiah ran away from home, terrified of the prospect of remaining under his parents' roof for a single day more. Running from the farm meant wandering a big highway with nowhere to go, until you either hitched a ride with a stranger or starved to death. Mosiah had chosen the former, hitchhiking with a teenage girl and her mother down the highway into the city. In the backseat, he’d made awkward conversation with the woman, who looked older than his mother. When he got into the car, she’d looked him in the mirror and asked what he was doing out by the highway all alone.

That was the thing about adults. They were nosy, and they gossipped. Mosiah knew telling the woman the truth would probably result in her turning back around and driving him home. It was as if a teenager couldn’t have a mind of their own at all: and this was infuriating. Even Mosiah’s two year old daughter had a mind of her own.

He grumbled. “I have nowhere to go. I’m an orphan.”

She’d pitied him. She had to, in order to do what he wanted. She’d taken him to the home of his oldest brother, with whom he'd always been close. Nobody had come to look for Mosiah. After a short time, it became evident that nobody really cared about his departure at all.

At first glance, Mosiah didn't seem much like a boy people would want to hang around. He wore mostly mesh and fishnets, frightening strangers with his occult jewellery and red contact lenses. Mosiah knew for a fact his in-laws loathed him, as they made no secret of this, and it wasn't worth caring about. The kitchen of his duplex was scattered with occult items and large wall hangings picked out by his wife. A former Catholic, Valentina had brought distance between herself and her family upon her marriage. She remained mostly apathetic about this fact.

"Why do you dress like that? You look like you're going to go home and set things on fire."

At work, there was a dress code Mosiah never really cared to follow. He worked during the days, returning home early enough to put his daughter to bed, and often gathered with his coven late at night.

Zipping his jacket, Mosiah glanced at his coworker, who always arrived as he was leaving. "Hail Satan." He wasn't somebody to be feared, despite the way he dressed or spoke. It was ugly to conform, and Mosiah had never had any interest in following society like a sheep. "See you tomorrow." As a Satanist, Mosiah was often misjudged. This never surprised him, although it got tiresome to educate the uneducated. Satan was a symbol of the self, not an actual deity to be worshipped. Mosiah didn't really worship anything at all.

On the way home from work, Mosiah always stopped to pick up his daughter from her daycare. It was on the other end of the city, but he'd never minded. After all Valentina did at home, the least Mosiah could do was be his daughter's transportation.

Maia looked just like her mother, but she had her father's eyes. Mosiah recently learned how to braid the toddler's hair, which was thick and curly, and got in the way if it was left down. When Mosiah arrived, Maia scrambled over on her chubby legs, as she did every day, chattering away. "Hi, Daddy!"

"You know, I'm starting to think God doesn't even exist at all!"

Mosiah's brother, Salem, was seven years older than him. When both brothers lived at home, most of their free time was spent together, secretly discussing their scepticism about religion and the family dynamic. Salem left the home when Mosiah was twelve, and he never returned. Nobody ever did.

"He doesn't." Salem had shrugged his shoulders, which were covered in a thick black cloak, the one he still wore every Halloween. "Not in the Christian sense of the word, anyway." He was always a skeptic when it came to religion. Salem's biggest arguments with his parents were always about the way they raised their children. It's funny; for a guy who claimed to know more about parenting than his mother and father, he'd never even had kids.

Mosiah had begun to feel isolated from the rest of his family by the time he'd hit puberty. It was easy to sneak out of the house, to learn and to question. It was easy to return early in the morning before anyone suspected he'd been gone. Sometimes, as a young boy, he'd have bitter thoughts of his father dropping dead of a mysterious cause, and this would bring him a sick sense of comfort when his father was unbearable. Of course, despite the way he looked, Mosiah was not a criminal.

He'd questioned Salem, eager for more information. "What do you mean?" He'd never considered, at twelve years old, the misinformation he might have been getting from the religious community. Salem had a fresh perspective, and this was just what Mosiah needed. "I don't want to go to Hell."

"You won't." Salem was preparing to move out, at the time, to a town a couple of hours away. As the second-eldest child, he was always more of a babysitter than a sibling. "Hell isn't real. It's just a place people made up to scare us into listening." Lillian had always told the children they would go to Hell. When Mosiah was outed as bisexual, Lillian had screamed at him, insisting that he was an abomination, that he would burn in Hell. This had scared him, for a while. It had never scared Salem.

A year ago, Mosiah eloped with Valentina. He'd met her at work, and didn't care much for her at first. Something about being ignored was exciting to Valentina, he'd later learned, as she was always drawn to the man who showed no interest in her. Perhaps this was due to her father's neglectful behaviour of her in the past. When Mosiah began dating Valentina, men at work were envious – she was hot, and certainly more than a little objectified in public. At the time of Maia's birth, Valentina was seventeen years old, and not on speaking terms with her family. Things were slightly different, now.

In the backseat, Maia played with her stuffed bear. Like many biracial children, she was regularly exposed to two languages. She didn't speak well in either. "Daddy, where going?" As a teenager, Mosiah would have cut off his legs if it meant he'd never be a father. If he'd never met his wife, he probably would have stuck to this idea.

"We're stopping by the flower store." As a father, it was very important Mosiah exposed his daughter to healthy behaviours. It was very important he show her first-hand the proper ways to be treated by other people. Mosiah didn't believe in the golden rule. It was pointless to treat unkind people with kindness. It was foolish to treat anyone with kindness who didn't deserve it at all. "I'm picking up something for your mother."

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"I'm ashamed to be your mother," Lillian had said, her head ducked to the ground, as if looking at him hurt her eyes. "You are not a child of God!"

At the time, Mosiah had to have been around fifteen years old. Though he hadn't seen Salem in years, their conversations lived loudly inside his head. "Good. I don't want to be a child of God, anyway."

"You should know what a cult is by now," Salem said, the day he moved out. "You're living in one."

The second-last time Mosiah spoke to his father, they argued badly. This was not uncommon. Orion had scolded him for refusing to attend mass, and Mosiah had insisted on staying home that morning, unbothered by the slap Orion had sent screaming over his cheek. It was cowardly to hit a child. It was cowardly to treat a child badly at all.

Mosiah’s sister Esther was his favourite of his siblings, and the only one he missed since leaving home. The last time he saw her, she was three years old. Esther would follow him around the house, begging to play with him, longing to participate in whatever he was doing. Some days, he felt bad for leaving her. Esther likely didn’t even remember him at all.

"Hi, amor," said Mosiah, stopping in the kitchen to kiss his wife. "These are for you."

Valentina made money from social media, where she was well-liked. Naturally, it wasn't hard to like a woman like her. The bouquet of flowers in Mosiah's hand was filled with dahlias and daisies, and boasted beautiful colours. After bounding inside the door, Maia ran off, shouting, to play in her little bedroom.

Despite having lived in the country for more than a decade, Valentina spoke with a thick accent. She'd spoken before of her desire to return to Colombia. Maybe when Maia got a bit older, it could be their first family trip. "Thank you, papi." Valentina was cooking, as she did every day for supper, usually something native to her home country. "I have some news for you." Taking a break from her preparation, Valentina poked her head inside Maia's bedroom. "Should I tell you now or later?"

Mosiah was twenty years old. This would be, according to his mother, far too young to be a responsible father. He would disagree. There was really no age limit on responsibility, after all. He became a father at the age of eighteen, months before moving out of Prince Edward Island. It wasn't hard to leave. There was nothing, really, he would miss. "Tell me now."

Finishing up, Valentina shut off the stove. She was a good cook, and a good mother. She pulled back her curly hair, calling for Maia to come to dinner. Like many toddlers, Maia was a picky eater. Creeping up in front of Mosiah, Valentina rubbed a hand against his butt. "I'm pregnant."

When Mosiah first met his wife, he thought she was obnoxious. While men at work were stupidly desperately trying to get her attention, Mosiah could not have cared less. He was sixteen at the time, staying with Salem and working part-time at an electronics store. On the days when he and Valentina worked the same shift, he'd do his best to avoid her, but Valentina was loud and bubbly, and for some reason determined to get on his good side.

"Why do you hate me?" she asked once, after confronting him during their lunch break. "What did I ever do to you?" It was hard to ignore a hot girl standing so close. Valentina knew she was attractive. She was a confident woman, who'd always gotten what she wanted, especially when it came to men.

She always wore her hair in a ponytail. She was short and curvy, and men were shallow creatures who thought with their dicks. "Never said I hated you." There were often misconceptions that Mosiah was a hateful person, based off of nothing more than the way he dressed. "We're just not really friends." No one really wanted to be friends with Valentina. Girls were jealous of her, and boys wanted to fuck her. This, she said, was why she was initially into him. He was a refreshing change, she said. The next week, he'd hooked up with Valentina in the parking lot after their late-night shift.

There was still an ultrasound photo of Maia on the freezer. When Valentina got pregnant for the first time, her parents shouted at her. She was an unmarried teenager: a sinner, in the eyes of God. Back then, she may have still believed that God existed.

"Thanks for dinner, amor," said Mosiah, helping clean the kitchen after their meal. "I'll go get Maia ready for her bath."

He was a tidy, organized man, and cleaned the home often. All of Mosiah's things had a place, set off somewhere neatly, easy to find at a later time. People were taken aback by this, as though a boy of Mosiah's age couldn't possibly be tidy, meticulous, as if it were Valentina who made him keep things tidy. If you asked Mosiah's wife, she'd say she couldn't care less about a messy house.

"You're a disgraceful son," Orion would say, whenever Mosiah did something with which he didn't agree. "You're a disgrace to your family and to God. On the day of the Second Coming, you won't be spared."

It was all more sad than anything, really. Everybody knew the church was a cult.

After putting his toddler to bed, Mosiah met his wife in the living room. Most of her days were consumed with vlogging and editing videos for social media, or scheduling posts that would help pay the bills. She was gorgeous, and assertive. A lot of the time, men called her names for this.

Valentina laid her head on his lap, yawning. "Hey. She go to bed alright?"

He kissed her. "Yes." Maia always did. With her coloured nightlight and her meditation music, she was usually asleep before Mosiah left the room.

It was snowing. It was exciting and surreal to know that he was going to be a father again. Contrary to what most people thought, Maia wasn't an accident. Valentina knew from a young age that she wanted kids. Her fingers swept over his crotch, kneading, playful, knowing she was irresistible. Valentina wouldn't call herself a nymphomaniac. It would have sufficed to say her personal life was never lacking.

Mosiah was horny. Valentina was out of his league. "You're so hot," he said, kissing her again.

In the evening. Valentina often wore camisoles and sports bras. Sometimes she wore nothing at all. She kissed with just the right amount of tongue, her teeth tugging at Mosiah's lips like a tease, one hand rubbing over the thin fabric of his linen pants. Women were easy to please. Valentina wasn't shy about saying what she felt.

The duplex was warm and dim. A statue of Baphomet sat on the floor across from the couch. Sliding a hand down her chest and stomach, Mosiah slipped his fingers quickly into Valentina's sleeping shorts. She was already wet. When Mosiah softly swirled his fingers over her pussy, she muttered, breathing loudly into his face. “I love you." Her eyes were dark, perusing his face without a word. Before Valentina, he'd never been in love. After her, nothing was the same.

Mosiah was always careful to look at a woman when making her cum. He loved to see the curves of her mouth, the flutters of her eyes. He loved to hear the catching of her breath as she unravelled, trying her best not to be heard by the neighbours. Her pussy seemed to tighten around his fingers, tempting. She could tempt her husband by doing next to nothing at all.

She was still. Moving his face closer to hers, Mosiah kissed her, and then lingered inches from her face, so that he could feel her breathing. Her eyes closed, fluttering with each of his touches.

Growing up, Mosiah fought a lot with his siblings. It was easy to get away with things, when so many children were in the house. He could have snuck out for hours and nobody would have noticed. He was home schooled from the age of five, always forbidden from using things like cell phones or technology, never permitted to leave the home without a parent present. It all seemed so extreme, as if there was something to be hidden from the children. There certainly was. At sixteen, Mosiah and all of his siblings were made to sign a purity pledge, promising themselves to nobody but the woman or man they would marry. While some, like Hannah, were more than happy to partake in such a disgusting action, Mosiah had refused, erupting an explosive fight between him and his father, and leading to his escape from the home. It was as though adults believed sex and love went together, but they didn't. Mosiah had fucked people he didn't love at all. Orion used sex to piece together relationships that were never meant to happen.

Maia was crying. After quickly kissing his wife, Mosiah stood to tend to her.