turn to your neighbor and say, “visit the archives.”

– Chapter 10 –

In his dream, he was dead and meandering through an emptiness he assumed was heaven, in the absence of flame-melted flesh and the gnashing of teeth. Every minute, his chest swelled with a tidal wave of relief and gratitude. Every minute, that wave receded into a chasm of loneliness too certain and unchangeable to bear.

He woke, back home, gutted and hungry. The sunlight in his old room seemed dingy. The sounds he heard, his parents milling about, already hours into their day, were tinny and muffled but swift and efficient.

Being here reminded him of how he used to feel on Saturday mornings, when he’d wake to find the massive house creepily still and his heartbeat would quicken as he threw back his bedsheets and rushed through the halls. The longer it took him to find one of his parents, the more sure he became that the rapture had taken place in the middle of the night and he’d been left behind.

He’d check the bathrooms first, looking as much for his parents as for their pajamas in a pile on the floor. Then he’d run down the winding staircase and head to the kitchen. Then his father’s study. Then the sunken family room.

All the while, he’d hearken back to the movies he’d watched when he was little, with the bloodcurdling screams of a wife upon finding her husband missing and the multi-car highway pileups that began with the disappearance of one driver. He’d think of the scriptures that’d been drilled into him: Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.

He’d freak out about the candy he stole at Giant and the lie he told about being sick in the men’s room, when he’d really ditched Sunday school for an Egg McMuffin from the McDonald’s up the street of the church. He’d mutter to himself, “Lord, I’m sorry! I repent! Please forgive me!” even though it was becoming increasingly clear that his pleas were too little, too late.

Then he would shudder at the thought of a microchip under his skin or a barcode branded on his forehead or the back of his hand or his neck: the Mark of the Beast. He’d imagine scorpions with the heads of women and the four horsemen of the apocalypse. And what about when things became so bad that he tried to kill himself—again and again and again—only to find that he couldn’t, that he was doomed to remain alive until Armageddon? And what if his head was shoved into a guillotine and he was asked to deny Christ to spare himself? Would he do it?

And then he’d double back to the kitchen, his shoulders slumped as he resigned himself to his fate as a kid left behind to manage post-apocalyptic life all alone.  He might as well toast himself some Eggos before food became unattainable, without the Mark of the Beast.

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