Jacob awoke suddenly, just before six a.m., gripped by a panic that was the direct result of a nightmare.
In his dream, he’d been in a shootout for his life. That’s all he really remembered, the details were fuzzy; gossamer threads still hung around his mind, but unlike spider silk, they broke quickly, leaving more questions than answers.
In the dream, after his gun emptied, his pursuer had dropped her gun, then walked over to him and kissed him on the cheek. Already the face of his pursuer had gone, his fear-drenched mind worried about a real-life threat instead.
But who kisses someone after a gunfight?
Jacob glanced over at his wife, who seemed to be breathing heavily. His immediate reaction was guilt—he was married and shouldn’t be kissing other women in his dreams—but then he realized she wasn’t privy to his nightmare.
He listened closely, and as he did, he became aware of a another sensation. The bed he was lying in, the air around him…the entire room seemed to be vibrating. It was as if something was producing the exact resonance frequency of not only every fixture in the room, but of his body as well.
His wife’s breath quickened and took on a whimpering quality, and Jacob thought for a moment maybe she was aware of the vibrations as well, but she slept soundly. Jacob found pride to be an effective blockade; he couldn’t reach out for her, and he couldn’t call her name. He was afraid that any movement or sound would wake him further, and he would discover he was still dreaming, and would look foolish for waking his wife for something as simple as a nightmare.
Besides, she’d only make him go get a glass a water, and that would mean getting out of bed at six a.m.
The vibration intensified.
Jacob lay there, unmoving, in a paralyzed panic, while the pulsing vibrato in his ears reached a feverish level, drowning out everything, reducing his world to a staccato timpani. Anxiety took hold. Short, ragged breaths escaped him. His temperature rose and his sweat turned icy.
For whatever reason, Jacob decided The Rapture was happening.
He had no idea why his thoughts led to The Rapture. Having been raised in church, he was no stranger to the concept, and he believed it fully, knowing one day it would happen. But on a Wednesday morning in August? And just before he was about to start a new job? Surely not.
His mind raced to pull up the details of The Rapture and what he’d been taught. Wasn’t there supposed to be a trumpet? Where in Revelations was the part about weird dreams leading to vibrations? Maybe he’d slept through the trumpet. Maybe he was left behind. But why was his wife left behind too?
He’d played poker the night before. Was that a sin? Did that cost him his soul? Surely not. Would his Internet history give him away? That gave him a nasty knock. Was it too late to ask forgiveness for a few things? How did Kirk Cameron handle this? Wait, how did Nic Cage handle this? Would he be able to get his hands on a copy of The Omega Code?
The last thing to go through Jacob’s mind—besides a blade from his malfunctioning ceiling fan—was that maybe he was being silly, and nothing was wrong after all.
(Hey guys and gals. It’s Memoir Monday time! This is where you write down a story about yourself, steal my button down there, drink a beer, and call it all a win. The only rule is that it has to be true, other than that, there are no rules. I keep getting more and more people to follow my lead! It’s catching on! Will YOU be one on the bandwagon this week? Once you post, let me know, and I will link you up down there for all my kick ass bloggy followers to go and read! Y’all are the greatest, and I love you. If you want to see all the Memoir Monday posts, just click on the book!)
Kid Funk (Justin Kinman) and I have had some adventures.
One of them in particular is dying to be typed today, so here it goes.
A very long time ago, I was “girl crazy.” I would like to say at this point that I am still crazy, but only for my wife, who is not a girl, (thank you baby Jesus) but a woman. So. I am officially woman crazy I guess.
Either way, the point is, I was girl crazy. Loved the ladies. They revved my engine.
Our pastor at the time was from a little town in Oklahoma called Barnsdall. It’s north of Tulsa a bit, and it’s a typical Oklahoma small town, only it has a stoplight. If you don’t know why I brought that up, you have never lived in a small town. Small towns are judged by their stop lights or stop signs. If all you’ve got is a bunch of stop signs, you’re pretty lame. If you’ve a got at least one stoplight, well then my friend, you are UPTOWN.
Anyway, there was a girl in this particular town that had caught my eye. I was 17 or so at the time, and she was 14 or 15. I didn’t care. I wanted to take her as my lover date her a bit, and maybe hold hands, and then leave town and break up with her, because let’s keep it real here, she lived like 2 hours away. Who here can remain faithful to a high school girlfriend whilst being two hours away? Not this guy. Besides, I wanted to hold hands with every chick in Green Country.
So Kid Funk and I decide to take a drive up to Barnsdall to see this chick. I decided not to tell her we were coming, because, well, that would have given her the chance to tell me no. I also decided we’d go up on a Wednesday night, on the premise of visiting their church, which my church had gone to on a mission trip of sorts a few months earlier. There was also a wicked good pizza place up there called Bighearts Pizza (props to them if they are still in business) and I figured if all else failed, we’d at least have some good pie. (TWHS)
We got there with little incident, and stopped for some pizza, wherein the greatest single prank in the history of man might have been pulled. You see, the waitress at the pizza place was kind of cute. I for sure would have held her hand. Twice. Not to be one that doesn’t mess with a cute waitress, I decided to talk to her. I walked up to the counter, and looked at her and said, “Darlin, what’s your number?” She stumbled for a moment, and then started saying a number. I immediately said, “No. Not yours personally. The pizza place’s.” Woo. Talk about an embarrassed lady.
We get done with our pizza and head out to the church. When we finally found the place, no one was there. No one. There were a bang ton of empty cars, the doors to the church were unlocked, and no one was home. NO ONE.
Now you’ll have to understand, I am a Christian. I have no bones telling anyone that, and if you don’t like it, you can leave. I firmly believe that one day Jesus will come back to collect his own, and so on and so forth. However, I won’t shove this down your throats, because I respect you as human beings who mainly just want to laugh at me, and not talk about God.
So. When we see that there is no one at this church, and there were cars and such outside, we start to do a little trembling of the maybe we’re not so righteous sort. We drove to a second church.
THE SAME THING HAD HAPPENED.
HOLY CRAP, DID WE JUST MISS THE RAPTURE? ARE WE LEFT BEHIND? WHERE IS KIRK CAMERON? CAN SOMEONE CALL KIRK CAMERON?
You can understand our panic.
I mean, let’s be honest, Hell is gonna be turrible.
So anyway, we were a bit freaked out. We decided to stop at the next place we saw some fellow left behindinians, and politely, if not a bit panicky, ask them what they did with all their church folk.
Turns out, once a month, all the area churches bus their people to one of the churches for an all denomination get together.
Woo. False alarm. I don’t think the people in that little store understood our relief, or our request for a bathroom.
When Kid Funk and I walked into that church, we started jubilatin. “Almost left behind but not really praise the Lord Almighty put your hands together and clap for Him and do it all again and put 5 dollars instead of 1 in the offering plate and raise your hands to heaven and testify and confess that one time you took a good kid out to strip club for his bachelor party and then got him drunk but you’re forgiven now and you just wanted to tell the church and dance a little in the aisle and maybe speak in a tongue or two” jubilatin.
We had good reason to.
I didn’t even remember why we came until the end of the service, and then I saw the chick. For some reason, I wasn’t as worried about it anymore.
We wound up going out to her house, where Kid Funk had his shirt chewed on by a goat, we met an honest to goodness retarded rabbit, and her mom and dad both drank milk straight from the cows teat.
Small towns in Oklahoma.
You never really appreciate the people in them until you think you’ve been left behind.
Other Non-Raptured Trips Down Memory Lane: (GO READ THEM!)
Alex’s Memoir Monday
Daffy’s Memoir Monday: Can You Feel The Burn?
Ed’s Memoir Monday: I’m A REAL LIVE Mountainman.
BigSis’ Memoir Monday: Do WHAT?
Quixotic’s Memoir Monday: The Honeymoon Is Over.
Greg’s Memoir Monday. *ROOKIE!
Josh’s Memoir Monday: It Was The Summer Of ’98.
Corrie’s Memoir Monday: How A Movie Taught Me About My Son.
Carol’s Memoir Monday: Monday Morning.
Shany’s Memoir Monday: Parenting Tips. *ROOKIE!
Cody’s Memoir Monday: My First Try. *ROOKIE!