Whirlwind

In the bathroom, she was wondering how she was going to fix the mess that had become her hair overnight when she saw something that made her stop.

It was there in the mirror just a split second ago...but now it was gone. It might not have even been there in the first place, and it was probably nothing, but a part of her kept insisting that it had been there and she should be careful.

For a while, as she was undoing the curlers in her hair, she thouht she had seen...

Knock it off, she thought. The dream, breakfast, old memories. You woke up this morning, and this is a day just like any other day that you've ever gotten out of bed.

But the sand...another part of her thought. These are the days of your life, each one of them accounted for, remember?

Pffft! Sand is sand. How many grains of sand are there on the beaches across the world, and you're going to be a little surprised that there's sand on both of your hands this morning?

Something, she thought, dropping her curlers into the sink one by one, something was wrong.

Dolly held out her hand level in front of her and saw that she was trembling, as if in shivers. She clenched her fist to try to stop herself from shaking.

In the mirror, her reflection, her hand didn't clench but continued to shake. And on this side of reality, Dolly held her fist to her chest. On the other side of the mirror, in the reflection, in chaos and terrifying definition, she watched as the "other" Dolly threw her head back into a fit of painful convulsions.

"No," she whispered, staggering back, away from the mirror. In high, sharp clacks, the mirror began to crack in a psychotic spiderweb pattern. The earth trembled.

Dolly felt doom and dread pressing into her from all sides as she sunk to the floor and sheltered her head from the falling debris.

She had no idea what was happening. She could feel something bad rushing towards her now, something the complete opposite of what she'd felt just minutes ago. The reverse. The negative. The depression and the lack of all things good. In the mirror, flames were licking at the glass from the reflection. The smooth surface warbled. And all she could do was whisper: "Please, God! Let me still be dreaming!"

(Feels good to be back! This forum is like air...and I was holding my breath all the time I was gone! Your turn! Welcome, Who Am I! You guys are doing great! I can't wait to see where it all winds up...)

__________________
Chapter-by-Chapter, verse-by-verse.
Jesus is the Living Word.

Fluffy

__________________
Be transparent before God, He sees right thru you, anyway!
http://www.likepreciousfaith.org/testimony_val.htm
Please pray for your local emergency responders, daily.

Whirlwind

She won! With the Lord's help, with God in her heart, she won! She could feel the victory in her spirit. She could sense His presence with her.

Still gasping from the shock of it all, Dolly closed her eyes and hugged the feather before something horrible dawned on her.

"Bill!" she screamed. And with a few curlers still in her hair, Dolly bolted for the front door of their home.

* * *

On the freeway, Bill was signaling for his exit and making sure that his briefcase didn't slide off the seat next to him when the pavement fell away revealing fire and brimstone.

His hands tightened around the steering wheel as he felt the tires immediately begin to melt against the molten rock that had become the pavement beneath him. Heat radiated. Flames licked. Bill's car fishtailed on the slime of its own melted tires and came to a clunking rest in what used to be the shoulder of the road.

It's not real, he thought. This is what, he thought in the insanity around him, the earth is going to look like if there's ever an all-out nuclear war. This is how we're all going to be punished.

The morning rush-hour traffic around him faded out with a series of heat waves, seeming to dissolve into non-existence. It's as if the other cars, the other drivers, had never been there at all. In fact, as he watched one of the cars that was just preparing to pass him on the highway continued on its way merrily, vanishing as it climbed an invisible slope in the road.

The blue sky was infected with gigantic plumes of black smoke, jetting upward and out in sinister spires. Heat, in deep waves, flashed like digital cameras being fired all around him.

They say, Bill thought, that in the last minutes of your life, after you sip in your last breath, that your brain is oxygen-deprived. Storms of electrical impulses take place in brain tissue that is confused in its own death. And when we reach out and touch something...are we really touching it? Is it really there? We're trusting those electrical impulses to convey messages from the world around us to us, our being. But if there's a storm of impulses, what is going to do inside of our minds?

Maybe, Bill thought, I'm really dead. I'm not here. I never flew with an angel, I never kissed Dolly goodbye this morning. Those were just storms. I'm really in bed, clinically dead. My brain is attempting to jump start itself by throwing off random electrical impulses. But in my mind...this is what it's producing.

It was like he was in an oven with the heating elements above and below him glowing and glaring an angry red-orange. Instinctively, Bill loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt to try to get some air circulating.

The air inside the car was increasingly hot. And in the rearview mirror, he could see droplets of sweat already forming on his forehead.

"Where am I?" he whispered.

Fire and molten rock and smoke, as far as he could see behind and in front of him. To the left was a wall of crumbling, radiant cinder. To the right, a cliff.

It seems real, he thought. The heat, it's becoming unbarable! The air is too hot to breathe!

He felt the car around him sag as the metal began to relax its shape under the hot. The soles on his shoes began to run like black melting candle wax.

Bill began to scream.

Just then, someone tapped politely on the driver's side window. The rearview mirror shattered in the building heat, and Bill looked out the window to see a stately-looking gentleman, wearing a black business suit, slightly bowed at the hips to peer in at him.

"I'm sorry to bother you, my friend," the man in the black suit said. And oddly, Bill had enough time to realize that this man was beautiful, flawless. "But it looks as if you're in a pinch there."

Bill began to wheeze and clawed at his throat, trying hard to harvest what oxygen he could out of the blasting air around him.

"I can help you," the man said. He frowned then, and tapped on the glass again. Bill wondered how this man could be so relaxed when the world was burning around them. "Are you listening to me? Can you hear me? I said I can help you. Roll down your window, my friend. That looks awfully painful, my goodness. Roll down your window and take my hand, good sir! I'll get you out of this dreadful place at once!"

(Your turn! Thanks for making this so much fun!)

__________________
Chapter-by-Chapter, verse-by-verse.
Jesus is the Living Word.

Fluffy

Maybe this man in the suit is reality. The only part of reality that I am percieving. Maybe he is a lifeline to sanity.
Still, something nagged at Bill at the back of his mind. Like a mouse chewing inside the wall, scritch scritch scritch
He hesitated. What was it? He couldnt think in all this heat!
"Sir?" The strange man tapped, more insistently now. "You really must get out of the vehicle."
Bill's skin began to crisp and yet still he hesitated.
"Oh, Jesus, help me, please!" Bill whispered because his throat was arid. No moisture in the air at all. His tongue felt like a thick piece of wood, but he managed to rasp it out.
The man's face changed. It was no longer genteel concern, but hatred and anger. "Get out of that car!" He screamed.
Bill stared in wonder as the man's face transformed from a gentleman to a snarling madman.
The car was melting around him, yet the madman couldnt reach him. Bill felt like if he did, he was doomed.
"Get out of that car!" The searing pain was almost forgotten in his fascination with the change in the man. He still wore the same suit, and seemed unaffected by the heat, but he no longer resembled a concerned citizen.
Suddenly, without even thinking about it, Bill started to sing his Gregorian chant. His tongue thick and wooly, throat screaming in pain,he sang of the Son of God and the blood that was shed. He rejoiced in the saving power of God's grace and the mercy that was shown to man.
The madman screamed a gutteral scream and vanished. Along with the heat, the fire, and smoke.
Cool air rushed in thru restored air conditioner vents. The streets as they were, green and bustling.
Bill gulped in the cool air and checked himself over. No burns, no blisters. Not even the smell of smoke.
Water. He needed a drink of water, badly!
But he was so badly shaken, all he could do was sit there, shaking.
What just happened?
Dolly! He had to get back to Dolly!


(your turn! Whee!)

__________________
Be transparent before God, He sees right thru you, anyway!
http://www.likepreciousfaith.org/testimony_val.htm
Please pray for your local emergency responders, daily.

Whirlwind

(Someone? Who Am I? Violet? Bookworm? Anyone?)

__________________
Chapter-by-Chapter, verse-by-verse.
Jesus is the Living Word.

Fluffy

__________________
Be transparent before God, He sees right thru you, anyway!
http://www.likepreciousfaith.org/testimony_val.htm
Please pray for your local emergency responders, daily.

Fluffy

__________________
Be transparent before God, He sees right thru you, anyway!
http://www.likepreciousfaith.org/testimony_val.htm
Please pray for your local emergency responders, daily.

Whirlwind

(I'm sorry Fluffy! I've been on the road a lot in the past few days as a part of my job. I'm currently in a motel in Vancouver, WA. I promise I'll scribble up some more on this when I get back, okay? It sounds grrrrreat!)

__________________
Chapter-by-Chapter, verse-by-verse.
Jesus is the Living Word.

Whirlwind

The cat hissed again, its fur flared, and it turned and bolted down the hallway.

Dolly rose slowly from the couch, watching after the cat, and called out over her shoulder again, "Bill?"

Nothing. Running water in the kitchen sink. The clock on the wall seemed to have turned up its own volume, each tick seeming louder than each tock.

Dolly frowned, cocked her head, and listened to the clock. Tick-tock! Tick-tock! The sound seemed so loud that it almost drowned out the swish of running water from the kitchen faucet.

Something. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, whatever it was. She backed away from the wall, away from the hallway, walking in reverse towards the kitchen where'd she'd probably find Bill quietly sipping down a glass of water one polite swig after another, holding up his finger to let her know that he'd be done momentarily, don't go anywhere.

She rounded the corner in reverse, and saw that the kitchen was empty. The cupboard doors stood open. The tap was on, pouring water into an empty sink. The fluorescent lights cast an artificial light on the green-yellow kitchen tiles, making them seem more yellow than green now.

"Bill, you answer me right now!" Dolly called out. In two or three steps, she was at the sink, and she turned the water off. In the place of the sound of rushing water, there was only the clock and the dry hum of the refrigerator. "Bill, darn it!"

Panicking never got anybody nowhere, she remembered her mom saying. That was one of her mommyisms, one that Dolly only remembered when it seemed to apply. If someone ever asked her for a list of her mother's mommyisms, Dolly would have been able to give them a long list of them, only to leave this one out to be remembered later on. Keep your head screwed on right, there was another one. Don't fly off the handle. "Bill!" Dolly shrieked, alarmed at the urgency in her own voice.

Nothing. But where was Bill's pile of clothes, if what she suspected had happened really happened. Wasn't he supposed to leave his shoes? His tie? Wasn't there supposed to be a mound of frumpled clothing on the floor? The smash of the water glass on the linoleum when he vanished in the blink of an eye?

And then it dawned on her. The thing that she couldn't quite put her finger on while listening to the clock tick a few seconds ago, she knew what was strange about it then. The clock, the sound of the clock was still there. So was the fridge. The sound of water running in the sink. But Bill's breathing, his footsteps, that sound was gone.

So was the sound of cars occasionally passing on the street outside. The sound of airplanes taking off and landing at the airport in the distance. The sound of children screaming, lawnmowers, cell phones ringing, horns honking, ambulances out in the city, bike bells. These were all sounds that filled in the gaps, filler-sounds. The mind, she thought, doesn't even realize that these noises are there...until they're gone.

"Bill!" Dolly called out, her voice wavering on the edge of tears as she began to make her way towards the front door. Down the hallway, probably from underneathe the bed, Kitty answered in reply - a pathetic sound that reminded Dolly of the tone in her own voice right now. "Bill?"

Dolly opened the front door of their home and saw nothing. Cars stopped in the street. Lawnmowers stalled on half-mowed strips of grass. Bikes lying dead on their metal ribs on the sidewalks. Further down the street, there was an empty baby stroller with a bottle dribbling onto the seat. In the sky, there was a great contrail streaked in a straight line across the blue - a line that suddenly took a mad, jagged dip. Dolly watched as the jet fell, and when it finally dropped behind the skyline, she felt herself walk out onto the grass.

"What about me?" she called out in a desperate whisper. "God, what about me!?"

There was no answer. The earth had gone silent, asleep. The air seemed still, packed onto her too tightly.

"You forgot me!" Dolly screamed at the sky, sobbing. She sank onto the grass, falling hard onto her knees. "You forgot me!"

(your turn - sorry it took so long to get back...working on a big project at work and I was force to travel; something I dislike because I miss home so much. But hoo-hey! Here it is! )

__________________
Chapter-by-Chapter, verse-by-verse.
Jesus is the Living Word.

Fluffy

__________________
Be transparent before God, He sees right thru you, anyway!
http://www.likepreciousfaith.org/testimony_val.htm
Please pray for your local emergency responders, daily.