The Beginning of the End by Lorana Hoopes (readict txt) 📕

trembled as she let them glide across the dark leather cover. She’d known or at least she’d assumed as soon as the patients began flooding in that day. Most had been involved in automobile accidents when either the person they’d been driving with had disappeared or a car with no driver had hit them. A few people had been hit while walking, and one person had been injured from flying debris when a plane crashed near him. Regardless of the injury, all the stories had been the same. Someone had disappeared.

Candace remembered the pain that had gripped her heart as she treated one patient after another. She’d had no time to call her husband, but she’d known it wouldn’t have mattered. He would be gone. She’d been attending church with him as long as they’d been married, but that’s all she had been doing - attending. At the end of the sermons on the Sundays she could attend, she could rarely recall the message because she’d been too busy thinking about her job to actually listen to the words.

Phil had tried to talk to her in those rare moments they’d had together, but she’d brushed him off. She liked the idea of God - someone who was there when you needed Him, but she hadn’t actually wanted to change her lifestyle, and she’d heard too many people who’d spoken about giving up things they loved to follow God’s plan. She’d always thought there would be time for God’s plan, when she was done with her own. Turned out, she’d been wrong.

When she’d finally gotten home the day after the disasters, Phil had been gone and the house had been empty, just as she’d known it would be. She’d expected to feel something - sadness, anger, shock, something, but all she’d felt was nothing. A deep, empty void of nothing. So, she’d showered and crawled into bed, pulling his pillow toward her. It had been strange. They rarely shared their bed anymore due to her demanding schedule, but at that moment, all she’d wanted was something to remind her of him.

She’d stayed in bed all of Tuesday and returned to work on Wednesday where it had been just as hectic as Monday evening. Several of their staff had gone missing and more causalities had come in while she’d been out.

“The government is now claiming the disappearances are a terrorist attack from Russia though they have yet to supply any proof of how Russia might have pulled this off.”

Candace shook her head and smirked at the newscaster on the television. She’d turned it on for noise in hopes it would lessen the lonely feeling pervading her house, but she hadn’t really been listening until now. However, at the word that had seemed to own the previous year, she focused her attention on the newscaster.

Russia! Though she had no doubt that Russia played a part in some of the nefarious activity the government reported on, how anyone could say the country was at fault here with a straight face was beyond her. People had disappeared from all over the world, including Russia, but then again, these newscasters probably had no idea about the rapture or had probably hardened their hearts like she had. She wondered how many others like her might be out there - people who had known but hadn’t really believed. Could she find more like herself? She could try, but it could wait until after she caught up on some reading.

With a sigh, Candace flipped open the Bible and began reading.

Gabe shook his head at the television as the anchor spoke of the newest theory that aliens were involved in the mass disappearances six days previously. Just a few minutes ago, the media had claimed the disappearances were Russia’s fault though they’d never been able to explain how Russia vaporized people or why certain people had disappeared while others had not. Add to that the fact that Russia suffered their own disappearances and Gabe wasn’t surprised they’d had to cancel that theory, but he was slightly surprised they’d gone with aliens. It wasn’t that Gabe didn’t believe in aliens - he had heard enough stories to at least be open to the possibilities of aliens, but why take so many of the population? What would that accomplish?

As the news anchor flashed up pictures of the recently released information for Area 51 as if that explained everything, Gabe clicked the channel changer. He didn’t believe it was aliens any more than he had believed it was Russia, and neither of them got his family back or filled the void in his heart.

Melinda and the kids had been gone for six days. Six long days. No matter where they were, could they even still be alive? Melinda’s mother had been gone as well when he’d finally reached her house which gave him hope that at least the kids weren’t alone, but where were they? And more importantly, how did he get them back?

He paused as the image of a man with scraggly hair and wild eyes filled the screen. “I’m telling you it was the rapture,” he said to whomever was interviewing him. “God got tired of us turning our backs on him, and He took them home.”

“You sound like a believer,” the off-camera voice said.

The man nodded. “I am.”

“Yet, you’re claiming God took the believers-”

Another nod. “He did.”

“Then why are you still here?”

As if realizing he’d walked into a trap, the man opened and closed his mouth a few times before his shoulders dropped. The craze went out of his eyes, replaced with a deep sadness. “I guess I only thought I was a believer.”

The camera cut to the interviewer who shook his head. “And there you have it folks, the rapture could be another theory for the disappearances, but you’d have to be a little crazy to believe it.”

The camera panned back to the man, but Gabe no longer saw crazy. He saw himself in the man’s dejected