“Roberta.”
The name settled in the southern-most region of Josh’s twisted-sick intestines.
“I thought we were different than everyone else. You said you didn’t care I wasn’t called. You’re cruel to leave now.”
Josh sniffled sickly into his BlackBerry. He hadn’t eaten in days. To him, the world was not round, it was Roberta.
“I hope you’ll call me back soon. I’m going now to be with a few people like me.”
He separated the phone from his face and wiped blooming tears.
“You say you talked to god. You say he told you something…”
With a beep, Roberta’s phone cut Josh’s voice message short.
Josh flopped the phone onto the passenger seat and gripped down hard on the steering wheel. The drive to the rally wasn’t far.
His parents and sister got called. Nearly all Josh’s friends got theirs months ago. Some said god was done calling.
Those who received them said they were epiphanies, absolute sea changes. People looked different after. Some lost years, even decades from their face, as if tension had dissipated and former stress lines had been pressed by a five-star Manhattan maid. Some grew inches in height after the call and women’s breasts once saggy, seemed to perk up, like gravity had lost some of its grip.
The calls came in multiple languages, in voices individuals described as ranging from their mother’s or their dead uncle’s, to the sound of an afternoon’s rain.
They conveyed a unified message:
“You’re unequivocally saved – free of guilt, pain and death. You’ll be rid of your decaying organic shell in paradise soon.”
Some said the calls were bogus. News reports said that 90 percent of humans had received them. Some received the message via dream others found mysterious handwritten notes. Most in western countries came by phone.
In other continents, more rudimentary means of communication prevailed. It was said that in the Congo an announcement came to an entire village over an emergency PA system.
Josh had some close calls – a fortune cookie, a bathroom wall scribble, but it was like falling in love, you knew when you had and when you hadn’t – and Josh just knew he hadn’t.
Insomnia gave Josh time to think about what being uncalled meant:
Was he doomed to burn forever in hell?
Josh couldn’t imagine eternity.
Were end times near?
Something is near, always.
Would he be left behind?
He already had been.
No observable events in the cosmos had occurred but on Earth, the uncalled minorities were forced to come together in rallies to feel any true camaraderie that was left for them.
Josh pumped the brakes as the highway became congested. The uncalled had come from across the U.S. to San Francisco to show solidarity. Josh’s hands ached with stiffness as he pried them from the steering wheel.
Tears formed again as he exited his car. He wasn’t sure if they were from the lack of sleep or the Prozac. Maybe his body was forcing up some tears that had been held back for too long by meds, maybe they came due to his possible damnation, maybe they were left over from Roberta’s words: “I can’t be with you anymore because of what he told me.”
It was hard to say.
Police were not present at the rally but news helicopters flew above. Called people only viewed the uncalled from a distance. There was a fear among the called that if the time came for god to take them, it may not be wise to be in close proximity to the uncalled many of whom now gathered on Lombard Street.
Josh cut his way through the crowd as a voice over a megaphone sermonized about how a god who was equitable wouldn’t call known deviants like Bill Clinton or worse, O. J. Simpson, both of whom had received notable media coverage upon receiving their calls.
“The Internet is the work of the devil himself!” declared the voice. “False prophets have come down to Earth and they have engaged in our sinful forms of worldwide communication. Take solace in the fact you were not contacted, my friends.”
Josh walked towards the voice and found a man speaking in the center of a small gathering of people. The man touched the gray stubble on his wrinkled face as Josh approached. He eyed the BlackBerry clasped in Josh’s hand. He removed the megaphone from his lips and spoke directly to Josh.
“Son, I was head usher at my church for ten years, provided for three kids, never cheated on my wife. I don’t need a phone call to tell me I done good.”
Josh became conscious of the man staring down his BlackBerry-clenched fist and touched the screen to unlock the phone, revealing no missed calls, no voice messages, no Roberta, no god.
“You know no god, do you son?” asked the old man approaching Josh. Josh considered the question, his mind now in a desperately truthful location.
“I know him – he put me here to be abandoned by the woman I love,” said Josh with a surge of uncaring, exhausted enthusiasm. “He put me on this planet as a sin-infused infant to live out a meaningless life of 80 years at best and then get eaten by worms who will shit me out and make more dirt, just to bury other miserable human beings in. He put me here to suffer with that fact every Earth-walking moment, whether I’m at work in my cubicle, talking to my mom or attempting to sleep in my bed.”
The old man with the stubble smiled.
“And now he doesn’t even call you to say hi.”
Christopher Krull was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, where he currently resides. After graduating from the University of Missouri-Columbia, he spent five years working in advertising, think Willy Loman (not-so-cool) not Don Draper (cool). Currently, he works as a graduate assistant in the communication department of Saint Louis University (SLU) and is slowly accumulating credits toward a Master of Arts degree at SLU. Chris is an avid creative writer, amateur mixed martial artist and cat lover.
