Slippery Minds

"Did you honestly think your pathetic half prayer would save you from my grasp Cameron?" Buck heard in his mind very clearly in the voice of Nicholia Carpathia, who was broadcasting his thoughts as he discussed petty politics with the men at the table. "I'll let you watch for right now, please, do not get up."

Every second next to Carpathia was toxic to Buck, like microphone feeding back directly into his brain. He wanted to plug his ears, or bite his lip, or jump out a window, or something to take his mind off the dull ring in his subconscious. He wanted to, but all he could do was watch. Anytime he made a motion to do anything other than sit and watch his mind filled with images of the security detail surrounding Jonathan Stonagal ventilating him at the slightest twitch.

"Now to the true business," Carpathia announced in a regal fashion, "Your promotion Mr. Stonagal, will see you far too busy to handle your usual business affairs. I will take charge of them from now on, please relinquish all your assets and files to me."

"What?" roared Stonagal, blood rushing to his face, fixing his eyes into a glare that would have killed its target had it not been directed at the  iron constitution of Nicholia Carpathia. "Have you forgotten whose plan this is? I've been pulling the strings for decades, you're nothing but a stepping stone, an errand boy. I will not stand down now that my work is almost complete."

"Please Mr. Stonagal," calmly replied Nicholia, smirking in the face of stare that withered the house plants behind him. "I would not want to have to abuse the great power that has been recently invested in me to deal with you."

Stonagal was shocked, anyone could tell that Carpathia was referring to much more than the powers of the UN, but Stonagal seemed to know exactly what he meant. Flustered Stonagal went into a momentary blinking fit, his eyes desperately darted around the room finally coming to rest for a brief moment on Buck. Quickly Stonagal's facial expression changed to a complete poker face, staring Carpathia straight in the eye. The only thing that could be gathered from Stonagals body language was that he was bracing himself for something.

"Guards, kill the pretender anti-christ," Stonagal thundered, making a violent gesture towards Carpathia.

Nicholia put up his hand, and the body guards made no move.

A single chuckle escaped Carpathia's curled lips, "Poor choice of words," said Carpathia then clenched his fist.

Stonagal's guards turned on their heels, and opened fire, going for clean body shots, minimal blood splatter.

Just before Stonagal slumped over for the final time, the feedback in Bucks head crackled and ceased. He could think again somehow, but he thought it was not a good time to make a move.

Todd Cothran did not share the same reservation for action. Stonagals men turned towards him, and moving to cut the head off the snake, Cothran quickly un-holstered his Colt .45, drawing a bead on Nicholia. Far too late, impossibly it seemed as if Nicholia somehow had a gun in his hand the whole time, and shot Cothran through the heart before the Colts safety was off. Cothran fell inelegantly forward, and his corpse smashed into the table, letting the gun slide out of his hand on impact.

Brushing the debris from the fired bullet off of his suit and getting straight back to business, Carpathia addressed Stonagal's now former head of security, "Bring me his files, I want to make the transition as soon as... Wait."

Nicholia quickly jerked his head to his left and saw Buck Williams trembling, pointing Cothran's gun across the room at him.

"Don't move," Buck stammered as he slowly backed toward the door, directed more at Stonagal's men than Carpathia.

Carpathia didn't flinch, he knew Buck couldn't hit him if he was two feet away, let alone twenty. He raised his arm to order the Guards to fire, but Buck let out a shot before he could say the words. The bullet hit nothing but ceiling tiles, but it provided enough of a distraction for Buck to dash out the door. There was no point going after him, the hall outside was a maze of hallways that all lead to an exit.

"Remind me to repeal the fire codes as soon as I get back to my offices Plank," sighed Carpathia as he sat down.

"Sir, I thought that was a marvelous display of power otherwise," replied Plank obediently.

"Too bad it is all wasted, we can not let my inner council see this as weakness," said Carpathia as he buried his heads in his hands, the rest of the men in attendance sat in a silent stupor. "Apparently Mr. Stonagal freed Mr. Williams of the mind control just to spite me, it was all his limited powers could accomplish, how childish of him. I shall take this memory from them, in the meantime find someone who looks similar enough to Stonagal to stage this again. I think we can do without a Cameron Williams next time around, arrange for an accident to befall him."

"Yes sir," Steve Plank responded quickly as Stonagal's former security guards removed the bodies from the room and prepared for take two.

Alone in Hell

Bruce Barnes was the kind of loser who would go to the movies by himself. Not just once or twice, but frequently. Every friday he would finish his visitations early, go to the movies and see whatever was playing at the time. Which was rather unfortunate, because if he hadn't gone to see "Dogma," he might have been spared his time in hell.

Any regular person might have walked out of the theater still laughing at their favorite line, or contemplating the over all theme of the movie. Not Bruce Barnes, he left contemplating if you really could find a divine loop hole, a way to pull one over on God and Satan at the same time. Also rather unfortunate for Bruce Barnes was that he spent four years at Bible College, which filled his mind with various conflicting passages from the Bible. Within this morass of contradiction Bruce found the loop hole he was looking for.

Finding the solution didn't come right away, Bruce spent several weekends pouring over Premillenial Dispensation Literature, (maybe Bruce's problem wasn't that he went to the movies too often, but not often enough),  and found God's blind spot. The plan was simple, through an archaic "point" system, Bruce Barnes assigned a value to both sins and the atonement of those sins. He reasoned that if at the end of the week if his total number of points equaled zero, and he kept his score at zero until the Rapture occurred, he wouldn't be raptured into heaven, but neither would he doomed to hell during the Tribulation. In effect, he could just stay on earth for those seven years, indulge in worldly pleasures, then go straight to heaven at the end, no harm, no foul.

Then, finally he would be able to have some peace. For once in his life people would stop pestering him, and he would be able to watch his movies. Bruce liked movies, and he wanted to be an accountant, he was good at math, he had to be to come up with the point system.

"You can't be an accountant Bruce, all those intellectuals with their proud ways will be left behind in the Rapture. You're going to Bible College like I always wanted to, but never got the chance,"  the argument with his father would go for the first month after Bruce graduated from High School, "My dad wasn't like me, he never took an interest in anything I did, you should be grateful."

Bruce would have been grateful if his father was more like his grandfather, the fact was Bruce's father took too much interest in what he did. His dad was forever trying to make Bruce into what he could have been. He watched over Bruce unceasingly, or when he was at work, his mother took over the watch, they never stopped molding him into a pastor.

"Seriously what kind of freak dreams of becoming a pastor, and how much worse is it to pass that dream on to your son," Bruce would mutter to himself while doing his weekly book keeping. At first it was hard to get used to sinning, Bruce's chosen poison was pornography; he reasoned it was the same as his weekly trips to the movies, except at a different theater. He was a bit squeamish at first, and never got fully comfortable with the whole ordeal, which worked out for Bruce, because if he was going to avoid hell he couldn't actually enjoy watching it. He did get used to it is a certain sense, after all the women were far better looking than his wife.

Bruce always did regret getting married, his wife was just a replacement pair of eyes for his mother and father. At the time it made sense, better to be bothered by just one person than by both his mother and father. Unfortunately the wife, (Bruce had long ago stopped referring to her by name), turned out to be twice as annoying, and she expected him to... well, no point in thinking about it right now. What's worse she was even more against his watching movies than his father was, which is saying something. Dinners at the Barnes house were awkward affairs.

To offset his sins, Bruce Barnes was the best visiting pastor New Hope Village had to offer, two weeks out of the month. The other two weeks he got the easy schedule, the elderly and the chronically depressed. In the case of the elderly, he'd show up, leave a prayer card, call his own beeper and never come back. Then just chock them not remembering up to Alzheimer's, and point to the prayer card as proof he was there. With the depressed he'd offer them some false comfort, and hope they were in a good enough mood for him to leave, if not he'd feed into their depression and dump them off on the suicide hotline people. After a while he got rid of several repeat customers. He would have loved to help them, but he had sinning to do if he was ever going to get left behind.

Bruce Barnes was diligent in his pursuits, and finally zero hour came, the Rapture. Billings was throwing a hissy fit after the "bombing" of Jerusalem, and had the Rapture timed down to the second, (with Bruce's help mind you). On the eve of the Rapture Billings called all the pastors into his chambers for a vigil, which to Bruce Barnes seemed like a New Years Eve Party. Out of a cosmic sense of irony, Bruce was the one of the people holding Billings hand as the final minutes ticked down.

"This is it, from here we either go to heaven or hell," Billings said somberly.

"Maybe the rest of you will," sneered Bruce Barnes, knowing it was too late for them to do anything about it, "I'm staying right here, and I'll finally be rid of the lot of you. See you in seven years, I'll be the one with the big smile on my face."

"We will all serve our time in hell, one way or another..." rasped Billings, and then he faded away.

They all faded away, all except Bruce. Just clothes, and fillings, and one nipple ring Bruce didn't know Taylor had under his vestments. That was all that was left.

He then ran home, past the car wrecks, past the people crying out in desperation, past the sick and wounded, and smashed open his door. He searched the house high and low, but he couldn't find her. He'd done it. He was finally alone, his wife was gone, nobody answered the phone at his parents house. No more eyes watching him, no one, he had won.

It took a few days for him to get loosen up. He couldn't shake the feeling that someone was watching him, he'd lived with the paranoia all his life. But then he thought about it, Billings was gone, every other pastor was gone, his wife was gone, his parents were gone. It took him a while to figure out what to do with the remaining congregates, but he found Billings Rapture tape, and they seemed to eat it up. He just left that on loop in the meeting hall and nobody bothered him. He was alone.

Then, all of a sudden he was stricken with doubt. What if he really was in hell? What if, as soon as he lost his guard damnation would just come streaming through the walls and swallow him up? What if the curses of old fools held true?

No. He was fine, he was alone, he was happy. Or at least he was going to be happy. From now on he was going to do whatever he wanted to do. He was going to loosen up, have a beer for the first time in his life, and maybe actually start enjoying his movies, both his old cinematic ones, and his newer more adult ones. Then just settle in for the next seven years, and have a good time of it.

"First things first, lets lock that door," said Bruce Barnes, with the first real smile in his life, "There is no way this next seven years will be anything like hell, it's just Billings blowing smoke. 'Time in Hell' indeed."

But before Bruce could flip the lock, the door opened outward, and standing on the other side was Rayford Steele.

The Four Men and the Apocalypse

Four men dressed in black entered Bruce Barnes office looking defeated.

"Reverends, Father, Rabbi," Bruce Barnes acknowledged but did but did not welcome the men.

One of the Reverends stepped forward and made his plea, "Bruce, we may have had our disagreements in the past, but it's pretty clear what happened. Billings knew everything their was to know about the Rapture, and you know everything their was to know about Billings. We want salvation, and to help those left behind."

Bruce Barnes looked up from an ancient, well-worn Bible with a myriad of bookmarks and placeholders sticking out from the pages. "First gentlemen," he hissed, "you must help yourselves. You two, rededicate yourselves to Jesus on the spot, there is a reason you were both left behind. You 'Father,' accept Jesus into your heart, if he was with you he would have told you to switch to the correct faith years ago. Finally, you 'Teacher,' accept Jesus as your Messiah, and pray in repentance for your heresy. Once all of you have purified yourselves, we need to gather supplies. Food, water, and most importantly weapons. We must make this church defensible, dark times are upon us."

"But what about the others left behind?" asked the Rabbi.

"Who do you think we need to defend this church against?" asked Bruce Barnes coldly, "Those who have not yet accepted the truth are already lost."

A look of sadness came over the four men in the door way.

"Let's go," sighed the second Reverend, "Their is no salvation to be found here..." As he turned toward the door he finished, "For anyone."

With that, four men dressed in black left Bruce Barnes office looking defeated.

Tomorrow at Midnight

And there stood at each end of the Wailing Wall a grandfather clock, a mystery in the face of the greatest mystery of mankind. The clocks wouldn't have been considered anything interesting in Jerusalem by themselves, fanatics and crazy folk has set up far more bizarre displays at the Wailing Wall even before The Event, after The Event the displays became even more outlandish and incomprehensible. These clocks wouldn't have seemed interesting at all, except for the fact that they exploded.

The clocks sat at either end of the Wailing Wall all day and all night, incorrectly keeping the time, harming no one. Local authorities considered them so innocent in the face of many other more garish displays that they allowed the clocks to sit for a few days before attempting to remove them. It was then that the grandfather clocks became interesting.

Upon laying his hand on one of the grandfather clocks the luckless Israeli police officer burst into flames, along with the clock he was touching. The grandfather clock was completely destroyed, and all that was let of the police officer was a charred corpse. A grandfather clock was an odd mode of delivery for a bomb, but this was Jerusalem, and far more bizarre methods of death and terror had been implemented, even before The Event.

At noon they deployed the bomb squads robot to deal with the other clock. Remote inspection revealed no trace of a bomb, this one might have been a decoy, a gambit in the hopes the police would inspect it first and decide to let the other clock alone. Still it wasn't worth taking any chances, the bomb squad activated the robots pincers, and attempted to drag the clock over to the detonation van. This clock burst into flames too, taking with it $20,000 dollars worth of robot.

The next day the clocks reappeared, some say in the exact same positions as the day before, at least one of them was for certain, the bomb team had marked the second clocks outline with chalk, and the new one stood exactly within the lines.

The police weren't taking any chances this time, they cordoned off the area around the clocks, and just let them tick away. When they blew up, the police decided, there would be no one around except for the police, who would quickly put out the fire, and inspect the remains for clues too the bombers identity. So they let the clocks tick, and they did tick, for three days and nothing happened. The police were stumped, remote controlled cameras and thermal imaging revealed no bomb components in either of the clocks. but they didn't want to take the chance of touching them again. Nit being able to keep such large sections of the Wailing wall cordoned off for such long periods of time, the police allowed people nearby, but they had to stay outside of the clearly marked perimeter of the clocks.

And so the clocks stood when a tourist took note of them. The tourist wasn't interested in the clocks when he encountered the first one, only sparing a passing glance, noticing its engraving reading "Eli," but when he came across the second clock on the opposite end of the Wailing Wall engraved as "Moshie" he decided to give the clocks some thought. He watched the clocks for hours, and with the pen and stationary set he'd stolen from his hotel, he scratched out notes about the clocks. The clocks read five minutes after midnight, and after calculating the speed at which the clocks told time the tourist worked out that it would be almost seven years before the clocks would read midnight again.

After thinking about his discovery, the tourist turned the page on the stationary pad, and began making a list of all the things he wanted to do before it was midnight again.