rsvp to immortality

My very worse fear is that one day, i will witness a divine apparition. i’m afraid when i’m in, let’s say my room, Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary or God Himself will show up to me and dictate secrets of major importance. then i’ll be carrying around terrible knowledge, such as the exact date of the end of the world, and the other horrors that’ll follow afterwards. plagues, scorpions and such.

my other terrible fear is that any day from now, the end of the world will come. i usually wake up at around 5 a.m. (in the philippines, we’re deprived of waking up late), and i noticed there was not a single light outside. not even the streetlamps, though the electricity at home was working fine. i thought, oh my god, this is it. save me from eternal roasting. i made up my mind to go apologize to whoever it is i made fun of in my entire life. i wondered whether i should pray or not, but i decided not to. i’ll get what i deserved. anyway, i just took my usual shower, and life went on. the sun came out just when i was about to finish off.

geez, i do hope i’d be dead before the end of the world. sure, i’m afraid of dying, but i read somewhere in the book of revelations in the bible that there is a lamb who will open seven seals and out of those seals comes out angels. when the first angel blows his trumpet, hail and fire mixed with blood will come down on earth. a third of the earth will burn down, and so with every blade of green grass. when the second angel blows his trumpet, something that looks like a huge mountain will go down on the sea, turning it to blood. a third of the sea creatures will die, and a third of the ships will be destroyed. when the third angel does it, a large star will drop from the sky and fall on a third of the rivers and springs of water. the water will turn bitter, and many people will die from drinking it. if it would taste like black coffee, i wouldn’t blame them.

when the fourth angel blows his trumpet, a third of the moon, a third of the sun and a third of the stars will be struck, so that their light lost a third of its brightness. there would be no light during a third of the day, and so with the night. when the fifth angel does it, locusts will come with the power of the scorpions. they will not actually kill us, but torture us for five months. the pain they have will be like a scorpion’s sting. during that time, we will all want to die, but we can’t. funny, isn’t it.

etcetera, etcetera. in other words, any death is better than that.

don’t get me wrong. i’m not encouraging you to suicide or anything.

have you ever heard of the antichrist? according to some books i’ve read (i’ve done a lot of major research about this), it’s the final battle between good and evil, aka, i think, the end of the world. now my dad has a lot of interesting-looking, really thick books with very tiny print, so small, you can’t even read it under a microscope. some of them were in my mom’s office, and i got a look at one, the prophecies of nostradamus. nostradamus is some prophet in the 1600s, i think. anyway, i read it, and it said the antichrist will be on 1999. 1999 ! my brain screamed. i panicked. my blood litterally froze. i had to believe it. all his prophecies came true, why shouldn’t this one?

i’ve also read this book that was my grandpa’s. it said the end of the world would be on august 1998. well, it’s already october, and nothing unusual is happening yet. then again, what does nostradamus know about the 20th century?

i curse the irony of this song by r.e.m.:

it’s the end of the world as we know it
it’s the end of the world as we know it
and i feel fine.