“Do you believe in dreams? That is, do you believe that a dream can be prophetic? You smile. Christ, don’t you believe anything any more? You smile. Your God used to send messages in dreams, didn’t he?…I know what is going to happen. I dreamed it, but it is also going to happen…”—Walker Percy, Lancelot
_____
“Do you believe in modern prophets?” John asked. “Do you believe God still gifts visions and words and books to a few to foretell to the masses?”
Tone, more than question, left Magdalene unsettled. It was a question not of passive and idle interest, but in a way that asked, pleaded, for proof one’s self was not crazy.
“What makes you wonder? Why do you care?” Magdalene returned.
“An author. He cycles the same themes, but there is always an element. He speaks of American culture fifty years ago. Since it’s had heights and lows, and of social critiques and observations, I believe we are back into a depression—maybe we’ve never left it, just learned to mask and hide it better. If real, the demons are more bold today.”
She didn’t like when he spoke like that. Why should mankind blame faults and sins on mythical creatures and not own them for one’s self; but even with her belief, there were energies and auras, ways of men and society that seemed to change and express beyond the human element, synchronicity of events one, if believing, could readily call evil, but disbelieving dismissed—with far less conviction and faith—to poor luck, or the innocent errors and ignorance of man.
*****
The same man on the ground, in command, at the largest domestic crowd shooting in American history is also leader of response for the deadliest ‘wildfire’ in recent American history; a fire that that damaged little wild and much that was urban, precise and surgical in complete leveling of a city block-by block until a line where, after and beyond, all is untouched. A natural disaster of precision not even a developer could plan, and avenues of exit locked and blocked by armed servants of the citizenry.
Poor luck. What else could it be?
Initial death toll is reported, there is no follow-up on the missing. Man loves calamity and horror, but only in small doses. Too much, and the spell is broken. One begins to think of God.
Media coverage goes silent: strange, given the obsession and attentions to calamities that never really live; and this, real and true and terrible—and the world goes quiet. It is the wrong disaster, or maybe not a disaster at all.
Flow of information does not exist, just as with the grand crowd shooting. There is intentional and sustained silence; refusal to answer questions even when raised…
Terrible. Unfortunate. What else could it be?
A man believes he will be President, oversees Congressional hearings of appointment, and after little incident—just before vote—an allegation that one can neither prove nor disprove, but reprehensible on insinuation, arises: just as the would-be President shakes the hand of nominee in private, with big white smile, saying “you have nothing to worry about.”
The Hell of after, big white smile changed to smug expression of already victory fastly washed and hidden beneath visage of solemnity as cameras roll; one final chance for the appointee to make his case and clear his name—which will never be cleared because those who wish him harm will never let it go; it is a purposeful smear and mark to be exploited again and again whenever politically expedient—and in live-time before a watching nation, the accused speaks words he credits, not of him, but of God that turn the tide.
As God’s words speak, solemnity too is cleared of the acting face presiding. Defeat, resentment for it knows that it has lost. Truth of Good, God—should one believe—triumphs over construct and farce of deceit intended to sow doubt where, even if innocent: how could I vote for ‘that.’
The nominee is approved and appointed to the Supreme Court. The method of attack and intentional discredit is repeated: tactic, technique, and procedure unchanged whenever sway of the Court is in balance.
Always, it is insinuation without evidence; impossible to prove as much as to disprove; but we must believe the accuser without affording of time to review or question any of it. The accused, curiously, are always Catholic; and their exonerations and gateway to appointment occurring by means, impossibilities, one would dare call ‘miraculous.’
Curious. What else could it be?
Stranger still, the other does become President: just not when and as he imagined. The devil makes good on his deals, but it is in way and means that suit his, not the soul’s, ambitions.
He is old, perhaps senile—or possessed—but that is absurd. Nevermind, and should one care when his eyes go black and a strange laugh rises when upon questioning by the media all are dismissed and refused, an emptiness and conveyance of something else, in way of the laugh and smiling face: contempt—for the media or, perhaps, mankind.
Who can say? The media doesn’t. He is the most powerful man in the world, by title, and yet seems—so often—entirely empty, a living void filled with words of an other.
Odd. What else could it be?
*****
“Again and again, he speaks the same message—the same vision—a reckoning and resetting of God upon mankind; or our western culture.”
“Most authors find and fix to a theme,” Magdalene spoke.
“I just think it’s curious.”
“How so?”
John opened the book. From the book, he read:
“1. We are living in Sodom.”
“On what does he make that assertion?” Magdalene asked.
John flipped back through the pages, pointing to and providing passage to read.
“That’s horrible!” Magdalene decried.
“Is it horrible because it’s said, or horrible because it’s true?”
Magdalene did not know the answer. Why shouldn’t it be both? The reprehensive is not exclusive to singular labels to reason. Reprehension was an entirety one knew when exposed.
Magdalene’s unsettling in John’s risen conversation changed, deepening from unnerve to acknowledgement of a growing dread, realization of speaking to an unspeakable.
“What else does he say?” Magdalene asked.
John read more of the passage:
“1. We are living in Sodom.
2. I do not propose to live in Sodom or to raise my son and daughters in Sodom.
3. Either your God exists or he does not.
4. If he exists, he will not tolerate Sodom much longer. He will either destroy it or let the Russians and Chinese destroy it just as he turned the Assyrians loose on the Jews, and Sparta on Athens….”
“It was written in the Cold War. Why shouldn’t it be believed to be the Russians and Chinese?”
“The Cold War ended; and they were Soviets then. No war came of it; but what we have in the world today is something else. Before, the Chinese were a weak entity. Now they are not.
Why shouldn’t the be the Dragonists of Apocalypse’s vision? Did you know, in the original Vulgate—before man sanitized and revised texts for contemporary reading instead of eternity, the Book of Daniel names the idol of his foreseen Apocalypse: Book eleven, verse thirty-eight. Read the difference in Douay-Rheims and the modern rest…
Maybe that’s why traditional Catholics are surveilled. They retain a clue Protestants have erased: nuance irrelevant in the present but essential to eternal told.
Clue too, in the days of the Apocalyse, it’s beginning in ceasing of the eternal sacrifice—Communion.
Very recent, it was ended world-wide for a window on account of a fear—which is the only way evil holds power over men: surrender and submission of our own freewill, God’s Love and Gift to man. From the end of the eternal sacrifice: there are a stated number of days.
From ending of the eternal sacrifice, days are numbered to the next presidential election transition: when we will be most politically vulnerable domestically. Whoever wins, half the country will be unhappy and disbelieve.
Why shouldn’t the Dragonists move for Taiwan? Why shouldn’t we respond? Why shouldn’t Wormwood fall from the sky and our epoch be erased; a new beginning becoming out of fated and chosen that survive?
And nevermind namesake of the Russian’s largest warhead is Satan himself…”
“I don’t like what you’re saying,” Magdalene spoke, voice steadied, sober and level.
“I don’t either,” John responded. “I don’t either. Probably it is nothing, but I’ve found messages that repeat, again and again, are echoed for a reason.”