He gathered up his books then set them all on fire.
Leather bindings curled like dying hands.
Gold-lettered promises blackened and split.
The words of prophets, kings, apostles, and madmen
rose together in the smoke
as though heaven itself had finally exhaled.
He burned every righteous word in one last righteous twist of fate. Had the words lost their meaning? Or had mankind simply outgrown the burden of truth?
Truth had become unfashionable.
An antique thing.
A cracked photograph in a junk drawer.
It had been traded away for bumper sticker theology, for slogans screamed through flickering screens, for easy little lies soft enough to swallow whole.
No one wanted weight anymore.
No one wanted consequence.
Every phrase was disposable.
Every conviction rented by the hour like a whore in a motel room on a forgotten highway.
The world no longer spoke of commandments.
It communicated in advertisements.
He stood silent as Zechariah while each syllable ignited.
Paper peeled inward like skin in a furnace. Ink blistered. Verses twisted into smoke signals for a deaf and dying age.
Still, he never wept.
This was not grief.
Grief implied surprise.
No.
This was recognition.
The final realization that mankind had not killed God.
It had simply replaced Him.
Outside, the city glowed in artificial light.
The remaining cathedrals stood hollowed and repurposed.
Their stained glass saints stared down upon food courts, banks, and pharmacies.
The bells no longer summoned the faithful.
They merely marked business hours.
And somewhere beneath the electrical hum of civilization,
something ancient stirred.
Not mercy.
Not salvation.
Recognition.
The air itself seemed to tighten.
Dogs whimpered at empty corners.
Birds abandoned the power lines.
The rivers slowed beneath films of oil and ash.
Even the insects disappeared into the cracks.
Creation knew.
Creation had always known.
The reckoning would not arrive with trumpets and golden light.
It would come the way winter comes to dying animals.
Quietly.
Instinctively.
Without appeal.
He lowered himself beside the ashes.
The room smelled of smoke, dust, and old paper.
The odor reminded him strangely of funerals.
Far away, sirens wailed.
Then stopped abruptly.
The silence afterward was worse.
He thought of Revelation. Of blood-dark moons and falling stars. Of bowls of wrath poured over nations drunk on themselves. As a child, those verses had terrified him.
Now they sounded merciful.
Because the true horror was simpler.
The world would end exactly as it had lived: mocking, distracted, laughing at its own reflection right up until the teeth came out of the dark.
A low trembling rolled beneath the floorboards.
Not an earthquake.
Something deeper.
Older.
Like the foundations of the earth groaning in their sleep.
The lights flickered once.
Twice.
Then every bulb in the city exploded at once.
Darkness swept across the skyline like floodwater.
For the first time in generations, mankind was forced to look upward.
And the heavens looked back.
Not with love.
Not with anger.
With terrible, endless certainty.
He closed his eyes.
Outside, the screaming began.
He was reminded of something his father told him when he was a child:
“You can lock your goods up from a thief, but there’s nothing you can do about a liar.”
copyright notice © 2026 Michael C. Metzger
Just a bit of the ol' dark & dreary - culled from yet another unfinished song.
More below - if you dare!
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