[ WP ] A happy story about the end of the world

When I was a child, I was taken to be baptized in a Catholic ceremony, but I was frightened by the priest. I thought for some reason that he was going to brand an iron mark into my forehead. 
 
 When my sister was taken up to him, she disappeared around a green plant and her head was tipped back underneath his solemn hand. But she never even screamed. 
 
 `` God!'' I mumbled. 
 
 On sunny days, we used to play a game where we would stand outside barefoot on the hot black asphalt of the road and see who would move first, and my sister always won. But I could n't believe that she had n't made a sound at all. 
 
 Then my brother was taken up, and he also endured it without a flinch. 
 
 But, when my mother came for me - as soon as she touched me - I burst out crying and shaking. And the church went silent. My extended family, who had all come to watch the baptisms, looked over at me. The priest scowled, and my mother blushed to her ears. And out of shame I let myself be carried up. 
 
 My father held me and my head fell back before the priest. 
 
 The priest prepared his dread utensils. 
 
 He raised a shiny piece of metal that was shaped like a shell. 
 
 But then he poured only cold water over my forehead! And I began to laugh madly in relief, laughing until I was crying, while my father set me on my feet and dried my face off with a towel. My relatives were hushing me gently because I was clapping my hands and hopping around where my father held me in place under the towel. 
 
 But, when he removed it, everyone gasped and drew away from me. 
 
 `` What?'' I asked. 
 
 They were staring at my forehead. 
 
 -- -- - 
 
 Being marked, therefore, and ostracized, I withdrew from men and women, and I lived instead among the stars. I spent my boyhood sleeping through the light of day, and at night I would take a telescope out into the backyard where I would watch the wondrous planets. I worked out Kepler's Laws on my own. When I was in high-school, my father presented me with a history of Einstein's field equations - from the Schwarzchild metric all the way up to quantum gravity - and I dropped out of school to devote myself to the heavens. 
 
 To survive, I worked as a fieldhand among Mexican migrants and I wore a straw hat pulled low down to my eyebrows for otherwise they would call me `` El Diablo''. And, while they slept in the buses or the shanties, I would take out the astronomy gear that I carted with me instead of clothes, and I would look out into the vast infinities of time and space from whatever small plot of tomatoes I had broken my back to harvest that day. But I grew sunburnt and cancerous, and my Spanish was never good. I was forced to work the wildest earth, and I was miserable. 
 
 Then, one night, I found it. 
 
 It was hurtling past Mars, jagged and fearless in the great drifting void. It was shaped not like a ball but like a giant weaver's shuttle. It was half the size of the moon if I had measured it right, and it was entirely of smooth red iron except for a mark on it like an insignia - it was the same mark I had on my forehead. For many years it was my secret. 
 
 But then they found it, too. 
 
 At first - to them - it was an oddity, a thing not shaped like it should be, a wonderful new addition to our solar system. NASA had its pictures on their website. The Fermi Paradox and Carl Sagan were once more at least vaguely familiar to every dweller on our pale blue dot. And in a sudden burst of interest, backyard astronomers were buying up math books and star charts, and they were in Scientific American. Except then one of them sat down and *really* looked at my weaver's shuttle. 
 
 And then they knew - it was coming dead for us, and there was nothing we could do about it. 
 
 -- -- - 
 
 A week before the world ended, my brother showed up at the farm where I was working, and he walked out to me in the rows of tomatoes with a jug of cold water for a gift. He looked at my straw hat. 
 
 `` None of us ever cared about that,'' he said. `` You know that, right? We all love you all the same.'' 
 
 `` I know it,'' I said. `` But I do n't really know it, you know, down where it counts.'' 
 
 There was a burnt out oak tree with wild honeysuckle growing over it at the end of my row of tomatoes, and we sat down in the shade. 
 
 `` D'you see the mark on the thing?'' I asked my brother. `` Have you seen those images, with its insignia?'' 
 
 `` Yeah.'' 
 
 `` Do you remember the story of Jonah, when he was on the ship?'' 
 
 My brother's eyes widened, and he stared at me. And then with great dramatic slowness, he withdrew from his pocket a small knife which he turned and stabbed into his own chest. His shirt burst red, and the red leaked down within the cotton, streaking, while a pulpy crimson flesh came up out of his collar. Then his hand appeared clutching the flesh. He was squeezing a tomato that he had hidden in his shirt, and he burst out laughing as he jumped on top of me. He was squeezing the red juice of the tomato over my face. 
 
 `` Jonah, you're killing me! You're eating my heart!'' he was shouting 
 
 He got tomato all over my face and my forehead, and we were laughing wildly until I was finally able to throw him off and get my hat back on. 
 
 -- -- - 
 
 When the world ended, I woke up in my childhood on a very strange day where my entire family was going to a Catholic church for a reason I did not understand. I was very nervous. I crawled out of the small bed in the room I shared with my brother, and I kissed him on the head, but he was still sleeping and he was still sleeping and he would not wake up. 
 
 I had a toy shaped like a weaver's shuttle with many pens in it of different color, and I used it draw a small circle on my brother's left hand. Then I drew a circle on the wall. And then I drew ten circles of every color on the wall, and it was very beautiful and I forgot the pen and went looking for my mother to take a picture. 
 
 But when she came into the room, something in her face changed. She was terrifying. 
 
 `` Who did this?'' she asked in a whisper. 
 
 My brother had awakened, and he was sitting in the bed by the circles with the pen shaped like a weaver's shuttle in his hand. He was looking at us innocently. He could not talk yet, and his pacifier was in his mouth. 
 
 And then - just as I had done in my dream, when I caused my brother to get beaten as a child and he visited me on a farm as a man before the world ended - I reached out and pointed at him. And my mother marched over to him, shaking. In her fury, she yanked him by the arm, and holding up the wooden spoon she had been using to cook with, she aimed to strike his back. 
 
 `` I DID IT!'' I heard myself shouting. `` I did it! I was just scared - that's why I said - but I did it! I promise!'' 
 
 My mother froze. And her eyes were blazing like all the stars in space were about to come out of them. She came over and grabbed me by the hair, and she dragged me out of the room and beat me. And later that day, while we were at the Catholic church for the baptism, I still had welts underneath my clothes. I was terrified of the priest for the way he was burning his iron mark into my sister's and my brother's forehead. But they never even cried out. And I was too ashamed to not go up after them, but I began to cry and shake. 
 
 The priest readied his dread utensils. 
 
 He raised over me a shiny piece of metal that was shaped like a shell. 
 
 But he poured only cold water onto my forehead! And I burst into laughter - uncontrollable laughter for the relief I felt. Afterward, when my father had finished drying me off, everyone came over and scruffed me gently about the hair and crouched down and looked me in the eyes. They hugged me and asked me, `` What were you so worked up about?'' 

