I once decided I should prepare for the Rapture.
Not because I had received a vision, heard a trumpet, or seen four horsemen galloping down Interstate 10.
I had started reading the books.
There were a lot of them.
In the first one, the world was ending.
In the second one, the world was still ending.
By the fifth, it continued ending.
Somewhere around the tenth, I began to suspect that Jesus was circling the airport waiting for the publisher to give Him permission to land.
I kept reading because surely eventually somebody was going to explain what happened.
They did.
Then they explained it again.
And again.
A new Antichrist appeared. Somebody discovered another prophecy. Somebody else stared ominously toward Jerusalem. The forces of darkness regrouped. The righteous regrouped. Everybody regrouped.
Except the reader.
The reader needed a nap.
By the time I finished what felt like twenty books, I had developed my own theology:
The End Times apparently take a very long time.
That presented a practical problem.
I am getting older.
Suppose Christ returns, but the authors were right about one thing and He is running behind schedule?
I began researching.
Not theology.
Decomposition.
I asked Santiago what would happen if a fat man and a skinny man were buried beside each other. Santiago, who unfortunately takes my questions seriously, gave me a scientific lecture about moisture, coffins, adipocere and skeletal remains.
That was when I discovered the hidden advantage of getting fat.
Shelf life.
All these years people have been telling me to lose weight.
They were looking at the wrong timetable.
I am not overweight.
I am being preserved for the Second Coming.
Still, I wanted insurance.
Santiago explained that cold temperatures slow decomposition.
Problem solved.
My revised burial instructions are simple:
Take Meme to the South Pole.
Dig down one hundred feet.
Put him in.
No embalming necessary.
At those temperatures, when Christ finally arrives, everybody else may come climbing out of their graves looking like the biology department at a community college.
Then they reach Antarctica.
There is Meme.
Still recognizable.
Possibly freezer-burned, but recognizable.
Christ looks down.
“Meme?”
I brush off the ice.
“Present.”
The skinny fellow buried next to me rattles something unintelligible.
I look at him and smile.
“Should have eaten the tacos.”
There remains one theological problem.
What happens if Christ returns before I die?
After reading all those books, I have concluded that is unlikely.
There will probably be three sequels first.
