The preacher was waxing lyrical. ‘One day soon, our Lord will return. And the whole world will know! We shall be lifted up all together, all at once, to meet Him in the sky. All over the world, people will vanish in what we call the Rapture; and all of those who were working or walking or sleeping alongside them will mourn, as they realise that the Christians were right all along.’

The congregation stirred and a few people Amen’d a little sluggishly in response. They liked the idea; but they also knew that their minister liked the sound of his own voice; and he had been speaking for a long time. I mouthed no Amen and sat in glum discomfort; I had been up late the night before and had forgotten to take two headache pills before setting off for this Sunday morning service. My head was thumping; and my eyes were glazing over. Even though our minister was proclaiming the end of the world, his words began to blur.

One or two sentences from his message passed by me without my even registering their existence, while other phrases floated over me in detached confusion. I recalled that as a boy in the church choir I had trained myself never to listen to the preacher; unfortunately the habit had stuck all too well.

At the front, our speaker’s face dimmed, even though he was looking in my direction. With the light behind him, he seemed almost to be floating in my vision. ‘The Bible shows us that we will be lifted up to the sky to meet Jesus!’ I tried to focus. Where was the voice coming from now? ‘There will be panic everywhere.’

‘Panic? What about?’ A different voice seemed to sound inside my head. Or was I already asleep and starting to dream?

▪ ▪ ▪ ▪

‘This is not the age of panic,’ said the woman on my phone screen. ‘This is the age of protest, of indignation. Today all barriers are breaking down. We shall have a level playing field, with no-one allowed to insist on anything. This is the age of disbelief, the age of incredulity. Nothing is good or true any longer: those so-called virtues are history. Today we can do whatever makes us feel right. W can believe anything. Or nothing.’

The woman faded and a quite different scene appeared on my mobile phone. Then another, then another. I scowled. My phone was acting very strangely. Instead of showing a single video recording, it was constantly shifting to a new person, or scene, or voice. I looked at the instrument closely and gave it a shake. I spoke to myself. ‘It acts as though it is connecting up repeatedly to different cameras. Perhaps it’s a fault on the network? Perhaps I’m being hooked up to lots of different people’s smartphones, one after another?’

I kept watching, somehow transfixed by all the fragments of life stories that I was seeing. The next scene that became clear on my phone screen showed two men working in a field. They were harvesting some sort of fruit from long rows of low bushes. They were also talking loudly. One appeared very angry. I could hear his words. ‘You will be taken before the council tonight. Your beliefs are an attack on the rest of us. You will admit that you are wrong, or we will punish you. There are those who want to kill you.’

‘Why?’ The other’s voice was mild, calming. ‘Don’t I have human rights, too? You that say everyone can believe what they want.’

The first man turned and threw his heavy basket of fruit at the other. Some of the fruit hit the second man and splattered. The rest fell and rolled away, spoilt. With an exclamation of shock, the victim reached up with one hand to wipe fruit and blood from his face whilst he put his own basket down with the other.

The first man grabbed his basket. ‘That’s an hour’s picking you’ve wasted. I’ll have yours. You’ll be punished for slacking.’ He turned his back and started picking fruit along the row, away from the other.

The second man stared. ‘That will mean my children don’t eat tonight. You know that that will happen.’

The first man glanced over his shoulder. ‘Go to hell.’ He turned away again.

The second man, tears mingling with the fruit smearing his face, looked at the other’s back. ‘I forgive you,’ he said softly. Slowly he turned his face upward and spread out his hands as if to pray. Then, in a moment, he vanished. There was a faint sound from far above the place where he had stood, a piercing note that lasted just for a second.

The first man did not notice and carried on loading up his basket. It was a minute or two before he turned round. He stared across the empty field. He shouted in fury. ‘You b—. Where are you? I know you’re hiding. You’ve scuttled away through the bushes! I’ll have you whipped tonight. You and those God-poisoned children of yours. If your wife was still alive, I’d—’

Without warning, my phone changed scene. Two women were working in a kitchen. Again, one was reviling the other. ‘Don’t tell me you’re so innocent! You’re a whore like the rest of us, even if we don’t see who sleeps with you.’ She slammed down the rolling pin that she had been crushing ingredients with. ‘Admit it! You aren’t a virgin. There’s not a cat’s chance of that at your age. You have lots of secret lovers. Or at least one.’

The second woman lifted a tired head and looked her in the face. ‘You’re right about that.’

The first woman’s face went red. With a triumphant shout, she picked up the wooden rolling pin and threw it at the second. It hit her in the face. From the sound it made, a cheekbone had probably been broken by it. The second woman screamed and, sobbing, fell to her knees.

The first woman turned her back imperiously. ‘Now I’ll get on with my work,’ she shouted. ‘And you can appeal to your lover for help.’

The second woman stopped sobbing. Ignored by the first, she lifted her face. Blood was streaming from a deep cut. ‘I forgive you,’ she said.

The first woman tensed without turning, then started pounding down noisily onto a chopping board.

The second woman lifted her head further and gazed upward. Then, in a moment, she vanished. There was a faint sound from above. The first woman ignored or did not hear it. She worked on fiercely for a couple of minutes. Then she turned to pick up a knife. She stopped, shocked. ‘Where have you gone, you witch?’ She stared around the room. ‘There’s work to do! I know. You’ve run away with your dirty boyfriend. I’ll have you for this. I’ll make an end of you if it’s the last thing I do.’

Again, my phone’s image changed. A couple in a double bed. Then there was only one under the sheets. The other woke, looked round, swore. ‘This time I am actually going to kill his mistress.’

Yet another scene. This time my phone showed a man in a shiny suit, standing in front of a television outside broadcast camera. A reporter in a smart jacket was asking him a question. ‘There are reports from many places that people have disappeared, Minister. Are you confirming officially that the reports are false?’

‘We think so.’ The politician nodded. ‘We think no-one has actually disappeared. And that’s not a just a message for the media. We have heard the suggestion of a religious “Rapture” too; but there simply is no eye-witness account of anyone being seen at the actual moment they vanished. You know that, because your own sources confirm it in every case. Many of the missing must have fled underground into religious extremist organisations. Others have taken the opportunity to abscond with sex partners or have gone homeless. Others may have fled the area or even the country—or may have drowned themselves in rivers or lakes: religious people are prone to despair, because of the genetic faults that make them like they are.’

The reporter nodded. ‘That’s what our sources are telling us, too. We cannot prove any mass disappearance.’ The reporter turned briefly to the camera. ‘You heard it first here. And Minister? Have you been expecting something like this to happen for a while?’

‘Yes. The religious extremists have been infiltrating news media organisations for decades, and for years they have been planning this assault on social media. You as a member of the Press must know that.’

The journalist nodded. ‘This is an awesome tidal wave of Fake News. It’s the most globally organised conspiracy in history. All the social media platforms we have looked at are swamped with messages claiming these fake vanishings. Does the government think a foreign power is responsible?’

‘No. We know who could be responsible. We are going to hunt down and arrest very many people. They will deny it, naturally, but it could be an attempt to bring down the government. The so-called Christian Rapture is Fake News. It didn’t happen and it never could. There is no such thing as God. There are no miracles. And Jesus Christ is certainly not returning.’

‘You’re not worried?’

‘Why should we be? If in some weird way these people have really vanished, then in one day we have solved the housing and overpopulation crises and have been relieved of the burden of great numbers of the poor, the feeble and the frankly witless.’

‘What if they are all merely hiding? What if it is a huge deception?’

‘In that case it obviously has a political aim. Many of the supposedly vanished voters will suddenly reappear on the day of the election and will try to swing the result. We will be ready for them. We are in power—for good.’

The reporter turned to the camera. ‘So that’s it. No-one vanished. Fake news. You never really saw people disappear; or if you thought you saw one do so, you were hallucinating. Don’t say you weren’t.’

▪ ▪ ▪

▪

‘Wakey, wakey, sleepyhead.’

I opened my eyes. ‘You started snoring. The preacher started laughing and said you could sleep until Jesus came; but we decided that you ought to be awake to meet Him when He comes.’

[George B. Hill (2018)]