Day 340 - Not gone not remembered

Not gone not remembered

Matthew Ryan Fischer

 

Had it been the rapture, then it was quite the disappointment. At most it seemed like a blink. A long blink where you wonder if you accidentally fell asleep for a second. There were no notes, no phone calls, no emails, or voicemails. Nothing. Just a clock that didn’t make sense and a dinner that began to spoil. If not for the smell and mold, Justin would have thought nothing had happened. But a conspiracy of clocks and calendars told him that he had somehow just missed a week.

The man on the TV screen told him that there had been a million or more such people. It was like one of those movies or tv shows where people disappear and other people worry about having been left behind or not chosen or whatnot. The world thought they had done bad and that the missing people had done good. And so, for about a week they freaked out and accused each other and passed blame around and did foolish things like eat or drink too much or stop going to jobs and things like that.

Sure, it would be a lot to take in, not being raptured. Sure, it would feel like having been judged. But some people just used it as an excuse to do bad.

In reality, it was nothing like that. In reality some people were only gone a second or two. People almost instantly started popping back up. It took a while for people to notice, that’s all.

Pop, pop, pop, they returned. Same numbers. Some hardly noticed. Some hardly knew. Walk out of the room, your spouse disappearing and reappearing while you were looking the other way, you’d never have known.

Not with Justin though. He had been gone a week. Or so the world around him claimed. But no one had noticed. No one texted him or called him in that time. No one had a spare moment to think about poor old Justin. So, had it really happened? Could he claim it? Tell people about it? Would they believe him if he did? Or would they just think he was some attention grabbing nogoodnik?

A sad day for him. None of his so-called friends would ever know, he decided. He would keep it too himself. His loneliness. His sadness.

Whatever had happened to him, it was now his little secret.

Besides, he was back. Things were getting back to normal. A few hundred thousand or so were off somewhere. But if they were anything like him, they wouldn’t remember where they’d gone or what they’d done. They’d just show up at some other time and wonder what all the fuss was about. Waste of a time travel, really. No good story. No vision of horrors of the future or wonders of the past. Nothing to learn or teach or tell. Just a blink and then life moved on. Like any other ordinary day. Like nothing had happened at all.