Cult: A Brief Commentary on Actress Allison Mack’s Descent into Darkness

mack

Allison Mack – Photo Credit: R. Umar Abbasi

Guilty pleasures confession time. I used to be a huge fan of the television series Smallville (2001-2011). I’ve watched every episode at least once, and I love the theme song (YouTube).

In case you don’t know, “Smallville” followed the adventures of young High School student Clark Kent for the ten years before he put on Superman’s tights and cape. Actor Tom Welling starred as Clark, and supporting actors included Kristin Kreuk as love interest Lana Lang and Allison Mack as Chloe Sullivan, a sort of High School newspaper version of Lois Lane.

I heard of Mack’s arrest last April on sex trafficking charges and was stunned. In her role as Sullivan, her character started out with a girl-next-door charm and a nose for bizarre news stories, plus she was as cute as a button. Of course, that has nothing to do with who the actress was as a human being.

Mack’s in the news again, this time professing her innocence in documents filed in Brooklyn’s Federal Court, basically saying that if Scientology can get away with it, she should be able to as well. Notice, at no time does she actually say she never committed the acts of sex trafficking of which she’s accused.

More’s the pity.

Continue reading

The Man in the Dark

shadow man

Black soul – Foto Giovanni Dall’Orto – Wikimedia Commons

Autumn 2017 – London

“Here’s what we’ve got from your video and description of the suspect. Amanda Thomas, 48 years old, born Zuhal Amanda Clarke, Father George Sanford Clarke, British, a nationally syndicated columnist and novelist, Mother Aliya Fowler, moderately successful painter of mixed English-Arab descent.”

Mikiko expected to be debriefed or briefed or whatever in some official government office, like the British Secret Intelligence Service building where MI6 was headquartered, but she found herself sitting in an uncomfortable wooden chair with several other people, none of whom she knew, listening to Geoffrey Colins speaking to them in a darkened room in what seemed to be an out-of-business clothing boutique, or rather the break room of said-business. A small, portable projector was throwing images on the blank wall behind him, showing a loop of the video she’d taken last night of the woman now called Amanda Thomas.

She didn’t get back to her hotel room at the Premier Inn Heathrow until after midnight this morning. She’d walked back to the nearest bus stop from the house she’d been watching and then, in her normal identity, got on board a bus traveling in the general direction she had come from. She’d received a text from Colins as to which stop she’d exit the vehicle. Once on the street and with the bus out of sight, she heard a car engine starting two blocks away and then drive toward her. At the same time she got a text from Colins stating “Get in the back.”

Continue reading

First Flight

 

Salerno

© Pacific Press/LightRocket/LightRocket via Getty Images – The bodies of 26 young migrants arrive at the Italian port town of Salerno on Sunday (5 November 2017).

The Present – Salerno, Italy

The young Japanese woman looked as if she were just another curious spectator in the crowd watching the corpses being offloaded from the vessel sent to retrieve them from the Mediterranean Sea. Mikiko Jahn felt the tears welling up behind her eyes and almost overwhelming grief and anger like a weight in the center of her chest before the neural circuitry in her brain suppressed those feelings and replaced them with an impassive calm.

Well, it was mostly impassive. The residual emotions she experienced moments before remained, but they were well contained. How had she come to this?

Two Weeks Ago – The Project – An Unknown Location in Japan

“He’s called the ‘Shadow Man’ for the simple reason that his true identity is not known. What is known about him is that he is a British national and one of the leaders of a cartel that siphons refugees, mostly young women and children attempting to reach Europe from Libya, from sanctuary into sexual slavery. We estimate that as many as twenty to thirty percent of these victims are currently in the UK with the rest distributed in Europe, Russia, and Asia.”

Continue reading