The Compound

I live in a gated compound. They don’t call it a cult — not officially. It’s dressed up as something softer, something seductive. A concept wrapped in linen and sunshine smiles. A place of complete freedom. A return to something pure. A place where we can enjoy Mother Earth without the rules and regulations of what we now call “the outside world.” No 9 to 5. No taxes. No corrupt systems telling us how to live. Just land. Air. Space to be. Sounds idyllic, right? Of course it did. It did for me too — when I dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s with the kind of blind faith that feels, in hindsight, recklessly naive; the kind that skips the detail in favour of the dream. In fact… I skipped the small print entirely. No men. Half my family — gone. I still feel the echo of that goodbye. It doesn’t fade; it just settles deeper. It lives somewhere behind my ribs now, like a second pulse. They were taken to an all-male compound, several hundred miles away. “Taken” sounds dramatic, but that’s how it felt. A quiet tearing. My husband trying to make light of it. Alex cracking jokes that landed somewhere between brave and brittle. And Maxi, bless him, more concerned about losing Wi-Fi than losing us. We all pretended it was fine. It wasn’t. I haven’t seen them since. I’ve made friends here. Real ones. Or at least… real enough to keep the silence from growing teeth. There’s Bonnie — my Asian pal with a Scottish accent that still hits you like a plot twist every single time she opens her mouth. “Pass us that shovel, hen,” she’ll say, whilst I perform a double take and a firm squint of the eyes. Her laugh is infectious — reckless, almost. The kind that feels like rebellion in a place that claims it doesn’t need any. I get strong powerhouse energy from her. Boss bitch, no question. The kind who would’ve closed deals, broken hearts, and done it all with a smile that made you thank her for it. Then there’s Megan. Once high-maintence Megan. Polished to perfection, now stripped of all her usual armour. We’re not allowed makeup here. Not even mirrors — as if reflection itself might undo the illusion. But I catch her sometimes, pausing in reflective surfaces. A spoon. A puddle. The blurred ghost of herself in a window at dusk. “I just miss… upkeep,” she mutters once, tilting her face, searching for something familiar. “Maintenance. Is that so tragic?” Her hair — once styled within an inch of its life — is scraped back into a tight, practical bun. She’s still beautiful. Painfully so. But beauty without control, without her usual camouflage and careful tweaks… unsettles her. It leaves her exposed in a way she never chose. “I’d kill for a bit of Botox,” she says one morning, half-laughing, half-not. And there’s something in that moment — something raw — that tells me she’s not joking. And then… Hatty. Harriet, technically. But no one calls her that. Mad as a Hatter, too. She’s thriving here — properly thriving. While the rest of us orbit discomfort, she’s rooted. Hands in the dirt for hours, talking to herself like the soil answers back. She tends to the horses. We call her the horse whisperer, half in jest, half in quiet awe — because they listen to her. They soften under her touch. I imagine she lived a simple life before this. Something outdoorsy. Horses, maybe. Mud under the nails, wind in her hair. Or maybe… she’s just the only one who doesn’t need the illusion stripped away to feel whole. We all do our bit. We harvest food — organic, pure, hard-won. And if I’m being honest… it’s harder than my old job as a postie. Romantic in theory. Backbreaking in practice. There are moments — small, sharp ones — where resentment sets in. I catch myself thinking, I’m not even getting paid for this. And then I correct myself, like I’ve been trained to: That’s the point. This is the payoff. A “pure life.” Free from government. Free from systems. Free from the hamster wheel of work, pay bills, sleep, repeat. And I don’t hate it here. I don’t. But I don’t love it either. Not the way I thought I would. Not in the way the brochure promised. I miss my family. It’s not a passing feeling. It’s a presence, constant and uninvited. Some days I work harder just to drown it out. To keep my mind fixed on the task in front of me instead of drifting… back to them. Back to what was. I miss stupid things too. My bath. God, I miss my bath. The smell of washing machine–spun clothes. Fabric conditioner. That artificial, chemical comfort that somehow felt more real than this raw, earthy existence. Cleanliness that didn’t require effort. Comfort that didn’t need earning. Here, everything is natural. Only what the earth provides. And yet… something about it doesn’t sit quite right. We wear uniforms. They don’t call them that — whoever “they” even are. But that’s what they are. White gowns. Bonnet hats. Plain shoes. No makeup. No mirrors. No technology. No communication with the outside world. I still don’t know what to do with my hands. I used to hold my phone like it was an extension of myself — a comfort, a distraction, a lifeline. Now they just… hang there. Idle. Uncertain. Like they're waiting to be told who I am again. There’s one rule. Just one. Do not leave the compound. Which would be simple enough… if not for the gate. Forty feet high. Smooth, seamless, impossible to climb. Electrical barbed wire crowning it like a warning you don’t quite question. I catch myself staring at it sometimes — not in fear, but in curiosity. Because something doesn’t sit right. This… doesn’t feel like freedom. It feels like something wearing freedom’s clothes. The longing builds. Slow. Relentless. Until one day, it becomes unbearable. So we make a plan. A quiet one. Passed in glances, in half-sentences, whispered in the space between breath — like something fragile that might break if spoken too loudly. Word is, a reporter is coming. From the outside world. There’s only one way in. The gate. But when the day comes… we’re already too late. They’ve arrived. Camera rolling. Lights glaring. Reality intruding like it’s never been gone. And somehow… I’m the one they choose. “Amanda,” the reporter says, adjusting his mic. “Can you tell us what you enjoy about living in this…” He hesitates. “Compound,” I offer. “Ah. Yes. The compound.” My cheeks flush, my brain scrambles. “Just… a few things you enjoy?” he prompts. My eyes flick — instinctively — to the gate. It’s open. Actually open. “Umm…” I stall. “Probably not having to pay rent.” I laugh, but it lands flat between us. He strokes his mustache. A nice one. Polished. Conditioned. Slightly ridiculous. God… I haven’t seen a man in so long, I start to feel flutters in unholy places. He looks almost… unreal. A bit alien. A bit… hot. Hello, horn dog. It’s been a while. “I like your mustache,” I say, pivoting hard into chaos. “Do you condition it? Gel? It’s very… shiny.” He goes crimson. “Just a bit of oil,” he says. “Oil,” I repeat, nodding like this is groundbreaking. “How natural.” What happens next escalates at a frankly alarming speed. A hut. Hands. Heat. Limbs remembering things my brain had politely shelved. His hand slips under my gown — — and suddenly clarity punches through the haze. The girls. The plan. The gate. I pull back, breath catching. Outside — movement. White gowns flooding the path like a tide. Freedom in motion. My distraction worked. “Maybe another time,” I whisper, already running. We run. God, we run. Feet pounding gravel. Hearts cracking open. Bonnie grabs my hand, pulling me through the mass. “Come on, hen!” The gate looms. Open. Waiting. And just like that — We’re through. Years behind those walls… undone in seconds. Too easy. Far too easy. There’s a guard outside. He doesn’t move, doesn’t shout. Doesn’t even look surprised. “We’re free!” someone yells. “Don’t you care?!” He shrugs. And then he says it. The thing that splits something open inside me. “You were free all along.” Everything goes still. “The gate,” he continues, almost bored, “was never locked.” My stomach drops. “Then why—” I start, voice thin, “why have it at all?” He looks at me properly now. “It was a social experiment,” he says. “A reflection of your outside world. The gate represents rules. Systems. Assumptions.” My chest tightens. “People,” he adds, “spend their entire lives not questioning whether there’s a way out… only accepting that there isn’t.” The words feel heavy, permanent. “So…” I say slowly, “we could have left. At any time?” “Yes.” A scream cuts through the air. Megan. “You mean I’ve missed a YEAR AND A HALF of Botox for THIS?!” The guard nods. “For fuck’s sake!” Silence settles. Thick. Uncomfortable. I look back at the compound. At the towering walls. At the gate. Still open. Always open. And something inside me… rearranges. Because it wasn’t the wall. It wasn’t the wire. It wasn’t the rule. It was the belief. The quiet, unquestioned agreement that this is just how it is. And suddenly — painfully — I see it. Not just here. Everywhere. All the gates I’ve never tried to open. All the rules I’ve never thought to question. All the ways I’ve kept myself small, contained, obedient… because it felt easier than testing the boundary. “Maybe…” I say, though it sounds different now. Sharper. “Maybe we didn’t escape anything.” No one answers. Hatty watches me. And for the first time, I understand her. “Freedom isn’t out there,” she says softly. I nod. Because the truth lands clean and brutal and impossible to ignore: We weren’t trapped inside the compound. We brought the cage with us. And worse — We decorated it. We named it freedom. We defended it. We stayed. And the most unsettling part? Standing here… outside the gate… Nothing has changed. The world is still full of invisible fences. And now I know — the only thing that ever kept me inside them… was me.