Raptures and Ruptures

Henry Blake was picking at his breakfast one morning when suddenly he realized what was going on.

 

“Wow,” he muttered.

 

“What?” asked his wife.

 

“Nothing.”

 

“It must have been something,” she remarked, munching on bacon. Her name was Delores and her face had known better days.

 

Henry shrugged and pushed away his plate.

 

“Always the mystery man,” his wife frowned. “Well, whatever’s going on, don’t forget we have that dinner engagement at the Seymour’s tonight.”

 

Henry wanted to tell her what he knew but he didn’t know how. He also didn’t know what difference it would make. Instead, he said,

 

“I won’t forget.”

 

Is it true? he wondered later, as he slowly backed his new Ferrari convertible out of their three-car garage. The empty smile on the face of his waving neighbor seemed to answer his question.

 

Maybe I’m just dreaming, he thought.

 

……………

 

Greg Abbott started his day by staring at the squirrels in the park not far from his rooming house, wondering why the little creatures seemed perfectly normal when nothing else was. He was so engrossed in watching them that he didn’t notice the thin young woman who took a seat next to him on the park bench.

 

“You lookin’?” she said, shivering in the cold.

 

“What?”

 

“I said, are you lookin’?”

 

“No. I’m just sitting here.”

 

“Come on, buddy. We can help each other out. I got a place nearby.”

 

She was thin and pale, and barely sixteen.

 

Greg shook his head and muttered,

 

“Don’t bother. Nobody can help me. Or you, either. Not now”

 

“You got twenty on you, don’t you?” she demanded, obliviously.

 

“No, but take this,” he replied, handing her some coins.

 

The girl grabbed the money quickly. He felt her eyes stay on him as he gazed at the squirrels, who were studiously searching for acorns on the snow-dusted ground.

 

“You don’t got any more?”

 

“I gave you what I have. What more do you want?”

 

“This won’t even get me an eight ball, man,” she scowled.

 

Greg shrugged.

 

“I seen you down here before,” she said after a moment. “You live at the Empress?”

 

Greg nodded, staring at the squirrels.

 

“I’m Deanna.”

 

“Hi Deanna.”

 

“You don’t do dates?” she asked him.

 

“No. I don’t want to take the risk.”

 

“I don’t blame you, man,” she said with a smirk. “That mother fucker Carlos just kicked one of his girls to death, right over there by that fountain. She and her john both got it.”

 

“Who’s Carlos?”

 

“You don’t wanna know.”

 

Greg nodded. It all fit.

 

“You don’t look like a local,” Deanna continued.

 

“Oh yeah? Why not?”

 

“You ain’t got that hungry look,” she explained, scratching a needle scab on her arm.

 

After a moment Greg said,

 

“I was a pastor, once.”

 

“You shittin’ me?” Deanna exclaimed. “A fuckin’ priest? You a kiddy diddler?”

 

“No way. But I ratted out other church guys who are. So here I am.”

 

The girl gave him a knowing look and nodded. Then in a gentler tone she asked him,

 

“You got a name?”

 

“Greg,” he said, extending his hand. Her touch was like cold marble.

 

“You should eat something,” he said to her.

 

“Naw, I can’t keep any of it down. There’s too much shit inside me.”

 

Deanna touched his hand again.

 

“Thanks Greg. You’re okay.”

 

She stood and turned to leave him, then gave him a hard look.

 

“You still think there’s a God, Greg?”

 

He stared at her and finally said,

 

“That’s all over with now.”

 

…………..

 

Henry couldn’t stand waiting in the ant-like lobby crowd to catch an elevator, so he took the stairs to his office, two at a time. He could barely breathe by the time he reached the ninth floor.

 

“Good morning, Mister Blake,” droned his secretary. “The senior partners have scheduled a ten o’clock with you, FYI.”

 

“Thanks Trudy,” Henry muttered back.

 

“Your mail’s on your desk,” she said as she did every morning. But he had already shut his office door.

 

Henry slumped behind his desk and swiveled his chair to stare at the fog-shrouded downtown skyline.

 

If it’s really true, then there’s nothing to be done, he mused. All we can do is make do.

 

His phone buzzed.

 

“Hello Hank,” came a sultry female voice.

 

“Hey,” he replied carefully. “How’s it going, Sue?”

 

“Shitty. My analyst is out of town for a week. And the Delmonicos are screaming for a meeting. You wouldn’t mind covering for me on that one, would you, love?”

 

A memory of Sue on an Acapulco beach wearing barely anything danced delightfully through his head.

 

“I’d be ever so appreciative, Hank,” she purred.

 

“When?”

 

“Today, if you can. They want this summons derailed pronto. And you’re the man with the inside track.”

 

Henry felt like hanging up on her in disgust, mostly with himself. Instead, he said,

 

“How appreciative?”

 

“More than you can imagine,” Sue said softly.

 

He said yes, naturally. She knew all his buttons.

 

Their law firm catered to special, super-wealthy clients who paid whatever it took to avoid jail time. Henry had once drawn the line at representing child rapists and serial killers, but time had taught him realism. And yet now, nothing sat right with him.

 

“I’ll be gone for a while, Trudy,” he announced on his way out the door.

 

“But the partners’ meeting!” she said alarmedly.

 

“I’ll be back in time. I just need some air.”

 

Henry wandered to the courthouse square across from his office tower. A pale sun was dissipating the morning mist, but a deeper shade seemed to cloak everything.

 

Glancing at the pair of stone lions on the courthouse steps, Henry smiled as he remembered the day he and other long-haired youths had draped themselves and their anti-nuclear protest banners over the staid edifice. Then he frowned. The square, like Henry, was empty of that time.

 

A bedraggled, bearded man approached him.

 

“I don’t have any change,” Henry said preemptively.

 

“It’s not your money I want!” retorted the man. “I want to know if you care about your immortal soul?”

 

“Oh, fuck off!”

 

“You know what I’m talking about,” said the stranger, undeterred. “You know what’s happening.”

 

Henry turned and ran back to his office.

 

…………

 

Greg Abbott’s room was a shoebox facing the alley, but it was high enough to spare him the sound of junkies overdosing or tricks and their girls screwing. He had salvaged some odds and ends from his life that gave the hovel a semblance of a home. Above the wobbly desk where he wrote sat a picture of him and his two infant daughters from a time of innocence.

He took a pen and scribbled in his notebook,

 

It’s true after all. They weren’t lying.

 

Somewhere down the hall came the chime of bells and some chintzy Christmas music. Greg sat back and remembered the only yuletide he had spent in Kipling, Saskatchewan as a newly ordained minister, half his lifetime ago.

 

The icy air bit his lungs as he hauled his two-year-old daughter Fern on a sled through the quiet Christmas eve. Stopping for a moment to rest, he smiled down at his fur-bundled firstborn and let out a sigh of happiness. And as his steamy breath faded into the night, he realized that the only sound he could hear was the tinkle of snowflakes as they fell on the icy ground. The world was silent and still.

 

It must not have happened by then, Greg reflected. For nothing was as much like God as the perfect quiet of that moment.

 

He looked about his room and wondered how he could have ended up in such a place after sixty-eight years, even when he knew the answer.

 

Another memory settled on him, from his seminary years. A rotund professor glared at him from a lectern.

 

“And you seriously expect to pastor a congregation with that kind of attitude?” the teacher barked.

 

“But how do we explain Jesus’ abandonment by God on the cross?” Greg had replied. “Isn’t that absence of the divine the more common human experience than His presence? Hasn’t God deserted mankind?”

 

His congregations never had a problem with Greg’s beliefs; nor did the church brass, for that matter, until he wouldn’t help them hide their dirty secrets. After that, one disaster followed after another.

 

Greg looked at the Bible sitting unattended on his shelf. When asked by the resident evangelist whether he’d kept up on his scripture reading, Greg had told him that he had borne enough of his own crucifixions to have to read about them second-hand. The Born-Again Christian had promptly cursed him to hell.

 

So here we are then, he thought.

 

A sudden knocking roused him from his thoughts.

 

“Greg, we’re waiting for you,” came a woman’s voice through the door.

 

“What for?” he snapped.

 

“You know! It’s Friday. Twelve step.”

 

“Oh, Christ,” he muttered. “What’s the point?”

 

“What?” said the voice.

 

"Nothing. I'll be there."

 

Years before, when he still thought in terms of giving, Greg had offered to counsel his fellow Empress Hotel residents with their assorted addictions. Each year he had been pulled further into the bottomless pit of need without even knowing why. He presided now at twelve step groups in a sort of avuncular, pastor-emeritus capacity, just going through the motions.

 

That day’s circle was the usual crowd of survivors who said all the usual things. Greg found himself nodding off at one point, as a young native guy was describing his perverted relationship with his auntie Rose. A nudge on his arm stirred him awake.

 

“You’re snoring, Greg,” whispered the woman who had summoned him there.

 

“Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s just my asthma.”

 

She gave him a skeptical look. Her name was Irene and she too was in her sixties. They had dated for a while and even tried screwing until it became comical.

 

“So that’s why I can’t get off the crack,” concluded the native kid. “Whenever I’m straight, all I see is my auntie trying to fuck me.”

 

“So, what’s wrong with that?” another Indian remarked drearily.

 

People laughed. Greg was about to offer an obligatory banality when Sybil the Slasher stumbled into the room.

 

Sybil was a fixture in their neighborhood. Every Monday morning on cue she would appear at one of the local drop-ins with her arms dripping in blood. Sybil would hold out her cut-up arms to anyone in sight and always say the same thing:

 

“What’s happened to me?”.

 

None of the staffers who bandaged her and sent her on her way had ever found a razor blade or knife on her, and she had never explained what had made all the wounds on her arms. But the ritual never stopped, even after Syb did periodic stints in various psych wards. The young girl had stayed on her mission, Thorazine be damned.

 

“Oh, Jesus,” exclaimed one of the group’s old timers when Sybil entered the room. But to everyone’s surprise, she was not bleeding.

 

“Do you want to join us, Sybil?” asked Irene.

 

The Slasher ignored her and scanned the circle of faces. Her eyes fixed on Greg.

 

“You don’t have to worry,” she said to him, lifting her scarred arms. “It’s all out of me now.”

 

“What is?”

 

“You know what it is,” she smiled with a radiant expression. “You know what I mean. It’s all over.”

 

“What’s over, Sybil?” asked Irene.

 

“My cleansing. I’ve been made fit to receive the kingdom.”

 

“How, bitch? By cutting yourself?” spouted one of the Indians, to more laughter.

 

She turned to her accoster and smiled even more sweetly.

 

“I never touched myself. This is the Lord’s work. He prepares his chosen ones this way.”

 

Her words struck Greg like a hammer blow.

 

“Goodbye, my beloved,” Sybil said.

 

And then she vanished.

 

………………

 

Henry Blake was too drunk to hear the recurring Emergency Broadcast announcement blaring from his office laptop. It was nighttime. Even the cleaning staff had come and gone.

 

Squinting out his office window, he wondered why none of the traffic was moving. Shrugging, Henry reached for the bottle of Johnny Walker on his desk and downed what was left of it before tossing it in the corner.

 

“This is an Emergency Broadcast Service special announcement. This is not a test. Remain in your homes. We repeat, remain in your homes. Further instructions will be issued soon. This is not a test …”

 

“Fuck off,” Henry slurred, shoving his laptop to the floor.

 

The meeting with the Delmonico brothers had not gone well. He had pissed them off by something he’d said, and they’d stormed out of the conference room. He couldn’t remember much else from that day, besides his colleague Sue screaming at him afterwards.

 

“Fucking mafia pricks,” he mumbled, staring at the pulsating red light in the darkened hallway. “Now that bitch will never screw me again.”

 

Henry was pondering how to win back Sue’s affection and salvage his sex life when the phone rang.

 

His wife’s frantic voice babbled into the answering machine until he couldn’t stand it any longer.

 

“Good God,” he said, switching it off.

 

As he surfaced from his delirium, he felt like he had as a boy at night when he hid under his blankets for fear of what lurked around him in the darkness. Stay snug and hidden and it won’t get you, he thought. But then he remembered what was happening, and he knew there was nothing to be done.

 

“Well, then nothing fucking well matters, does it?” he exclaimed. And the thought of it made him laugh, and rush from his office like a schoolboy on the last day of classes. He didn’t even think of his car.

 

The downtown streets were empty except for people like him, either wandering in confusion or with a feigned purpose. The buses and cars stood still and empty. Somewhere a siren was sounding.

 

If Sue won’t have me, I know who will, Henry thought, hurrying to the slum district east of Main street. There’s plenty of tail to be had there, and cheaply.

 

Skid Row was still very much itself, despite the shutdown all around it. The only difference was that there were no cops anywhere in sight, which suited the dealers and the hookers just fine. And the homeless, of course, had no home to remain in except the latest alley.  

 

Henry had often cruised these streets from the safety of his Ferrari, but it was a different thing to be on the ground. Hooded guys eyed him like the prey he was. When a pair of them walked towards him with clear intent, Henry quickened his pace and dashed across the street to a hotel, entering the lobby as his pursuers hovered outside.

 

Henry nearly collided with a small crowd of people clustered on the stairs. They all seemed in shock. Several of the women were in tears.

 

“We all couldn’t have been hallucinating it,” one of the men said.

 

“Christ, what the fuck is going on?” said another. “Come on, Greg, tell us! You’re the God expert!”

 

They all looked at an elderly man at the top of the stairs. He was shabbily dressed but dignified. He cast his gaze at Henry rather than the others, with a look that might have been recognition. Then the rest of them looked at the newcomer.

 

“Look, I’m sorry to intrude, but two guys are chasing me,” Henry blurted out.

 

“Hey, I know you,” said a young girl in a cheap fur coat. “A regular circle jerk. So, you finally got outta your car, did ya? Didn’t figure on this, did ya?”

 

Some of the others laughed.

 

“You’ll be okay in here,” said Greg Abbott to Henry. “Why don’t we all get some coffee?”

 

The two of them ended up in a corner of the Empress dining room.

 

“Then she was gone, just like that,” said Greg, tapping on his mug.

 

“Lots of that going on,” mumbled Henry, still recovering from his drinking binge. His stomach heaved.

 

“The bathroom’s over there.”

 

“Thanks,” said the lawyer. “I’m okay for now.”

 

He stared at Greg.

 

“What do you think is going on?”

 

“Damned if I know.”

 

Henry chuckled.

 

“Damned is right.” He paused and added, “So you really were a minister?”

 

“More a janitor, really. A Temple Maintenance Man. Then I found out who and what was stored in the basement.”

 

“I think I read about you,” replied Henry. “Pretty grim.”

 

“Yeah, especially for all those little kids.”

 

Greg finished his coffee and leaned closer.

 

“Look, Henry. I could tell right off that you’ve sensed it too. I mean, what’s going on.”

 

Henry looked suddenly crestfallen.

 

“I don’t know if you want to trust my word on anything,” he said quietly. “I’ve led a scummy life. I help killers walk free. I came down here tonight to get a hooker.”

 

“Just the kind of guy Jesus took to,” Greg said with a smile. “I’m all ears.”

 

Henry paused.

 

“Alright then, Reverend. It feels like we’re the last people on earth. Like a big door’s been closed on us and the key’s been thrown away.”

 

Greg nodded and said nothing.

 

“What do you call that thing?” Henry continued. “You know, when our souls are judged and we’re all sorted out like sheep and, you know …”

 

“Goats.”

 

“Right. Maybe that’s why your friend Sybil vanished like she did.”

 

“You mean she got saved? Bounced right up to heaven?”

 

“Well yeah, isn’t that how it works?” asked Henry.

 

“That’s the party line, alright.”

 

“What does that mean?”

 

Greg leaned back in his chair.

 

“It’s all too obvious, Henry. It’s like one big stage managed performance.”

 

“What? I don’t follow you.”

 

“Something is creating an impression of Armageddon,” said Greg. “Or maybe we’re all creating it ourselves.”

 

Henry shook his head and stared in confusion.

 

“I’ve worked on psych wards, my friend,” Greg said laconically. “I’ve seen group delusion and mass hysteria at work. If you’re in the collective psychosis, you’ll see all sorts of manifestations. Folks in the middle ages saw fiery chariots and celestial virgins in the sky. In our age, UFO’s. Now it’s the End Times.”

 

“So, are we being fucked with or are we just fucking ourselves?” asked Henry.

 

“Both, really. We’ve reached such a point of societal collapse that we’ve created a Last Judgement. Because we all want things to end. But we’re still thinking in those childhood good guy, bad guy terms, of the damned and the redeemed. In fact, there are neither. There’s just people.”

 

Henry felt a heavy weight leave him.

 

“Wow,” he said with relief.

 

And so, it was with something more than surprise when in an instant, Henry Blake found himself chained in a bubbling pool of sulfur and impaled by a legion of fiery demons.