The Reason Why If You Should Happen to Live as a Good Christian, You Ought to Always Dress Your Best

By Artie Nosrati


After years of preparation, when it finally occurred he wasn’t at all ready. He was standing in the kitchen wearing old boxers worn to threads in the crotch and a dirty white t-shirt. He was slathering mayonnaise on a sandwich when he felt it happen. At first he thought it was a stomachache or a cramp until he felt the rest of his body move, not up as he imagined, rather forward and backwards and slightly to the left all at the same time. And with that, he was ripped from existence. There was a hole, a void, for half an instant before the world filled in his shape like a flooded footprint in the mud.

Living as a pure Christian is a very difficult endeavor, which was perhaps the reason he found Heaven a great deal lonelier than he had anticipated. He was also mildly disappointed to see his supernatural body appear just as it had on earth, even down to his clothes. It’s just a matter of how you remember yourself last, something less than a voice but more than a thought spoke to him. He had purchased a suit for just this occasion, and in retrospect felt like an idiot for assuming there would be some notice or warning, and time to get changed.

His decades of pious living yielded a particularly insignificant number of acquaintances in the physical world, though there were those who noticed his disappearance—three exactly. They were his manager, his landlord, and his mailman and they were concerned with filling his position, what to do with his furniture, and where to put his piling bills, respectively. Soon his job was replaced with a slightly less motivated worker, his apartment was filled with a slightly noisier tenant, and his mail was stacked and stored neatly in the garbage.

At first the whiteness was blinding, but once he realized he was no longer hindered by eyes, he was able to see the entire planet at once and magnified like a universe-sized panorama. He scoffed at those who were left behind, and tried desperately to convince himself that he didn’t miss the feeling of gravity tugging at his flesh. He could watch them as ants from afar or so close that their eyes were the size of suns, but, he being little more than a floating idea, they paid him as little mind as they did when he was among them. Not only him, but they didn’t seem to mind a thing. He wanted to shout at them, he wanted to climb inside their brain and manipulate their thoughts to tell them that they’re oblivious, that they’re cursed and damned to live on that smog covered rock for what they won’t realize is eternity. But he couldn’t. The rest of the world continued eating, breathing, and sinning without a hiccup, unaware that there ever even was a rapture.

No Use Worrying, It Could Have Been Anything

by Artie Nosrati

     It was definitely something. You tap the bottom of the bowl with your spoon, testing the possibility that the noise was nothing more than a clink of metal on ceramic. Definitely wasn't that. You don't know what the noise could have been, unable even to classify it into a sub-genre of sounds. Was it a boom? A bang? It could have been a thud, though it would have to have been the loudest thud you had ever heard.

     The subsequent sounds are unmistakable, however. Screaming, plates and glasses rattling, and feet stomping urgently. You don't know if they are running to, or away from something but they are certainly moving swiftly. This may potentially have serious implications, all the commotion and such. But people tend to overreact. They are likely to scream just as loud over a loose rat as they would for a lion on the loose from the zoo. No need to speculate further. Instead you focus intently on the circle of red before you. There's something mellowing about the steam and the way the soup is a slightly different color beneath the cooling surface so that it leaves a faint swirling trail when you stir it.

     You keep your face down, hovering in the rising aroma of tomato bisque. Is that basil you smell? It must be. It tastes like basil. It's funny how loud the sounds are inside your mouth. The slurping sound of you vacuuming off the spoon almost drowns out the clamor still going on as you are trying to enjoy your meal. Almost.