Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Write in the SCIENCE FICTION genre (05/10/07)
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TITLE: For Such a Time As This | Previous Challenge Entry
By Venice Kichura
05/13/07 -
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Realizing it was already May, I glanced at my kitchen calendar and ripped off the month of April 2007. I prayed, “Lord, take me back to the good old days of the 1950s, when folks didn’t have to lock heir doors or parents weren’t terrified to send children to school.”
I blinked and there in front of me stood two colossal angels seated in a dazzling white chariot.
Trembling, I stared up at them.
“Relax, madam,” They said, trying to calm my shattered nerves. “We’ve heard your cries. Step into our flying chariot. We’re going on a trip.”
“A trip? But I’m not ready, have to pack, go to the bank…..and my husband, Raymond, isn’t home yet.”
“No time to get ready, ma’m. Just climb aboard. Hurry. We leave in three minutes.”
Before I could say another word, the angels took my hands and seated me as we were whisked away into the cloudless sky. We circled over my town at least a hundred times, my head spinning.
Then with an earsplitting thud, we hit the ground.
Wobbly, I stepped out of the chariot and walked up to what looked like our old historic town square.
“Raymond! Where are you?” I yelled, frantically, running through the town square.
“Chances are any man you’re lookin’ for has gone off to war,” a passing police officer said.
“He’s 63, too old to fight. Don’t tell me they’re drafting seniors now to Iraq.”
“Iraq?” The police officer looked puzzled.
“Where was Frank’s Furniture Store? Danny’s Diner? All I see is what faintly looks like Mac’s Market.”
I cracked the door open and walked into Mac’s, still shaky. A very pregnant woman who resembled me was standing at the counter. In disbelief, I stared into the face of a woman who was the spitting image of my own dear mother.
“Mamma?” I cried. “You’re alive! It’s me! Esther! Your daughter!”
She just stared back at me, as a little girl, about five years old, ran up and clung to her legs.
“It’s my older sister, Meg!” I gasped.
“Meg? It’s me, Esther, your baby sister!”
But the little girl just hid behind her mother.
“That will be nine cents,” the clerk said, handing the woman her change and a loaf of bread.
“Good day, madam,” the woman said, startled. She gazed into my eyes and said, ”I hope you find your mother. But, of course, it’s not me, lady. Forgive me, but you look like you should be my mother.”
I grabbed a newspaper and read…”May 11, 1944. ALLIES ATTACK SOUTH OF ROME.”
May 11, 1944? My heart stood still. That’s two days before the day I was born.
Sweat beading my brow, I ran out of the market and down the street, trying to follow the pregnant woman whom I now knew was my mother. But she had vanished. When I finally remembered where to find the street and house where I grew up, I was exhausted. I pounded on the door. The same woman I saw at the market answered.
“I don’t know anything about your mother,” she said, abruptly. “Shall I call the police?”
Giving up, I realized there was no way I could convince her who I was. I walked away from my childhood home and cried, “I just want to go back to 2007. At least my family knows who I am there.”
I blinked and there was the magic time chariot, again, with the two angels motioning me to take a seat.
I boarded and prayed for a safe trip back to 2007.
After another whirlwind ride, the chariot came to a halt. When I blinked, again, I was back in my kitchen. I picked up the month of April from the floor and read the bible verse for the month.
“….Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”*
I thought about my name, Esther. Just as Queen Esther of the Bible, God didn’t make a mistake when he planned the time and place of my birth. As an intercessor, I knew, now, I was born to pray for this troubled new millennium.
I heard my husband’s car pull up in the driveway.
It was good to be back “home.”
* Esther 4:14 (NKJV)
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After the first few paragraphs, I was kind of expecting your narrator to experience more of a revelation in the past, rather than just encountering her ancestors. Maybe if you get a chance to expand this?