— info.

[retrogressive]

content warning: sapphira’s story deals with themes of grooming, violence, murder, suicide, blood sacrifice of both humans and animals, trauma-induced psychosis, stockholm syndrome, and other cult behaviors. her “visions” induce blackouts and seizures.

It’s been two decades since the massacre of infamous cult Prosperity: fifty-seven members found dead, their bodies brutalized by self-inflicted violence brought on by homemade nerve gas. In the garish photos released to the public — eyes gouged out, faces caved in, skin and nails peeled off — one single survivor sits amidst the unspeakable carnage. A girl, nine years old, weak from hunger and mute from wading through the bodies in their sprawling underground home, looking unsuccessfully for a way out. Sapphira was supposed to be the future of Prosperity, the alleged daughter of the founding members, blessed with the unique gift to dream prophecies of the future — or so they told her for all of her young life. Instead, she was shuffled into the system and picked apart in hospitals and therapy sessions, forced into the unfamiliar garishness of the modern world. Prosperity became synonymous with something evil, chilling, something never to be revisited except only as a cautionary tale.

At twenty-one, her visions return to her, filling the hole occupied by broken dreams and bloodshed. Her memories encase her like ice shimmering in the sun, threads of reality and illusion tightly wound together. After the long years of being told by therapists that her predilection for the future was simply contrived by her parents as a tool for Prosperity, using the prop of their daughter’s supposed mysticism as a means for control, she knows the truth — that prophecies run through her dreams. And this time, she dreams of another survivor of Prosperity, a boy meant to be her other half, the missing link to resurrect the only place that ever felt like home.

She is owed a family. She is owed her birthright. She longs for a return to the life she remembers in sharp, vivid fragments, and so she searches for the lost piece of Prosperity, determined to bring back the tiny world in which she felt cherished and safe. Before the blood. Before the death. Before the massacre, there was something pure, something holy — the seed of that which lives in her. If she can only find the face in her dreams, Prosperity can live again.

Some things, however, should always, always remain dead.

CODE BY MARWOOD

Comments

— PROSPERITY

[retrogressive]

heavy content warnings for cult behaviors, brutal violence, animal sacrifice, murder, suicide.
loosely based on how bad things can get by darcy coates.

PROSPERITY was a cult active in the early 2000s, located in Colorado, led by a man who called himself CAPTAIN DEADWILER who claimed that his daughter, SAPPHIRA, was blessed with the gift of prophecy. Her prophecies guided many of Prosperity's rituals which included fasting, ingesting poisons, blood sacrifice of both animals and humans, varied sexual practices, and more. The cult, with a total of 58 known members, was active for a little more than a decade, existing in an underground commune, before Deadwiler urged all members to partake of nerve gas in order to reach a higher level of consciousness. The gas, a botched homemade chemical, minimized pain while inducing violent ideation and hallucinations. Over the course of one night, the members inflicted brutal violence upon both themselves and each other, while feeling little to no pain, even when breaking their own bones against walls or pulling out their own teeth. 57 members died. Sapphira was found and rescued after 13 days.