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Rain (part 3) "Did you hear the news, honey?" Jonas' wife asked him as she filled his plate with ham. Next to it she perfectly arranged the beans and salad. He wondered if she did it that way on instinct. He knew that the fat content of each one of the items had been counted, and that their sum fell below the fat content the Christian doctor had recommended. She only seemed to trust the Christian doctor. "No," he said, eyeing the food and noting his queasy stomach. "They've finally perfected the technology to put those chips in our hands," she said, setting his dinner down, and then filling their son's plate. "You know, the chip that holds all of your vital records and bank accounts on it. You won't have to carry a wallet around, they say. They were talking on WTGL today and someone took the inventor of this chip's name in Hebrew, and added up the numbers. Guess what it added up to? 666." "Oh, come on, honey," he said running his fingers through his hair. "What is that supposed to mean?" "Well it is the end times," she defended herself. "Have you had our name added up yet? Do we equal anything?" "Jonas," she said condescendingly, "It is the end times. Soon enough Jesus will come back, we'll all be raptured and none of this will affect us. Pray to God it happens soon. Before we know it, people will be trying to kill us because we're going to refuse this chip. And besides, I want Jimmy to hear these things and know that what he learns in Sunday school is true." "Gloria," Jonas began. How could he tell her what he knew? "I don't think this is the right way to do that." "Hey Dad, it's even on the TV," Jimmy said. "Today, a baby was born with seven eyes. They had all these religious people on TV telling how this is a sign." "Jimmy!" his mother scolded. "We are eating right now." Jonas sighed. Had everyone been taken captive by this hysteria? "Jonas," Gloria began, "are you okay? Your secretary told me that the power went out, and that you fainted in the elevator. Did you hit your head? Are you okay?" "Yes, I'm fine," he said. Jonas didn't look at her, he was afraid that the slight apprehension in his voice had betrayed him. She didn't seem to notice the weight on his shoulders, though, and instead admired the garden in the backyard. "So anything else exciting happen today?" Jonas asked his son, breaking the silence. "Well..." Jimmy began reluctantly. "You didn't get into trouble again, did you?" his mother asked. "No, no," he began. "It was really weird, Dad. I was out playing baseball. I play right field because I'm the best thrower. I was just standing there, and I had a daydream. But it was more ... real. It was really real. I had a dream that this horse walked right out onto the field. There was a rider on top, dressed all in red, and he was wearing something on his head that flashed in the sun. He had this iron stick, and he hit the ground with it." "This was a dream?" his mother asked him incredulously. "No. Well, I don't know," Jimmy studying his dinner thoughtfully. "It seemed like it was real, I mean, in a second he was gone. But I'm sure I imagined it, or maybe I saw it." "Speaking of dreams, Jonas, your father called today," his wife said. "He was just bubbling over the phone. He said he had a dream last night where he and Jane were back on that cruise they took a while back. He sounded so happy and energetic." "So he must not be that sick anymore," Jonas said, picking away at his dinner. "Well it's the best I've heard him sound in years." There was a thunder outside, and Jonas leapt to his feet. "Jonas-" his wife began. He hushed her. "What did that say?" he asked them. "What did what say?" his wife asked him. She shot him a puzzled look. "The thunder, what did it say?" "I don't think it said anything, Dad." Jonas ran outside. A storm was moving in, thick and black. He wasn't eased one bit. He caught himself trembling. "Honey," his wife called from the screen door. "Come back inside. Tell me what happened today." Jonas looked up at the storm creeping in. He couldn't tell them. His son would only look at him as he looked at the end time prophets who spoke from their podiums on the TV newsmagazines. His wife wouldn't understand; she would think it wonderful and want to tell everyone, to create a fantastic image of how wonderful her family was. He knew he couldn't tell anyone, but he had to ease their minds. "Nothing. It was nothing," he relented as he went back inside. --- That night he had a dream. As he tossed and turned in bed, he saw himself standing alone among a group of lampposts of different heights. They stood with the lamps burning above his head, and he tried to count them, to find some significance in them, but they kept moving whenever he began, and so when he woke up he was still unsure how many there were. He knew there should be seven, but he wasn't completely sure. It burned in the back of his mind like a cinder. "What's wrong?" his wife asked him at breakfast. "Nothing," he replied distantly. He drove to work that day with no radio on. He avoided the heavily populated routes, taking back roads as much as he could. When he had left his driveway, the uneasiness from the dream was drowned out by the memory of the faces he had seen the day before. The people on the street. The people in their cars as he passed them. The faces on the TV. His father. His wife, his son. They rose and fell with the inner tide of his mind, but it hardly seemed like his own mind any more. He watched it all like someone watching a parade in the distance, disconnected. He breathed, and his breath felt cold within his chest. His hands numbly held the wheel. As he passed under a tree's shadow he caught a glimpse of a reflection in the windshield. At first he hardly recognized it. Passing under another tree, though, it clicked, and he realized the face he saw was his own. The two eyes lifted themselves off the windshield and joined the other images spinning around his head. Something told him to keep driving. So Jonas did. He had become immune to the insanity, and it didn't matter to him where he went. The memory of the each person's eyes wouldn't fade; they picked up speed in their orbit around his sanity. He drove through the city, past the skyscrapers, past the shopping malls, past the homes on the edge of the city. He drove up to the park he had come to many times with his family, past the empty field to the beach parking lot. There, he parked and got out of the car. The wind had picked up, and it blew the sand around him like a shroud. The thunder roared his name, and Jonas ran, driven by an unknown power, to the water. He tried to form words on his lips, words to God, words he couldn't remember but knew he should say. But his lips shivered in the wind, empty hollows where the words should have been, and before he knew it he was knee deep in the ocean. A wave rose up and knocked him down, soaking him completely. His stomach cramped up, and the shock of the cold water drove the insanity of his mind away for an instant, only to have the memories of the faces in the crowd roll back to drown out the unformed words of his prayer. "Take!" he screamed. It started to rain. It pelted him and he clenched his eyes shut. "Take this away!" he screamed again. The storm thundered back, the waves picking him up like driftwood, tossing him back and forth. He gasped for breath but drew water into his lungs. He screamed out, but no sound came. The undertow dragged him under and out to sea. He spun in the blackness as his lungs burned. His mind screamed out for the Second Coming to start. It screamed, it tried to pray, to save him from drowning. He suddenly realized he was scared, scared to die. "I can't do this," the thought cut through the darkness like a beam of light. He felt himself being lifted up and thrown onto the shore. He coughed and coughed, clearing his lungs of the water. The salt stung his sinuses, his eyes burned. He was afraid to open them, his breath barely back, and so he crouched in the shallows, holding onto his breath. --- "Jonas." "Jonas," the voice calmly called his name. He opened his eyes, and a light rain washed over him. He looked out and saw the ocean in front of him, calm except for the small splashes of thousands of drops of rain. "Take it away," Jonas found himself weeping. "I already have," the voice answered back. Jonas sighed, the insanity purged from his mind. The gentle waves rolled in around him as he lay in the shallows, washed by the rain. He closed his eyes and wept some more. He felt comfortable and peaceful there. As he rested there, he thought of his mother, and how when he was very young she would hold him in her arms and gently rock him to sleep. the end |
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