THE ARMAGGEDON: Man Eat Man

Chapter VI

Back at Jonas’ home, his parents were still searching for the answers. Finally, his mother bumped into a book that she believed had the answers and, the directions for the path they wished to follow. She took it off the shelf and called David for them to have a look at it together. It was time to show him why their son’s talk of having powers would be true and why it all had to do with her grandmother, or in other words, their bloodline.

“Honey, I think I just found the journal I was looking for. It’s time for me to answer all your questions now.”

David stopped looking around and joined her to have a look at the journal, leaning closer to her.

“It sure looks like giving us all the answers we need.” Wiping cobwebs and dust off his face, he asked.

“Is this the proof that, indeed, my son is not mentally disturbed?”

Turning her eyes up from the journal to his face, Jessica answered, “Yes, it is”.

She opened the journal. The inside had nothing extraordinary except for the fact that, it was more than just a journal. Her grandmother used to record everything about the Armageddon in journals. Everything to do with their family’s bloodline and, about the gift Jonas was claiming to have. On the very first page of the journal, there was the image of what would seem to be, the end of the world. Past the image, inside the journal, she started narrating the story of how she came to know about her powers. The story read as follows.

I was a young girl when I realized my love for art. I really loved painting and drawing. Although I did not take that for my career, I did manage to convince my father to pay for me a few lessons in the painting class. He was a decent man and loved me very much. He could not want to see me sad. Being the only daughter in a family of three had its privileges. I took my class and finally, I completed the lessons. At the time, I had graduated high school and was about to join college.

I did not learn to paint for nothing. I took the knowledge I had together with my love for nature and, I used them to make paintings that I sold and got a few coins for myself. That made my parents so proud and kept me out of trouble with them most of the time unlike my brothers. They too were good but I think they had more curiosity. That made them fight with my parents frequently over small silly things that they did.

One day, as I was out enjoying nature and taking time off with myself, I experienced a strange happening. On a normal day, I would get my inspirations from nature and draw what I saw. I did create my own worlds at times but that day was different. I had my stand, canvas, brushes and the paints set up to draw a beautiful landscape. I was just a few miles from my home city.

It was at that moment I saw what I never thought I would see. In front of me appeared an image of the earth disintegrating and breaking into pieces for a while and then, it all disappeared. It was strange but I took no much attention to it. I was a lover of thriller movies and, I concluded it was the images of one just flashing in my head. I moved on to drawing my landscape.

A few seconds later, I saw the very same image and this time, it stayed a bit longer than the first time. I got scared but tried to avoid thinking much about it. I went ahead to draw my landscape and in a few hours, I was through and carried it back home. I would show every painting I made to my father. Besides him loving my work, he also helped sell a few to his friends. I also thought that, by doing this, I was showing gratitude for paying for my painting classes.

That day, his reaction to my painting was not the usual. He was looking astonished and surprised. My paintings were good but definitely not enough to have him put on the face I saw that day. That day, I think, he did make a very intense connection with my painting. He looked at me and the question that came out of his mouth was what had inspired me to make such a painting.

I could not understand what he meant. I got confused myself. I took the photo and turned it around to confirm it was there. When I looked at it, I also got the same look my father had on his face but only that mine was even worse. What I saw in the painting was not what I drew, or, at least thought I drew. My father could also see the confusion on my face.

Instead of a beautiful landscape, it was a picture of the earth I saw disintegrating and falling apart. That got me so worried. Well, the fact that it was a picture of the earth breaking apart did not surprise my father but the fact that, it looked so real. He could not grasp the main reason for me to want to draw the earth breaking off either. I had to explain to him what happened.

I knew the reason would not make sense to him but I had to tell someone. To be sincere, it did not make sense even to me either but it was all I had at the time. I could not understand why I had to daydream and then, subconsciously, me having drawn what I saw. It was a breathtaking story that we had to share with my mother too. After we told her, she advised us to see a doctor. She thought I was having some kind of breakdown or, an illness that was affecting my brain.

We all had to cancel our plans for the rest of the day. My father took me to the hospital for a checkup. On arrival at the hospital, I told the doctor what I had seen and how it happened. Looking to be in thoughts, he said it was a memory-related condition and gave a name I could hardly register.

He termed it as common and that, it happened to people often. Mostly, tumors, a memory or, an experience triggered the condition. What he meant was concussions caused by head injuries from accidents and tumors were the most causes of the condition. Occurrences I had never experienced in the past.

That got me more confused and, I had to call my dad into the room. What the doctor could not understand was how the world could have cracked in the past and we were still on it and very intact. The fact that I expressed myself very well after the incident confused him most.

That led him to request me to take a PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scan to check my brain's activity and its functionality. Now, I could hardly refuse anything the doctor said because, I really needed answers too. I took the scan and waited for the results.

While sitting at the hospital's waiting area with my dad, he asked questions about whether anybody had tried to hurt me. As the doctor said, it could also have been my mind’s interpretation of someone hurting me. I could not recall anyone ever hurting me or wanting to hurt me that bad to trigger such a reaction. The answer was no. No one had tried to hurt me before.

The day’s surprises were not over yet. While seated with my father leaning on his shoulder, I saw yet another strange image. This time, the earth was on fire and I could hear people screaming. After a short while, it disappeared just like the first one. I reacted to that by standing up very quickly. My father too stood up and held me by my shoulder trying to find out what had happened again. I told him I had just seen another image. He too got scared but hoped the scan had the right answers.

A few minutes later, the doctor called us inside the room. The scan was eventually out. By the look on the doctor’s face, I could tell something was off. It was not a sad face though. It was the face of someone suggesting they were not sure of what they were about to say. He went forth and told me what the scan showed. To begin with, nothing was wrong with my brain. Everything was very okay. There was no tumor, which is what both the doctor and my father thought I had. It was a good enough reason for me to put on a smile.

That was not the end though. I could tell there was more to the results. He continued to say that my brain was okay but, showed signs of great brain activity. What that meant, neither my dad nor I understood but I was hoping the good doctor would tell us. Indeed, he did tell us. He told us what I never expected to hear or thought I would hear from a medical doctor.

He said my brain showed signs of a superhuman behavior. My brain activity was excessively high for a normal human being. If it were someone else that told me that, I would call him or her crazy but, he was a medical doctor. Again, the scan could never have gotten it wrong. He said it was why I saw the image and why it appeared so real. I drew it without ever knowing about it because my body could not handle the speed at which my brain was working at the time.

That proved that there was more to the drawing than just being a drawing. It had to have some other meaning. The sad thing was neither my father nor the doctor could help me understand the image and the reason behind it. When I mentioned the second vision I saw, he went ahead to say that, my brain showed signs of rapid growth and more could be coming. What that meant was that, the flashes and the images were going to get more frequent. I was going to be seeing more and more of them.

He advised me to thinking of the reason I would see such images and asked my father to help me as much as he could. The doctor believed that if it was some kind of ability, it had to have a trace in our family. That was what my father had to help me find out.

Eventually, the journal explained to them how Jessica’s grandmother came to know about her gift. Above this, it also mentioned that, she was not to be the one to help avert the end of the world but was just a messenger sent to make way for the truly gifted.

She had also written that, according to her many visions she saw in the years, this gifted one was to be in her fourth generation. Hers was to pass enough information that would get the chosen one to learn to use his abilities to help avert the Armageddon.

That simply meant that Jonas fell right into being the gifted one. It also stated clearly that, they had to accept Jonas’ gift and show him the books so that he could learn more about it and help stop the Armageddon. It read, ‘when the right time came for the gifted, he was to have powers beyond which, a normal human could have.’ She also wrote that, he could only learn how to understand properly what he saw by reading what she had written.

He could not yet understand anything about the gift and that is why he had to read the books and get help from his father all along. That became not news anymore to the couple but, now a part of life they had to accept and live with. It was time they told Jonas everything they had learned about his gift.

His father could not believe that his son was right all along and that indeed; he was Goliath but with David’s role just as he claimed to be. They took one of the pictures with them out of the store. Having doubted Jonas before, the pictures and journals were the only things that would let Jonas know they really understood what he was going through and believed him.

What they could not comprehend was, why and how the world was to end. More so, why would God want to destroy the earth and then choose someone to stop the Armageddon? Now that they knew their son was the chosen one, it was time to find out why.

Since they could not have the answer, they very much wished their son could shine some light about it. If God were a human being, we would say that, he might have had a conflict of thoughts but I do not think that gives a good answer.

Out of the store they went and waited for Jonas to come back home. Actually, they hoped he would come back.