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The day it all fell apart... |
| Ralph studied the paper in front of him. He was standing in the bedroom of his house in Hamburg, Germany. A tall, well-built man, dressed smartly as usual in a suit. The document in his hands might as well have been burning, with hellfire streaming out of it. Not that he believed in hellfire, as the Jehovah's Witness doctrine was of annihilation rather than eternal torment. He knew the writing on the paper said he was bankrupt, and he knew it would change everything. His wife and he had been living beyond their means for some time now. They had a big house, and expensive cars and they had enjoyed exotic holidays for most of the last decade, all on credit. Reinhardt GmbH's firing him last month had pushed everything over the edge and now the bank was calling him in. He felt sick to his stomach as he contemplated the future. Aminifu, his wife, was from Kenya, they met in the local Kingdom Hall fifteen years before and had two young children, a boy, and a girl. On reflection, she may well have married him for his money and for the passport, which gave her European residency. She was good in bed and he loved her despite his suspicions about her. Her name meant "One who is faithful." It was ironic because she had confessed to sleeping with another man about two weeks ago, just three days after he had lost his job. When she told him this, something broke inside him and he became very angry, yelling at her to the point that she called the police. The police separated them and forced him to live out of the house for a few days. Now he was back, but only to read the portents of doom in this letter. His wife worked as a waitress, which gave her some money of her own. But she spent way more than she earned and loved to go out with her friends and spend even more. He glanced at the closet in the bedroom, which was overflowing with branded jackets, handbags, and shoes. Even though unemployed, he received three times as much as she did from the Bundesagentur für Arbeit. He needed to get his career back on track. But her unfaithfulness and her insistence that he pick up the kids in the afternoon from school had put a spanner in the works. Applying for jobs was difficult with so much uncertainty. He had lost his last job because of the irregularity of his hours. Was it too much to expect her to support him when he was the primary provider, he wondered? But she did not understand the Western way of doing business and the demands placed on people with serious careers. She wanted him to treat her as an equal, but the fact was that, in terms of jobs and the business world, she quite simply was not. He wanted a divorce. The only thing holding him back was his kids. He loved them and did not want to lose them. But how could he provide for them in this toxic situation? How could he find another job in these circumstances, where he had no support? On the other hand, he contemplated all the pointed fingers from the congregants in his local Kingdom Hall should he ever leave his wife and children. They would never forgive him. But then, did they ever forgive anyone? He had tried going to the Kingdom Hall for support from his fellow Jehovah's Witnesses. He had already borrowed money from two people there, though it was unclear how he could ever hope to pay them back. While living in the prescribed police accommodations, when forcibly separated from his wife, he tried to arrange a room or something for himself to get away. Those with families did not want him in their family dynamic and did not trust him regarding money. He shrugged, thinking he would have felt the same way in their situation. Friends advised him to send out a general request but embarrassed at the situation he did not want it publicized. Today he would meet with the elders in the Kingdom Hall to discuss the situation after a big event in Hamburg. Jehovah's Witnesses from all over the area were there for the event at the Kingdom Hall on Deelböge Street in the city's Gross Borstel district. They were all dressed smartly for the meeting and there was a degree of formality in how they greeted each other also. This event was for adults only, with no children present. His wife had the children tonight, so he did not expect her to be there, though he looked around to check that. He acknowledged some of the faces, avoiding the ones he owed money to, and entered the building. The elders had agreed to meet him after the meeting. He planned that that meeting would never take place. He had a Heckler & Koch P30 semi-automatic pistol concealed in his jacket. In the bag in front of him, he had 31 magazines of ammunition. Each magazine contained fifteen bullets, which should be enough to kill everyone here, he thought. It was the congregation that had introduced him to his wife; it was this congregation that had set the impossible frameworks within which their marriage operated; it was they that he blamed for his current troubles. People in the hall near the back were turning around and looking at him, and several of them even pointed. He realized that his wife had been talking again, as the people looking and talking behind their hands were her friends or people who knew her. There were titters of laughter from some of the groups. Ralph looked down at the ground, deeply ashamed, but he said nothing and spoke with no one. After the first song, which was sung to the tune of an orchestral recording, one of the elders stood up to speak, dressed smartly in a waistcoat, jacket, and a smart tie. Ralph knew him to be a self-righteous man who loved to point the finger at people and explain in exhaustive detail how their sins had contributed to whatever calamity they were currently facing. Maybe he had even enjoyed some of these talks in the past when they were not about him but rather about some other poor, misguided soul in the hall. But today he was afraid of what the man might say. "It has come to our attention that there are members of our congregation who are not managing their houses properly. They are failing to provide for their families and they are no longer working for a living but rather living off handouts. This is not the kind of people we are. The insecurity of dependents is a fruit of such irresponsibility we will address. The Bible calls us to be careful stewards of our resources, living disciplined lives and not frittering away..." He proceeded to provide an exhaustive Bible commentary on stewardship and finances while Ralf steamed in his chair. He thought about leaving, but instead he decided to carry out his plan. Let them laugh, they would pay afterward. He had never noticed the nastiness in the people around him before today, but now he could see it clearly. These were not people living in the grace and mercy of God, he thought to himself. They were hypocrites who did not know how to love and lacked even an ounce of compassion for others. So he grew angrier and angrier as he sat there listening to this diatribe. The elder kept staring at him, and it was clear that he was the subject of the conversation.This was only confirmed by the looks he was getting from the others. There was another song after the talk and then a discussion about a recently published Watchtower article on stewardship and then the Elder introduced the final worship song, which the assembly began to sing. As they did so, Ralph rose to move to the front, carrying the bag with the guns. The leading elder sat on a chair there with the other leaders of the church and rose to indicate that Ralph sit down like the rest of the congregants. Ralph drew his gun and shot the man in the face, then shifted the gun to shoot the others also. There were screams from all around him and Ralph recognized the voice of his wife, whom he had not seen in the hall. She must have gotten a babysitter and sat behind the pillars on the far side. He turned and shot her too, spraying bullets across her friend group as well. Her eyes widened at the gun and her arms splayed wide as the bullets thudded into her heart. He paused a moment to watch her fall to the ground. Then he shot her friends also, as they tried to run away, splattering their Guichi and Prada brand-name clothes with blood and gore. He turned back to the congregation, which by now was looking to run to the exit. "No one moves!" Ralph shouted. He planned to take his time about this. One of the elders moved toward the stairs and Ralph shot him dead. A pregnant woman screamed and he also shot her in the stomach. The congregation stopped moving. He had their attention. He looked down at the carnage before him and recognized a senior elder, whom he had previously only wounded. The man was in some pain and bleeding from a chest wound. He looked at Ralph and said, "You have lost all hope of the New Heavens and the New Earth today and killed some good people." "There are no good people here, and annihilation seems more appealing than life right now," Ralph replied before shooting him in the head and killing him instantly. His brain and blood splattered across the carpet. He then shot another elder and two others, with whom he had personal grievances. But then he saw the faces of those who were left. Like him, they were not senior figures in the congregation, just ordinary worshippers with problems of their own. He remembered one old lady, especially for her acts of compassion and self-sacrifice. She looked at him now, not with fear like the others but rather with tears in her eyes. He realized with a start that he was looking into the face of a saint and that he was not worthy of her compassion. She reached out to him and said, "Ralph, you are better than this, stop this now, you know that the wounded cannot take blood transfusions. You just shot a pregnant woman in the stomach. Did that child deserve to die?" Ralph looked over at the pregnant woman. She was sobbing, clutching a wound to her stomach and he knew that she also would refuse any blood transfusions and bleed to death. Guilt overwhelmed him. As it did so, he heard the sound of police sirens. Wow, they got here quickly, he thought. I thought I had more time. He heard shots as the police shot the lock on the door and entered. He saw the first policeman enter and he ran up the stairs. There was a standoff, giving Ralph some time to consider his options. But five minutes later, he concluded they will arrest me and I cannot bear the shame of what they will say about me. He turned his gun on himself and shot himself dead. But death was not the end. Ralph's vision filled with flames and the ground opened up and swallowed him into a pit of fire and burning sulfur. A large, demonic-looking figure sneered at him, "You were hoping for annihilation, eh!?" Notes ▼ |
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