Rapture

/ Liz H-H
Night view of a city street, post rain, described in text

© Ayr/Gray

Many thanks to Jenne Gray and C.E. Ayr for their photo prompt, THE UNICORN CHALLENGE. 10/18/2024). No more than 250 words in length.

It’s dark, past midnight on Edgewater Ridge. The night is closed and starless, though the rain passed through less than a half an hour ago. Except for the line of cars parked along one side of the street, nothing moves through the shadows or under the sporadically spaced houselights.          

That’s because everyone is gone and has been for months uncounted. Day rolls into night into another day et cetera, and the pattern is a slow, steady drumbeat. Not mournful, mind, just steady. As if waiting.

No animals rustle in the trees. The sea, beyond the stairwell down to damp sand, lifts as if breathing, as if it dreams of flight. No creatures scuttle through shallows, none dive deepest depths.

The trees, though, grip tight to the cliffside, stretching in gentle winds that run cool fingers through their tresses. Just under the shallows of the shore, seaweed sways with heavy hips, drawn into motion by the invisible moon, undisturbed by the turbulence of human and animal life. It’s just plants now.

Was everybody that good? Or was everybody so bad that God decided to just scrap the whole thing and start over? Did another other world do a better job of nurturing the gifts it’d been given, thus more deserving of God’s attention? Maybe after a certain length of quarantine, someone else will step in to our uninhabited planet.

The plants probably know, but they’re not telling. They like the peace.

© Liz Husebye Hartmann (2024)

17 thoughts on “Rapture”

  4. I was drawn right into your descriptions, Liz, seeing and feeling everything as you painted it out – superb.
    And the final paragraph that turned it into a strong cautionary tale.
    Quietly and evocatively written and all the more powerful for that.

    Liked by 1 person

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  5. A dark, poetic masterpiece, Liz.
    Superb imagery, with a special mention for ‘under the shallows of the shore, seaweed sways with heavy hips, drawn into motion by the invisible moon, undisturbed by the turbulence’.
    Magical!

    Liked by 1 person

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