Jake decided to go to the park, hoping the trees and grass would help settle his unease. That feeling of aimlessness had grown stronger. There was something he should be doing, he knew, but he didn’t know what. So he walked. In the park he saw a trio of women talking at a bench. Longing to join in, he leaned against a nearby tree so he could listen.
“I think that just proves God’s grace,” the lady in the center said, her graying hair up in curls. “Even though we don’t deserve it, He has given everyone a taste of what heaven will be like.”
“I hardly needed the proof,” said a redhead on the left. “Not after Johnny’s car wreck. But it’s good. I haven’t felt like this in years. You really think the rapture is about to happen, like Pastor Rick said?”
“Sure hope it does,” the center lady said. “With half the nation stuffed into church this week, we might have a chance of filling heaven’s bleachers after all.”
“This grace, though,” said the lady on the right. “That’s what this is. God’s grace, even though we don’t deserve it. That’s what we offer the world, us Christians, God’s amazing grace.”
Jake wandered off. He didn’t have a chance in joining that conversation. He wasn’t sure what the rapture was supposed to be, and the only grace he knew was in the song, which still moved him to tears when he thought of it. As he walked a man called out to him, jostling him out of his trance.
“If you wouldn’t mind,” the man said, sitting cross-legged in the grass with a plastic bag open before him. A few dollars and some loose change held it down against the wind. The man’s clothes were dirty, his hair long, and his teeth yellow, but his smile was kind and inviting. In his lap he held a sign that read Hungry and Homeless. Desperate for conversation, Jake drifted over when his natural instincts told him to smile and continue on. Without a clue what to say, he stood in front of the man. Thankfully, he was spared from silence. The homeless man was an expert at guiding awkward conversations.
“Things just never went right for me, you know?” he said. He scratched at his face, which was covered with an uneven growth of stubble. “Tried traveling across the states, did that for awhile, but man, I haven’t had anything to eat in a day or two, and I’m really hungry.”
Never asking, Jake realized. His hand was reaching into his pocket, and the man had not even asked.
“Things not picking up at all?” Jake dared ask. “Since, well, you know…”
“Since God touched us all?” said the man. “Better, sure. I was blind, but now I see, like Jesus himself spat on my eyes, but it don’t do no good. People look at me like it’s my fault now, as if the whole world’s been fixed. Get a job, they say, like I got a phone for them to call me back on, or a return address so they don’t throw it away the second my ass is gone. Should see the looks on their faces when I ask for work. Praise God, I can see, but I’m still hungry.”
As he was talking the three women on the bench stood and tidied up their coats and skirts. The hungry man held up his sign. Two of the women completely ignored him as they passed, the third glanced over and frowned.
“You’re right, grace is exactly what this world needs,” the center one said, their conversation never halting. Jake watched them go, a hard rock in his stomach. He pulled out his wallet and dumped its contents into the stranger’s plastic bag.
“God bless you,” the man said, tears in his bloodshot eyes.
“Sure thing,” Jake said, hurrying off as if he felt the whole world pointing at him and laughing. When he got home he kicked a hole in the wall, then stared at it red-faced and more embarrassed than ever in his life.
Pain twitched and grew in his knee.
In school Jake had read how all the watches in Hiroshima had stopped when the bomb went off, so among the bone and ash they knew the exact time Hell had hurled up a piece of itself to Earth. Well, The Worldwide Event was that bomb, and Jake felt like the watch, stuck in place without hope of fixing. It seemed irrelevant that the bomb had repaired his knee. If a second bomb had fallen after the first, sucking up the ash and rebuilding the walls and giving life back to those who’d been vaporized, they still would have stood around dumbfounded and in shock. How does one continue on with living and working and fucking and dying after something like that?
Jake sat on his bed, head in hands. Depression, that roaring lion, was breathing down his neck, its weight heavy on his shoulders. In front of him was a shoe box. Inside that shoe box was a gun. Reuben had arranged for him to have it during his lone trip from Kansas City to meet Jake.
“You’re one of us now,” Reuben had said, handing over the gun like it was an initiation. “Don’t let anyone tell you what life is and what it isn’t. You know your life, you know what you have and what you live for. Don’t you dare hesitate for fear of what those other faggots might say. You got that? Your life. You control it, and you can end it when you damn well please. Just keep the safety on at all times, all right? Last thing I need on my conscience is you accidentally blowing your fucking nuts off.”
Jake didn’t dare take the lid off the box. Seeing the gun, clean, black and well-oiled, might give him some crazy ideas.
To his right the television ran on mute. On the scrolling newsreel, the constant updates ticked across.
Scattered reports across the U.S. suggest symptoms removed during The Worldwide Event have begun returning in select individuals.
Jake tried to stand, grimaced, and sat back down. He cried.
*click*
“…think the most logical explanation is a global mass hysteria, except instead of a disease or fear it was a cure that spontaneously spread, perhaps building through increased…”
*click*
“…have sent nano-technology into our atmosphere from their spacecraft. Now listen to me, the sudden activation would have given everyone relief at approximately the same time, would have defied detection by our current medical professionals, and now perhaps they have run their course, or encountered problems with our genetic code compared to theirs, and then shut down.”
“So what you’re saying is aliens might be the cause of this Worldwide Event?”
“Well, that’s one possible source of the nano…”
*click*
“God’s wrath has come upon us now! Woe unto you, Jeruselam, for in your disbelief Jehovah has revoked the gift given to us, and unless we embrace, fully embrace the blood of Jesus Christ we will burn in the fire that approaches, for the bible is clear, the afflictions we suffer shall only become worse! Pray for those you love! Beg God for forgiveness, for these are the days of Revelation, and the lion and the lamb shall return carrying a sword…”
*click*
“…reports from hospitals have only increased what many experts now believe were only psychosomatic episodes, although no one has yet adequately explained the x-rays showing cancer remissions.”
*click*
“…anyone truly doubt the awesome abilities of the mind? The world, in its sorrow, yearned for a cure, and as our souls connected in the ether, we made whole our physical shells…”
*click*
Jake hobbled to his mailbox, his teeth locked tight as he fought the natural impulse to limp with his right leg. He fumbled with the key, inserted it backward, then flipped it over. As he pulled out the lone envelope, he noticed its address and immediately opened the flap. Inside was a single sheet of paper, a form letter with a statement followed by a single question.