At first we did not see the rain fall from the sky, though we did feel the damp in the air, in the steel of our bones. The still sky was gray, the gray clouds full of flood, saved up and timed as though to wash our sins from earth all at once. The rain fell for four long weeks with no pause.
"This is no good," Hank Struck said, as he made the sign of the cross and sank down in the dark muck that took his front porch, his red four by four and his pet black lab. We lost a lot of good men, drowned by the roll of the waves on our own main street. Sharks and rays and a big blue whale made it known that they were here to stay. They knocked the walls in, slammed in to our homes, pushed us from our beds, ate our wives, stung us, bit us, sent us out to face our fates.
Those of us still left met at the church on the hill. We climbed to the wood pews that bobbed up and down, high up, by the stained-glass saints. The priest said, "God has left us."
"Why? What did we do wrong?" we cried.
"I don't know," the priest said. "But if you have faith, you will know that we have sinned and that we will die for our sins."
A shout went up from a sleek black haired boy not more than nine, who told us that he had not sinned. He was young and free of guilt in this world. "I have gone to school, I have played games in the woods and in the street and have been fair to my friends. I have read good books and I have done my chores. I have done no wrong."
"We have all sinned," the priest said with fire on his breath. "And now we are to die."
The boy, sure of his words, stripped off his shirt and showed us all that he had grown gills at his chest and neck, webs at his hands and feet, a sharp fin at his back. And with that, he dove from the pew into the depths of the church and swam out to meet the day. Then, one by one, the boys and girls of our town plunged after him like a school of fish in search of the light.
© 2013 Jonathan Papernick
