When Miss Brock regains consciousness, she's lying on a cot in a medical tent behind the stage. Two battery powered fans are blowing full blast at her. I'm right there beside her, and a funny-looking guy named Frank, wearing a polo shirt and huge glasses, is standing over her.

Frank is trickling water into her mouth when her eyes suddenly snap open. She sits up, spitting and coughing. The ice pack on her forehead flies across the partitioned off area, and Gus pads over to sniff at it.

“Oh, there we go,” says Frank, straightening his glasses and patting her back. “Oh, good, good.” He lets out a relieved sigh that, to me, sounds like an owl. “For a moment there I thought I was going to have to call a real doctor,” he says, chuckling nervously. “And then I remembered phones don’t work any—”

Belle coughs again loudly, clears her throat, and lets out a breath. Then her eyes focus on me. And that’s when she freaks out. I mean, she totally loses it.

“You! No, no, no,” she says, pointing at me. “Frank, you get him out of here.”

Frank looks at me then back to Belle. “Why?”

“He’s dangerous. He—”

“My dear, Jack here might have just saved your life? He carried you all the way here from—”

“No, he killed Jeff. I saw him. He—”

“Killed Jeff?” Frank makes a face, looks at me, then back at Belle.

Belle is shaking her head, still pointing at me. “I saw him, doc. He tore off all of Jeff’s clothes, and then they just fell to the ground and he … or …” she’s shaking her head, trying to remember, unsure of how to complete her own sentence in a way that doesn't sound that way it’s sounding.

Frank gives me an even more scrunched up and confused look.

“That’s not what it sounds like,” I say, shaking my head. “She’s a little confu—”

“I saw him. I saw you!” she squeals. “And he has talking lips on his hand. His hand spoke to me. It spake. Speaks—whatever.”

“My dear, I … I … think we need to keep you out of the heat for a little bit—”

“You’re not listening, Frank.” She starts reaching for her pistol but finds the holster empty. It’s sitting on a table by my newly acquired AK on a table in a different part of the tent.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

I hold up a finger and open my mouth to respond when the flap bursts open and Dr. Reverend Brock rushes inside. His sport coat is gone now, and he’s in a pair of slacks with a button down Hawaiian shirt. His chest is a washboard of well-aged muscles.

“Where is sh—there you are.” says Doctor Brock. “Are you okay?”

“Daddy, that man, right there, he’s not … he’s …” She tries to stand up but Frank stops her.

The funny looking doctor eases her back down on the cot into a sitting position with a “whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s not stand up too quickly.”

Gus pads over and drops the ice pack in Belle’s lap, like a good boy.

“He’s not what?” says Doctor Brock, looking back and forth between me and his daughter.

“Sir,” I say, “Hi, hello. I’m Jack. I just want to say I really admire what you’re doing here. I think.” I tilt my head back and forth. “I mean, it feels right. Feels like a good thing, and I want to help.”

“Daddy, he killed Jeff!”

“What?”

“No, I didn't, I didn't kill Jeff. Jeff is fine. He’s in a better place now.”

“A better—What? Where?” says Doctor Brock.

“I know it sounds crazy, but just hear me out,” I say, holding up my hands, showing I mean no harm with my palms out. “I sent Jeff … away. Well, let me backup a little bit. Okay, the world is ending. Let’s start there.”

All three of them are giving me the same wide-eyed crazy looks. Even Gus tilts his head in confusion at me.

“And the aliens,” I say. “They actually came to help. But we didn’t know they were here to help, because they didn’t know how to communicate with us. I mean, they understood that we used language, right? But they don’t know how to talk. The same way we understand, anyway. Like, you know how we understand intellectually that ants use pheromones or whatever, and bees dance around and all that, but we can’t squirting smells or shimmy, shimmy to say ‘hey, just FYI your whole planet is about to completely crack itself into pieces,” because that’s what they were trying to so and—

“Jack, you’re losing them,” says Xeno.

“Shush!” I say to my hand.

“See!” says Belle.

“Son,” says Doctor Brock, taking a tentative approach towards me, slowly lifting his hands in a defensive posture. “You better start making sense, or I’m gonna start calling security.”

I sigh, close my eyes, and make a decision. I open them, and grab hold of Frank's arm. His polo, pants, and a bunch of trinkets from his pockets spill out all over the canvas rug as he disappears.

Belle screams, and covers her mouth.

Doctor Brock stumbles backward, then braces himself. “Jesus!”

“Uh, Nope,” I say, pointing at him. “Definitely not. But maybe, I don’t know. Maybe He sent me … in a way.” I cringe and shrug. “To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about the whole God thing quite yet, but I’m working on it. What I’m trying to say is,” I pause looking around for inspiration.

Doctor Brock and Belle simply stare at me, frozen, like I’m about to explode and there’s nothing they can do about it.

I sigh and nod. “I think I’m the rapture.”

Gus makes a huff sound.