Collider World | Peter's Log

2017 | Lucia de Souza

I remember it as if it was yesterday.  It was a Sunday morning and I was seven years old. I was feeling rather anxious about my First Communion. I had had my first confession just the day before but I couldn’t stop feeling guilty because I forgot to mention that time when I knocked down my cousin’s ice cream out of spite. So there I was, all dressed in white, facing the mirror in the dressing room, my mom doing my hair with small white flowers.

“What’s wrong sweetie?”

“Nothing…” I replied looking down, which made two flowers fall from my hair.

“You know that when you say nothing like that no one believes you, don’t you?”

“I was just thinking about my First Communion…”

“And…”

“And I remember I didn’t confess all my sins, do you think God will ever forgive me?”

“God sees everything sweetie. He is looking at you from above and he feels your worries. He knows you’re a good girl. I’m sure He knows you’ve repented and that you feel sorry. ‘Cause God understands everything. ”

“You really think so?”

“I know so. You’ll be fine.”

I smiled and gave my mum a kiss and a big hug, which made two more flowers fall from my hair. I noticed she smiled back but she quickly changed her smile into that face mums do when they want to pretend they’re mad at their kids.

“Now, stop moving. Don’t you want to look pretty?”

“Yes, mummy.” I said while playing with my crucifix, feeling the luckiest girl in the world, now that I knew that God was looking at me and after me.

My state of bliss lasted for a big part of the next twenty years. But after witnessing so much destruction I couldn’t help to question His reasons. My faith was never lost. I never stop believing in the one true God, nor I stopped feeling in my heart that it was all in God’s plan. I just couldn’t understand why.

My name is Lucia de Souza, I’m 26 years old and I was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the land of sun and beauty…. until it all begun.

The first signs were the earthquakes and the giant tidal waves. I had never seen so much devastation is my life. Everyday I would pray to God to think about its children and the horrors He was putting us trough. When the first earthquake hit São Paulo, what used to be one of the most populated cities of the world quickly turned into nothing but a big dirty sea with islands made of wreckage.

Fortunately Rio didn’t suffer as much from the earthquakes. From taking care of the injured to organizing community prayer sessions, whatever I could do to help I’d do it.

What we had taken for granted was taken away from us: electricity, sewerage, heating and cooling, tap water…the Internet. It didn’t take long before the pillaging and plundering began. What little was left was robbed and vandalized.

Then came the Unknown. As if all the natural catastrophes hadn’t hurt us enough, people started disappearing from their lives. It started happening on alleys and dark places, so at first everyone thought the suspects were humans. But then we started hearing disturbing reports of big inhumanly shadows moving in the dark. Eventually people started calling it The Unknown. Conspiracy theorists started claiming they were right all along, that Bigfoot, Sasquatch and Yeti were real and they were finally asserting their dominance over the human race. But what I saw was no Bigfoot.

It happened three weeks before my parents’ incident. It was almost six in the afternoon but it wasn’t completely dark, my prayer group and me were leaving the assembly. It was a particularly beautiful ceremony. Rita, my lifelong neighbour, had just lost her son so we all talked about Heaven, so all of us bore a sad smile on our faces. It may not seem much but those smiles, as sad as they were, were a refreshing sight for my tired eyes.

As we were walking down the street we heard a scream coming from behind. We all looked back, shaking and sweating from the fear. Rita was no longer there. We saw something moving in the shadows and someone yelled run. And so we did, and we run as fast as we could. Every time I looked back there was someone else missing from the group. I started crying but I couldn’t stop running.

We eventually got trapped. In a back alley, with our back against the wall we could only see the intermittent light from the fluorescent hospital sign, one of the few places where power generators were still working, and a pair of red dots, which I assumed must have been its eyes, in the dark coming toward us, faster and faster.

I looked up and mentally prayed to God to spare this world from all the madness that had been happening. As I was preparing myself to die I heard the most hideous scream I had ever heard in my whole life. I looked back and I was still able to see a black hairy and strangely moist paw in the light before that demon, or whatever it was, run away.

In that moment we understood we were safe. We were relieved and happy and sad at the same time, but it was only a few hours later that I rationalized what had happened. The Unknown was afraid of the light. God is light, so Our Lord can’t have sent the Unknown.

Sometimes the Unknown would leave its victims behind as if it to show it was killing for pleasure and not for survival.

That’s what happened to my parents.

I was at my parents’ place resting when both my mother and father stormed through the door. They weren’t expecting to see me. My mother started crying and my father started yelling for me to leave. I couldn’t understand anything.  It was only when he said “They know we’re here!” that I understood those monsters were chasing them.

I begged them to flee with me, I did. I swear I did. My father wouldn’t listen. He kept saying that I had to save myself, that I had to run. When my father finally managed to push me out of the door I heard two loud noises and then… silence.

I couldn’t believe why God would allow this to happen. I couldn’t believe why He’d want this for his children. What could we possibly have done to deserve it?

I opened the door and there they were.  My mother and my father lying on the floor, blood on their clothes, faces and hands. I kneeled beside them when a burning light hurt my eyes. By today I haven’t find out what that was. All I know is that something inside me yelled “RUN” and so I did. If I hadn’t run that instant I would have been burn and buried alive on my parents’ apartment. Huge explosions were happening all around me. I had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide until I saw it.

Our church. Unbelievably intact among all the destruction it was the most majestic monument in town. 

I walked through the door, kneeled and asked Him why.

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