There wasn’t any light. No sound. People just stood still. Looking up at the black sky. The glow from the moon was gone. Stars did not sparkle. Street lights out. You couldn’t see your hand in front of you. Couldn’t see the person you were talking to. Nor hear them. Just mouths moving with no sound. Cars made no noises. Factories had been shut down. The old man mumbled to himself, Never seen it this bad.

It was as if people had woke from a terrible dream; a nightmare. Except the nightmare kept on going. Were they still asleep? Hard to say. We had dreamed for over two hundred years. Big dreams. Lofty goals. Bigger than the Roman Empire. Now all that was gone. Folks were wasted in culture wars and financial hardships. The world economy had collapsed. Now men and women stood around waiting for the darkness to subside. They waited and they waited.

The doors on banks were locked. Financial institutions closed. Money was there, just no one could get to it. Plastic cards didn’t matter anymore. Nor did dollar bills. Everything was vacant. Nothing made sense.

And the old man would walk all the time around the neighborhood. Not knowing if it was night or day. He walked by used car lots. Remembered driving across America with a fantastic blonde. Money in the bank and gas in the tank. He walked past movie theaters. The Rialto where he saw movie stars up on the screen. Robert Deniro, Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, all of em years ago up on the silver screen making movements and voices came from their mouths. Way before everybody was told to shut up. It’s amazing what court orders can do. The laws of the land in a land that had become lawless.

People thought all this was a sign that Jesus was coming back. Riding into town on a white horse. Proclaiming that evil was done. Now a thousand years peace. But, he never came. Can you blame him?