Apocalypse Rebirth, From Trash to God

 Jax Cole died for two bags of rice and he remembered every second of it, the cold black mud under his knees, the thin wire cutting into his wrists until blood ran down his hands, and the way the black rain that smelled like rust kept falling on his head while his own family watched.

 In front of him Ravena Voss stood holding the rice like it was treasure, Kade Voss stood beside her with a cruel smile as he kicked dirt toward Jax's face, and Selene Voss, his wife of three years, stood a few steps behind them refusing to look at him even as he begged for her help.

 Commander Drax of the raiders looked down at Jax and said, "We don't need a worker, we need bait for the crawlers," and when Jax tried to say Selene's name, Selene finally looked at him with cold eyes and said, "You were always useless, Jax, at least now you can be useful once," and then the knife came down and everything went dark.

 The hate did not go dark, the hate stayed alive and burned so hot that when Jax opened his eyes again he was not dead at all, he was sitting up in his old small apartment on 5th Street with sweat on his forehead and his heart beating like a drum, and the calendar on the wall said March 14.

 March 14, three months before the black rain, three months before the world ended.

 He touched his neck and there was no cut, he touched his wrists and there was no wire, his hands were clean and young again, and his phone was ringing loudly on the desk.

 He knew the ringtone, he knew who it was even before he looked, it was Ravena, and when he answered he heard her sharp voice saying, "Jax, where are you sleeping, come to St. Mary Hospital right now, Kade needs you, don't make us wait."

 Jax remembered this exact day in his first life, this was the day Ravena told him Kade needed a kidney and that if he truly loved Selene he would give his kidney without question, and in his first life he had said yes like a fool because he wanted to be loved.

 He stood up, looked at himself in the cracked mirror, and whispered, "Not again, never again," then put on his cheap jacket and walked out into a city that was still normal, where cars still honked and people still laughed and bought bread without knowing that in three months the sky would cry black rain and everything would die.

 At St. Mary Hospital the smell of medicine was strong and the Voss family was waiting in the hall like royalty, Ravena sat with her legs crossed wearing expensive clothes, Kade sat playing on his phone with his big lazy body, and Selene stood by the window looking beautiful and distant as always.

 Ravena looked up when Jax entered and said, "Finally you came, you always make us wait, you have no respect," and Kade laughed and said, "Look at his shoes, he looks like a beggar from the street," and Selene walked toward him and said without emotion, "Jax, the doctor said Kade is a match with you, his kidney is weak, you will give him your kidney, you are family so you have to do it."

 Ravena added, "If you love my daughter you will sign the papers today, if you refuse you are not part of this family anymore and you can divorce and leave with nothing."

 In his first life Jax had dropped to his knees and said, "I love Selene, I will do anything, I will give anything," but this time something inside him snapped like a rope that had been pulled too long.

 He looked at Ravena and said calmly, "No."

 The hallway went silent.

 Ravena frowned and said, "What did you say, speak louder, I did not hear you."

 Jax said louder and clearer, "I said no, I will not give my kidney, I will not give my blood, I will not give one more year of my life to people who see me as a slave."

 Kade stood up angrily and his chair fell back, he walked to Jax and grabbed his shirt collar and shouted, "Who do you think you are, you rat, my family fed you, my family gave you a roof," and that touch, that angry touch full of hate, triggered something deep inside Jax's chest that felt like fire exploding in his brain.

 There was a buzz, a strange vibration, and Kade's hand suddenly grabbed nothing but air because Jax's jacket had vanished right off his body.

 Kade stumbled forward holding nothing and shouted, "Where is his jacket, where did it go!"

 Selene stepped back with wide eyes and said, "What kind of cheap magic trick is this, Jax, stop playing stupid games," and Ravena stood up and said, "You think you can scare us with street tricks."

 But Jax was not listening to them because inside his mind he saw it for the first time, a huge dark space as big as a stadium, silent and endless where time did not move at all, and floating inside that space was his jacket, and he understood that this was his spatial ability, the power he had awakened in his last life only after he left them, but now it had awakened earlier because his hatred was stronger.

 He thought about his jacket and said in his mind, come back, and the jacket appeared back in his hands, real and solid.

 Kade tried to grab him again and Jax pushed him hard, Kade fell back into the chairs with a loud crash and shouted, "You dare push me!"

 Jax did not look at Kade anymore, he looked at Selene and took off his cheap silver wedding ring that he had worked three months in a warehouse to buy, he placed it gently on the hospital chair and said, "Selene Voss, I want a divorce, today, right now, I am done being your husband and your family's servant."

 Selene's beautiful face turned white and then red with anger and she said, "You want to divorce me, you have nothing, you are nothing, you will sleep on the street like a dog!"

 Jax smiled for the first time in years, a real smile that reached his eyes, and said, "I would rather sleep on the street than sleep one more night in your house and eat your leftover food, I would rather be a dog on the street than be your dog in your mansion."

 Ravena screamed, "If you walk out that door you will get nothing, no money, no house, we will make sure everyone knows you are a useless failure!"

 Jax put on his jacket, turned his back to them, and said as he walked away, "Keep your money, keep your house, keep your rice, in three months you will come begging me for a single grain and I will not give it to you."

 Selene shouted behind him, "Go then, never come back, we don't need you!"

 He walked out of the hospital into the bright sun and for the first time in three years his chest felt light, he could breathe, he was free.

 He went back to his small apartment and locked the door, he sat on the floor and began to practice, he looked at a cup and thought go inside and the cup disappeared into his space, he thought come out and it came back, he tried with his desk and his bed and they both vanished and came back, and he realized his space was endless and that time inside stopped completely so food would never rot and water would never spoil.

 He laughed with tears in his eyes and said, "With this I can survive the end of the world."

 He knew exactly what was coming, on June 14 the black rain would fall, it would poison half the people and turn the other half into flesh-eating beasts, power would go out, water would stop, cities would burn, and people would kill each other for a bottle of water.

 He had only two thousand dollars in his bank, that was not enough, so he picked up his phone and applied for every loan he could find, twenty thousand from one bank, fifteen thousand from another, ten thousand from an online app, forty seven thousand dollars in total, and he did not care about debt because debt would not exist after June 14 and money would be worthless paper.

 He went to the wholesale market to find Old Man Finn, the only person who had ever been kind to him, Finn had white hair and kind eyes and when he saw Jax he said, "Jax my boy, you look different today, what do you need?"

 Jax said, "Finn, I need everything you have, I need rice, flour, water, oil, salt, sugar, canned meat, as much as you can give me."

 Finn was surprised and said, "Everything, are you opening a big store, how much do you want?"

 Jax said, "Five tons of rice, two tons of flour, a thousand boxes of clean water, and all your canned meat and oil."

 Finn laughed and said, "That is enough to feed a village for a year," but he still called his workers, and while the workers were moving boxes, Jax quietly touched each bag and made it vanish into his space, one bag after another, fifty bags, a hundred bags, all gone in seconds while Finn thought they had been loaded onto a truck.

 After that Jax bought medicine, boxes of fever pills, antibiotics, bandages and painkillers, he bought fuel, huge tanks of diesel, he bought warm clothes, blankets, boots, soap, and solar lamps, he even bought guns from a man on a dark street, a shotgun and a pistol and enough bullets to fill a box.

 For three days and three nights he did not sleep, he just bought and stored and bought and stored until his huge space was half full with enough supplies to live for ten years without ever needing to go outside.

 On the fourth day he went to the hill north of the city where an old war bunker stood empty and forgotten, the bunker was made of thick concrete and had a heavy steel door, he cleaned it, he fixed the door, he put solar panels on the roof, he put beds and water tanks inside, and this became his fortress, his kingdom that would survive when the rest of the world died.

 That night his phone rang again and it was Selene, her voice was annoyed and cold as she said, "My mother says if you come back now and apologize and agree to give Kade your kidney, we will forgive you and let you come home."

 Jax stood on the roof of his bunker, the wind blowing his hair, looking down at the city lights that were still bright and beautiful and alive, and he held a hot piece of chicken in his hand from his endless storage.

 He said calmly into the phone, "Selene, listen well because I will only say this once, on June 14 black rain will fall from the sky and the world will end, monsters will walk the streets and your family will have no food and no water, and you will remember this moment, you will walk to my hill and you will kneel in the mud and beg me for help just like I once begged you, and I will look down at you and remember these two bags of rice you sold me for."

 Selene laughed coldly and said, "You have gone crazy, you are insane, you need a doctor," and then she hung up.

 Jax put the phone down, smiled at the stars, and whispered to the dying city below, "We will see who is insane when the rain turns black."