Rapture Flash Fiction: “God’s Twinkling Eyes”
I’m so going to hell for this story. The idea came to me last night and my friends demand I take a swing at it.
God’s Twinkling Eyes
Nicky threw open the hatch on their semi trailer’s tank and held his head to one side. The air filled with acrid smells: rot, flesh, vitriolic acid. The fluid trickled into a thick, yellow cloud that wrapped around the hatch’s entrance, burning long furrows into the metal there. Later, this truck would be sent to the junkyard and crushed by the Archbishop’s crew, then buried by the Friars of His Holiest Landfill and Organic Avocado Farm, never to be seen again.
Canioli - Cain to his friends in The Family - carried a small boy over his shoulder. the boy was stone cold dead, just like every other member of the small Church of St. Mary’s Grace was going to be in a few hours, transubstantiated by Christ’s postassium cyanide-laced blood. The building smelled of feces and incense mixed tobether. “We have the cops paid off for another twenty minutes, boss. You want me and the boys should start bringing bodies!”
“They have to be naked!” Nicky spat. “Do I have to do everything myself? Take off their clothes, leave them in the pews, and _then_ bring their bodies to the truck! This is the rapture, not a hit. We have to leave something behind.” Of this the Church made sure to emphasize. The priest that contracted them had a bone-chilling way of doing it, too: “Remember, we exist around the world. If you so much as breathe wrong, you will be saved.” Then the old man crossed himself and kissed his ring as if annointing the sick.
Nicky still got chills from it.
“Sorry, boss. Not used to the protocol.” Cain was wearing gloves, just like every other handyman they’d brought for the job. Usualy they were cracking drug dealers, stool pigeons. Working for the Church was a new experience entirely. Not that they minded; variety is the spice of life where murder is concerned. One can only do so many cement shoes before it stops being interesting.
“Ten minutes, then we roll. Women and children first, then pick the guys that look like they were nice people. If we don’t get to them all people’ll just think they were bad men.”
“Got it, boss.” Cain poked his head back into the building, screamed something in Italian, and within seconds the handymen were hauling bodies two at a time to the trailer like so many potato sacks, tossing them through the hole. Hydrogen and burnt skin filled the air with fumes. Nicky threw on a respirator and tried not to dissect the orchestra of odors hitting his nose.
Besides, he couldn’t get to comfortable here. Soon they’d get another call, another church asking for disposal services, another chunk of change paid to the fuzz while Nicky and his mob cleaned up the souls that’d be saved by the morning news the next morning. One way or another, God’s eyes would twinkle for the rapture.
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