home authors guest shorts graphical shorts
Rob stumbled out of the rectory and into the cold. Rob needed cash, not words of comfort. As he drove out of the lot of St. Mark’s Church, his mind wandered to his recent misfortunes – dead child, cheating wife, laid-off, prostatitis throbbing with icy-hot-vapo intensity deep within his loins -- and he began to cry. He pounded the steering wheel. “Why God? Why have you forsaken me? I pay my taxes. I go to church. I don’t masturbate. At all. Ever. What have I done to deserve this?” As if on cue, Rob’s car sputtered and then broke down. “Perfect,” Rob muttered. He got out and began walking along the highway. The wind was hard and bitter. He walked along the highway for a while when in the distance he noticed the ruin of a car burning in a clearing on the side of the highway. Despite the harsh winds the flame remained calm, defying the very laws of nature. It burned with an unearthly glow. Rob felt drawn to the flame, all his thoughts of despair and doubt quieted before its beauty. “Robert,” a voice boomed. Rob’s heart filled with wonder. “Yes? Who is it?” “It is me, Robert. The Lord, God!” Rob collapsed to his knees in supplication. “Oh, Lord! I knew you would not forsake me. I long for your guidance, your wisdom…” The Lord, God cut him short. “I will sweep everything from the face of the earth,” The Lord thundered. “I will sweep away the birds of the air and the fish of the sea, declareth Me.” “Uhhh,” Rob said. The Lord boomed: “Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Come to life!’, sayeth me the Lord!” Robert tentatively lifted his head up, the look of wonder replaced with one of confusion. “I’m not sure I follow you Lord…” “The great day of me, the Lord, is near – near and coming quickly,” he continued. “Listen, Robert! The cry on the day of the Lord will be bitter, the shouting of the warrior there, a day of distress and anguish, a day of trouble and ruin, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness, I speaketh thusly.” “Listen man,” Rob said. “I just need a job and an all night gas station; I don’t understand all this stuff about the woe and the wood stuff you keep talking about…” The Lord continued. “I will bring distress on the people and they will walk like blind men!” Rob crawled up from his knees and slowly backed away from the divine auto-ruin incarnation and slowly, without any sudden movements, returned to the road. Once he got to the highway, he began to run and didn’t look back. Behind him, the voice of the Lord bellowed into the windswept void. “Their blood will be poured out like dust and their entrails like filth…Look, I the Lord, am setting a plum line among my people, I spare them no longer...”
Date Written: January 08, 2006
Author: scoop
Average Vote: 2.5