It was the second coming, only she didn’t know it, until she saw the four horsemen of the apocalypse riding toward her from her bedroom window. It was a dream. Only a dream, but she couldn’t shake it. She lay back down, got back up, turned on the light. She was awake and there were four horsemen in her bedroom.
They stood there solemn, so she did what any good academic would do. She got up and went to her computer and researched them. According to the internet, they represented conquest, pestilence, famine, and death. She didn’t trust the internet to tell her what they were doing in her bedroom, what they were doing at all. They had ridden toward her at a gallop, with ferocity, two with swords unsheathed, the horses’ tails blowing in the wind as they rode through the wall and stopped abruptly next to her bed. The furniture shook. Did her neighbors here? They made not a peep and the four horsemen were quiet, waiting for her to get off her computer. Life in the 21st century.
She needed an original source, so she broke out the Bible. Revelation chapter six was very different from what she’d found on the internet. The conquest horseman with his sword was clear but what was he conquering? And how did they get famine from the horseman with scales setting prices for food? The grocery store set prices for food but did not encourage famine. War sat on a fiery red horse and held a large sword, unsheathed, that could cut somebody’s head off. The pale rider, death, she understood all too well. When she read his part in Revelation six, a lightbulb went off in her head. Death was coming for her. She knew about death. She knew when someone was going to die. It had happened ten times, every person she knew who had passed. She’d know the day, not the hour, but the day, which convinced her that there was a God. She did not tell her academic friends. She would have lost credibility.
She stopped reading when she got to the part that said they were given the power, “to kill with sword, with hunger, with death and by the beasts of the earth.” She sighed, put the Bible down, went back to bed and lay face up. She wanted to curl in a ball, but she told herself to face it.
One more avenue she could explore. She got up, found her phone and texted her Adventist friend who texted her back three pages about the story of the four horsemen. Apparently, the horsemen had started doing what they do in the apostle John’s time, even though she knew Revelation was written about 300 years after John’s death. Her friend pretended not to know that. He still said John wrote it. She knew it could have been passed down in oral form, back when people still told stories, which made her ache for that time. No one told stories anymore. Anyway, the horsemen started to work again in 1844, about the time of the Great Disappointment when the Millerites thought Christ was returning. Why did the horses start and stop and start again for the Adventists? Her friend said it was all about the church. And she wondered, Why would God do so much for people who don’t do much for Him? It seemed arrogant to make the horses about the church, asking too much, expecting too much while supposedly being humbled, humble already.
She thought about how all throughout history people predicted the end of the world. Even the Aztecs had an end of times prophecy. Maybe every society predicts its own demise, not just Christianity and Judaism. She didn’t believe the world had ever ended in the past. The whole world hadn’t flooded in Noah’s time or all the animals on the other side of the planet would have drowned. The dinosaurs world ended. That seemed true. Maybe the horseman with the scales was meting out judgment to people. Would God kill everyone? What about babies? Her nice neighbor who didn’t go to church? She didn’t know anybody without sin, anyone who was safe. Such a terrible thing, wanting the end of the world. She couldn’t stomach it. She would rather die first, let go, fly around helping people, do something to stop the carnage.
And so that night, having exhausted her research and exhausted her emotions, she didn’t know what to do but get on her knees and lean over the bed, put her face in her hands and ask God to stop it. Will Christ make a fool of himself? Come surrounded by angels of peace, killing billions of people, animals, plants, organisms? It’s wrong. And what would he wear? Robes? Jeans? A suit? It seemed unlike him to want everyone to suffer while he appeared in all his glory. It couldn’t be true. She couldn’t believe it. She asked for mercy, for herself, for every living thing, even the four horsemen and their terrible jobs. She asked for compassion. She asked for deliverance. She asked for the Bible to not be true. One of the horses began to nibble at her toe. A friendly nibble. She could just ask the horsemen what they were doing in her bedroom, but she thought better of it. Clearly, they had appeared with a message for her. They would tell her what they wanted her to know. One of the horses pooped on her bedroom rug. Spirit poop.
She was quiet then, lying on her bed, starting to drift off when the realization came that we were destroying the planet ourselves, and it would not support life soon. Anything could happen now. The pale rider’s horse grunted and shook its head, prepared to go, while the conquest horseman set his sword down to rest a moment before going back to work. She couldn’t sleep knowing death would finish the job. “Par for the course,” he said, in Latin, as he rode by.
“Did they have golf in Rome?” she asked, “How did I know what you said? I don’t know Latin,” The others took off at a gallop, going in separate directions. “What do I do now?” she asked. “How do I warn the others?”
“See you soon,” the pale rider said.