The Last Three Days

December 30th
Two days ago...

Some of us recognised his face. The rest recognised his voice as soon as he began to speak. After all,he had been a near-constant presence in our collective consciousness since most of us were children. And even though the words seemed odd coming from him, and the tone was a bit more plaintive than we remembered, there was no mistaking him for anyone else.

"Why didn't you listen when you had the chance?" he began. "I tried to do it differently this time. I came to you through the most popular medium that you had, and I tried to make my message more palatable to you. Every week i showed you a new morality play. I'll admit, I tried not to be obvious, but since you hadn't even payed attention to the miracles before, I thought maybe if I dumbed it down for you, brought my message to you in a language you could grasp, then maybe...

"But no, you went on just as before. Dismissed my parables as entertainment and didn't even try to glean the messages of hope and compassion and brotherhood they contained. Instead you looked simply at the fantastic elements, grabbed on to those, twisted them just like you did before when i sent you my son. I thought He was the most spectacular failure I had ever produced until I tried dealing with you directly, but now, now I know what he was up against. Now I know how crass you truly are, and that there really is no hope for you. And I know that i have no choice but to start over again. Destroy this world and what you have made it into, and try one more time to make a people that can truly understand my message.

"I'll give you a little more than 24 hours to get your affairs in order, then it will begin. At midnight tomorrow, I destroy what i once created!"

Then he disappeared in a blinding flash of light, just as he had appeared.

Like i said, we almost all recognised him, but I have no idea how many actually believed their eyes and ears. After all, who would believe that Rod Serling, the creator af the Twilight Zone, had come back from the grave, revealed himself to be God and then condemned the entire earth, apparently because we didn't like his show all that much?


December 31st
One day ago

You know how New Yorkers are. They simply cannot resist a party. Even with the supposedly imminent destruction of the human race, plans went on for the Big Celebration. The streets of Manhattan were jammed with partiers, and there wasn't an inch of Times Square that wasn't jammed with people. The big ball glowed above the city ready to make it's leisurely descent to mark the passage of another year. Of course, the celebration wasn't quite the same since Dick Clark had passed on a few years back, but not even HIS death could really stop time.

Still, in the midst of it all, there was a palpable sense of something being wrong. Most of the people, even those who had seen what had happened the day before with their own eyes, seemed not quite sure that they actually believed it. And of course, there were those who took the impending threat as a reason to just get that much more drunk. After all, if the world was going to go out in a blaze of glory, I suppose they figured they might as well, too.

It wasn't until about 11:50 that someone noticed that there really was something not right in the heart of the city. The official countdown hadn't begun, but the ball, the great ornate timepiece that became more elaborate with each passing year, the gatekeeper that seemed to bring the New Year to the entire country, even those whose clocks were set three hours later, was dropping faster then it should be. By 11:55 it was a mere 25 feet off the ground and at that point it began to swiftly plummet.

At 11:58 the ball hit the ground. Actually, "hit" is not the appropriate word at all. The sphere exploded with a flash of light and smoke that made those within miles of it believe that the end of the world really had come. But once the smoke cleared enough to reveal the figure in the midst of it all, we knew that somehow mankind had gotten a repreive, for He had returned. He looked younger than we remembered him, but then he had always looked too young for his age. Perhaps that, too, had been some minorly miraculous manifestation of his powers.

As he stepped out into the streaming spotlights which had been surveying the area, trying to make some sense of the choas, the man we had known as Dick Clark raised his fist to the sky and shouted "Father! I will not let you do this! I will not let you destroy all of these wonderful people because of your own petty feelings of rejection! Meet me! Now!"

January 1st
Today

It was quickly established that the battle between the two would be televised on pay-per-view and would be hosted by Oprah Winfrey and Geraldo Rivera. The all-news networks and even the non-news ones had gone "wall-to-wall" with coverage, bringing in everyone from theological experts to Las Vegas oddsmakers in an attempt to gain viewers and try to get a leg up on the competition. Even now, moments before the actual battle is scheduled to begin, they are making their analyses and predictions. Of course, the grand atmosphere surrounding the fight has been tainted slightly. In someways it seems like whatever the outcome it will be somewhat anti-climactic and only a prelude. After all, now that Rush Limbaugh has revealed that he really IS the
devil incarnate...