Fasnachat Festival

March 2020

The mammal bleating turned into a blood curdling cry.

Thuds and screams, as people began running toward Ben in panic. He searched wildly for Joelle in the bizarre still unaware of the danger. His calm demeanor eroding as the throng of bodies rushed passed him; his shoulders taking a beating as his feet began to slide with the flood of human bodies.

For a moment, all seemed frozen in time, not much different from an evening snow storm at Zermatt during the twilight hours. The ski lifts continuing to operate, as a few people carve down the hillside making a low undefined buzzing noise.

Now he felt the shock of a crash on the ski slope; only he had just met head on with an alarmed stranger in the street. It knocked Ben to the ground. A woman stepped on him. He got up as if he were running with the bulls. Looking over his shoulder he finally discovered the manmade disaster.

A package van grinding through the Fasnachat Festival in Zurich. Pedestrians who had arrived earlier in the day to indulge before Lent started, now felt their faith being tested, as God allowed their lives to be chewed up in the rubber tires of a terrorist attack.

Ben waded in the current of common man until he found a doorway to stop in. People continued to file passed him. He searched in vain for Joelle.

Ben could see the wild fanatical gaze of the package van driver as he plowed through fallen civilians. Blood smeared fenders, and the raw carnage of wasted human meat, his wife somewhere in this sea of red.

Love for his wife now the commanding emotion of his will.

“Guess we’re going to be late for Grandma Maude’s birthday dinner,” Ben laughed to himself before slipping back into the street to return to the pageantry, now turned post-apocalyptic nightmare.

Moans and cries from the dying survivors.

“Ben!” Joelle screeched like a banshee.

Ben could see her raised arm. She sat on the sidewalk among corpses while she bled from a maimed leg.

“Are you OK?” Ben said now kneeling next to her. Both feeling stress from the chaos.

Then the gunfire began to ring out. They looked down the blood stream to where the van had crashed against the plastered wall of body bags. All the doors to the package van now open. Four terrorists with machine guns began executing the begging souls at their feet.

Ben grabbed his wife around the waist, dragging her out of harm’s way as the thunder of death drew closer.

“I wish I’d proposed to you sooner. We should have got married on our first date,” Ben whispered into his wife’s ear.

“I love you,” she responded in pain, trying to use her one good leg like a ski pole on the slippery edge of bloodshed.

December 2020

Ben and Joelle sat on the Zermatt ski lift in the dark rising into the sky. Around them tall trees and the glow of the snow from the moonlight. Ahead, in the chair in front of them, their two children a boy and a girl. At the top of the hill Christmas lights and the descent to the ski lodge on a sledge.

This small group, connected to the select few enjoying Zermatt during the pandemic holiday season.

“I’m sure they’ll create a vaccine soon. At the lab their saying we’ve gotten close to it. We’re not the best. One of the other major pharmaceutical companies are going to beat us to it,” Ben said squeezing his wife’s hand to reassure her.

“It’s just so sad. These Christmas trips to Zermatt always included the entire family. I haven’t seen Grandma Maude since March,” said Joelle; a native of Switzerland who’d spent every Christmas of her life in Zermatt.

“Next year my love, I promise. Next Christmas the entire family at Zermatt with vaccinations available to everyone.”

“Thanks Ben, you’ve already won my hand in marriage and I’ve given you two children. I’m glad we saw Grandma Maude on her birthday after the terrorist attack. Only this pandemic is worse than a terrorist attack.”

The end.