This week’s words were:
tide :: short-sighted :: reflective :: apocalypse :: gloom
This is the first week I really struggled with my Wednesday Write-In! I’d written another story altogether, but decided to scrap it at the last second. I replaced it with this one, which I’m still not sure is entirely a good idea…
Judgement Day
‘An apocalypse,’ he’d told me once, ‘is an unveiling. An uncovering. A hidden truth being brought to the surface.’
Yes, I’d thought. And then what?
The gloom in here was suffocating. All our exhalations, coming together like a tide, in and out, filling the air with gentle death. Every breath taken felt like a mountain climbed.
Someone, somewhere, was singing. Show me, O Lord, the Glory of Thy Face… Then, the voice threaded away to nothing, absorbed into the darkness as if it had never existed at all.
There had always been too many of us. We’d had to make the best of what we had, but it was never enough. Every year there’d be more women, more babies, more mouths, more filth, more work, but it was all for the glory, so I bent my back to the task. I laboured in the vineyard of the Lord, but it didn’t seem to matter.
‘I have been short-sighted in my obedience to His will,’ he’d announced one day. ‘He has provided, but I have been greedy.’ A reflective silence followed, during which we studied our hearts and explored our souls, and concluded that we were unworthy to keep living.
I can still hear the grinding click of the key in the lock. He shut us in here, and then he drove away.
‘An apocalypse,’ he’d taught us, ‘is an ending, and a beginning.’
Yes, I thought. But for whom?
Image: benchasephoto.com
SJ O'Hart 