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A picture on the wall beside Ethan’s sofa was mesmerizing him.  He had bought it years ago while out of town at a sign convention.  There had been an art fair going on simultaneously, and when Ethan saw this painting he felt compelled to buy it.  Several thousand dollars was a small price to pay for the piece’s abstract magnificence.  Two mountains with a shining river below melting into a blue and cloudy sky with streaks of gold cascading like waterfalls, color and energy winning glorious victories in the void.

“When was the last time you ate something?” asked Linda.

“Thirty-seven hours ago,” replied Ethan.

“Stop this madness or I’ll send you back to the hospital.”

“I’m fasting, Lin, no food or water.”

“Or water?  Great, you’re going to die.”

“Am not.  Trust me.  Every time you fast, you get a reward.”

“Tomorrow you eat breakfast, a classic American breakfast is your reward.”

“The day after.”

“Fine, but if you starve it’s your own fault, don’t blame me.”

“How could I blame you for starving myself?  Linda, come here, look at this painting for a moment.”

“The one that’s been on our wall for five years?”

“Isn’t it beautiful?  How perfectly it represents our spiritual cosmic universal astro-theological circumstances at present, wouldn’t you agree?”

“There are colors.”

“You’re hopeless.  Can you not see the life breaking through and pouring forth from the canvas?”

“You’re supposed to go from crazy to sane, or at least less crazy, in the psychiatric ward, not the other way around.”

“I think it’s sublime.”  He kept gazing at the picture

Ray McRae was doing a-okay, despite having been thunderstruck by the Creator of all things.  He had felt charred for a while, all his senses—seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, and smelling—registering burntness for weeks after the incident.  How one can see or hear burntness remains a mystery.  Apparently God had given him the power of flight in order to test Ray’s power of resistance.  It had been easier to resist flying since the lightning strike.  He hadn’t as much as thought about levitation since then.  He had also given the six-hundred thousand dollars to Catholic Charities.  He would have given more but he didn’t want Clara to feel like he was giving away their life savings.  Money didn’t matter much to him anymore.  He had inexpensive tastes and Clara sort of did too.  If he ever needed money he could always make more.  Ray decided to spend some of the money he had left on his wife to show her how much he loved her and cherished their marriage.  She came home that night to a candlelit dinner from her favorite restaurant and a diamond encrusted heart with a ruby and an emerald forming the center.

“The red is for you and the green is for me.”

After dinner they drank champagne and talked about the end of the world.  Ray mentioned how a lot of people he worked with are retiring.  She wanted him to work less but Ray was reluctant.  His fear of God since being struck made him want to be more humble, working hard and serving others until the end.  He talked about how fewer and fewer people care about money, not only in Weatherview but also worldwide.  It was nice because there was less pressure at work, everyone was more relaxed.

Clara talked about not having money growing up and how it was strange that no one really cared about it anymore, how one second it meant everything and the next people were passing it out like candy.  “I wish they’d been so generous when I was growing up,” she said.  Ray thought it funny that the wealthy members of the upper class had stopped caring about money.  Like she said, one second it was everything, their whole lives, and the next it meant nothing.  Money had served its purpose on earth, he guessed, and now its time had come to be forgotten.

“If you could have anything in the world, what would it be?” he asked her.

Clara laughed and thought for a few seconds.  “A great big castle in the sky where you and me could start a family.”

He almost started to cry.  “Sounds perfect.”