Ark

by J. J. Wilder

  I cowered on the ground, waters rising around me, swirling around my ankles, wetting my belly with icy cold. I crouched, waiting, watching.

  In the distance, I saw a mountain peak split open like a pebble dashed against a boulder, and from within the crack spat a column of water, spurting into the sky hundreds of cubits above the top of the peak. My gaze swept east, and I saw the earth shake and watched the ground itself crack apart, and a spray of water gush into the air with a roaring hiss. To the west, in the plains south of Umma, I saw a hundred such fountains pouring skyward from cracks in the earth.

  The waters rose around me, until I was forced to stand. It passed my knees, rushing and eddying and swirling, the currents violent, tugging at me. The floodwaters lapped at the ark, slapping against the side, and I heard the mighty vessel groan and creak. I put my hand against the pitch-sticky side and felt it swaying as the waters rose.

  My death approached.

  Yet . . .

  I looked up and saw the opening of the ark’s great door, the ramp still lowered.

  Lightning flashed, and the rains hammered down in a blinding deluge.

  The floodwaters caught at my thighs, and I felt the final pangs of fear bite into me.

  A new sound, then, yet another kind of rumbling, a bone-shaking roar, from the northeast, from the mountains thence. I peered through the gnashing, pelting, weltering wall of rain, and saw white. The ark shook, and the sky shook, and the ground shook, and I stared hard through the rain.

  The whiteness was a wall of water. Rushing. Cascading. A flood, god-high—God-high. A flood that touched the sky itself, smashing against the hills and pouring over them, covering them.

  I wept and saw my death approaching.

  Of its own accord, the ramp ascended, pulled by no ropes, pushed by no hands, guided by no man. It rose, trembling, creaking, and dripping floodwater.

  I was covered to my waist, now, shivering, weeping, crying out loud to the Lord of Heaven, to Elohim, but my cries of torment were lost in the roaring of the approaching flood.

  At the last, as the waters bore me upward, as the wall seethed toward me, I knew my weakness, and I knew my sin.

  Elohim, my Lord God El Shaddai . . . forgive me.

  I caught hold of the ramp as it ascended, the wood slick under my fingers.

  THE END

  ARESIA’S SONG

  The voices of my brothers

  echo in the temples,

  sandals stomping.

  They swagger like bold heroes,

  bellow like proud bulls;

  they offer hollow sacrifices

  to empty and silent gods,

  hungry hands and selfish eyes

  devouring all that they survey.

  Their victims weep and plead to deaf ears,

  and their laughter mocks the dying.

  Sons of men and angels,

  princes of the earth,

  these brutal demi-gods

  carve their names in shifting sand.

  They do not see their demise

  rushing down upon them

  floodwaters from the mighty Tigris,

  a deluge from the Euphrates.

  I walk among the mortal men of the earth,

  and I hear their prayers,

  prayed not to gods many and futile,

  but to The One God

  whose Voice reverberates from the mountaintops.

  I walk among them,

  searching for a light

  to illumine my darkened soul.

  I have no sacrifice I can offer up,

  no prayers to heal the wounds

  inflicted by my father’s fists,

  by the King’s anger.

  The waters rise up,

  the tides come and they cannot be stopped,

  the waters drown my city,

  and carry away my people,

  tear down the ziggurat

  and the palace.

  The floodwaters of The One God

  bathe me clean;

  Elohim draws me to Himself

  and stills my cry

  with the comfort of rushing waters,

  and I am silenced.

  Also by JJ Wilder

  Visit me at my website: www.jasindawilder.com

  Email me: jasindawilder@gmail.com

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