Ever since the day I died, I’ve been trying to write my story. On September 18th, 1988 at the young age of 18 my family, everyone I’d ever known or cared about, killed me.
I was raised a strict Jehovah’s Witness and when they disfellowshipped me, everyone, even JW’s I don’t know, treated me as if I were dead. I’d been disfellowshipped once before when I was fourteen. It lasted for six months and it was hell to get reinstated. I couldn’t do it again. So, I’m still dead to every JW the world over, including my mother, father and sister.
I left that confining existence, where you aren’t allowed to associate with anyone but other JW’s, and went out into the real world. That experience is told in Jolene, but fictionalized big time, in Jolene, You’re Not a Monster. Instead of a JW, Jolene was created and raised in a lab. Military Intelligence trained her and uses her as a spy, but one of the doctors that created her is trying to terminate her and another group is trying to capture her.
I made her birthday September 18th 1988 and the story is set in 2009. She’s hardheaded, resourceful and wants to live. There are so many things she’s never done, just like there were so many things I’d never done.
One of the first things I did when I got out on my own was have sex, so does Jolene and it kind of sucked for both of us. I’ve never talked to anyone whose first time was all that good. Still, like me she doesn’t give up until it gets better. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t an erotic novel, but it is a character driven a science fiction thriller and young twenty-somethings do it. (Okay we all do it, I hope.)
Another aspect of Jolene that mirrors my life is that from a young age, her father figure, Dr. Carter taught her to never kill. They may have kicked me out of the religion, but I still believed that Armageddon was coming soon and when it did I was going to die with the rest of the worldy, non-JW people. I had nightmares for years about Jesus riding down as explosions went off around me, pointing his sword at me personally and yelling, “You betrayed me.” Lightening would flare out of his sword and I’d explode with my last thought being I’d screwed up.
It wasn’t until college that I managed to chip away some of that brainwashing it. It’s hard to look at something you’ve believed all your life and pick holes in it. Jolene goes through what that feels like when to save herself and others, Dr. Carter tells her to kill. Everything she’s believed about Dr. Carter was from a daughter’s perspective. She has to see Dr. Carter as a person not just a parent. She has to go through everything I did when I got hit in the face with that realization at 18. My parents who were supposed to love me more than they feared dying at Armageddon, didn’t.
I am not 18 anymore, I’ve had children of my own and I’m no longer brainwashed, but that 18 year old, naïve girl is still inside of me, just a little less now because she’s also out there as Jolene who is now her own person born of my pain and joys at that time in my life. It wouldn’t surprise me if she knocked on my door and asked who gave me permission to write her story. It would scare me though, because she is a bad ass monster.
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Kacy Jey is an award winning author with short stories in Bonded by Blood Anthology III, SNM Horror Magazine and articles in various magazines. Jolene, You’re Not a Monster is her debut novel. Kacy, born in San Bernardino, California, currently lives in Texas via Michigan after six years.
