The Ending (Of Everything)

I turned toward Amanda after I read the news ticker. She smiled at me with those doe eyes and clutched my hand tightly, letting out a little giggle. I smiled back, because it’s happening just the way Clergy Tom said it would…mostly. I’d kind of hoped we could bring the sinful city of San Francisco to a reckoning. We had the weapons stockpile that he’d been collecting for ages, and a plan to start in January. But judging by the tear-filled, puffy-eyes of the newscaster, we weren’t going to make it that long.

“To the streets then?” I asked, unentangling my fingers from Amanda’s. Her smile disappeared almost immediately, replaced instead by the upraised eyebrows of confusion. She bit her lower lip in that cute way that she does sometimes. She leaned toward me and whispered “We could go somewhere together.”

“And miss this?”

“No,” said Clergy Tom. “We’re not unleashing the Lord on this city. I do like the energy, but it’s much too late for that. Hopefully the Lord will understand. I’d suggest you all go home and spend time with your loved ones. Convert who you can, because as you can tell,” he said, motioning to the screen, “Judgement Day is upon us.”

“It can be just us,” Amanda whispered, her breath tickling my ear. “For half an hour. Alone.”

Her inuendo wasn’t lost on me, but when she said it like that, all I could think about was my ex-girlfriend, Gertrude, and how she constantly hounded me for sex. I had told her once, “why take the purity vow if you don’t intend to keep it?” That’s the last thing I said to her before she left. I considered it a bullet dodged when I found out that she didn’t even join a faith group in college. In fact, I had it on good authority by this point that she was sleeping around and had become a total slut. Nothing warps you like college. That’s why I went to a good Christian school, where I’d met Amanda and Clergy Tom. I smiled at Amanda, who wasn’t a slut, but was a virgin like me, and proud of it. Until judgement day, I suppose.

“We said until marriage,” I said. “And we meant it. Just because the world is ending doesn’t mean we get to skirt our vows.”

She tried to grab my hand again, but something about her felt off now, and maybe…spoiled. I recoiled from her touch, and turned my attention instead to Clergy Tom.

“We have all the weapons,” I said. “What’d we get them for if not to use them?”

“I guess it doesn’t matter,” he said, nodding toward me. “Knock yourself out. But I’m telling you, there’s not time. By the time you get out the door, the missiles will be here.”

About thirty minutes later, when I finally got the guns unlocked and was preparing to head out into the streets of San Fran and clean them up for good, a blinding flash of white light covered everything and I was no more.

The Ending (After The Ending)

“What happened?” God asked, scrunching his eyebrows together into an arch. Something in His face seemed tired, if that’s something that one can say about God.

“The apocalypse,” I said with all the confidence of my seminary degree. The moment was at hand. Every single second of my life had been spent for this one purpose. Sure, I had died, but that wasn’t without its opportunities. My only wish is that I’d been a soldier in God’s Army as we vanquished our athiest enemies and established God’s Kingdom on Earth. It irked me to think that might be going on without me. I’d anticipated a glorious battle, me defending God’s Honor in the holy war that was breaking out all around us. I’d aimed to be his Paladin, the Right Hand of the Lord. 

No such luck.

But I knew an apocalypse when I saw one. I nodded confidently, looked God squarely near the eye, and repeated myself: “The apocalypse. You said it in revelations, and it happened. Or…at least it was apocalypse-like. All the signs were there. Was I raptured?”

“Wait…wait…what apocalypse?” God asked. I saw Him blink in surprise through my peripheral vision.

That caught me off-guard. Dead like I was, I experienced that blink in the way that all spirits do. Tidal waves washed over an island off of the coast of Papa New Guinea when His eyelids touched, and the moon shifted phase when His eyes opened again. And in that instant, I became just a little less sure.

“The apocalypse. Wait, I remember the verse.”

I sought impress God with my insanely accurate memorization of the Biblical text:

“How much worse will it be when I send against Jerusalem my four dreadful judgments, sword and famine and wild beasts and plague" - Ezekial 14:21

“Oh, that,” He said, something resembling a half-grin on his face.

“What do you mean, Lord?” I asked, careful to infuse the correct amount of deference in my voice so as not to be smited. Or…was it smote? Smitten? I was never good at tenses. But that’s okay, because He seemed to accept my genuflecting tone.

“You never cease to amaze me,” He said, shaking His Head. I felt a typhoon wax and die in the movement of His Hair. “You humans. I spell it out for you and you still don’t get it.”

He raised His Great Fingers to His Forehead and rubbed His Eyes.

“Did it never occur to any of you that the apocalypse you spent so many centuries trying to bring about needn’t ever have occurred?”

This time, I blinked. Nothing extraordinary happened except that I did get a ghostly eyelash in my ephemeral eye. I had thought that once I went non-corporeal, things like eyelashes wouldn’t be a problem any longer. Apparently that’s the second thing I was wrong about.

“Really?”

“Uh..yeah. Why would I send war, famine, killer animals, and diseases among my beloved creations? It defies reason. You…you…did discover reason right? I didn’t imagine that, did I? Millenia can kind of run together sometimes.”

“Yes, Lord,” I replied, now thoroughly confused. “Then why did you say that stuff about famine?”

“I said nothing,” He intoned. “I showed visions of a possible future. I figured whenever you got around to reason, you’d figure it out. You, humans, controlled all of that stuff. The horsemen…where on Earth and Heaven did you even come up with horsemen, anyway?”

“You said—”

“Careful,” He corrected me with His Divine Wisdom. “Be very careful. I showed a vision. And remember when I gave you dominion over all creatures of the Earth? I was very clear about that.”

“Well…yes, that’s true. But—”

“And war, I mean…that’s literally humans killing other humans. Did it not occur to you that all you had to do was not kill other humans. I mean, I did say thou shalt not kill. That was pretty clear too, right?”

“Lord, you make an excellent point. What about disease? We surely—”

“Medicine. I gave you so many hints. Remember what I said to do about Leporosy?”

“You said to send them out of the camps and have them proclaim themselves to be unclean,” I said, by now too overcome with humiliation to feel prideful any longer. “That was to show us—”

“You can’t spread diseases like leprosy if you can’t touch the sick, right? I figured for sure you would put that together when you finally figured penicillin out. Sheesh.”

“Well, Lord, that’s true. We humble creatures can only—”

“Humble? Really?”

“We creatures striving for humility are so ashamed. But..Lord, if I may…” I paused, tired of being interrupted, and giving Him the opportunity to use the space. He waved away my concerns with the flick of a wrist and four stars died at once somewhere in His Universe.

“Go ahead,” He said. “I suppose you’re going to ask about Famine?”

“Yes, oh wise and benevolent Lord.”

“Laying it on thick, aren’t you? Okay, look. I’ll spell it out. I put enough food down here for a population nearly five times as large as what you all had there at the end. I looked down at you all and had to scratch my head. You had like three people consuming nearly ninety percent of all the world’s bounty. And you liked it that way. Don’t look at me on that one. You all did it to yourselves.”

“You mean there didn’t have to be an apocalypse?”

“Of course not. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Apocalypse…sheesh. Do you realize that now I’ve got to rebuild all of humanity. Maybe I’ll just let the dinosaurs have it all this time. A colossal waste of my infinite time, to do this all over again. Not only did you fight and kill each other, getting blood on everything. Do you know how hard it is to get that out?”

“Uh…”

“And the nuclear snow. Brilliant move, humanity. You all didn’t think that making the planet I created unliveable for any living thing for decades might piss me off a bit?”

“Uhm…but…”

“And now I’ve got a line of you, all thinking you were the right ones, when all you seriously had to do was get along and work together.”

“I was yours, Lord, forever.”

“You were someone’s. Not sure whose. Lucifer?”

That’s when I noticed the angel of light standing to God’s immediate left. He hadn’t been there a second ago. I rubbed my ephemeral eyes.

“Wasn’t mine, Lord. I was busy having orgies and doing blow with prostitutes.”

“That would have been a better use of time than blowing away my Earth,” the Lord said, nodding and not even looking a little peaved at Lucifer.

“You said that sex was for having children,” I blurted out before I could stop myself.

God laughed. Those four stars sprang back to life. Lucifer offered God a line of white powder, but God put up a hand to decline. He turned to Lucifer with a look that I swear must have been amusement. Then He turned back to me.

“I said be fruitful and multiply,” He said. “I said sex is a beautiful thing. I basically said be careful. That’s it. You all…” He paused and shook His Head. A black hole somewhere stuttered into existence. “You all made most of that other stuff up. I thought it was amusing at first, the way you just kind of picked what you thought was important out of my book. But it got old right around the crusades. Remember that, Luke?”

“I remember.”

“Who does that?”

Lucifer wiped white powder off the end of his nose, sniffed a bit, and shrugged. He offered me a line next, and I declined as politely as I could.

“Uh…who does what, Lord?” I asked, not following.

“Who picks war and famine over love and sex? I really thought that was a no-brainer.”

“So…,” I said, it beginning to sink in. “I wasn’t raptured?”

“Raptured?”

“I guess you were,” He said. “I mean, in the sense that you’re not on Earth anymore. But nobody is, remember? You blew it up.”

At those words, I felt the nascent black hole explode.

“I didn’t—” I began. Lucifer shushed me with a look and mouthed: “I wouldn’t.”

Given that he was currently doing blow off of the back of what was most likely a (gorgeous) woman of ill repute (who also wasn’t there a moment ago) if he was stopping me from doing something, I guessed I should probably listen. God was turning solid beet red, which was puzzling given that He didn’t seem to have a corporeal form.

“You did. You all did. The Earth didn’t blow herself up, did she?” He said.

“Well…”

“And who were you rooting for when it all came down? You turned civilization into a football game,” He said, then caught me in a reproachful glare. “Yes, I know about football. Forty-niners were really on to something there, weren’t they? But now? No more forty-niners. No more basketball either, did you think of that? Celtics? Nope. All dead. World destroyed. Sheesh.”

“But the others…they’d stopped believing. They didn’t love you anymore. They were—”

“They were closer to doing what I told them than you ever were. You and all of your hypocrites. I should have smote you…smitten….smited? I should have gotten rid of you. You and whatever idiot invented the English language. Sumarian made way more sense.”

I’d be lying if I said it didn’t give me some comfort to hear even the Lord to get the past tense of smite incorrect.

“Lord, you asked me to tell you—” began Lucifer.

“I know, I know,” God said, waving His Giant Hand at the angel. Then, rather begrudgingly, almost as an affirmation, he said: “I am a merciful and forgiving god. I don’t smite people anymore. I’ve learned, and I am a better god for it.”

He looked at me with a forced smile, rage hiding behind his eyes.

“What should I do with you, then?”

“I’ll take him,” said Lucifer.

“To Hell? I’d rather not,” I said.

“We have great parties.”

“Does he look like a partier, Luke?” God asked. “Send him to Heaven with the others. He can sit under a tree or something.”

“And feed fruit to animals by a stream?” I asked, recollecting back to my childhood issues of Watchtower magazine my grandmother used to hoard. “Lambs and lions?” I was elated…at first. But God wasn’t smiling, and something clicked in my head.

“But what about Heaven on Earth,” I asked. “That’s kind of a big part of Revelations.”

He shook His Head. A planet somewhere disintegrated into nothing. I felt the subatomic fragments spread out through the universe, destined to float through the heavens perpetually.

“Have you seen what you did to the Earth? I’m not cleaning up your mess.”

“But…”

“Luke, tell Peter to send in the next one,” God said. Then under his breath he muttered, “Please tell me this one’s a junkie and not another teetotalling fascist like this one was.”

“It’s a Proud Boy,” Lucifer smirked.

“Shit.”

Somewhere a galaxy flared and was gone.

The (Third and Final) Ending

I feed a lamb. I feed the damn thing like twenty times.

It doesn’t matter.

The lamb won’t die if I don’t feed it.

It’s Heaven.

There’s not a lot to do here. The women are nice and all, but sex is definitely off the table, even if the urge isn’t. I mean, half of them run around topless, so that’s cool to watch. Try to touch one breast? Human Resources is on you faster than white on rice. It’s not like sex is forbidden, just none of these women seem interested in me.

I’ve become an incel, even though Amanda’s right here in this same part of Heaven. Did I mention that. Yeah, it’s a good thing we were waiting to have sex until marriage. That’s all I’m going to say about Amanda. Well, except that the woman she’s with now is hotter than she is, and that’s saying something. There’s no room for me in that. Even though Amanda’s bi, she’s made it perfectly clear that she wants nothing to do with me by not talking to me and generally pretending I don’t exist.

I tried talking to her. For the first hundred times, I thought she might break. She has not.

Speaking of “white on rice,” there is no rice here. Just fruit trees. Pears, plums, apricots, apples adorn them, hanging like jewels. But there’s no flour, no fire, and no way to do anything with them aside from eat them raw or feed them to lions and sheep.

I want a steak. But even though you can walk right up to a cow here, you can’t kill them, and without fire, you can’t cook them anyway. It’s Heaven for them too, I guess.

Every once in a while Lucifer comes by to check in, or that’s what he says. Though usually he’s too busy pointing and laughing to have a conversation. As if on cue, he pops into existence making lewd gestures just out of Amanda’s line of vision.

Gertrude is with him.

Ugh.

She points and laughs. She says something I can’t hear, and he laughs too. Sometimes they…gross…copulate right there in Heaven in front of me. Thankfully not this time. And this time, after a hearty guffaw, he comes to me, with Gertrude’s arm in his.

“Okay, okay, man,” he says. “You’ve been here a while. You ready to come to Hell yet? It’s way more fun, I promise.”

I pause for a second, pondering my fate. My eyes drift toward Amanda, and as soon as she notices me she kisses her girlfriend. I roll my eyes for effect, notice a cow, and a pomegranite. Neither seem appetizing. I turn to Lucifer.

“Fine,” I say. “Fine. I’ll come. When do we leave.”

“Psych!” he says, and shoves his hand through his hair like a greaser. “You’d bring the whole thing down to a very boring stop.”

In a flurry of laughter, he and Gertrude disappear, leaving me staring at a cow. The cow turns toward me and lets out a long, low moo. Cows apparently get snarky when they know you can’t kill them.

Ugh.