Rapture

Marian stared outside the living room window just in time to seen dark clouds rolling in, blanketing them in a soft darkness that wrapped around them like wool cloth during winter. Nothing escaped the amorphous titan as she was certain its shadow silent crept across the entire world, cities and towns becoming drowned under the sudden twilight without warning. Everything had stopped making sense after… no, she couldn’t bring herself to picture their faces, not without it breaking her down to inconsolable sobs and desperate pleads with God to return them.

Everything had gone to hell when they vanished into thin air. Anyone who anatomically and physiologically male had simply disappeared, as if the earth itself had opened and swallowed them from where they stood.

It wasn’t out of the ordinary to wake up to an empty bed, specially not during the middle of the week. Every morning she would reach out to the other side of the matrimonial bed, dig her fingers onto the lingering warmth of her lover’s body after leaving an hour ago for work while still slept, rubbing circles over the imaginary body she knew intimately and smiling upon hoping to feel his touch again as soon as he got back. There was not a single day in her life after they had married that she didn’t follow through with this ritual, it was so ingrained into her life that she could have easily know if something was suddenly off. 

When the first rays of daylight fell on her face her hand was already reaching out to feel that warmth she delighted herself with, yet as she continued searching all she felt between her fingers was the cold of an empty bed left untouched during a cool night. 

It had been a strange and quite jarring thing to wake up to, but in her mind there was no reason to panic. None at all. Despite it being something of a rare occurrence, whatever worry caused by a mere lack in heat emanating from her spouse’s usual end of the bed was all but dispelled from her mind as she concluded that an emergency had been reported at work which resulted in the first break of her morning ritual. Yet even dazed and drowsy with the lingering spell of sleep still having its firm grasp around her consciousness she did not fail to notice the prim and clean set of clothes her husband had conveniently hung on the door as to not waste time lost in the closet figuring out today’s outfit left untouched, the specks and wrinkles she vaguely recalled on it as they went to sleep still there.

By that moment, no thoughts of the end of the world or divine punishment had come to mind because of something so small and personal between two people out of the billions living in the world. It was illogical to think that it was a sign of the end. It had not been until the screams of her neighbor frantically calling out for her son that the realization that something was wrong washed over her like cold water.

With a jolt of adrenaline urgently being pumped through her veins, Marian rushed to her son’s room, the primitive instincts of a mother to protect its cup awakening from the depths of her being upon the wails of a desperate matriarch in search of her missing child. 

When she’d burst through the door her mouth shriveled at the sudden dryness that settled in it, her every organ coiling into knots as she saw the room, and before long she was already forcing herself to wake up from a nightmare turned reality. Over and over again she blinked hoping for the sight of the empty cradle in front of her to show a small bundle peacefully slumbering away, yet the scene remained the same. Her son was gone, and she had no idea of where he might have been taken.

From then on everything became a blur she miraculously managed to vaguely recall despite how disassociated she’d become, the only reminder that what she was living through was actually happening being the terrified wails of others who’d woken up to the same scene as her. Seeing clear skies above them, the sun warming their pale faces deformed into twisted expressions of fear and sorrow was unfitting for what was happening, it was insulting, almost as if their carefully built lives shattering without reason or explanation meant nothing to the world. 

As they days passed them several discoveries where made about the happening. What was believed to have been an isolated case in their city was disproven as caravans of weary and confused women revealed the same had occurred to them, and before long everyone began accepting that perhaps it was something which had befallen to the rest of the world. 

Scientists, astronomers and even theologians had started amassing their own followings as each sought to explain why all men had just snapped out of existence, and try and figure out if there may perhaps be a way to return them from wherever it was they were taken to. Marian sat on the living room couch, the radio playing in the background as every station kept rambling on about the same thing on loop as if an answer would suddenly come to them by stating the thing everyone knew. They were gone.

Life had become unbearably quiet, slow and dull, while the world had continued to move on, hers had become stagnant, trapped in an endless cycle of regret and longing. There had not been a moment where her heart did not ache, as if the flesh inside became torn with every weak heartbeat made. 

As the morning ritual shattered with the mass vanishing , another one swiftly took its place, this one not guided by sentimentalism, affection or passion, but by blind hope that anytime the nightmare would finally give out. Yet as days turned to weeks, it became painfully clear it never will. 

The only thing that remained for Marian was a repetitive cycle of waiting and praying, of watching the world around her chance and adapt while she herself could not. What exactly it was she hoped to achieve with doing nothing more than continue feeding that vice birthed from her misery she wasn’t sure, but her mind could not conjure any other thing to anchor herself to reality other than faith… faith, such a strange word considering the circumstances they were in. 

Was it all due to a lack if faith? Has God, or whatever thing watching over them, noticed the lack of faith in him and decided to once more return to the cruel and disproportioned punishments in the old testament that priests always utilized to instill a convenient fear of the holy to enrich their pockets and paint themselves as sole guides of salvation? Or had it been something even worse? What if it wasn’t God who had lead to her deplorable state, rest of the world be damned, but something well beyond even him? Could there truly be something far more powerful than he who’d created it all, something which only needed the creator of life to blink to provoke such disarray, and if so, should she become so desperate as to try and pray to that nameless beast, would it answer her calls?

Thoughts like those became part of her new life, serving as the only thing keeping her from absolute an catatonic state while meeting with the minimal requirements to stay alive just to prolong the cycle a while longer. With what little consciousness and will remained within her was all but used in evading mirrors as to not stare into the husk of a person she’d become, limiting herself only to holding onto the immediate belongings last held by her loved ones, clutching them so tightly against her chest for fear that the moment her hold went slack, what little that was left behind would vanish just the same. 

It wasn’t healthy, she knew that much, but while the rest of the world sought to make sense of the unexplainable, few had taken the event as nothing more as a means to destroy and defame cities and monuments, calling everyone to arms to reclaim they claimed was rightfully theirs, of women, the only reason why something as mass disappearances became so chaotic and anarchic solely due to this group blinded by misguided principals, she merely sealed herself away from everything and everyone. As long as she could help it, the only thing she wanted to do was be left alone with her precious memories of a better life, the shirt the man she loved was supposed to wear the morning he was taken clinging to her small frame while a colorful toy wand was zealously guarded over her chest, with every heave from it resulting in mellow jingles to float around before being lost to the oppressive silence. Yet the world seemed keen in denying her of any joy.

The sudden crash outside of the house halted any melancholic thoughts, the surprise of the loud noise being enough to finally break her of her trance, quickly becoming the only stimuli to awaken her from her catatonic state. 

It was strange for her body to feel alive again, to feel her heart beat in her chest after so long, even if the reasoning was because of an instinctive reaction to a loud noise. The sudden jolt of such a strong emotion swiftly overwhelmed her depression if only long enough for her to see what had caused such a commotion. 

Several questions began taking Marian’s mind by force, seeking a means to reason with something yet unseen. Had the chaos and anarchy of the big cites finally found its way to them? Or had others finally snapped at their failed attempts to adapt to their new normality? The longer she questioned it the louder did that voice at the back of her head screamed of something terrible, as if standing at the edge of a cliff mere moments before falling to a certain death. 

Another loud crash came from outside, the sound of windows shattering and metal crumpling by some extreme force was heard this time, and for a brief moment she could have sworn that there was the beginnings of a car alarm about to burst to life before being cut short. It was clear it had to do with the vanishing, the rapture of men, and this was a means by the culprit behind it to mock her, remind her just how powerless she was before it. And so that initial surprise and fear became burning white rage.

Having only allowing herself to react instead of willing done anything for weeks without end, rationality and lucidity were still hardly present even when needed the most. That rude awakening only came to her as the front door was swung open and had barely set a foot beyond the door frame when the cause of the loud noises fell before her feet.

It had happened so fast for her to almost not see what it was that came crashing down from the sky, almost. Despite wanting to deny it, to shrug it off as an illusion made by her unstable mind, there was no question in her mind that what she had seen in that brief flash was a human silhouette crashing down on her porch. 

Slowly, her eyes fell on the naked body of a man, intact despite seemingly falling out of the sky, and almost like a flash of lighting across dark clouds, it dawned on her. It was a man. She didn’t recognize him, no fleeting memory casting a light as to who they might have once been, and as her eyes trailed the scenery of a once lively suburban neighborhood, other naked bodies stood out like a sore thumb amongst the scenery. 

A flash of light engulfed the darkened skies and immediately Marian turned to the sky as a show of light and insanity claimed it all. Yet it wasn’t the sight of inexplicable nature above the blanket of clouds that fully sunk her heart, but the various black spots like stars growing larger the closer they came to the ground. All around her, the sound of flesh crashing against concrete, steel and wood echoed all around her, growing louder and numerous as more bodies fell from the sky. All of the men who’d merely vanished one day now returned, left to rain like and early spring storm.

Panic was quick to overtake the city, the emergency sirens blaring loudly across as corpses began littering the streets and destroying structures with all the momentum carried from gravity returning them to where they belong, however Marian only stood there, her hold on those precious items of hers now gone slack as she focused on the flashes of colors unknown to her from beyond the grey barrier of clouds. Her eyes burned with tears at the sight, mirthless laughter heard only by herself as the world became drowned in chaos. 

Step by step, she made her way to the middle of the road, bare feet walking over the broken and empty bodies of men beneath her. 

The giant mass of tendrils dancing above the clouds stood omnipotent and pure, with several other shapeless things floating all over the sky just outside the view of others too preoccupied with a downpour of empty shells. With an empty smile, Marian merely held her arms out, reaching out to the beast for it to reunited her with the ones it had taken from her. Upon feeling her chest be crushed by an impossible force, her body became weightless, free from any shackle keeping her down. The last thought from her rational mind before being pulled beyond the limits of their world and theirs being nothing more than a quite yet infinitely grateful ‘thank you'.