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

Never asking, Jake realized. His hand was reaching into his pocket, and the man had not even asked.

“Things not picking up at all?” Jake dared ask. “Since, well, you know…”

“Since God touched us all?” said the man. “Better, sure. I was blind, but now I see, like Jesus himself spat on my eyes, but it don’t do no good. People look at me like it’s my fault now, as if the whole world’s been fixed. Get a job , they say, like I got a phone for them to call me back on, or a return address so they don’t throw it away the second my ass is gone. Should see the looks on their faces when I ask for work. Praise God, I can see, but I’m still hungry.”

As he was talking the three women on the bench stood and tidied up their coats and skirts. The hungry man held up his sign. Two of the women completely ignored him as they passed, the third glanced over and frowned.

“You’re right, grace is exactly what this world needs,” the center one said, their conversation never halting. Jake watched them go, a hard rock in his stomach. He pulled out his wallet and dumped its contents into the stranger’s plastic bag.

“God bless you,” the man said, tears in his bloodshot eyes.

“Sure thing,” Jake said, hurrying off as if he felt the whole world pointing at him and laughing. When he got home he kicked a hole in the wall, then stared at it red-faced and more embarrassed than ever in his life.

Pain twitched and grew in his knee.

In school Jake had read how all the watches in Hiroshima had stopped when the bomb went off, so among the bone and ash they knew the exact time Hell had hurled up a piece of itself to Earth. Well, The Worldwide Event was that bomb, and Jake felt like the watch, stuck in place without hope of fixing. It seemed irrelevant that the bomb had repaired his knee. If a second bomb had fallen after the first, sucking up the ash and rebuilding the walls and giving life back to those who’d been vaporized, they still would have stood around dumbfounded and in shock. How does one continue on with living and working and fucking and dying after something like that?

Jake sat on his bed, head in hands. Depression, that roaring lion, was breathing down his neck, its weight heavy on his shoulders. In front of him was a shoe box. Inside that shoe box was a gun. Reuben had arranged for him to have it during his lone trip from Kansas City to meet Jake.

“You’re one of us now,” Reuben had said, handing over the gun like it was an initiation. “Don’t let anyone tell you what life is and what it isn’t. You know your life, you know what you have and what you live for. Don’t you dare hesitate for fear of what those other faggots might say. You got that? Your life. You control it, and you can end it when you damn well please. Just keep the safety on at all times, all right? Last thing I need on my conscience is you accidentally blowing your fucking nuts off.”

Jake didn’t dare take the lid off the box. Seeing the gun, clean, black and well-oiled, might give him some crazy ideas.

To his right the television ran on mute. On the scrolling newsreel, the constant updates ticked across.

Scattered reports across the U.S. suggest symptoms removed during The Worldwide Event have begun returning in select individuals.

Jake tried to stand, grimaced, and sat back down. He cried.

*click*

“…think the most logical explanation is a global mass hysteria, except instead of a disease or fear it was a cure that spontaneously spread, perhaps building through increased…”

*click*

“…have sent nano-technology into our atmosphere from their spacecraft. Now listen to me, the sudden activation would have given everyone relief at approximately the same time, would have defied detection by our current medical professionals, and now perhaps they have run their course, or encountered problems with our genetic code compared to theirs, and then shut down.”

“So what you’re saying is aliens might be the cause of this Worldwide Event?”

“Well, that’s one possible source of the nano…”

*click*

“God’s wrath has come upon us now! Woe unto you, Jeruselam, for in your disbelief Jehovah has revoked the gift given to us, and unless we embrace, fully embrace the blood of Jesus Christ we will burn in the fire that approaches, for the bible is clear, the afflictions we suffer shall only become worse! Pray for those you love! Beg God for forgiveness, for these are the days of Revelation, and the lion and the lamb shall return carrying a sword…”

*click*

“…reports from hospitals have only increased what many experts now believe were only psychosomatic episodes, although no one has yet adequately explained the x-rays showing cancer remissions.”

*click*

“…anyone truly doubt the awesome abilities of the mind? The world, in its sorrow, yearned for a cure, and as our souls connected in the ether, we made whole our physical shells…”

*click*

Jake hobbled to his mailbox, his teeth locked tight as he fought the natural impulse to limp with his right leg. He fumbled with the key, inserted it backward, then flipped it over. As he pulled out the lone envelope, he noticed its address and immediately opened the flap. Inside was a single sheet of paper, a form letter with a statement followed by a single question.

It read:

Department of Social Services has received a significant amount of reports involving incorrect status involving disabilities and illness. In order to better serve you, we are asking that you answer the following question truthfully. Please check one (1) of the following boxes that best describes you.

[ ] My illness/reason for disability has dramatically improved in recent days, and not returned.

[ ] My illness/reason for disability dramatically improved, but symptoms have returned.

[ ] I experienced no change in my physical/mental disability.

Once inside, Jake checked the third box, cut his tongue licking the return envelope, and then smashed a second hole in the wall.

On the drive to the church, Jake kept rubbing his eyes as if to pull himself out of a very deep sleep. He winced every time he hit a bump. There were two reasons. The first was the pain that flared up and down his leg from his bad knee. The second was that the lid to the shoe box next to him kept coming dangerously close to slipping off.

He turned his radio to a Christian music station, hoping to find a hymn or something to calm himself down. Instead he heard vaguely sanitized rock with love of women replaced with love of God. He felt the stone in his stomach turn. Turning into the parking lot of the church, he kept running insane thoughts through his head, hearing Reuben berating him again and again, calling him a weak pussy, cowardly and afraid of everything. In his mind, he could offer no rebuttal.

Inside the church there was room to breathe, and the jovial atmosphere of elation and celebration was gone. A dark cloud settled over the hallways, and worry leapt from the red carpet like fleas. He found a spot in the back and stood, eyes closed and hands open at his side. One time, for a brief moment, he had been touched by God, but it was too brief a touch. He had not grabbed on, had lost the opportunity to be led, and within the church he prayed for another chance, another touch, to be clutched in a hand wiser than his own and led down a path far better than the dismal, dark loneliness he feared.

Somber songs. A band leader that told everyone to keep faith with a smile on her face that did not match her voice. The preacher was soaked with sweat, and he held the bible aloft like a lightning rod. And then they sang Amazing Grace. Jake’s heart leapt. The song began, and he hoped for a regression to the way things were. He even prayed for his knee to be healed, for that glimmer of hope to be restored in his chest.