As swiftly as it had arrived, the voice inside her head departed and all Mayra was left with was the sound of breathing, but not just her own. Beside her, Gavin was also sitting up, a bewildered expression playing on his face. “I had the craziest nightmare, babe. There was something going on but not on Earth and somehow Heaven got destroyed.”

But she knew it wasn’t a nightmare, it was a realization. Heaven was gone. And just as she knew it was the truth, she also knew that everyone else in the world knew it, as well. Without a word passing between them, they sat in bed for what seemed like hours in stunned silence, their breathing synchronized in the darkness, experiencing the loss together but separately.

Eventually Gavin succumbed to fatigue and went back to sleep, but that was not an option for Mayra. She was made of questions and speculation so she pulled the tablet out of her messenger bag and padded quietly on the balls of her feet out of the bedroom and into the living room. Settling on the couch, legs folded beneath her, she reached for the remote and turned on the tv. Clicking through the twenty-four-hour news channels and even the syndicated stations that ran local news, she was trying to get confirmation that other people felt the disappearance as well, but there was nothing. Well, almost nothing. She thought she noticed something in the faces of the news anchors, a lack of expression but something else too. It was difficult to work out but she read it as either the absence of hope or the longing for something lost in oblivion. Was she imagining it? Conjuring clues to prove that she and Gavin weren’t alone in this? That she wasn’t as nutty as she felt? Too many strange emotions were at play within her, all happening at once, competing for her attention.

She turned the tablet on and just as she had done with the tv, she searched internet news sites and social media and found nothing. She began to doubt herself. Surely if other people felt what she had someone would have posted about it. The thought crossed her mind to post something herself, but she couldn’t find the words to express it properly, so with a sigh, she turned off both tablet and tv and went back to bed.

Gavin was sleeping on his side facing her so she slipped herself beneath the sheet and pressed her back to his chest in the little spoon position and wrapped his arm around her belly. She wanted him to feel it, the life growing within her. She wanted him to know without her having to tell him, the same way he knew about Heaven.

But it was no use, she couldn’t sleep so she spent the morning at the kitchen table staring at her laptop, nibbling her bottom lip and absently stirring a mug of coffee. Gavin shuffled in, rubbing sleep from his eyes and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. He kissed her temple on the way to the coffee pot. “Did you get any sleep?”

“I tried,” Mayra answered. “But my mind won’t shut down.”

He poured himself a cup of coffee and took a sip. “I guess your hand won’t either.”

“What?”

Gavin pointed at her hand raking the spoon in continuous circles in the chipped coffee mug. “If you stir that any more you’re going to drill a hole through the table,”

“Oh,” she let go of the spoon.

He glanced at the empty stovetop, said, “Guess I’m making breakfast?”

“Sorry,” she said, pointing at the laptop. “Distracted.”

 “Anything interesting in the news?”

“Absolutely nothing. Just the same old trivial nonsense. No mention of what happened.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. If the media could prove it’s real they’d be on the story quick fast and in a hurry, but this feeling,” Gavin shook his head. “It not newsworthy right now. There’s no proof that what we felt meant anything.”

“I don’t know how but I’m certain everyone felt it, Gavin, even if they’re incapable of understanding it, they felt it. That has to mean something.”

“Come on, I’m not stupid, babe.” Gavin grabbed four eggs and an open pack of bacon from the refrigerator. “Of course, everybody feeling it means something, but how does the media report about a thing like this until something concrete happens? We need signs and even if the sky opened up and a winged angel appeared and made an official proclamation, people would still find some way to debunk it as a Hollywood movie promotional stunt or something. Far easier to shrug it off as a nebulous possibility than deal with the frightening reality.”

Mayra nodded with an audible sigh. “So, what happens next?”

“Nothing good,” he pulled a skillet from the wall mounted pot holder and placed it on the stove over a low flame. “When people come onboard to the fact that Heaven is gone, that there’s no great reward at the end of the journey for living a good life…” he let the sentence trail off as he peeled bacon strips and carefully laid them in rows to sizzle on the hot skillet. “Right now, I think I feel safer with people not believing it happened. The moment that changes is the moment we start running out of options.”

“So, we just pretend the world is the way it’s always been?”

“That’s just it, babe, the world is the same. Even with the absence of Heaven it doesn’t change the fact that we need to live our lives.” Gavin held an egg in his hand, “How do you want ‘em?”

“Scrambled,” she answered but wasn’t really hungry. She also wasn’t the sort of person who was good at pretending things were fine when they weren’t.

***

Mayra was eager to get to work. She convinced herself she needed a distraction but the truth of the matter was she needed to get out of the house. Although Gavin was being incredibly and unusually adult about the situation, she felt the nagging suspicion that he wasn’t as invested in Heaven’s disappearance as she was, which led her to think, did Gavin actually believe in God or the afterlife? Had she unknowingly been living with a secret atheist? She wasn’t even sure if there was such a thing as secret atheists, but she knew some space needed to be put between the both of them.

She worked as veterinary receptionist at the Calumet Animal Hospital. It was a temporary job, kind of, sort of, loosely related to her field of interest. At least that’s what she told herself to keep her spirits up. She was on a gap year between earning her bachelor’s degree and starting a graduate program. Her goal was to become a marine biologist. The time off from her studies wasn’t so much a mental break as it was a necessity. Her grants didn’t allow her the luxury of living on campus so she and Gavin moved into the cheapest one bedroom they could find to make ends meet. Only Gavin was in between jobs at the moment so the burden fell on her to bring in some income until he got back on his feet. The animal hospital was the best fit as it was within a comfortable walking distance from their apartment and offered a ton of overtime.

But work wasn’t the distraction Mayra hoped it would be. Just as with the tv news reporters, she saw in the faces of the clinics’ clients the same longing.

During lunch, she picked at the yogurt cups and grapes she brown-bagged from home, still not hungry. When one of her coworkers, Susie, asked, “What’s the deal? You’re usually all energetic and talky.” Mayra brought up what she now referred to as the knowing.

 “Maybe you should give tv and the internet a break,” Susie said.

“I just can’t believe there isn’t anything on the fact that Heaven is gone.”

“How do you report on something like that? Without sounding crazy? I mean, maybe, despite all the religious flag waving, most people don’t care because to them it’s something that never existed in the first place. Finding out Heaven’s gone wouldn’t change anything for them.”

This was no use. It was like talking to Gavin. But perhaps they both were on to something. What if it wasn’t a lack of caring, but shock. It was definitely a hard thing to wrap one’s head around especially if people stopped to consider how the world would be affected by the absence of Heaven.

“And maybe people are changing religions,” Susie continued. “With Heaven confirmed, what’s to say other religious or mythical afterlives aren’t real also? Plenty of alternatives to choose from.”

Sighing, Mayra stood, gathered her lunch and dropped it in the trash. Even though her shift was half over, she knew it was going to be a long rest of the day.

To Be Continued…

©2017-2020 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys