There was something ominous about the evening. I had sensed it from the moment the sun set, but I was unable to identify what 'it' was. The clouds were misshaped, enlarged, engulfing what little I could see of the dark skies. It looked as if a gigantic hand had reached down from the night and ripped away part of the evening sky. I couldn't find my familiar stars. The Big Dipper had vanished and so had the Pleiades-all of them, one by one by one, disappearing before my eyes. It looked like more than a third of the evening sky had been wrenched away.

I wondered if I was dreaming because nothing could be this powerful-unless it was visitors from outer space or a change in the atmosphere. Perhaps Nuclear Wars had taken place over Australia or one of the American's and hadn't reached us here in London. Or then again, perhaps my night vision was just getting worse.

I had never studied astronomy, but I had read a lot-literature, of course, all the classics and the Bible. Could any of those give a clue? I turned on the TV and there was nothing but a blank screen-and a persistent, almost unworldly hum-a frightening, sickening, sound that hurt my ears-and rankled my soul.

Next, I grabbed my phone as I turned on the radio-and both had the same despicable horrible sound-then words-foreign words-words that I had seen before not sure where, perhaps in the Bible. No, they were Sunday School Words, that me and my cousins, Butch, Leta and Peggy used to giggle about "Meanies, go tickle the Parson." And we'd trade off pretending one of us was the parson and the others were the tickler. I loved that game especially when I got to tickle the holy heck out of Peggy, but I hated being the parson and couldn't understood why our pastor, Pastor Walter J. Kirk of the Wheaton Bible Church, made it such a big deal that anyone would tickle a parson - especially when we as kids had no idea what a parson was anyway-except something to be tickled a lot!

Leta said it was a veggie her mom put in soup. Butch said it was someone who was very cheap because he heard something like it in a movie when Ingrid Somebody or another said someone was Parsi something or another. But Peggy Ann said it must be religious-but then the Good Humor Truck rolled by and we raced and raced and raced and reached it just in time to buy our nickel Popsicles-I bought the cherry, Butch went for his usual Strawberry, but Peggy went for the root beer-I thought that was far too nasty for me but she, being oldest, at 12, and a junior high school girl, said it had a more grown up taste.

But then, as the skies darkened blacker and blacker, and I looked up, I saw the words I'd heard Pastor Kirk say and remembered the Bible story about how God weighed King Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom and was taking it away because he was a stupid big fat drunk who worshiped idols and the words were not meany, meany, go tickle the parson-they were Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.^1
1 Literally, "the writing on the wall" which means an inevitable, looming disaster, failure or end of an era.

The End


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