Revelations.1

Revelations.1

\"The world\'s ending, you know.\"

I sit here in silence amid the storm of conversation. I\'ve a glass of ice water and if I exhale into it just right, I can see my breath ascend like souls to heaven.

\"I know,\" I murmur. I let my eyes roam across that lake of frigid water to the door and from there they make their own course to my watch. The digital display is frozen at half-past three. My gaze slides to the ice in my glass. I swirl it and listen for the soft clinking below the cheerful conversations.

\"They\'re so stupid,\" he hisses and I finally turn to him, arching one cynical eyebrow. \"Listen to them, nattering on and on about their lives, pretending each others\' stories are interesting. To them, this is just another storm, the other things just some twisted freak of nature.\"

I feel the ghost of a smile come hauntingly to my lips. His stare is intense, yellow-green eyes unblinking.

\"They\'ll know soon enough,\" I say to him, placid as the now-still water in my glass. \"They\'re just trying to have fun. Give them a break. Let them enjoy it.\"

Lightning rends the air, coming down with a great crack like the snapping of a dragon\'s spine. The room suddenly echoes with shrieks and I smile contentedly, feeling their eyes fill with fear as I stare at my glass.

Even as I watch, the water is gaining a tinge of pink. I swirl it again and the taint grows until the entire glass is blushing. The chatter returns to the room.

\"Let them enjoy it?\" His voice is raised now. People are turning their heads. It\'s growing quiet as a tomb, free from the voices of the damned. I sigh.

David, give it a rest. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy, and all that. I send to him. He rolls his eyes with a tangible aura of disgust. The white brand on his forehead shines with all the misplaced holiness it can muster.

My glass of water has turned red. I dip my finger in, swirl it around, pull it out, raising it up. My tongue comes out and I lap the liquid off my fingers. Its coppery taste flowers in my mouth. I smile with the first real warmth in weeks.

\"That\'s really creepy, you know,\" David mutters, his lip curling with all the contempt of a man gazing upon his failure of a son. \"Vampire fetishist...\"

\"For some of us, these final days are a blessing,\" I respond, my eyes closing. Without visual input, I can better hear the screams of those caught outside. \"Don\'t you have some new Earth to go to?\" I sip at the blood in the glass. David is getting tiring. I can feel his presence unravelling my essence, my connections to this dying world.

\"And don\'t you have a planet to escape? That is, if your plans with Brendan ever got that far.\" He smirks, \"but you\'re right, I should be leaving. The Lord will give me wings. Have fun in this hellhole...literally.\"

I sigh as he departs, partly with relief and partly with trepidation.

My eyes roam to my watch. Four o\'clock PM, if there were now a difference between morning and afternoon.





Someone has brought a bible into the room.

The red leather cover glistens with sweat, as if the book itself is nervous. Nobody reads it these days, nobody but the Ascendants and, well, me. But I think that they all know what it holds, for their eyes glide right over it as though refusal to recognize its existance will keep it from being real.

We all know the story is true. In our minds\' eye, we can feel the hot breath sending daggers down our spines, hear the hooves at our heels, hunting...

I stand up abruptly, walking to the book that sits there so innocently, as though it was a proper item for our location, the flat coffeeshop so firmly denying the apocalypse. I take a swig of my canteen, the only water left available, before taking it into my hands.

All eyes swivel to look at me. Silence falls to drape the room in lead curtains.

If there was any ghost of a voice from the collective vocal chords, it would wail at me to stop, to leave well enough alone, to pretend that the book was nothing more than paper, leather, ink, and glue.

It is New and Revised, the cover displays proudly. It will do.

I flip it open, the thin pages ripping in my hands. They fall to the floor like dead butterflies, wings bent and broken. Someone can\'t quite stifle a gasp.

I begin to read. I know my voice- it is quiet, but firm. Not melodious, but not grating; it carries a long distance.

\"Then I heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven angels, \"Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God.\"

So the first angel went and poured his bowl on the earth, and a foul and painful sore came on those who had the mark of the beast and who worshiped its image.\"

A gob of saliva strikes my cheek. It slithers down like a tear as I hide my surprise that they would waste their precious spit- their precious fluids- on me.

But I can\'t stop letting all the words out, because it gives them a chance to speak up about it, to call out blasphemous names. I smile as the word rises up in my mind. Blasphemous. Scum floats to the top of the pond.

\"The second angel poured his bowl into the sea, and it became like the blood of a corpse, and every living thing in the sea died.\"

A woman is sobbing now, a quiet harmony to my careful cadence, the thunder providing a constant underlying beat. Hateful glares rip the flesh from my bones, seeking my organs deep within.

\"The third angel poured his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water, and they became blood. And I heard the angels of the water say,

\'You are just, O Holy One, who are and were,
for you have judged these things;
because they shed the blood of saints and prophets,
You have given them blood to drink.
It is what they deserve!\' \"

I let the last line ring out like a funeral bell in the large stone room. I can see them flailing their arms as they cross tightropes over hysteria.

You have given them blood to drink... I could almost swear there\'s an echo across the silent space.

And I turn to toss the Bible into the roaring fireplace, my arm unwinding to snap out like a snake. The book screams as it hits the fire, its ghostly silhouette shivering- but no, that\'s a small child, held closely in her mother\'s arms, her cheeks sunken and tongue a wretched, shrivelled viper.

I feel that scream bridging them over hysteria to riot.

It is 4:08, and they are burning heretics.