Seven Days of Writing, Day #3
A man who loses his hearing in the first moments of the Rapture must navigate humanity's last minutes in silence, unaware that the real journey begins after the angel's trumpet strikes.
“Missiles strike capital as death toll rises…”
“holy shit theyre actually doing it…”
“Examining possible strategies to prevent…”
“please god not again not again not ag…”
I scrolled my finger across the phone screen and kept walking. The crowd’s noise echoed beneath the domed arches above the alley. I turned up the volume. This time it was too loud. I looked up. People were running in every direction.
“Ow, what’s wrong with you, animal!” someone slammed into me from behind. He lost his balance but didn’t stop. Then another. I was thrown aside. My left hearing aid flew to the ground. I lunged toward it. Stretched out my hand. Suddenly someone stepped on it. It shattered before my eyes.
The world go silent.The crowd’s noise cut out, yet everyone remained in frantic motion. The air began to darken. I looked up. The blue sky visible through the alley’s vaulted openings grew bruised, more and more purple.
I started running. Joined the crowd. I assumed the siren had sounded again, though I heard nothing. I left the alley and followed the crowd toward the shelter.
Dust enveloped everything. The purple sun had turned the air yellow. Finally we reached the shelter. A square courtyard at the corner of a street. In the middle of the courtyard, a hatch lay open in the ground. People were entering one by one. Suddenly someone stuck his head out. He began speaking, waving his hands toward the courtyard entrance. The man disappeared and the hatch slammed shut. We all stood stranded, looking at each other. I went to lean against the courtyard wall. Sat on the ground. Hugged my knees. A woman sat in a corner after me. Then another person, and another…
People sat all around the four walls of the roofless courtyard. Across from me, a woman had pulled her two children close. One sat on her lap, the other stood beside her. Both had buried their heads in their mother’s body. The woman’s eyes brimmed with tears, her cheeks furrowed and blackened. Her fingers clutched the children’s bodies. She stared at the hatch in the center.
Suddenly the child on the mother’s lap screamed. All eyes turned to him. The child’s hands and face began to glow. The child shone like a turquoise fluorescent lamp. Brighter and brighter. Lighter and lighter… Poof. Suddenly the child vanished from the mother’s embrace. Dust trickled to the ground through the mother’s empty fingers. The woman’s eyes widened. Her mouth gaped beneath her wrinkled forehead. She clawed at her face. Suddenly a white light flashed from my left. I turned my head and saw a handful of dust where the man beside me had been. The hatch in the center stirred. The door opened and everyone poured out. Chaos erupted as everyone ran about lost. Every so often, someone would vanish before our eyes in a bright turquoise light. I fled toward the street. The dust in the air was so thick nothing could be seen clearly. Every few seconds a light would appear through the haze, revealing people’s shadows. It was as if lightning struck upon the earth.
Frozen among the crowd in the middle of the street. The ground began to shake. The tremor’s force threw us all down. The bruised sky’s clouds moved rapidly. Suddenly a black point appeared above us. The gray clouds began spinning around the point. The point grew larger and larger. The point became a circle and the circle’s edges began to shine. A luminous green and silver ring covered the circle’s perimeter. White light began radiating from the black circle’s center. I looked around. The crowd around me all lay lifeless on the ground.
The earth’s trembling intensified. From the white light’s center, something vast and black began to emerge. At first just a shadow, cruciform, growing, spreading across the sky. The darkness peeled away like burnt skin. Beneath: radiance. Two wings, impossibly white, unfurled behind the thing descending. In its grip, a trumpet larger than any earthly instrument.
The closer it came, the more wrong everything felt. My bones hummed with its approach. My skin rippled as if trying to flee my skull. The thing turned what should have been its face toward me. But instead of features, there was the head of a lamb, woolly and white, with eyes that held the weight of ending things.
It hovered above me now. Drew the trumpet from its muzzle. Its cheeks deflated with a sound like continents sighing. Then it raised the instrument high. Not to play, but to strike. And brought it down upon my head.
The world rang like a bell struck from inside.
To be continued…
Leave a Reply