yet, you have pride enough to deny the only hope that is left? You truly are a stupid man!”
He doesn’t say a thing. He looks at me and then down at the floor. “Hope has never led anywhere before. You stop believing after awhile.”
The scratching behind me has become violent. And out of the corner of my eyes, I can see worms beginning to gather on the walls as maggots start to sprout at my feet. I pull the timer from my left pocket. The time isn’t something I can clearly read anymore. The numbers are static and jumping, something close to how a radio station changes channels. Time is running out.
“Take a chance now. You have nothing to lose.” I speak at him but I may be too late. I don’t even know if he can hear me anymore. If time is moving faster, our conversation may be nothing but a blank spot to him now. He may already be lost, because the man standing in front of me has begun to glitch: he disappears from one spot of the room only to appear somewhere else a few moments later. And this happens every few seconds.
“I want to take a chance.” I hear his voice clearly. And he suddenly appears sitting on the edge of the bed, fully stabilized. “What do I have to do?” He seems confused as he looks around, as if caught in a moment of deja vu. He looks at where he was standing and then at me. And then he looks behind him.
“Acknowledge His sacrifice for you. Ask for forgiveness. And invite Him to be your Savior.” I slip the timer back into my pocket without looking at the numbers.
His eyes wander aimlessly as he begins to speak. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. I’m speaking from a very small part of myself because I have nothing to lose.” He pauses. And I notice that the maggots and worms are beginning to shrivel all around me. “But, this man tells me it’s enough. It’s all I can give. Every word I’m speaking is forced because this is the only part of me that wants to say anything. This small part is the only part of me that believes. But, it’s genuine. Well, as much as it can be… I believe You died for me, and-and rose again.” He hangs his head as he shakes it back and forth while clearing his throat. “What I’ve done shouldn’t be forgiven. I know that. I am a coward. And I hate myself for the terrible things I’ve done. But, if You can really give me fullness, if You can really bring some kind of hope to me—I’ve only known pain. And if I can be forgiven, please forgive me. Th-this man says that You are fullness. And I need to be full. Fill me up. Come into my life.” With a long blink and a soft sigh, he looks over at me. “Why are there maggots at your feet?”
3
He finally sees what’s beneath the surface. I haven’t answered his question; in a way it seems like it wasn’t even directed at me, because his eyes are aimlessly scanning the room. He’s looking at the walls, back down at my feet, repeat…
“Look behind you, Evan.” I say softly.
He looks at me with a strange glance before turning around. And immediately he jumps up and moves away from the bed.
“What happened to her?” his eyes are wide and searching. “She’s disgusting.” He now sees her for the parasite she is.
Bring him out of the room, Andrew. Jesus’ voice is a clear and piercing whisper. I want him to see the truth before you bring him home. You understand his counterfeit well. Be his guide.
The relief washing over me is like a clean breeze blowing after narrowly escaping asphyxiation from a burning building. The effects of this atmosphere still linger but the healing has begun. Knowing that Evan is saved is indescribable. And the joy I feel is clean and hard to contain.
Jesus has me showing him this world because I’ll be passing him the torch. I doubt my experience is the same as others. And I doubt the counterfeit he’ll be sent to will be much different from this one.
Watching Evan slowly understand the reality is like watching a man come back to life. Though horrified as he continues to look at the creature on the bed, a smile begins to grow on his face.
“You said I hated Jesus because I couldn’t see the truth.” he speaks while still looking at the creature. “Can you tell me what the truth is?”
“You’ve never killed anyone, Evan.”
He glances at me and then looks back at the creature. “How do you know my name?”
“This is what those women actually are.” I ignore his question for the moment. “They are creatures from Hell, sent to deceive you and lock you into a hopeless mindset. Do you remember anything before this world? Do you remember your childhood?”
“I don’t like to remember my childhood. It’s filled with pain. I watched my parents die in front of me. A man wearing a-a devil mask broke into our house and cut their throats.” His eyes are glazed over as he looks off into the distance, as if he’s watching it happen all over again.
“The truth is that you, Evan Charles, are not a victim of tragedy after tragedy. And your real parents are not dead; in fact, they are most likely sitting by your bedside right now. What do you remember about your childhood?”
“How do you know my name?”
“You are my mission, Evan. I was sent from Jesus Himself, saved last minute just like you.”
“This all sounds crazy.” He shakes his head from side to side.
“Unbelievers require proof of God, right?”
His reply is a nod of the head.
“The proof of your reality is in what you can now see. How else do you explain the worms, the maggots, and the creature on your bed?”
“I can’t.” he says quietly as he looks at me. “Where am I? Is this world even real?”
“You are in the counterfeit, Evan. It’s a spiritual world. So, yes, it’s very real. And it’s your world. Outside of the spirit, in the “real world”, if it can really even be called that, you are in a coma. You were very sick as a child.”
“That’s right,” his eyes light up with realization. “I practically lived in a hospital bed. Mom and dad were there every step of the way, until…” he pauses, caught in long blinks. “… Until I went back home with them. I wasn’t even sick anymore. And they didn’t talk about it at all. That’s when it changed.”
“This world is just another example of God’s love for us. You weren’t saved when you fell into a coma, so this world is here to give you more time to accept Him. But, we all have an appointed time to die. When I first knocked on your door, you only had a little over 6 hours left until you die, which means you were just over six hours away from eternal damnation.”
His eyes are wide; his throat is thick with a lump he’s trying to swallow.
I pull the timer from my pocket again: 00 D 00 H 18 M 32 S. I toss it to him. “This is how much time you have left until your physical body dies.”
“Eighteen minutes? You said it was a little over six hours when you knocked.”
“It was. At some point during our conversation, time sped up because we are on the cusp of eternity. If you are at all familiar with the theory of relativity, I imagine this world is no different. But, I don’t know how it works exactly. I only know that time drained from the countdown much faster when the creatures were near me.”
“What happens to me in eighteen minutes?” he asks softly, looking like a child after waking up from a nightmare.
“You get to experience what it means to be truly full.” I smile. “You get to see your home.”
“I don’t know what to say.” His expression is made up of a thousand things. “I don’t know what to do next.”
I can’t tell if the doubt is still healthy in him or if he is guilty from the hate he has held onto for so long.
“You are going to see terrible things when I bring you outside of this room. I don’t know what you saw before, but it won’t be the same. I want to prepare you for this world because you will be given a mission too. You will visit Heaven and then be sent back to someone’s counterfeit to try to lead them to The Lord before their time runs out.”
“I’ve already seen many terrible things in this world. Actually, too many to count. I think I can handle whatever is out there.” I understand where he’s
coming from. Pain gives you thick skin. But, when the reality of how close he came to Hell hits him, when he sees the stairway, it will petrify him.
4
Evan is behind me as I approach the door. The worms are dried out shells shedding from the wall onto the floor; the maggots have curled up into circles. Evan’s dress shoes press their bodies into the tan carpet with a crunch. He’s holding onto the timer with both hands, watching each second that remains of his life tick away.
I grab the doorknob and turn. The door opens. But, the hallway isn’t on the other side. Instead, we are standing in the doorway of a hospital room. I step aside as Evan takes two steps forward.
“I was wrong about what you’d see.” I say softly.
He looks back at me as he steps into the room. I follow behind him. Four people are gathered around the hospital bed, two on each side. Evan’s body is only alive because of the machines currently running. One machine breathes in and out for him; another monitors his currently steady heart rate.
I stay near the back of the room as Evan walks up to the end of the bed, joining his family as the fifth member.
“If you can hear us, we’ve come to say goodbye to you, son.” On the right side of the bed, an older man is speaking with a tremble as he holds the hand of an older woman. “It’s time for us to let you go. We want you to know how much we love you and how much joy you’ve brought to us.” With the way Evan is standing, it looks like