Prophecy

Overlooking the huge black bookshelves tightly packed to the seams with old comic books still in mint, Joey considers where to begin. During his contemplation with a vexed tap of his foot, he heavily sighs, almost a grunt, feeling inconvenienced. “It’s been 10 years, and I haven’t gotten rid of these witless comics Mom just had to save for me. When I said I wanted a legacy, I was not talking about this!”

His mother was a comic book author and illustrator back in her youth. Before she passed, her dying wish was to gift her entire collection over her lifespan to her son. Being the only child, Joey was stuck with the hundreds upon hundreds of supposed cliché hero v. villain plots between covers but obliged since her existence was slowly tapering off. Eventually she did pass away, and he’s just been so busy with his own life to do anything with them. “Maybe they’ll be worth money one day,” he told himself a decade ago. You see, he’s an awful hard-pressed businessman. He’s never found time in his weighty schedule to unjam the comics out of the bookshelf into a garbage tin let alone actually read them. Not even a little page flip or a skim.

He’s never been fond of his mother anyway. She, to him, was just way too hippie and an incredibly “overzealous visionary.” Joey’s a die-hard realist, perhaps a cynic instead. The world has always been in black-and-white; there is no color, no story, and no dimension in what we simply call existence. You wake up, you go to work, you make money, and then you croak. The Earth is practical, material, physical, so there’s no space for feelings.

However he learnt his pessimism, maybe it was rebellion, his mother was the polar opposite. She was what you’d define as a spiritual nut; I’m talking healing stones, aura, crystals, meditation, angels, and most importantly and mustn’t forget, extrasensory perception. Boy, did she love a psychic’s sixth sense, or what her son would demote as a wild conspiracy theory.

She saw the value of the spiritual realm, utter appreciation for the divine creator. She wasn’t necessarily religious, or affixed to one particular faith, she was openminded and thus loved everything. As she got older, she had many a-fight with Joey on creativity and positive energy. “Don’t you know none of this is real?!” he’d demand. The night before her last breath, she hoped, really begged, to him to keep her comics because one day he would “see their true merit.” Not the price tag or monetary worth but rather the true profit of them. He merely would roll his eyes, in denial over anything this crazy woman said. After all, what writers are actually normal and not a little insane?

Current day, and he snaps out of a flashback that has been haunting him in the form of a towering bookshelf that is not only an eye sore but a dust accumulator. “Today’s the day I finally get rid of these misadventures on ink. He yanks one book out, nearly bringing down the whole case with them. As the comic wiggled back and forth from the collection, with a strong arm that I might add, he finally freed it. Then before he knew it, the entire bookshelf grew larger and emptier, with the floor around it stacking high.

On a whim, he picks up a book and decides to flip to a page at random. The cover was enticing, flashy like a flickering light bulb. Despite him looking at life as a shade of a meshing of black and white, the title, the font, the colors, the animation drew his attention. Page 15. The illustration was what you’d see standard in a comic, sharp lines, vintage yellows, words in blurbs and clouds, but the image was shocking. A man in a personal office of a home, with his neck bent into a book. Yet, the space looks unrecognizable. It’s his own. And the man—he looks suspiciously familiar, too. Almost like himself, indeed. The same gelled hair, stubble, and suit and tie. Mystified, he looks around the room in awe. Checking it off as coincidental, he feels tempted to open more books. One by one he begins looking through them all. In the depictions, he sees more than art; he lays eyes upon his own life—his future. The job promotion, the wife and kids, the new car, the new house, his unsavory demise. In disbelief, he slams the book shut and shakes his head. “This is unreal. What kind of joke is this from my mother? She’s probably laughing at me in the grave. Is this some sort of last hurrah to messing with me? 10 years later?”

He goes about his normal life, proceeding, after a change of heart, to sell the whole collection to a local comic bookstore for 100 bucks, and pretending what he saw—what he felt, the inquisitive pound of his heart—was just a trick; nothing more, nothing less. “Mom must have set the scene so to speak for that exact moment, to try and fool me, to get me believe all the crap she talked about for all those years.”

Weeks go by without a single thought given to his mother or the books she wrote and illustrated. It clearly frightened him, and he’d be damned if he admitted to this vulnerability. That is, until, he turns on the news after a long day at work. A breaking news banner pops unto the screen and a reporter steps in and describes how a Calmic Bookstore received a collection of comics that are just a little more than a classic tale of superheroes—the reporter suggests these books are special, noteworthy; truly a discovery. The owner of the store joins, “For weeks, day in and day out, I read all the comics, and reread them, and reanalyzed, and I’ve come to the conclusion that these books predict the future. Just look at the publication dates with the events in the storylines, and notice how they came true shortly after, about a year or so. And there’s even oracles for our destiny right now as we speak.” The reporter continues, “We’re getting a historian to review these comics for accuracy, but so far, it checks out.” From predictions of fires, to weather, to natural disasters, to politics, to international tensions, to presidency, to pop culture, it’s all there in his mother’s words and pictures in print.

Over time, the predictions were deemed true, every intricate detail is precise, growing in the media, grabbing the attention of billions, really the entire world. The comics are now worth millions, and Joey sold them for a crisp Benny, when in reality they are sentimentally priceless.

It was no use to assert himself into cameras, pleading he’s the son of a modern-day prophet. He tried but only looked even more like an idiotic and self-centered descendant. Now his own fate mushroomed to the conversations of thousands, and he can’t even make a profit from it. He supposes he could always write a memoir about it in 20 years, but what about today? The worst part is him being split between feeling morally inferior and the urge to acquire richness in filth. I’m sure he can still live with himself.

He falls to his knees, saturated in stress sweat. “What have I done?” He becomes swallowed in a whirlwind of guilt and regret for several reasons: 1) he could be affluent and famous right now, 2) he never believed what his mother said ever had worth, and finally, 3) he gave away the last piece of any legacy of his mother. He drops his head into the palms of his hands, unsettled. “Damn, she wasn’t a theorist; she bestowed prophecy. And I vended off my mom’s second sight like a hidden proprietary gem. And now I’m paying for it.”