Faithless & Forgotten

The rain poured in torrents, coating, soaking and inundating the world's entirety. No place was dry. No place would be again. The world was being baptized, anointed in its damnation. And there would be no escape.

I had climbed the highest mountain. I had sought the last refuge. I had come alone.

I was not a good man. I had not listened and taken heed of the warnings by another of the coming deluge. I had not prepared my people. I had scoffed with my faithless role as a man of faith. I simply had not believed. Now, I had not done more than to try to warn others to seek the high ground. To escape what I had thought was a mere giant flood.

I was not a monster. I had given the last of my food to a family who could not climb any higher. I had given my last cloak to another who was coughing from the cold drenching. I had, in fact, warned my people to leave the village before the waters rose too high from our river.

I had not abused my position. I had not been a saint. I simply was human.

Here and now, I knelt before the torrent and prayed. I prayed until the last, faint wisp of hope, the desperate hope that comes for the damned in denial, had fled me. I felt the iciness finally lap upon my knees.

I wept in the moment. I wept the tears of those truly repentant, those who know they have done wrong and wish to make amends, but those same tears of the ones damned with that knowledge and the knowledge of not gaining forgiveness. I was damned. Those I loved were damned. Those who were my flock were damned.

And there was not a thing I could.

I had failed them.

I had been, I was too flawed.

My God would not save me.

He would not save whoever was left of my people.

We were damned.

I rose when the waters reached my waist. I could not accept my fate. I could not accept I was doomed. I looked desperately around for some way, some escape for myself. I saw none. I had climbed as high as was possible. Not even the howling of my soul could tear open a passage to safety, to salvation.

The waves began to push and pull against me, threatening to dislodge me into the freezing, gaping maw of the risen sea. Yet still I refused to accept. If there was simply something I could do. if there was simply some way I could do...something...I could escape. The only faith I had was in myself.

I felt a great presence upon me. I felt moved. And I saw.

In the great distance, too far for the eye to see naturally, I saw a great ark. It was a vision of faith rendered in wood.

Another vision possessed and oppressed me. I saw a flame burst into being above a village and it dried and protected and nourished its people.

Then I had a vision of all my sins, my faithlessness, my hopeless failings and how, in the end, I had prayed for my salvation and not been completely selfless, even when it was obvious there was no way for me to survive.

My soul was laid bare. My motivations exposed. My false humility crushed.

I was pulled out to sea. I was abandoned. I had earned my damnation. I was washed away.

The seas, currents, the rising torrent, pulled me under.

And I thought as my mind expired and the pure pointless animal fight for survival took hold, the survivors would merely write, merely remember the ending of the world as when the rains arrived, it washed everything clean.