Max, Epilogue: Two years later, and several hundred miles from his hometown.

How quickly things had changed.  The business, which he prospered, through the long hours, was no longer his to manage.  Nor would he inherit it.  His father, the owner, almost a year back, had fired him.  Fired him for no better reason than having named the Name of Jesus Christ, The Messiah, one too many times.  No, that last visit back home didn't go well at all.   And that wasn't it.  The most shocking thing, wasn't having been formally disinherited from the family.

The most shocking thing was the somewhat recent phone call from his sister.  His parents were in the process of splitting up.  Of all married couples...sure, they had had their quarrels, but Max never, for one minute thought divorce was anywhere near their vocabulary.   Though, shortly after the disappearance, he had begun to notice some unspoken distance growing between his father and mother - things said, or not, Max had figured it was merely the stuff of approaching old age.

Just one more bit of proof that things sour quickly when the Restrainer is gone.    Shortly after Max had found himself unemployed - for the first time in his life - apply for UC had been a nightmare.   As an employer, he had, on numerous occasions, either contacted or visited the Labor and Industry staff.  Usually helpful and considerate...

Wow! It neither was much longer after the disappearance, the whole experience turned real miserable - almost on a dime.  Ugh, that Employer's Tax clerk, what a surely ... beech. He had to wonder what became of the old lady, the one with the squeaky, cheerful laugh.  Winnie, that was her name, or close - likely disappeared, along with the other Church-age saints.

Max pulled into the parking lot, and drove around the back of a building - one in store need of a paint job, for one thing.  His saturn was beginning to make strange noises; it wasn't like he could just go anywhere for parts or repairs.   Nor neither could the friends inside - correction, his brothers and sisters in Christ, go just any old where to buy things like paint, or siding, or auto parts. 

Things were getting - no, things already were dicey.  Their small group of maybe a dozen, had lost another family member.  Frank had been minding his business - the paper said, a routine mugging.  Of course assaults - and about every other crime, even in quiet mid-western towns - are up, and keep going up.

How easily things get explained away, and swept under that lumbering beast, eating and defecating, in the living room.

The End.