Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 51862 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51862 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
I step outside into the sun, and I hear the sounds of Hallow Grove all around me. Industry is near constant here. Clanking, grinding, tinkering, and sloshing. We all have our jobs to do, and we all do them. This is the sound of pure peace and satisfaction. I feel a perfect sense of belonging, and of place. This is where I should be. This is where I was made, and where I will always remain.
Next thing I know, the lightness in my soul becomes a lightness in my limbs. I feel an exceptional happiness flowing through me, a…
I’m floating.
I’m flying.
No. I’m falling.
Up.
I think about screaming, but there doesn’t seem to be much point. Clutching my number two pencil, I look around to see that across the street, Mrs Travers is also cartwheeling toward the clouds, floral dress flying up into her face and then falling back down toward her knees over and over again.
The sky is full of people all falling up at the same time. I know all of them, because nobody here is a stranger. Our little village lies very distant from many cities. The collapse never reached us, because progress never did either.
We grow food and we barter services and most of us wear clothing made by the Bellatrix sisters, two women who can turn a curtain into a culotte in the blink of an eye.
I am wearing a rainbow ombre vest, a cheerful handcrafted piece made by my mother, and a pair of comfortable denim jeans that have softened in all the right places. My feet are clad in my favorite sneakers. I am feeling good about everything with the exception of the way the world is fast disappearing away from me.
It doesn’t quite feel real, and I have to allow for the fact that I might have fallen asleep. This might be a bizarre and very vivid dream. I did have mushroom soup for lunch. It’s possible Goody Greenweather introduced a few of the special shrooms into it. She’s been known to from time to time when life begins to get a little stale.
Up above us, the sun has become very bright. Many of us have been pulled from the ground. I see more familiar faces tumbling upward all around, whipped up into the air in an abundance of unprepared positions. Ted Fellows has his pants down, and Mary Levitt is also similarly pantless. They are both married to other people but they appear to have been ragged up through a bushy area. Irena Foster is entirely naked and soaking wet from her outdoor shower. And there’s someone else in a full beekeepers suit.
Mary is shrieking and wailing, the others are making intermittent sounds of confusion and consternation. I am silent because I am just staring at everything going on around me. We are all unfortunates taken against our will, and we are all suffering, save for one of us.
“HALLELUJAH!” Pastor Jay is tumbling through the air, his long, rangy limbs making him look somewhat like a daddy long legs spider going the wrong way. He is delighted.
“We are going to God! Brothers and sisters! The rapture is upon us, and the righteous are finally to be rewarded. Prepare yourself for heaven!” His words are intermittently lost in the wind, but I know what he is saying because it is the same sort of thing we are all treated to on a regular basis. He is praising the heavens and crying with joy while everybody else screams in terror, right up until the moment we are sucked into a very bright light that is as godless as it is alien.
Everything goes dark for a brief moment. When my eyes adjust I am standing with many of my villagers in what appears to be a large black and green metal vault. There are no pearly gates here, and we are very much alive. Irena Foster is shivering, nude, and wet and terrified. Ted offers her his jacket in a gallant action that gives me hope for cheating men everywhere.
“Where are we?” The beekeeper asks the question.
“Heaven!” Pastor Jay insists on clinging to what is clearly an inaccurate understanding of our situation.
A door slides open, and before us come three very large creatures who are certainly not human. They stand at least eight feet tall, each and every one of them. Their features are fantastical, elegant, and refined. Faintly angelic, if one were to squint and truly project one’s own biases onto them. I don’t see angels. I see aliens. They have scales on their skin and bright blue eyes brimming with predatory intent. They are looking at us like fishermen might look at a catch. They are clothed in leather-like clothing with straps and fastenings. Goth. Essentially. Long dark hair frames their faces and intensifies the appearance of something very demonic. But the final pièce de resistance in their terrifying visages are the tusks they all bear, sharp fangs extruding from their lower jaws out over their upper lips.