Strike three

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.

The water rises steadily around me, lapping in great waves along the counter top, the spray mingling with my tears. Crying not from fear or sorrow, but from the righteousness of my situation.

My knees folded under my chin, I’m quickly losing sensation in my legs and feet. Growing numb from the cold and lack of circulation, I watch out the kitchen window at the helicopters circling our cluster of homes being flooded by the erupting well.

There was so much water, more than any of us anticipated. The others have already fled, still I stay. While the sink hole opens up, swallowing the James’ home and Miss Carter’s little bungalow, I know I will be saved. I believe, but the others failed in their faith.

My reward will be great, my sacrifice deemed worthy.

When the city sent police officers to rid me of my home, I rebuffed them. Rebuking them for their lack of honor, rejecting their false words of calamity. My prayers will be answered.

The boats were next. Men in green ranger uniforms argued I was in dire straits, and that they were there to protect me, to take me to safe ground. Philistines! Do they not know of the power of my holy Rescuer?

Finally they have come with their assault from above. What more can I do to spurn these attempts to break my convictions? I raise my voice in glory and praise, calling on the One to deliver me from this flood, just as Noah was delivered, just as Moses parted the Red Sea.

As the water rises above my head, the last of my breath bubbling from my lips, still I stay.

Master Class, brain-child of Eric Storch, is an exercise in flash fiction, building on the opening sentence of a famous (or not-so-famous) book. This week’s inspiration comes from “I Capture the Castle” by Dodie Smith.

Inspired also by an old anecdote about a flood victim that sat on the roof of his house, praying and waiting for God to save him. Three times, rescuers tried to get him to leave the rising water, three times he refused, finally succumbing to the deluge. At the Pearly Gates, he asked St. Peter why his prayers for rescue went unanswered. St. Peter replied, “We tried to save you three times. We sent the police in a car, we sent rangers in a boat, and we sent the Coast Guard in a helicopter.”