Future Tormentor

16

On December 24, 2023, outside a brightly lit church on Christmas Eve, an old man in tattered clothes sat on the ground, seemingly lost in a daze. Known to the churchgoers as a harmless, if eccentric, presence, he often muttered nonsensically about waiting for a disaster to befall the church.

As the night wore on and the congregation dispersed, the old man, who was Leo, now aged and worn by the decades, continued his vigil. His ramblings about a catastrophe striking the church were met with sympathy and occasional charity but largely dismissed as the ravings of a madman.

Unexpectedly, a meteor streaked across the sky, crashing into the church roof and creating the very destruction Leo had foretold. Amid the shock and confusion, Leo, animated by a sudden burst of clarity and purpose, scrambled into the newly formed crater within the church, searching frantically.

Emerging triumphantly, Leo clutched a dirt-encrusted, rudimentary phone—a relic he believed could alter his fate. His joy, however, was short-lived. In a moment of profound realization, he recognized the futility of his long-held belief in the phone's power to change his destiny.

In a fit of rage mixed with liberation, Leo destroyed the phone, declaring that salvation lies not in external forces but within oneself. His laughter, a mix of madness and enlightenment, echoed through the damaged church—that one's fate is shaped by one's actions and choices, not by reliance on miraculous escapes.

As Leo accepted this truth, his aged form began to fade, as if his existence was being erased, signifying perhaps a release from the cycle of despair and futility that had bound him.

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