Le Fin

One should never wait for such rapture...

I sat in my chair and closed my eyes. The numbers didn’t lie. It was going to be today. It was going to be in just a few hours. That was how exact the book was. It wasn’t a matter of faith. I simply knew. I’d known for a while. When I discovered the pattern, everything made sense. All the stories contained within the pages, all the great messages and teachings we needed to know.

I had spread the word as I knew he wanted me to do. I spoke the ancient words and cast out the pamphlets. Our trucks were covered in the teachings. It was coming soon. We would all be saved, all of us who believed in him. And believe we did.

I made myself comfortable, flipping the books of his story. He’d done so much in such a short time, at such a period in his life where there was little hope. At times there were those for him, others were against him. Even now, in an age when he was needed most, true believers were a minority. So many said he’d never return.

I turned my TV on and watched the coverage of this event. Whether they thought it would happen or not, there was one single, undeniable fact, the word had been spread. I had sent it along to the people. My heart was happy. To think that I may have saved so many.

I had once been like them. I had once found myself caught in the worship of false, brooding idols. I was enthralled with stories of goddesses caught between two dark gods, one of the night and the other more beast than man. The evil doctrines brought comfort to me then. How blinded I was. Their pull was of a more naturalistic nature. The anger and jealousy and lust they felt mirrored my own. My parents were worried. I began to change my name, I adopted the deities’ as my lovers in my mind. I joined what they saw as a coven and left the world of reality for a time. They desperately wanted me back, they wanted their child to return to them.

They brought me another book, one of power and mystery and, above all, real love. I discovered that the attractions shown by my false path was unreal and, at times, ridiculous. The new teachings, as they were new to me, centered my soul. Though they were far more fantastical than the celestially focused tomes I had loved, they brought me to reality. I discovered the links between our world and that of this new, spiritual place. That was the true magic of it.

Through my speakers I heard the crowd hush. A figure, robed in white, walked along a path and stepped up to a podium. I gripped the hard leather cover tight and watched as this beautiful woman, the speaker of the stories, scanned the crowd. For a moment, her eyes flashed into the camera and met mine. I erased all others from existence and knew she was looking into my soul, questioning my faith. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I fell to my knees and begged for her acceptance. I was but a humble reader. I was a simple believer.

She nodded to no one and everyone. We had all waited so long. I could only imagine the faces of those without faith, or worse, the minions of the dark lord. They had taken the words of the books and destroyed their meaning. They became a dark blot on what had always been destined as perfect. Though they had a hand in ruining the untarnished image of what I held so dear, I could not hate them. Hate was pointless, as we were taught in the pages. Hate only leads to the darkness. As the teacher showed him near the end, I, like the savior, could only pity them. And there at that moment, I did feel their pain. They would never be allowed to enjoy this moment. For them, it would be agony.

She spoke in that ethereal voice I had heard over and over again. There was safety there. There was love. She told of the greatness of the believers and how they much joy they had given her. It made her truly happy to see so many touched by something so great. I clenched my teeth, waiting for the words, waiting for the confirmation of my hopes and dreams.

The she looked down. She seemed ashamed. I wanted to lift her up and take the look from her face. The thought didn’t cross my mind as to why she could be so saddened by such a happy occasion.

“Harry will not be returning. I have thought over this many times and his story is simply done.”

The emptiness I felt could not be described. It was a few days before any semblance of sensation returned. I went about my life, going to school and talking with friends but it was only my body. My soul had been denied and therefore denied the world. How could that have been? I was so sure. The numbers were so clear. His second coming was prophesied both in canon and with the apocrypha texts. It was blasphemous, it was a heinous rejection of the greatness that could have been. The believers were destroyed. We held our faith hard, however. New things happened every day. Perhaps she would change her mind. That is the hope we continued to hold.

We found new outlets yet still remained loyal. On his birthday, we held celebrations. We would delight in stories of his deeds. We would hold the traditional wands to the night air and shout the words that, through his mouth, would cause a great rush of silvery light.

There would even be a recreation of the fateful night when he triumphed over he who must not be named on its anniversary as well. Each of us would take turns screaming the deadly curse at a burlap effigy of the dark lord.

Though our joy and rapture of a new installment was never fulfilled, we had the proven enchantment of what had already been. That was good enough for us, in time.