Word Count: 520
The man on my doorstep was bright green, nearly chartreuse. The woman with him was cherry red and I couldn’t help but snicker silently at how Christmas they looked, and out of place on this hot August day. Funnier still, they were selling religion.
“Good morning,” they said in unison. I raised an eyebrow in question.
“Do you want to be saved?” they both asked me.
“Of course, wouldn’t you?” I’ve learned to answer any question with another, or at least tack one on.
“Sir, the world as you know, has become a place of discontentment. There are too many moving parts.”
“Moving parts?”
“Telephones sing songs. Show questionable movies. We are constantly bombarded with sound and graphics,” the man said.
“Well yes, there’s technology. Ain’t it great?” I wondered how he’d break down that wall.
He frowned. She frowned. But their lips started to curl at the edges slowly into a tight determined readiness of smiles.
“It is not the technology but rather how mankind tends to use it,” he said. “We, too, admire the wonders of computer technology. We have a website.”
“So why do you still walk door-to-door?”
“It’s the last remnants of human communication on a personal level. We choose to present our beliefs in a warm face-to-face encounter.”
Encounter?
“Okay, let’s hear it,” I said.
They told me a whole bunch of things, including the fact that the world was going to officially end in forty-nine days.
“Good God,” I said, “I’d better get ready!”
They took me for a serious convert.
I had nothing better to do so I invited them in and together we boarded up windows, brought boxes of canned and boxed food down into my basement. They pooh-poohed the notion of my surviving the final day but went along with my insistence. Then we cleaned the kitchen, dusted and vacuumed, though the woman warned I would likely have to do it again before it all fell into the cracks of the earth.
We were all tired by mid-day so I offered them lunch. We had egg-salad sandwiches with mayo on rye.
“John,” he said after politely waiting to speak until after we ate, “your soul is what we’re concerned with.”
I nodded, wondering why he wasn’t too concerned about being green. It seems they were a married couple and while I asked about children I tried to imagine what color they’d be. These two weren’t primaries after all.
“We have how many days left?” I asked.
“Forty-nine,” they both said.
“Well, I’ve got some time yet,” I said. “How about coming by again next week?” I didn’t mention my lawn would need mowing and I was thinking of cleaning out the garage.
They left on a false cheery note–these two didn’t have a great sense of humor, but then, facing the last forty-nine days of life I suppose it’d be natural.
I waited anxiously all week. Piled dishes up in the sink. Never emptied the ashtrays. But though I really was looking forward to them coming back, they never did.
