A low voice grumbled behind him, “Plates broken, blood on the walls, the eyes of the righteous crying under the weight of the path to come”.
Joseph rolled his eyes. The dirty man behind him had been talking to himself for at least fifteen minutes. Sitting in midday service in the hot inner-city church, He didn’t think it incredibly odd that another vagrant would decide to use the building as a place of refuge. Eyebrows raised, Joseph thought to himself, “Sometimes I feel like that’s all I use it for”. It wasn’t like he didn’t believe anymore; these days Joseph just didn’t really see the point.
The old vagrant piped up again, “The Face of the legion, the dark child, his protector”.
Joseph thought that this man was speaking in such a queer way now. He hadn’t noticed it during the man’s previous words, but it had kind of a dual quality. It was almost a whisper, almost an exclamation. Joseph felt as though he was hearing someone hum and whistle at the same time. The feeling just didn’t sit well, never mind the crazy shit he was talking about. Joseph began to sweat.
“The redeemer won’t save the flock that won’t save itself”, the man whispered.
It had gotten fairly hot over the next fifteen minutes. Joseph loosened one of the buttons of his shirt. Rubbing his head in his hands, Joseph’s attention was called to the pulpit. The priests normally reserved tone had changed into a booming cry, “It is alive in all of us, alive in every man, woman and child. Give into the fear, give in to the hate”. Joseph was trying to understand the words coming from the priest mouth when his entire body froze. The priests face turned into three separate faces, with three separate mouths. Inside each mouth appeared to be a person agonizing and thrashing against his captor. Joseph couldn’t move. He couldn’t understand what he was seeing. He blinked and the image was gone. Back was the priest who had begun the sermon.
Sweating now, Joseph tried to work through what was going on. He quickly looked to the others in the congregation; nobody seemed to have noticed the priest’s metamorphosis. Joseph continued to look around and saw a woman staring back at him from three rows up. Eyes bleeding, the woman was just staring. Her face looked like she was trying to scream but the sound betrayed her and did not come. Joseph stood up and almost began to run to her. As soon as he did, however, the woman was gone. Sitting down slowly, Joseph put his hands to his temples. “This isn’t happening”, he thought. He begged his mind to make sense of what his eyes had shown him.
“A plague will be visited, the moon will turn red with the blood of the unworthy, the worthy’s wings shall beat”, the man shouted into Joseph’s ear.
Yelling himself, Joseph whipped around. The space the man had occupied was empty. Panicking, Joseph looked back to the pulpit. The woman with bleeding eyes was back, this time with large boils covering her face. Like a whip cracking, thunder rang. Immediately, Joseph could see red drops on the churches windows. After this calamitous sound, the church erupted into noise. Screaming, crying people were attempting to flee from the direction of the pulpit. Joseph brought his eyes to the front of the church.
Where the priest had been now stood another man. Although to call him a man wouldn’t be quite right. This creature had red eyes and fire for hair. Smoke billowed where his face should have been. Still, within the smoke a smirk could be seen. This creature wore no clothes. Its black body was the color of midnight. Looking into it was looking into eternity.
Joseph, terrified, began to run, to follow the crowd, but was stopped. It was as is he felt a powerful hand grab onto him and keep him in place. Joseph fought but his legs would take him nowhere. Then Joseph began to feel the burning. What started like lighters being held to his back progressed into the most blinding, excruciating feeling that he could have imagined. Erupting from his back, a pair of golden wings extended, bloody from the struggle to be free. Once the wings reached their full length, Joseph wiped the tears from his eyes; he began to have an idea what the old man meant.