The Reaching Light

The Reaching Light

She inched her toes further back, pushing harder against the wall behind her.  The deep shadows of the room were receding before the silent threat of the reaching light. A whimper broke the silence of the space and it took her a moment to realize that it was her whimper. With that realization, she wished that she could still cry.  She could feel the tingle at the corner of her eyes that once would have heralded tears, but she knew nothing would come of it.  Closing her eyes, she pressed her head back against the unyielding wall behind her.  Even then she was aware of the slow, crawling progress of the light across the room.

God, please. The prayer came, unintended. She knew she was no longer in God's grace and that He would not answer. I know that I am damned, undeserving, but please God, I am not ready to die.  I did not ask for this cursed existence, but I am not ready to leave it. I have no right to call on You, but I hope that You still have a place in Your heart for me.


It was true that she had not asked to be made into this.  It was also true that she'd come to accept her altered existence and now she found that she wished to cling to it with all the stubbornness of the oldest of her kind. But here she was, chained in place, surrounded by a setting of homey comfort turned sinister by those determined to Save Her Soul.

A bitter giggle escaped her at the thought, and a nagging voice wondered if she was going mad in this place. She opened her eyes and fixed them, almost unseeing, on the leg of the coffee table.  She was all too aware of the ceaseless forward motion of those deadly shafts of light, even if she the greater details of her surroundings were currently lost on her. Unbidden, the thought that they'd have to spend hours cleaning her ashes out of the carpet and furniture drove another bitter giggle from her lips.  A giggle that gave way to a broken, tearless sob.

What would her maker do to these people?  And what would God do?  Is this really what God would want to bring about the salvation of a soul? Did she even have a soul anymore to save? She couldn't stop the constant stream of questions racing through her mind now as the feet between her and death receded to inches. Six inches between herself and... what? Once, she would've said eternal life. The embrace of God's love bringing her into the warmth of heaven to rejoin with loved ones lost.  But that was before she had been remade. They told her she was damned, her soul forfeit.  They told her that she had to accept God's judgement and that, if she was forgiven, she could step forth into the searing light of the sun and be rendered immune to it.

She didn't believe that.  Oh, not that she didn't believe God could forgive her - she still felt, deep in the deepest parts of herself, that God could forgive far more than people gave him credit for - but that such forgiveness would stop the sun from destroying her. Faith can do many things, but she didn't believe that it could remake her biology again. If wishing could turn her back to the time before her maker, she'd have done so long before now.

And still the sun edged closer.  When it was only three inches away from her toes, she could feel the punishing heat of it. Blisters already rose on the skin of her feet, the formation of them an agony that took all of her attention to the point that she was unaware of the distant pops of sound that indicated gunfire. When the first rays of light touched her toes, she didn't know that the fighting outside was coming closer to the building. When the light started to crawl up her shins, the torture of it drowned out the sound of her own screams.  When the cavalry finally broke through the resistance and her maker's soldiers crashed down the door to her prison, the sun had finally climbed to her face and she could no longer even scream.  Her last sight was Jeff's anguished expression as he ran towards her with the light blocking blanket moments too late.

Blessedly, she did not feel anything anymore as her body dissolved into ashes. Only the warmth of God's love.

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Word count: 765
YTD: 1167