The Acquaintance Trap

This is Fiction

“They knocked on my door every day,” she told Roger. She was a slender woman, not much older than twenty (if he had to guess). He’d later found out that she was seventeen. The leader of this band of nightcrawlers – whose sole mission was to transform the planet into a global bastion of preachers of the dove moon. That was until she had fled.

“So what? Why didn’t you just tell them to go away?” he asked her – pointing his microphone closer to her mouth, her voice so low it was barely registering on his decibel meter.

“At first, I did…” she said, taking a sip of coffee from the lukewarm mug. He had a habit of meeting his subjects in roadside coffee shops lately.

“But that was when it was only one or two of them knocking. I always felt uncomfortable, so I would always say ‘thanks, but no thanks…”

She polished off her coffee cup.

“Can I have another?” she asked as if she had never tasted anything sweeter.

Roger raised his hand to signal for the waiter.

"So what changed?" Roger asked.

"It was the weirdest thing... They moved into the neighborhood," she explained as her second coffee arrived.

"What do you mean?"

"Well..." she took another long draw from her new mug, savouring the taste.

"We lived in a cul de sac and my family's house was the last one on the block. All of a sudden our neighbours were moving out. One by one their houses were put up for sale and one by one, the people who would knock on our doors were buying their properties up and moving into them."

"Why?"

"Well, my parents thought it was because they were trying to get close to us... close to me. They believed that if they were part of our community, I would be more willing to trust them and eventually... Join them." she downed her coffee in a large gulp.

“Psychologists call this the acquaintance trap… When we are unable to say ‘no’ to a group of people who put social pressure on you to perform a certain way or do a certain thing…”

"Do you think that is true?" Roger asked. Tiffany nodded. At first, he was skeptical, but the evidence did point to a mass infatuation with her, the one they called 'the chosen dove.'

"You don't think that was a tad... excessive? How could they be so organized around attracting a fourteen-year-old girl as their leader?"

Tiffany shrugged.

"That brings me to another question... Why you?"

Tiffany sat silently. She was waiting for this question but didn't know how to address it.

"At our church... We were excommunicated,"

She let that hang before looking at Roger who was eager to know more.

"They had a strong social media presence. One day the preacher came out into the audience, there were thousands of us out there amongst the pews. We were all talking in tongues. Except for me, I was sprouting out something. I didn't know..." she turned away in shame.

"What was it, what were you saying?" he asked.

"I don't know... It was, well... I thought it was gibberish. Turns out it was something that caught fire on TikTok. Next thing I know there are hundreds of people visiting the church demanding to know where I am. They want to talk to me and to meet up with me. They want to hear me speak. Those videos that the preacher put on social media, went viral... Or so I'm told. Millions of views within weeks of the upload. All of a sudden I am some cult hero to a group of disjointed people who had never met one another but were keen to hear more from me... And I don't even know what I was saying to them!"

She twisted the handle of her coffee mug as she spoke. Her agitation was on full display.

"Can you give me a sense of what it is you were saying that prompted so many people to become devoted to you?"

"Didn't you hear me?"

"I did, but I mean..." Roger switched off the record function to his tape deck.

"I think this story could benefit from a quote Tiffany." She looked at him with disappointment in her eyes. She had hoped he would be the one to break the curse she had been living under. The one to recognize the absurdity of the cult that had formed around her as a result of an accident. The unwitting leader.

"Can't you just go online?" she asked. "When I say those things... I don't even know that I am saying them. I just close my eyes and it is like something else takes over. Something or someone uses my mouth as a vessel to spew out this stuff and I have no control over any of it. Next thing I know, a thousand more people sign up for the cult of the dove - or whatever they want to call themselves and I have to lead them. Even though I don't know what they want and I don't know what to say to them."

"Sounds like an awful lot of responsibility for a young woman," Roger said. "Why do you still do it?" he asked.

"You still aren't listening. I'm not doing it. I quit... I escaped. Remember? That's how I made contact with you. I said in my email - I have quit the cult but I am their leader - I want to tell my story so people will know that I don't believe this stuff and they should stop following me and stop believing what they are hearing me say,” she said through tears.

"Well, look... I can print that. I can print exactly that. But, I mean... You say you have quit but... I saw online that you uploaded a new video to the congregation last night and that too has gone viral. How can you explain your actions to me today in the face of you also saying that you are a changed person and you do not wish to lead the congregation."

She stared at him dead in the eye - locking pupils with a laser lie focus.

"I told you, you aren't listening. I am not the one giving these lectures... these homilies - whatever you want to call them. I have no control. Someone or something is controlling me. That is who is leading these people. Not me. I have escaped but the thing that controls me stays on. That is who is preaching online each night and releasing video after video..." Her voice suddenly grew agitated and deeper, as if it had an inhabitation, alien-like quality to the tone and cadence.

"Start recording," this new voice coming out of the mouth of this young girl commanded. Transfixed, Roger did as he was told.

"The armies of the oils that live beneath the pores of the ocean silt will rise and begin to walk amongst the plants, animals, and other species who dwell in the soils away from the coastlines. Their inner demons will reveal themselves and emerge for the victory that lies..."

Roger was transfixed.

He awoke from a day slumber holding his microphone towards no one. He sat alone in the booth of a coffee shop that was empty aside from himself. Chairs were stacked on tables. The cashier had closed up for the night. There was no evidence that he had met anyone in the shop that night. No residue from coffee mugs, or food scraps, nothing to indicate he was on assignment. It was a blank canvas, a wiping of time, expunged completely from his consciousness.

He looked down at the recorder, its wheels were still turning. The tape still running through the gears, still picking up the sounds of the night that echoed off the walls of the silent shop.

He stopped recording and placed the machine into his day bag and shuffled out of the booth, wondering how he was going to escape the locked-up shop from inside.