The Cultisack - The story of forgotten shooting stars

The Cultisack - The story of ignored shooting stars

Taliss Bradford

27, female, Washington girl, long, strong, and straight black hair.

Her eyes are hazel, and her lips are almost brown

She grew up living on the same street as everyone in her friend group. This ride or die gang is filled tightly with strong men who drive great cars, own street houses, and the girls live off of them.

Taliss and I were really close when we were little, and I had the biggest crush on her. She didn’t see me as that, so I thought, but when I left the neighborhood, my time with her ended also.

Taliss grew up with an abusive mother, bringing home different men each night. She clung to stability, and thus she stayed within the street friend group as her safe space.

Taliss, at 16, moved in with a boy named Tom, from the gang, avoiding a terrible home life, but he wasn’t much better. He would hurt her, abuse her, demean her, make her sleep with other men, and watch. The gang was not about this, but Taliss couldn’t leave; she could never go back to her mother.

One day, preparing for a special holiday BBQ, Tom began to demean Taliss. Alluding to how she was in the past, a whore. As he was berating her, she was peeling potatoes. She continued peeling as Tom peeled away at her, saying she is just like her whore mother-

slash

Taliss caught Tom with the peeler blade and he begins to bleed, but he doesn’t retreat, he presses into her. She tries to defend herself, but he takes the peeler out of her hand and begins to press down into her cheeks, pulling the blade down and removing a deep chunk of skin. He matches it on the other side. He goes to peel along the ridges of her forehead but Cole, the gang leader enters into the house to take care of Tom, Taliss is rushed to the hospital.

When I returned home, I wasn’t planning on seeing anyone from the group. I figured our days within that empty cultisack were over once the land was filled with homes. But when I returned, it was as though I had missed everything.

Seeing Taliss again was one strange sight. Yes, I saw her scars and her broken soul, but all I could see was the little girl who treated me like her brother, and when she saw me all grown up, she was speechless, as was I.

When I told her “I’m so glad to see you”, I didn’t mean her now, but who she meant to me.

I had just finished law school. My family decided to put me into boarding school when I was young, so when I returned home, the cul-de-sac was the place to be.

It was closed off; no one could enter on their own, they had to be invited. We did what we wanted in that cultisack. We would ride bikes in the mounds, play pretend in the grass, and watch the sunset, whatever we could do to stay away from our parents, and they didn’t care; they didn’t want us around anyway.

Taliss and I were really close. I would sneak over to her house late at night sometimes to help her leave, and we’d run straight to the cul-de-sac just to sit in the grass and watch the night sky and dream of the future.

She was so beautiful and sweet, mean sometimes, but her and I clicked because we were tough and didn’t want to become our parents any more than our parents wanted us around. We didn’t have to put on a front together; we could be honest and hopeful. Around everyone, it was different, but alone together, we could be ourselves.

When I was stuck at boarding school, that was what I looked forward to every weekend, every summer, every Christmas, every thought of home was thoughts of her.

Time goes on, my family moved while I was away at school, and I never got a chance to say goodbye to the gang, especially Taliss. I tried to find her in a phone book, but I never found the Bradford residence, which was her Dad’s name anyway, and she lived with her mom. So even if I did find the name, it wouldn’t have gotten to her

I finished out school and headed right for the academy. My father pushed for me to be a lawyer, so I spent many years building the future my parents dreamed of for me. I found a girl in the town of my academy, and we married after law school.

When my father became sick, it was hard for me to watch the God of my life wither away right in front of me. I learned what it meant to be a man that day he died.

The funeral is this week, and we buried him in the Pines cemetery next to his parents, that’s why I’m back home with my mother. We are staying at her mom’s house. My grandma told me about how my friends. I didn’t want to meet them; it seems they aren’t great with the law and have a code independent of others. It would be better to stay put. Those days in the cultisack are done and over.

One night, as I walked to the car with groceries in hand, I saw them, all hanging around in the back of the parking lot, and I even saw her, still as beautiful as ever, but broken.

When we came together, it was like magnets, but I knew I couldn’t stay with her. I knew that those days were behind us, and we are too different now, flaws and all. 

I’ll never forget those cultisack nights, I’ll never forget the fights, the duels, the races, and the dreams. I just hope that my kids will have a cultisack of their own, and learn what it means to truly dream.