A short story: The day I finally believed in God

It was a crisp afternoon, so crisp that you could just about here the snap in the air. Electricity seemed to flow through the atmosphere and I knew something was up. I’d followed the prophecies for years, even made fun of many of the devoted, but I’ll be the first to admit that I was wrong.

There was a tangible feeling of weight in the air; something pressing down on the Earth. The expectancy infiltrated every fiber of every being on the planet whether it was human or not. As I contemplated the slowly fading sunlight I wondered whether the lengthening shadows were sinister parodies of the demons that may soon inhabit our realm, or simply moments captured in time that would last an eternity.

People around me were looking around nervously waiting for something to happen; the last few months had seen the press turn into a frenzied circus as they regurgitated every single Mayan prophecy or End of Days warning they could find, turning the world upside down in their quest to find the most profound or at least the funniest headlines; the best I had seen was ‘Are you ready to rrrapturrrre?’

As December 21, 2012 had approached the majority of people blew off the prophecies as mere scare mongering and religious nonsense, but most of these doubters were now standing around in shock as they felt the rumblings of change beginning to surface. It’s hard to define how we all felt, and as you read this history of this fateful day I wonder if you’ll understand the despair, fear and in some way elation we all felt at this time of change.

Religious groups were already espousing the return of Jesus, and the promised rapture that was sure to come soon after. Strangely enough I suddenly believed; years of doubt had suddenly been removed and I knew that today I would see God and whether or not he embraced me I would believe with all my heart and soul.

I doubted that I would be one of the chosen for the rapture and I was OK with that; just knowing that there was an all powerful God who one day may accept me in Heaven was a relief and a blessing. As the sun gave up its final rays of the day, perhaps the last rays of sunshine I would see, I slowly lowered myself to the ground and waited.

I didn’t have to wait too long. A tiny prick of light appeared above us with an intensity that seemed to burn into our souls. The light began to expand commanding everyone’s attention encompassing all around us until the only thing we could perceive was the light itself. A feeling of peace passed through me as the light expanded to fill the sky bending the fabric of the Universe to make itself everything.

I, like those around me, reached my arms out wide as if to hug the light and waited for the moment of truth, the moment where all my sins would be absolved and I would join together with the masses in rapture. Suddenly the light brightened, so much so that I was temporarily blinded. The whole universe seemed to contract in that instance until it felt like I was part of something so large and yet infinitesimally small at the same time. I felt the presences of intelligence so vast that it awed me to the core of my being; gasps could be heard all around as this feeling seemed to elevate us all. Boundless Joy engulfed us all so suddenly that we could not breathe and then it was over; the universe seemed to flash and return to normal in an instant.

It was then that I realized that the arrogance of man had been shown in its fullest. We weren’t the ones that were to be part of the rapture, in fact we were not in God’s image at all. As the horror of the situation dawned on me I looked around; everywhere I turned there were wide eyed humans staring into oblivion. As my perception cleared and my eyesight returned the horror engulfed me as I realized that every living thing apart from humanity had disappeared – the rapture wasn’t for humanity, it was for all life except humanity. The Earth as we knew it had changed forever; not one animal was left, nor was there any plant life – I wondered even if there were any bacteria, viruses or any other minute organisms left too.

What was left to humanity was a barren world, with no food aside that already manufactured and humanity itself; whether humanity will survive this apocalypse is unknown, I just know that mankind’s crimes have been punished in the most profound way possible.