Robert Duperre - The Gate 2 - 13 Tales of Isolation and Despair

The stone that he’d been holding for support broke off under the weight of the crumbling wood, and he was lost under the ghastly water once more. His body was spent. He was unable to save himself as his back smashed into a gravestone, and then his right arm broke when it collided with another. He spun, limp, sucking water into his lungs as he writhed in pain… slipping under… consumed by the darkness… his hair twisting in the void, tickling his face. He felt the life leaving him replaced by a strange sort of lightness, drawing him away from the pain.

He then shot out of the water and slid up onto the side of the barn with such violence that it revived him from near death. The barn wall rocked from side to side, and more and more debris piled up beside him. Jules lay in the confused mass atop the makeshift craft, face down, one broken arm useless and lying at an odd angle to one side, a pool of blood gathering under his head.

He wished for death. In that one moment he had tasted it, however briefly, the sweetness, the peace. More than anything he’d ever felt before, he wanted that again. But instead he was in agony, too weak to move, with garbage and dead things surrounding him.

As he lay there, half clothed and broken, he spied a corpse lying beside him, stark white in the lightning, with a mangled face and a rope tied around one wrist.

Dawn McCullough White grew up in Rochester, NY, and is a keen observer of people. She spent her childhood listening to her father tell stories about history and ghosts. This left an indelible mark on her psyche. It is not such as surprise that, at the age of fourteen she penned her first novel and has never looked back since. Dawn currently has a Dark Fantasy series out— The Trilogy of Shadows —available in Kindle and Nook and in print through Amazon. In her spare time she enjoys watching documentaries and keeping EA in business by buying up every single Sims expansion she can get her hands on.

Facebook Fanpage: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dawn-McCullough-White/125763474137312

Website: http://dawnmccullough-white.com

Jake Finley was sitting at his computer at 2:37 a.m. when the Worldwide Event struck. He started in his chair, not by any physical sensation but by the sudden lack of it. He stared at his monitor dumbfounded, his forum post momentarily halted. He scratched the stubble on his cheeks.

“The hell?” he said.

He pushed back his chair and stood, most of his weight on his left leg. Taking a deep breath, he kicked out with his right leg. No pain. No stiffness.

“What the hell?”

On went the lights with a flick of his finger. It was as if he needed to see, to know for sure he wasn’t asleep or hallucinating or dead. He looked at his knee, saw the scar across the bottom of his kneecap. After the surgery, he’d had no cartilage left in the joint. At least he thought he didn’t, but now, well…

He snap-kicked again, feeling like a short-haired, overweight version of a Rockette. No pain at all.

“What the hell! ”

After a few minutes of walking, jumping, kicking and stomping like an infant discovering his feet could make noises, he picked up the phone. He had a terrible urge to call a friend, but he didn’t have any. The closest person to a friend he knew was a paralytic man named Reuben who lived several hours away in Kansas City. And of course there was the whole middle of the night thing. He backed up his browser and hit refresh, scanning the titles of forum posts that had erupted over the past few minutes.

I might be crazy but…

Miracle?

Anyone else feel that?

God is here!

The words gave him the courage. He dialed the number.

“Hello?” Reuben’s gruff voice said before Jake even heard the phone ring. It was as if Reuben had been waiting for him.

“Sorry if I woke you up,” Jake said, staring at his monitor. He felt so stupid, so silly, but at the same time so goddamn happy that he had to keep going. “It’s just…well, you know my knee, right?”

“Jake,” Reuben said, not even giving him the chance. “I’m standing right now. As I’m talking to you. Standing on my own fucking two feet, not a wheelchair in sight. Your knee’s working, isn’t it?”

“Brand-spanking new.”

“I’ll be honest with you,” Reuben said. A bit of a chuckle came through the receiver. “I didn’t know who to call. I almost called you, but I didn’t think you’d believe me. You do believe me, right?”

Snap-kick.

“Damn right I do,” Jake said, and he laughed and laughed.

*click*

“…eaves just two roses left: Greg and…”

*click*

“…with a final score of twenty-three to…”

*click*

“…still receiving calls, but it appears that this is not a localized phenomenon. We have confirmed cases from Canada, Mexico, Great Britain, as well as reports ranging from Brazil to Germany to China. I want to stress that, no matter how outlandish this appears, this is no jo…”

*click*

“…and who now can deny the coming of the Rapture? God’s hand has come down and touched us all, and if these miracles do not affirm the reality of…”

*click*

“Whoooooooooooo lives in a pineapple under the…”

*click*

The next morning Jake went for a walk, because he could. He wore gray slacks and his nicest shirt, usually reserved for graduations, birthdays, and the occasional Sunday service with his mother before she passed away. Going outside felt like an event. There would be people out there, hundreds of them. The television had confirmed this. It all wasn’t in his head, and it wasn’t just him. He stepped outside and onto the sidewalk. Doing his best to fight his tendency to limp, he picked a direction and walked.

Strangers smiled at him. Some held their arms, or winked, or clutched their stomachs with their fingers. It was like everyone wanted to tell everyone what it was that had been cured. Several men walked past carrying canes high above the ground, and Jake smiled with a sense of kinship at their quick, exaggerated steps. The whole while, he ached to talk with someone, anyone, but he knew them not, and they did not know him. So he accepted their smiles, their understanding, and let his ears steal bits of conversations between strangers, indulging in their closeness.

“For over fifteen years I’ve had rheumatoid arthritis in both my hands. Could always tell you when the weather’s about to change. Now all I feel like doing is knitting…”

“Doctor told me just last week I had cancer. Can you believe it? Still got my hair, praise God, it’s almost like he did this just for me.”

“Now I’m not a religious man. I go by what I see, what I touch. Smart, you know? Now I wake up, not a bit of a cough, and you ask me who I think did it?”

At this Jake laughed and turned around. He wanted to appear happy, and he really was happy, but without anyone to share, anyone to talk to, he felt aimless. All his joy, funneled nowhere, building up inside and spilling into nothingness. Before he went back in his house he checked the mail. Flipping the envelopes through his fingers, he found his disability check. He ripped it open, a weird grin spread across his face, and with the flourish of a child opening a Christmas present he tore the check into pieces, tore those pieces into pieces, and then hurled them into the air. He watched the wind take them, scatter them across the grass and sidewalk like confetti.