Part 1: The Storm

Note: the following is a first person historical fiction, not my own inner thoughts.

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Flash. Again. Flickering. White black white black white black. And then, a deep shaking that pounds through ground and body alike.

I can't see. Between me and the next step is a sheet - alternating invisible and particulate streams of light - that would blind me even were my eyes able to adjust between the sky-searing blasts of brilliance. The sheet has drenched me, left me shaking, shuddering, unable to halt the furious clattering of molars as my body contorts against the frigidity surrounding it.

I am alone, in the dark, with the terror.

And behind me, it comes. Accusing. Screaming. Penetrating my mind with jabs that I cannot counter, that leave me dreading the future far more than this terrible darkness. Declaring my utter finitude and inability to save myself from this storm, much less the one to come. Always present, that declaration of my guilt, my iniquity.

The flashes are closer now, striking faster. I can see the gray sheet as though under a candle flickering in the night.

Searing pain. Whiteness. Agony. Blackness.

I come to slowly, shaking with the cold, extremities numb but trembling.

I should be dead. I lived? I came through that?

Impossible.

My mind whirling. How? Why? What purpose?

The world is no longer drowning. I, however, can find no sure grip, nothing to hold, and so am sinking under the weight of my mind.

I do not understand.

For I could as readily ask those questions of every moment as this one. Perhaps less spectacularly so. But no less truly: for those questions remain unanswered in my existence. Save for the pale and heartless litany: "Me. Me. Me." My own strength. My own reasons. My own desires. No other answers.

But here I am forced against the wall, leaned up against the edge of the parapet and forced to stare into the abyss beneath me, to truly comprehend the dizzying ebony fall beneath my feet should they but slip a little.

I swallow.

I know why I am alive.

The reason is not mere reason. It is a Person who is Reason. I have run from Him. He will not let me go. He has chased me even here.

But does He truly demand this of me? A promising career? A perfect bright future?

And condemnation sears again, for what have I to offer Him? Me? This puny wretch of a being, tormented by despicable thoughts and tortuous conniving? Nothing!

And how could He ever accept me? What hope have I of salvation?

Like flashes of torment in the dark the searing truth hammers again and again into my brain: that there is no hope for me, despicable man that I am. The storm is gone, but the terror has not passed.

No matter.

I know why I am alive.

I will go. He has saved my life, so I will give it to do with as He wills.

Darkness, only, now. The lightning is gone with the rain, and I am left alone in the cold, in the mist, in the impenetrable shadow of occluded night.

Hopeless.