May Be Not

(Harold Egbert Camping is a Christian radio broadcaster and president of Family Radio, a California-based religious broadcasting network that spans more than 150 outlets in the United States as well as a website. He has used mathematical predictions applied to the Bible to predict dates for the end of the world. His current end times prediction is May 21, 2011. He had previously predicted that the end would occur in September 1994. It did not. His followers are legion.)

Her petticoat scratched sharply at her skin, and the intimate place where her thighs met was slippery with sweat. She shifted, wishing to billow her skirt…circulate air…but her hands were firmly held on either side by the clammy suction of kin.  A catch in her breath was the only indication she mourned the wind. Eighteen years had passed since the last prophecy. They had been three children shy back then, but the fear on the face of their oldest was forever etched, and echoing now in older lines. Frightened, yes...but something else rode his features and burrowed beneath the surface of a chin, freshly shaved not so long ago. It had been 23 hours since The Preparation, and Matthew now looked haggard and nervous. She could not know his fear was not of doom.

Her husband sat stoic, eyes closed, with determined lashes twitching away the seconds. He had bought into the necrosis willingly and raised his children according to their pre-determined end.  He believed.  He was alone in it.  A loaf of bread sat next to an idle pitcher on the buffet, half filled with the color of sacrament and the taste of strawberries. The only sound in the room was the scuff-ting-thump of Ruthie's little feet bumping her chair legs in time with the clock. Questions hung as silent apparitions, dusty in the closet of their keeping. Doors threatened to pop with tension and even the chairs beneath them felt the unease of something about to go more horribly wrong than any End Of The World might be.

The only light in the room was the bright spots of the news vans...chomping at their microphones in hope of failure. Should tomorrow come, their humiliation would be the menu of all future meals...until the public forgot...and if she recalled correctly, public memory was long. She would not endure such ridicule again. As the clock struck midnight, on what was resignedly not the end and crested into the full moon of just another day, she squeezed the hands beside her and released them. "One last communion. We've twelve bells and this is how we shall commemorate the last."

All six of them reached for the glasses she had poured and grabbed a torn piece of bread. "Drink! Drink!" she encouraged as cups met lips, leaving a stain of tragedy like a mocker's grin. She gulped greedily, watching the adams apple of her husband as he also drank. His eyes closed, his faith unwavering, he did not question the cramp that shot through his gut at the stroke of midnight. She doubled over, surprised at the severity of it, the suddenness with which it threatened to take her. Raising up, she sought her children with one grimaced eye, as they bore the condition of their father's blind faith. What she saw was...unexpected. She shook her head against the blurry vision of Matthew and the rest of the children calmly putting their drinks down side by side.

It was then she noticed their glasses were full.

Matthew 24:36 “No one knows the day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
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