Tales of Light

VANISHED!

Hello everyone. The following series of short stories was birthed by some reedsy blog prompts I had written last year.
Now it's more polished and refined. I hope the message of the return of the Lord will be etched in our hearts so that we can adequately prepare.
God bless you as you read.

Genre: Apocalyptic/end-time fiction

•••°°°•••

Year 2047
Atlanta, Georgia.

A slight groan escaped Alexia's throat as she listened to her mom's never-ending lecture about the importance of being true to one's faith. Urgh!

"But Mom, I only told you that my boss took me as his plus-one on an official get-together with the other shareholders," she said.
She figured it would be best to help her mom save the bit of saliva that still remained.

This was a bygone event. It wasn't as if she could reverse time and change things.

She had come visiting, all pumped up about her great achievement. Her boss, Mr Nephert, CEO of Nephert Telecom Corporation Ltd, had asked her, being his PA, to follow him to an evening buffet in celebration of the grand opening of their twenty-fifth international branch.

The prospect was too enticing to resist. Any sane lady would drool their lives out to be chosen by the damn handsome CEO as an escort.

She had given a straight-out yes to him. It was either a yes or losing her high-paying and hard-to-come-by job.

Telling her mom was definitely a bad choice. Dang her hyper-jubilant spirit!

Her mother harrumphed. "You and I both know what that means, dear. I read the online news. I know quite well your boss's reputation of being a womaniser as well as all the other speculations that he is a kingpin in multiple secret fraternities all aimed at promoting the new world order," she said.

"Mom!" she drawled. "That's not fair to the man who gives your daughter the ability to fend for herself and take care of you and Lydia."

"It's God who fends for us, Sweetheart," her mother said as she put on the mitten gloves and brought out a steaming hot and to-die-for pan of chocolate cookies.

God. That was a topic Alexia would rather not broach. She had given up on the idea of there being a big man upstairs ever since her father died of Kidney failure three years back.
It wasn't even as if she had actually surrendered her life to Jesus at any point. She'd simply followed her parents to church because that was how it was.

Her mother would tell her that she should come back to God but none of those things moved her anymore. She was done with God. Period.

"Hey Mom, how're ya doing?" Lydia, her sixteen-year old sister, said as she made her grand entrance.
She was in the final grade of High School and never stopped talking about how she would soon be 'free'.
Now, she looked anything but soon-to-be free. She looked tired, with her brown hair stuck all over sweaty face.
She looked hungry too, especially with the way she was eyeing the cookies on the kitchen table and sniffing the air.

She walked past Alexia and took one hot cookie from the tray. She moaned, an indication that Mom had once again nailed the perfect cookie recipe of all time.

"Aren't you going to greet your sister?" Mom asked, playfully slapping off Lydia's hand from the remaining pile of cookies.

"Oh! I was too hungry to notice her. Hey sis! What's up?"

Alexia rolled her eyes. Typical of her sister to ignore her.

"You girls should hurry up and come with me. We are going to the Mall. Our groceries are finished."

Mom drove past the Motel Eroshit, lamenting about how the society has so much depreciated over the years that there was now a public motel for homosexual sex workers.

"Look! There's the new Hilliard School," Mom said, pointing in the direction of the tall and colourful  groups of storey buildings.
"Now that sch—"

When Alexia turned back from the sight to look at her mom, she discovered much to her distress and alarm that she wasn't there.
Adrenaline shot in her bloodstream.

Too scared and shocked to think, she screamed. Her high-pitched and horrifying scream was echoed by that of her sister in the backseat.

The car was just approaching an intersection where a sixteen-wheeled trailer was coming directly towards them.

Alexia, still shaking with too much adrenaline rush, still frantically screaming like she was about to be devoured by the Loch Ness monster, held the steering wheel and jerked it sharply to the right, escaping being crushed by the sliding trailer by an hair of a second.

The car crushed its many obstacles: stalls of wares, people even, until it came to a halting stop at the foot of a tall concrete electric pole.

The car looked like an innocent fly that had been swatted with a book. Squished, shrunken, shrivelled and very bloody.

Alexia's breathing were rasped but at least she was relatively unhurt. The belt and airbag did much to press her back and prevent impact. The trembling spread and wacked her whole body, and so did the mind-numbing pain.
But her mind refused to be numbed, for she suddenly remembered her sister.

She turned and almost cursed at the sight of the limp, bleeding figure at the back seat.

"No... No... No... Please don't be dead. You mustn't die."

She reached out her trembling hands and checked for her sister's pulse. It was there, feeble though. Whew!

She managed to scramble out of the wreck. Getting her unconscious sister out proved to be more difficult, but she managed to do it, using the fire extinguisher to break the now weakened body part of the car.

They weren't the only ones affected. It was everywhere: blood, fire, accidents, chaos, screams, wails...

The emergency service sounded their sirens; they were as confused and perplexed as everyone else in this city, in the whole world.

Alexia carried up her sister's unconscious figure. Lydia was bleeding from a cut on her head.

She cried. She cried along with the others who had seen their loved ones mysterious vanish into thin air.

Only she knew. She knew what had just happened. It was the rapture of the saints, the one she'd heard of once in children Sunday school, the one her mom had repeatedly ranted on about. The coming of the Lord.

She ran towards home, her vision blurred by the river of tears flowing from her eyes. Her arms ached from the weight of her sister. Her head thundered drumbeats away, unmercifully. Her heart was heavy with many questions and fears.

But she knew this was only the beginning. The beginning of the end.

Thanks for reading this first part. Next one is coming up shortly.
How do you imagine the rapture will happen?🤔 The Bible described it as the coming of a thief in the night.😵

It is my prayer that you and I will be counted worthy to be caught up to meet our bridegroom in the air. 🙏✨💫

Let's see the fate of Alexia, Lydia an the others who were left behind in the next part, shall we?👇👇👇