I kicked him in the shin. He cried out in pain and I ran off as quickly as my tortured feet and flayed legs would carry me. Fortunately that old codger was pretty slow, and so our pursuit race through the blazing high street was probably one of the slowest in the history of disaster zones. In the end, the man was apprehended by two Jehovah’s Witnesses, who wanted to talk to him at length about God, and no longer accepted ‘No, thank you’ as an answer.
I carried on running towards the ice-cream parlour, where the two little girls were fighting each other outside in the pile of sand, scratching and biting, because Lilliana desperately wanted her friend’s lipgloss. This didn’t bother mummy Svetlana as she was far too busy going at men at random with a broken Pellegrino bottle – she probably regarded each one as a potential punter – whilst my father was trying to strangle my mother screaming, ‘I was miserable for twenty years because of you!’ I was just about to try and separate them when I saw Gabriel standing on the roof of the four-storey building opposite. He was a person, but something had brought out an insatiable longing within him to fly again, even though he was lacking wings. I didn’t know where to intervene first; the brawling children, the crazed Svetlana, my strangling Dad or the potential grease spot. Then Joshua arrived and made the decision for me. He convinced Gabriel with calm words to step away from the guttering on the roof, assuaged my father’s and Svetlana’s anger by placing his hand on them and managed to get the two girls to share the lipgloss in a sisterly way: ‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures on this earth… For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’
As he said that, his eyes were filled with love for the people. And I suddenly realised what Mary Magdalene must have said to him. It must have been…
‘You really do take ages!’
No, those were not the words.
‘Can you please call the heavenly host of yours so that we can get going?’
Of course she hadn’t said that either.
I turned around, and at the table I saw a woman happily slurping on her espresso, looking at Joshua sneeringly. She looked like Alicia Keys, the one that Kata was so keen on. Kata? Had it really been her up there… No, it couldn’t… it simply could not be!
‘We haven’t seen each other in ages, Jesus,’ said the soul diva, who almost certainly was not a soul diva.
‘The last time we met was in the Judean Desert, when you were trying to seduce me,’ Joshua said to the woman.
‘You were a pretty hard nut to crack,’ Alicia grinned and, with a bang, transformed into a horrible red creature with horns and hooves that you might see in a puppet show created by Stephen King.
‘Scotty?’
‘Yes, Captain?’
‘I’m quitting too.’
‘What do you think about us both going into organic farming?’
‘An excellent idea, Scotty. An excellent idea.’
My entirely body was shaking, my nose was filled with a pungent stench of sulphur, and the smoke stung my eyes, but Joshua didn’t even bat an eyelid. Satan gestured for him to sit down at his table. But Joshua stood still, and just signalled to Gabriel to keep us all out of the way. My family, Svetlana and the children hastily followed the vicar, but I stood still. Gabriel ran towards me, touched my arm and wanted to drag me away, but I just said: ‘I will not leave his side.’
Gabriel smiled proudly. ‘I did you wrong.’
Then he led the others away as quickly as possible. But it didn’t bother the blood-red Beelzebub. He was probably confident of the fact that he would get them in the end. He turned to Joshua and explained. ‘It’s time for you to fight. The war has begun.’
To illustrate his point he gestured at the high street, happily bringing the cup of espresso to his mouth with his hideous tail.
‘I will not fight,’ Jesus replied.
‘You, you do not want enter into the final battle?’ Perplexed, Satan put his espresso down.
‘No,’ Joshua said calmly but firmly.
‘Are you doing another one of your “turn the other cheek” moves?’ Satan tried to keep his countenance – there he’d been, hoping for a battle, and Joshua was refusing.
‘I would call it something else, but your statement is correct,’ Joshua confirmed.
Satan was unnerved. Maybe, I anxiously hoped, this would throw him off his tracks so much that he would call an end to this whole thing… where there was no opponent, there was no possibility of waging a war, was there?
But then Satan laughed maliciously, as only a King of Hell can laugh: ‘If that’s so, my dear Jesus, I will just have to destroy you without you putting up a fight.’
Oh dear, this ‘turn the other’ cheek thing didn’t really seem to be working!
‘Come to me!’ Satan called into the sky, and the four horsemen sped down to us on their blazing horses. Now, as they approached, I recognised their faces… and one of the horsemen was the new vicar?
The next one was… Sven?
And then there was… Kata?
And the fourth horseman looked like me.
I didn’t even bother asking myself why this might be. I’d run out of questions.
The horsemen scooted down from the sky towards the town centre, and their intentions were clear – they wanted to destroy Jesus.
The horsemen landed right in front of our feet. The horses snorted, and hellish fire came blazing out of their nostrils. In combination with the remaining smell of sulphur in the air following Satan’s transformation, this created quite an unbearable stench. Sven and the new vicar were clearly eagerly anticipating the forthcoming slaughter; they were drunk with power. The one who looked like me, on the other hand, had cold, empty eyes, and since I knew the names of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and was able to draw some logical conclusions I sensed that this must be Death. The fact that Death looked very like me was, beyond any shadow of a doubt, a bad omen.
Yet my fear of dying was completely eclipsed by my sympathy for Kata. She sat on her blazing steed without scorching her bum. Her eyes were filled with sadness as she looked at me, whispering in a broken voice: ‘He threatened me with having to suffer this tumour for all eternity… I’m not strong enough, to disobey… or to trick him… Forgive… me…’
There was nothing to forgive. I understood her. I was not exactly easy to live according to the Sermon on the Mount if you were healthy, but if you were sick and a tumour was devouring your own body, you’d probably gladly sell your soul to the devil.
‘I wouldn’t be that strong either,’ I said to Kata, and a very slight, hardly discernible sad smile crossed her mouth. She was grateful that I wasn’t condemning her.
Satan stood between us. ‘I hope that I’m not disturbing your sisterly chitter-chatter too much by ordering you to destroy Jesus now.’
‘We’d be delighted to,’ Sven said to Joshua.
‘It’s your own fault.’ The gym-body vicar smiled at Joshua sadistically. ‘If you’d given me as much power as Satan, I would never have changed sides. But you always left me alone. Even when the lifeguard at the swimming pool told me that I was an eyesore in front of that group of Year 9 girls.’
Joshua didn’t answer. His whole posture and determined expression showed no fear. That’s probably how he stood in front of Pontius Pilate too.
While all the other horsemen focused on him, Death only had eyes for me. This was the kind of attention I could happily have done without.
Dennis and Sven now gave their supernatural powers free rein. I couldn’t quite understand what they were doing, but they stretched their arms out towards Joshua and he briefly cried aloud, his whole body cramping up. Sometimes I saw wrath blazing in his eyes, hatred even, then desire, but he always managed to keep these feelings in check. This was something that certainly displeased Satan. His smug smile had disappeared. He then turned to Kata and shouted: ‘Help them!’
My sister wanted to resist, but as she’d already said herself, she was too weak, and the fear of the eternal tumour caused her to
direct her horse closer to Joshua. Suddenly all the old wounds on his hands and feet started to bleed again. I didn’t know what was more terrible – to see Joshua suffer, or watch Kata, as Pestilence, extending the pain she had suffered to another person. It was this pain that she so feared to suffer for all eternity. I had to stop her, for Joshua’s sake, but also for hers. I stepped in between the horsemen and Joshua, who could hardly stand up and only just managed to stop himself from screaming out in pain with the last of his willpower.
‘If you want Jesus,’ I said to the horsemen, ‘then you’ll have to kill me first.’
I had some remaining hope that Sven and Kata still had enough feelings for me that they’d let us go. Joshua made a weak hand gesture – he could no longer speak, his inner battle was too terrible – but the gesture was clear. He wanted me to flee. He did not want me to sacrifice myself for him. But I stood still.
Kata manoeuvred her steed back a few steps – she did not want to punish me with terrible diseases. Her love for me at this moment was greater than her fear.
‘Fight!’ Satan commanded her.
She just shook her head. In the end he didn’t have that much power over her. For her love for me was stronger than her fear. In her own way she’d therefore managed to trick Satan after all.
This was certainly not to his liking. He pointed at Sven with his curly tail. He was no longer able to defy Satan’s power, and didn’t want to for that matter. His hatred had eaten him up a long time ago. ‘OK,’ he said to me, ‘killing you will fit into my plans very nicely.’
When Kata heard this, her whole body started shaking. Joshua was also suffering, but he was powerless. Thanks to the horsemen he was fighting his inner demons, which reside in every human being. And a cold smile was stretched across the face of the one who looked like me. I knew that I was going to die now. I had no fear. Only anger. At God. Because Kata was suffering. And Joshua too. And because they would suffer even more if I were to die now.
So I angrily shouted into the sky: ‘Eli, Eli, patika sabati!’
And I got this answer
THAT MEANS, MY GOD, MY GOD, MY MEATBALL IS INFERTILE.
The scenery all around me suddenly froze, as though someone had taken a still frame. Everyone had stopped moving and stood like statues. The satanic beast had an angry look on his face, Jesus was bent double with pain, the fire that was flicking out of the nostrils of the horses was hanging in the air, frozen in time, and even Kata was no longer shaking. Nobody did a thing – no one was shouting because of pain, greed or aggression. Suddenly, everything was peaceful.
Very calm.
The only thing that could still be heard were the sizzling flames of the burning thorn bush, which had appeared next to me out of nothing.
‘Eli, eli, intesti, sabalili!’ I shouted at him accusingly, hoping to have found the right words this time.
AND THAT MEANS: MY GOD, MY GOD, MY BOWELS ARE DOING HEAVY LABOUR.
‘You know exactly what I mean!’ I yelled, wishing that I could spray a whole cylinder of foam extinguisher on his leaves.
FORGIVE ME,
the bush answered, and immediately turned into Emma Thompson, who instead of wearing an eighteenth century dress was just wearing some H&M stuff. God didn’t seem the type of woman who was into expensive designer labels.
‘I did not forsake you. I do not forsake anyone,’ Emma/God replied.
‘Yeah, I can see that from looking at your son,’ I countered, trembling with rage.
Emma/God looked compassionately, even pityingly at Joshua, who was standing there as if frozen, his face distorted with pain. Then she said: ‘My son does not want the Day of Judgement.’
‘If you want to blame me for instigating this, then please go ahead! I’m actually proud of myself!’
‘The blame? Well, you are responsible for it,’ Emma/God stated in a calm tone of voice.
‘You can turn me into a pillar of salt if you want; you seem to enjoy doing that,’ I scolded.
‘And why would I do that?’
The question surprised me and took a little steam out of me: ‘Because… because I messed it all up…’
‘Yes, you have.’
‘But?’
‘You did it out of love.’
Her wonderful, benevolent smile really did dissipate my anger.
‘Yes, I did…’ I confirmed.
Her smile became even more benevolent, more wonderful, and then Emma/God said to me: ‘How could I punish you for that? There is nothing that could make me more proud.’
I stood there, completely dumbfounded. Emma/God turned around and where she looked, the world healed. The frozen people stopped bleeding, flames and smoke dispersed, and the charred houses were as new again, as were the ambulance and the lamppost. Even the paramedic looked like a completely normal person again. Emma/God looked at Satan and the blazing steeds, and they vanished into thin air. And so did Death, which greatly relieved me. Kata, Sven and the gym-body vicar were now sitting at a table at the ice cream parlour in a very civilised manner, and the high street looked just like a normal high street again, if you disregarded the fact that all the people still looked as though they were frozen, including Joshua. Emma/God stroked his hair with her hand, and then he disappeared.
‘Will I ever see him again?’ I asked fearfully.
‘That depends on him,’ Emma/God answered, and I felt that she wanted to disappear now too.
‘I have one more thing to ask.’
‘Ask.’
‘Why tumours?’
‘Or periods?’ Emma/God smiled.
I nodded.
‘Without birth and death there is no life.’
I added, ‘Well yes, but can’t you make it a bit more pleasant…?’ but she’d already gone.
A moment later, the high street was once again full of life, as though nothing had ever happened. People were no longer marauding through the streets. They were shopping, and no longer smashing the shop windows.
Everyone seemed to have entirely forgotten about what had happened. Almost everyone. The former human Horsemen of the Apocalypse looked at me guilt-ridden and full of shame. I couldn’t have cared less about Sven and the vicar, but not…
‘Kata…’
I approached her, but she got up and ran away. She couldn’t bear to look at me. I wanted to run after her, but Gabriel, who had approached me, stopped me. ‘Give her some time. She needs to process all of this.’
I nodded. The retired angel was right. He also recalled what had happened and presented the theory that all those who had been touched by the supernatural would never forget about it.
‘But… why did God cancel the Day of Judgement?’
‘There are just two explanations for that,’ Gabriel answered. ‘Either this was always planned as a trial by God, as with Abraham and Job…’
‘Abraham and Job?’ I asked.
‘In the end, Abraham was not forced to sacrifice his son, even though he thought that it was God’s will. But it turned out just to be a test. And Job, who underwent all this suffering that God had bestowed upon him, was also tested by the Almighty. In the end he was cured of his illness and allowed to have a family once again.’
‘I’m missing the connection…’ I said sounding confused.
‘Maybe,’ Gabriel replied, ‘the Day of Judgement and this prophecy of the Book of Revelation were just a chimera, and never meant seriously, just to find out what potential humanity has. And on this occasion, the chosen one for this test was not Abraham, not Job, but you, Marie.’
I still didn’t really get it.
‘Your love convinced God of the people.’
I took a deep breath, and Gabriel started grinning: ‘You, like a biblical character… who’d have thought it?’
His theory, that everything – the Day of Judgement, my encounter with Joshua, tea time with God – had just been a test for humanity with me as an exemplary representative, made me feel very anxious. So I asked: ‘And… what�
�s the other possible explanation.’
‘You were just damn lucky.’
Yet I wasn’t feeling particularly lucky, if luck is really all it was, because Joshua wasn’t with me. Would he ever even want to see me again? I said goodbye to Gabriel and went to our favourite spot by the lake, not feeling particularly hopeful. But then something incredible happened – Joshua was sitting on the pier, looking out onto the water, with the sun shining down on it peacefully. I was endlessly happy to see him. I sat down beside him and let my feet dangle down over the water next to his. After we’d been sitting there in silence for a while, he said: ‘I have spoken to God.’
I could have asked whether Gabriel’s theory was correct and I really was a quasi-biblical crash test dummy, but there was another thing that was much more important to me: ‘Is he allowing us…’ I began, only to stop talking again, because I was far too afraid of hearing the answer. I would have loved to suggest to Joshua not to say a word and to spend the next centuries just sitting next to me on the pier.
‘He is leaving our future up to our own free will,’ Joshua explained.
‘You… you… you… me?
‘Yes, you and me, if that’s what we want.’
‘You… you… you…?’ I now asked Joshua about his free will.
‘Yes.’
It was simply unbelievable.
He grabbed my hand. Just as his fingers touched mine, he said: ‘I will become mortal like Gabriel.’
‘Mortal?’ I asked sounding puzzled.
‘I will return to earth as a mortal human being and live my life until my earthly death.’
He was really prepared to give up everything for me, even his immortality. That was seriously romantic. The greatest thing that a man had ever wanted to do for me.
But I still didn’t like the sound of it.
‘Is that dying bit really necessary…?’ I demanded, and pulled my hand away again.
‘Yes, that’s the only way I can age,’ Joshua explained. ‘Imagine if you were seventy-nine and I was still as old as I am now…’
Apocalypse Next Tuesday Page 21