The Countdown Episode 1

Matt Sender was tired.
         It was a Sunday morning in the middle of June and he didn’t want to wake up. Normally church would come first on Sundays, but this morning was different. The nineteen year old male with dark brown hair and emerald green eyes slipped out of bed his eyelids were sagging due to his lack of sleep. He felt groggy and out of place today, more than ever. He felt as if he had never woken up from his horrible dream that was actually reality. In truth Matt wasn’t perfect, nobody was. But ever since he grew up he immediately began to feel his heart burn. His parents raised him to believe Christ was real.
         Jesus Christ, the son of God was real.
         Matt knew that for a fact that if God wasn’t real Matt would be in a body bag somewhere on the side of the road. But he didn’t really know. He heard day by day about people worshiping their God above. But why was it only their God and not the homeless man down the street’s God? Matt had so many questions, but he picked the perfect Sunday to stay home and figure those questions out by his self.
         Nobody was home.
         They had just left the house, when he had awoken. He remembered his Mom calling, “Matt get up it’s time for church!” repeatedly.
         It was one thing Matt was sick of, living with his parents. But he wasn’t too ashamed of it, he wasn’t all too ashamed that his parents had never really let his writing career that he always dreamt of become a reality. He didn’t really care that they had told him that if he had enough money to publish a book he had enough money to move out of their house.
         It was part of the reason why Matt was so far away from them, if they were Christians and they spoke to their son like that then he didn’t want to have anything to do with Christians, he almost wanted to tell them that flat out, but instead he would research it a little more.
         He flipped open the Mac Book Air that he had bought with his own money and that he could personally call his own. The computer was already loaded up, the operating system started quicker than any other computer he had ever used which was his favorite part about the slim white computer.
         There were two icons posted on the scrollbar on the bottom of the screen. One being ITunes and the other being his favorite internet browser Safari.
         He clicked the compass on the bottom of his screen.
         The Safari web browser popped up in a matter of seconds.
         And then temptation crept upon him like a poison.
         There were numerous pornographic sites in his web browser, he fumbled anxiously with the pad of his Mac Book around the Apple home page that had popped up. He couldn’t remember where the history button was. If anyone else got a hold of the computer he would be screwed. He then found a tools button on the top left corner.
         He clicked it once, but it felt as if he clicked it repeatedly.
         Due to his motor-skill delay everyone said he wasn’t able to do normal things, horrible hand eye coordination and a bad motor-skill delay had made him what he had become today, an intelligent nineteen year old guy that was once good at soccer, and excellent at writing. But the motor-skill delay thought had always brought him down.
         It was almost more powerful than the poison known as temptation. It brought anger into his life, if it wasn’t for the delay maybe he would be better at sports than his brothers that were worshipped before him because of their sports. It was one thing he always wanted.
         His parents to congratulate him for writing something longer than a normal kid’s two paragraph beginning of a story. Matt had always written more than two paragraphs and never received any sort of recognition, but oh when Thomas did something at school with ROTC, or Football it was always Thomas this, and Thomas that.
         Sometimes he hated having a little brother that thought he was everything in the world. And that had lead him to his only vice.
         Escape.
         Sometimes when Matt was awake late at night he would click on the pornographic website and browse through pictures, every chance he had to get away from it he did, but then it pulled him back in. Like a poisonous fishing line, the poison part would slowly turn his mind into a perverted ball of mush, and the fishing line would keep bringing him back. There was no way he could escape.
         He tried praying, but he only got his parents yelling at him for stupid reasons, so he gave up on that. Praying and reading the Bible seemed to come and go for him. Now that things were finally going his way, they were completely out of the question.
         He double clicked the address bar on the top of his screen and immediately went onto his favorite social networking website in the world.
         FACEBOOK.
         He couldn’t imagine a world without it, he couldn’t even think of how hard it would be if he didn’t have hands. To click the link with his toes and to talk to people by typing one letter a minute when he could type over a hundred with his fingers.
         The website appeared.
         Status updates were the top thing on FACEBOOK. Even older people had FACEBOOK accounts now. But in truth it was built by a college student for networking on a college campus, and then it went down to High School and then…Mom frequently commenting on Matt’s status’.
         Matt got used to it.
         Until he got mad at his Mom.
         She would comment, “It’s all going to be okay, we’re praying for you.”
         He would never look at the comments. That’s all there was on his status’ which would push most of his friends away from commenting.
         Matt knew he didn’t need prayer.
         Matt needed something else to waste his time…adventure, corruption…violence. A good story to keep his mind going, as a writer he loved to read. He read everything that he thought was interesting and kept reading, and reading, and reading.
         He was glad that books would never die out, or at least he thought they would never die out. With the invention of the kindle and nook he was angry. He wanted to keep the traditional paper back and hard back books out. He supported the book industry, the librarians all over the world. He didn’t write for himself he wrote for them! He wrote so he could tell the world a story.
         One much like his that he hoped would impact the world.
         Matt’s next stop on the web browser was CNN the only really reliable news website in the world. The browser took a couple minutes to load which wasn’t normal.
         “Server must be full of people.” Matt said to himself. When the website finally loaded his jaw dropped at the headline.
MILLIONS VANISH ALL OVER THE WORLD
Matt didn’t know what to think; if millions really did vanish all over the world the only thing he could think of that happened was the rapture, what his parents have constantly heard about in church. The Rapture was this, the Rapture was that.
         But Matt always thought it was a way to scare people into Christianity, he never thought it was real. And if God did do this…why did he rip people away from their loved ones? Why did he do this to all of them?
         The questions hung in his head.
         He pulled his Iphone from his pocket then glanced at it seeing how many people had just called him at once. His phone didn’t even ring and people were constantly calling and sending him text messages.
         He slid his finger across the phone and unlocked it with his four digit pass code.
         He then went to his contacts application and scrolled down the list.
         Dad.
         Josh.
         Mom.
         Thomas.
         All of their phone numbers were listed in his phone, he struggled with the thoughts to call them to see if they were okay, they were at church they had to be okay. But he didn’t know for sure if they were, or if they weren’t.
         He didn’t want to know.
         More calls and text messages came in, he didn’t answer them, he didn’t know if he could handle the constant questions that blew up his phone.
         “Are you alive?” Was one of the questions.
         Matt didn’t even think about answering the question, they would soon see if he was alive, or if he was dead. They would all soon see how alive Matt was, even if he was dead on the street corner after a crazy man launched himself into a bank with a pistol in his hands.
         Matt closed his laptop without shutting down the internet then laughed, “It’s the end of the world as we know it.” He then approached his recliner then sat on it and relaxed, “and I feel fine.”

She was screaming in pain.
         Shattered glass and a smoking engine lay in a twisted heap of metal thrown out across Highway 30 in Greenville Texas. She didn’t want to cry, she had to be mature, and she couldn’t show anyone her weakness. She was seventeen and beautiful, the memories of her ex-boyfriend calling her the most beautiful girl in the world rarely slipped through her mind because she didn’t believe it, but she knew deep down inside that he truly believed that she was.
         She had chocolate hair and matching chocolate eyes that he used to get lost into…that he loved to stare into…that he loved…
         She wished he was with her now.
         It had been almost three months since they had stopped talking, and now she was scared. Bleeding from a gash above her head and wanting to cry. Her crème colored VW bug had turned into twisted metal.
         She was paying attention, but the driver of the car in front of her had suddenly disappeared. Her thick green glasses hung from her face, the left side had a crack running down it while the right was barely hanging on her face.
         Tears drizzled down her eyes.
         She wished he was here.
         She wished he could hold her right now and tell her it would all be okay.
         He always made the promise to her, that he would protect her in her time of need, but where was he now? Why wasn’t he holding her telling her that it was all going to be okay now? Where was he?
         Where was Matt?