The Light Prophecy

 

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The Light Prophecy

    We watch hands to our mouths as our son scratches out the same picture we’d seen night after night on the news. “Children worldwide have been seen drawing this same image, some say it’s mass hysteria, others call it a phenomenon. Either way the evidence is hard to ignore,” the image flashed across the screen again. I suppressed a shudder as I watched: his blank eyes fixed ahead, fingertips white, hand scribbling away roughly. Not once did his eyes look to the paper, and yet his hand knew exactly where to go, possessed. How is it a boy with no previous artistic talent can draw something so strikingly detailed…the steep lines, the highlights and shadows? And yet with one last painfully audible scratch, there it was New York’s well acclaimed buildings laid out against an ominous sky. The clouds parted with a brilliant light creeping its way towards the cracked streets and battered lamps posts.

    My wife and I hadn’t talked about what transpired. Yet it was irrefutable, that same picture taped crooked under his bedroom window. 

    It was four days later, soon after dinner, when we saw the broadcast. The very same reporter stood before us, pixie hair down to her shoulders, eyes panicked. “Today marks two weeks since the phenomenon first occurred...” She droned on, and I started to doze. “It is strongly advised everyone remain in their homes until further notice!” That woke me up.  She started talking faster, puffing out short breaths, eyes jumping left and right in a frenzy. “People are being taken right off the streets! The light is coming!” She screamed louder. And it showed a fraction of a clip. The light inched its way to a panicked and screaming lady, before engulfing her entirely, then retreating. Where the lady was standing, nothing but air was left. And then the screen abruptly went black; the signal had been cut… She had said too much. 

    I panicked gathering everything we would need for however long this’d last, and headed to the basement. We survived nearly three weeks on food we had stored, but when it was time to seek out more our son was adamant about going, running up stairs and grabbing his picture off the wall, “It’ll keep us safe, Daddy,” he said in a whisper.

    We ran outside. He climbed into the back of our car, drawing clutched to his chest. Then we were speeding towards a nearby clinic, praying they had something edible. Halfway there the light had appeared in front of our car, the same light depicted in his drawings. There were screams throughout the car as I swerved back and forth trying to out maneuver it, but we were soon surrounded completely. The most brilliant light I’d ever seen flooded into the car’s windows. “Please, Please, Please!” I heard him cry tears in his eyes, paper thrust to the sky in a tightly clenched fist. And that was the last thing I saw as the light blinded me completely. 

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