April Anomalies A-Z: Hermas

Hermas, the dreamer, the visionary freedman, has seen him – the shepherd – again.  Hallucinations.  No. Not hallucinations, but dreams.  This was his sixth vision.

But he couldn't be sure what was happening.

In the first vision there was desire.  In the second, a book.  In the third he saw a great tower trembling in the shadow of a giant.  In the fourth, he saw the world collapse and the sky grow dark.  But in the fifth he saw him – the shepherd, the revelator.  That seemed to be the end of the visions.  But now he was seeing things again. 

First it was thousands of dead pigs floating in the rivers of China.  Now it’s tens of thousands of prawns washing up on the beaches of Chile.  “They’ve overheated,” he said to no one in particular, but he had no idea what it meant.  

‘I, myself, have seen the giant camels of the arctic,’ he thought, ‘majestic creatures, really.  Larger than the ordinary camels we see today, taller, broader.  But they were in no danger of overheating.  Not them.  They were perfectly adapted to their cold environment.’ 

There was something inside him: an idea that needed to be explored, an hypothesis that needed to be tested.  The burning on his hands and feet was the result of an intense electrical discharge.  Could these things all be related? 

He couldn't answer that question and he began to weep.

This is part of April Anomalies A-Z, a creative writing exercise and not intended to be an altogether accurate picture of the Shepherd of Hermas, but, like the pigs in the river, the prawns on the beach are, in fact, terrifyingly real.  The arctic camels were real too.