All stories

Gilly brought him over to me, this man beautiful man she said was called @The_Rapture. When I asked what was its meaning he shrugged – just what people called him. The way he smiled, the look on his face like he was doing me a favour by not walking away – of course he bloody knew.

Gilly grinned at me, and she leaned in to whisper how he more than lived up to the name. She pecked me on the cheek and melted into the crowd.

Clearly our little feud was over, because, well, just look at @The_Rapture.

He perched himself on a bar stool, both elbows tucked on the bar. He was looking at anything but me. He was not a conversationalist, but to be fair – those cheekbones.

What about the music in this place? God, it sucks.

That made him look. That made him slyly grin again.

What about hobbies? No, course not, a guy who looked like he did with hobbies? But one thing I knew for sure: woodworking. He’s into woodworking, right?

Once more he drew his sly grin slowly across his face and I decided to hell with being both sides of the conversation.

How about you let me ride @The_Rapture?

It’s not a good sign, a guy who’s not pissed nearly falls off his bar stool, but my God: he did look good naked. All over tanned and all over toned, and all over the hotel room strutting his stuff without a moment’s hesitation when I asked him to give me a show.

Did I want star jumps? How about a little hula hooping?

When he started with the helicopter that’s when I decided I was going to bloody kill Gilly.

Thirty minutes later I finally get the dude into bed. Thirty seconds later and foreplay is done, and the only reason I notice is because he’s talking again.

Oh yeah, baby. You are about to Ride @The_Rapture.

Oh yeah, baby. Spoiling you for any other man.

Did your mum ever have a sewing machine, or your gran?

Well, that.

I become a piece of cloth being run through a sewing machine, and that time Nana ran the needle through her own thumb? At least she felt something.

What does that make me, a sex Scrooge? Not his fault, is it, not his choice. But his choice with the commentary. His choice to inform me that he was the greatest, his choice to pull out a little black notebook with a Ferrari sticker on the front and tell me he was going to put me down as his Thursday second backup.

I thought he was going to cry when I told him I counted four hundred and eighty three potato waffle shapes in the hotel room ceiling.

And though Gilly’s dead to me, she was right about one thing – this feeling I’m left with now he’s pissed off.

The siege didn’t make much difference to 9 year old Alton.

Firstly, his daily life had been roughly unchanged.

His mother still had made and repaired the loose white robes for the community on the sewing machine she had brought from England with a few other treasured possessions.

He still had potato waffles for most meals.

He still felt lonely.

He still admonished himself for his selfishness in feeling this given his glorious role in God’s plan.

Nevertheless there was occasional gunfire and David’s speeches were getting more and more rambly. At times David, who was God’s messenger on Earth, “Kinda”, looked visibly scared.

Alton had never really understood the speeches but his Mum had said to trust.

To have faith.

And his Auntie Deneice had said the same.

Uncle Tony had left the building before the siege had started, he had joined Satan’s Army and that had brought shame on Alton’s whole family. Alton despised him for it.

Occasionally Alton dreamed of England. It was already mostly just a jumbled memory despite the years he’d been there. The cold and the rain and the conkers and that scary man shouting Ebeneezer Goode on telly, or was it Ebeneezer Scrooge?

Scary cold England had been replaced by Mount Carmel, which was a thunderously hot building somewhere in America. He barely remembered his friends, Michael and Patrick or the fearsome Miss Prenderghast. Time passed so slowly now.

“It is normal to have doubts, but weak to allow them to flourish” David had said, and he had clung to that, had tried to have the bravery, a true God’s soldier.

He had not even thought about leaving right up to the moment when Satan cast his hands upon him and compelled him to bolt through the temporarily opened front door.

As though it were an instinct.

The Federal Agents could have shot him and if it hadn’t all been so sudden they would certainly have but instead they gathered him in their arms.

He heard his Mum cry out. He immediately wanted to return but they wouldn’t let him.

They stripped him and they searched him.

And then he was under 24 hour police guard, In Waco General Hospital, answering the same questions again and again. Someone came with him when he needed the toilet.

He did not know at first that the “massive fire” everyone was talking about had killed his family.

Or that judgement day wasn’t coming to free him.

Or that he had been “traumatised” by his experiences.

A few weeks later, His Grandfather, looking much older than Alton had remembered him, came to return him to England and look after him.

In the years that followed he wondered why God had decided to cast him out from his Kingdom and what it was that Satan had wanted of him, the wondering made his head hurt.

He wondered how his mother and Auntie Deneice were doing in The Kingdom of Heaven. He hoped that it made them happy.

We have been hard at the treadles all day, though it is the height of summer and and sweat streams down our faces, spotting the coarse white fabric we stitch. Everything must be ready for tonight and there are still twelve more shifts to finish before dark.

The men are out, preparing spiritually with the Ovate. We women hide ourselves away and prepare the physical elements; our final earthly meal; our virgin robes, quieting the children, arranging the space.

We don’t know how it will happen, and the Ovate cannot tell us, though it is he who has been chosen to lead us to Glory. When we came we knew it was the beginning of the end of our earthly lives. We came open-armed and open-hearted to prepare for tonight; the next step on our Journey.

And, although I am ready, I slip away from the preparations for a moment, back to my bunk for one final forbidden stolen moment.

In the commune there is no ‘I’, no ‘me’; only Us. Only We. In the commune there is no yesterday, only the onward Journey, so these stolen moments are secret and sacrilege.

So, the box is kept hidden. Contraband. I would be forced out if the others knew I had it still, but I cannot seem to let it go. It is to the box I go now, for one last look into my old life; something to remember, to take with me to the new.

I slip it from under the mattress and prise off the lid. There is little inside, but it is like a window to the past, to feelings both heady and terrifying. An old book, my once favourite - A Christmas Carol. I let the memories wash over me again, for the last time; sitting with Father to hear about miserly Scrooge and kindly Bob Cratchit, then Christmas dinner and presents with my brother and sister.

A bright strip of red ribbon, a tarnished silver necklace and the handful of photographs I could grab before I left them; evening bathtimes, bedtime stories, birthday presents, laughter, the joy of one another.

False joy that distracts us from the path to Glory. I know this, yet still I look and touch and feel.

One too-bright photograph of Cassie and Michael and me, sitting down to a family tea of waffles and beans at our old scrubbed kitchen table. A casual, throwaway snap that captures our ordinariness. As I look at our scrawny elbows in threadbare jumpers my heart treacherously aches for a time before the Glory, when happiness was simply tastes, smells, laughter, love.

And as the first seeds of doubt settle, seed, begin to grow, I feel the rich sensations of my past contrast to the starkness of my today and the uncertainty of my tomorrow it is time to put away the box forever; to go down, pull on the white robe and hear the final words I will know in this life.

“I dunno, mate.” Julian watched the bodies floating up into the sky. “I’m pretty sure this is the rapture.”

“…fuck.”

In a concerted effort to avoid being one of those irritatingly over-excited types I’d resigned myself to a life full of understated appreciation instead. I would save my excitement for when it really mattered. Yet here I stood, existence crumbling around me, unable to muster more than a half-hearted four-letter expletive.

“Not necessarily,” I finally added, “maybe it’s an alien invasion.”

“Ha!” That short, sharp laugh I used to find so attractive. “Don’t be stupid. What use do aliens have picking up idiots from Port Talbot? The idea that a race of super-intelligent extra-terrestrial beings would choose this dump for their nefarious scheming is absurd. Fucking laughable. No, this is definitely the rapture.”

I hated it when he was right. But he was right, and all we could do now was wait for the inevitable. I wondered what it was like on the other side. I wondered what Julian thought of the other side. And then I wondered why we hadn’t started rising yet. Would we even make it to the other side?

“We’re good p…what’s that?” I caught him putting his hand into his pocket surreptitiously. “Julian?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Julian.”

Sheepishly, he pulled out three-quarters of a potato waffle.

“In case I got hungry.”

“It’s the fucking rapture, Julian!”

“And that makes me hungry!” He held it out to my mouth, invitingly.

“No. Thank you. What else did you bring?”

“That’s all. You?”

I fished through my jacket pockets and pulled out a ticket stub.

“I went to see A Christmas Carol last week.”

“Ooh! Michael Caine?”

“Tim Curry.”

“Oh. Oh well, never mind, eh?”

“We’re good people, aren’t we, Julian?”

Before he could answer, next door’s slated roof disintegrated and Mrs Louvna began her journey to the heavens, sobbing uncontrollably and clutching a portable sewing machine in her heavy-set arms.

“She loves that Singer.”

“They won’t allow that up there.”

“Why not?”

“It’s all holographic, surely. Material goods mean nothing in the afterlife.”

“For someone who only found God fifteen minutes ago, you seem to know an awful lot about the rapture.”

“You have to stay informed.”

For the first time that morning, I smiled. I reached for Julian’s hand and clasped it in mine, his greasy fingers rubbing against my knuckles. As if on cue both of my feet lifted off the ground, and so did his. Julian turned to look at me, pure exultation on his face. I felt his grip tighten around mine and, together, we looked down at the shrinking speck of grey that used to be Port Talbot. As we looked back up, we spotted a rogue sewing machine hurtling back down to the ground. Julian nodded knowingly and broke into a whistle.

“Can you stop that, please?”

“But It’s The Muppets. You love The Muppets.”

“Good people don’t like The Muppets.”

“Good people don’t watch Tim Curry films.”

I hated it when he was right.