the rapture

the rapture

By C. Zupnyk

The day the angels came, I was sitting on my rotting porch, legs numb on the sun-faded lawn chair. The golden trumpets rang out their siren song- or were those screams? It was hard to tell anymore; either way, the melody was beautifully, grotesquely desperate. I hummed along, tapping my fingers on the moldy arms of the chair, as ants scattered to dodge my militaristic drumming. 

The day the angels came, I was ready to die. Could it be considered death? Was this Rapture not the glorious birth of a new life in His arms? It never mattered much to me. Those who knew weren’t going to Heaven, anyway. 

The day the angels came, I was nothing more than skin and bone. How long had it been since I last had a meal? Since I last had a hand to hold? I’m not sure what one could even consider a “day” anymore. The sun was too hot. It was always too hot these days. It burned. It burned forests, it burned cities, it burned my leathery skin until the acrid scent of smoking flesh tinged my nostrils. 

The day the angels came, it was far too late. Nobody worth rapturing was left to rapture. The haze of smog from now-abandoned factories blinded the angels as they searched for worthy souls. Today was the day of reckoning when we all would be judged before God and His council. But it felt as though we already had been judged by God for all these years, as He sat on his panoptic throne and watched us rot away in a foul cloud of industrial smoke. 

The day the angels came, God abandoned us for good.