#hnwagte

[lines-and-paper]

holy ghost effervescent

The church admires the spire still standing. Her beloved sandstone spire is still with her even when the rest of her town is gone and disintegrated. No more a sleepy forest town, she’s still sleepy; even without her neighbors. But her memory isn’t so foggy that she can’t remember anything. She still remembers her brothers and sisters, the priests studying in her library, the churchgoers who would sit in the pews and giggle and converse. Her memories of anything outside her walls aren’t even greatly reduced, for she can hardly see beyond them.

The animals, though, are the first thing that’s taken note of. They’ve never been so close to her grounds before, and even with everything that’s happened, it feels sudden to see them all. There’s a pack, with bears and wild cats carrying humans upon their backs, foxes and dogs leading others by hands or nudges. Her church is about to be occupied once more, and the elatedness she experiences is stronger than she remembers having ever felt before. Her halls are going to be decadent once more.

She, the church, looks into the sky above her rose window, and the day sky has never been so filled. The moon is closer, and the planets of the solar system are all visible in this sunlight. It’s so bright out, it feels phantasmal to see the Milky Way. The sky looks like shimmering resin poured into a mold. So vibrantly sky-blue that it’s impossible to describe.

And oh how she feels when evening and dusk arrives, how it just embodies the sound of ‘hosanna’ and all the glory it shines with. The dusk reminds her of looking out into her forest during the height of fall weather, all the dewy golden leaves set upon a backdrop of dark morning skies. It’s a landscape photographer’s heaven.

But the night takes the last of her invisible breath away when she sees everything. Every star, every galaxy, every planet. It’s all there. She thinks they’re glimmering brighter in curiosity of the humans, the ones that’re left. They’re excited too, though, she’s certain on that.

Eventually she looks back into herself to see what her new guests have done and adores all they did. Her halls now have floral arrangements both standing and hung on the wall, the sconces are lit, and are those paper snowflake garlands? Oh, that’s adorable. She hopes they keep those up. Glancing into her library, not much is different besides better organization, so she moves on. Her grounds are being replanted and fertilized, seeming as though her guests aim to reintroduce the wildflowers and natural ecosystem to her, and she couldn’t ask for anything better. This church feels like she can breathe clearly again.

The animals make themselves known to her once more, having hidden away, and she notices their glow. It makes them seem… effervescent. Holy. They remind her of the creature in Revelation 4:6-8, but separated and individual rather than an amalgamation.

These Spirit-like animals brought these guests to her church, and inspired them to keep her despite confusing memories and emotions. This church hopes her spire had some wayfaring aspect for the travelers as well, but she knows better than to dwell. Especially now.

[lines-and-paper]

beautiful nightmare

It is midnight of this Christmas. Everyone's memories are fading, and most of everyone is gone. Some of everyone are still here. Those are the only people that matter in this story or the world. No one heard the sirens, because the governments say they were mysteriously turned off. No one knows about Project: Wormwood or Project: Abyss until it hits them. Hard.

When they say that a nuclear bomb hits with the power of a star's fusion, they say it to help you understand how devastating these weapons are. When they say that they aren't going to use them ever again, it's said hesitantly. And when you notice the boatloads of atomic bombs in storage, old and new, they'll say it’s to "scare potential enemies" and it's "just in case." What they don't know is when the third seal of Tribulation breaks, instead it’s the star Wormwood that falls to Earth, rather than the bomb. The devastation comes from every belligerently paranoid country's atomic stash being merely pricked and blown up by the star.

The sky is gray, the sun and moon are red, the sea is turned to blood, and more than three quarters of the planet’s population are disintegrated. Plenty die soon after this event.

Those left are there to pick up the pieces with bleary eyes and fogged minds. The new life they are all acting upon is idyllic to so many people in your, the reader’s, present time. They care for their holy grounds by cleaning the rubble surrounding churches, but they don’t even notice they’re doing so. They study the Scripture with a one-track mind. They tend to the plants well, despite having a rotting-thumb in the past.

The church in her small city doesn’t quite see nor does she understand this chain of events. To her, this isn’t a shocking revelation. After all, wasn’t this described in Revelation? She doesn’t have hands to check the Word, but she thinks it’s along the lines.

But this isn’t the past anymore, is it? The bombs practically reset the world. It’s not the future, though, either. Right now, it’s just the Beginning of the New World.

[lines-and-paper]

sunset car rides

So many people have a ritual of sunset drives whether they realize it or not. Many are unintentional, coming home from Christmas Eve service or their tradition of going out for Eve dinner, but also many are intentional. Perhaps they came from a family which in the past didn’t have the money to do much besides go for a family drive, and they decided the evening was the easiest way to help the kids fall asleep on their little food. Perhaps they needed to do this so the kids would have sweet memories for the future of their unique little tradition that they would do with their future family.

Either way, when people go for their sunset car ride, they don’t know it’s the final one altogether. Or the final drive period. They don’t know that this is the last time with their memories. What they do know is that the air feels wrong, like an impending war that their country tried to hide the tensions of. The air is somehow both thick and thin, as if the elevation for the atmosphere is lower. They don’t know that the atmosphere did get lower, that one country is already preparing to attack this country. They don’t know that that country is planning to send many horrors to every inch of this country, even the rural towns, even the forests uninhabited.

But for now, these families take comfort in the rumble of the engine, the smell of the ethanol-free gasoline, the smell of diesel for some. These all give a great comfort in the midst of war. They don’t need to worry about losing anything right now. That’ll be for tomorrow.

[lines-and-paper]

for four winds below

Sometimes, all that was needed for a bit of contentment was the calm of the wind and a thunderstorm. It’s only the rumble that’s needed, really. Mix the wind with the scent of the storm and it suddenly smells heavenly, as if there was a bigger rain, more lightning coming. One that carried an air of change and peace unlike any other. Most would call it tornado weather, though. Not anything too life changing.

So many conspiracy channels and websites claim everything is demons, that everything that happens is a prophecy being fulfilled, but they forget themselves. They’ve claimed every other “tornado weather” storm is the one implied in Revelation 6:12-14, or perhaps it’s a repeat of Genesis 6-9, so why would they be right this time? But this church doesn’t worry about any of this, she’s not on the internet nor can she read. She worries more about what she hears of the Gospels, the Testaments, and the heretics, saints, or martyrs… and of the industrial-style victims that are her sibling churches.

This weather, though, she knows. And she loves it dearly. Her priest taught many years ago that these were the storms that proved God’s handiwork, that maybe the rain is His tears for the fallen state of the world He created. This church hadn’t necessarily grown up quite like the kids in Sunday school, as she is a building of concrete and limestone and sandstone that, inspired as an in-between of two of her sisters, but her years have been spent learning nonetheless. Her home is wooded and vastly mountainous, but she doesn’t care for trivial things like that of location. She cares for this storm brewing. This church wants to sit ever so still and watch this storm head-on through her window. She needs to feel this storm through the eye of her soul. Feel her numinous panes shutter and shudder, unable to look away. The wind is relentless, but that is the nature of this storm, the nature of most storms. Praying is unneeded, as she feels the divinity entwined with the rainfall, the battering wind, the blessed strikes of lightning. She feels the divinity in how the plants around her thrive in this weather, how the trees protect the weaker greens from the wind.

But even still, when the storm starts to subside, the church also feels the notable change of air. Air turning into that not unlike the air before disaster strikes. And maybe those theorists were onto something this time, because even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Her limestone stands anticipating and strong, but she feels her sandstone whimper as if it were once apart of the Tower of Babylon. Afraid of the strike to come. Maybe praying is needed, as she is decidedly losing her easy steadfastness. Will she, the church of over a century, crumble with the next “tornado weather?” She may be losing stubborn stones, but she doesn’t dwell. She never dwells. If she had dwelled, her plot and foundation would be uprooted by now. She won’t be uprooted now.