Date post: | 08-Nov-2014 |
Category: |
Documents |
Upload: | diversion-books |
View: | 3,925 times |
Download: | 0 times |
Coming June 2013
1.
They come out of the sky and take you.
Everyone knows that.
Why? Nobody could answer that one. Not really. Not when you
thought about it. Sure the conclusion was that it was a Glory, but what
happened after they came, after they took, after they left? No one could
say for sure.
The first time it happened, it freaked everyone out. This was God-
fearing land. It said so, right on the town sign. You knew the second you
passed into our community that this was a god-damned God-fearing
place.
I’d always wondered if it was maybe ’cause we feared god so
much that they came.
Anyway, the people here couldn’t understand why they came when
folks went to church every Sunday. Everyone blamed everyone else. It
wasn’t anyone’s fault, though. Well, as far as I could tell.
They’d started coming six years ago, just that one day, just after
the sun had set. They came, they took, they left. They scared the shit out
of everyone. When they came the next year, same day, same time and
everything, that’s when people started thinking there might be more
going on. That’s when the church went up. I mean, we’d always had
churches here, but the other church was built. The one devoted to them.
The Church of the Angels.
See, people were conflicted, and the only way to reconcile it all
was to see it as a Glory. It couldn’t be that we were being punished. I
mean, some had speculated exactly that—that those who were taken were
bad. But then someone pointed out that Georgia Banks had been taken.
There was just nothing about Georgia Banks that was sinful.
Then a newcomer, a man by the name of Pastor Warren, explained
it to us. He pointed out how god-fearing the town was, and that maybe
this was all a holy blessing or something. I mean, they’re angels, right?
And they take them straight up, right? It wasn’t like they were going …
you know … down. Maybe we were looking at it all wrong.
And the new church went up.
Pastor Warren saw to it that the church went up.
People went to the new church because they claimed they wanted
to thank the angels for choosing us. They claimed it was to pray that next
time they could be taken too. But that just wasn’t the way of it at first. In
the beginning they went to the church and prayed to be left alone. They
left offerings and hoped that if they said just the right thing the angels
would let them stay on this earth some time longer.
The third year there was a celebration. Instead of locking
ourselves in our homes, windows boarded up, like some hurricane was
blowing our way, we all made our way out to the gazebo in Codghill
Park. It was like Fourth of July, banners blowing, fireworks and
everything. Hot dogs. And the little kids playing carnival games. When
the time came, and we couldn’t be sure for sure they’d come again, we
stood and waited and looked up into the sky. The silence was meant to
be reverential, but I could feel the terror. The dogs could feel it too,
twitchy and howling, yanking on their leashes. Buster broke clear off his
chain, and Buster was such a good dog most of the time.
Then there was a scream, and Bernie Wilcox went flying into the
sky. He was the first they grabbed that year. We saw the shadow behind
him, thick arms wrapped tightly around his chest, and wings that spread
twenty feet across the sky.
You never saw them come down, but you always saw them fly up.
Some reckoned it had something to do with the extra weight, but they
were angels, and I just didn’t see them as finding things particularly
heavy.
My thinking was they didn’t want to be seen coming in, because
then we might be able to run away. But they wanted us to see them
leave. Because they wanted us to know that they’d been.
Fourth year there was another celebration. By now Pastor Warren
had started to really convince us of the Glory. Well, most of us. So this
time we tried something different. We thought that maybe we could
think a couple steps ahead, that, maybe if we gave them some individuals,
at least in that way we could have some control over the situation. It was
a really strange celebration that year. You had, standing on the makeshift
stage, these hardened criminals, sentenced to life or worse. But then you
also had the volunteers, the ones who wanted the Glory. Saints and
sinners you could say, but I couldn’t quite understand why, when we’d
decided that the angels were taking folks to their Glory, why you’d be
sending up the sinners. I didn’t think they’d much want that side of the
stage.
They didn’t.
Didn’t want the saints either for that matter. They took whoever
they pleased from the crowd and left.
We decided after that to just to go back to the celebration idea. Try
just to have a good time. Pretty hard, really. Though we gave a good
show of it.
Fifth year they took Chris, my best friend since we were little and
who I’d just had my first kiss with the week before.
Sixth year, I shot an angel in the face.