The Divine Wrath Syndrome

[Excerpt]

The Divine Wrath Syndrome

When, on the morning of March 28, the richest man in the world was found dead in his bed, having expired peacefully in his sleep from what, for lack of other explanations, was termed “natural causes,” there were few mourners. A head-lining obituary appeared in the New York Times—as much by a fortuitous lack of competition rather than the intrinsic merits or interest in the life and accomplishments of the multi-multi-hundred billionaire. While Wan Lin Wu was not a household name, his current position on the top of the heap of the richest of the rich earned him a heading in bold type.

Another billionaire died the next night, also in his sleep, and also, to all outward appearances, from natural causes. His name, Francis Intelli, was much more popularly known in the United States, and the stories of his rise in the computer marketplace and his philanthropy filled the obituaries. Only a few of the papers happened to mention that Mr. Intelli, at the time of his death, yes, had been the world’s richest man. For one, tycoon watchers had become accustomed to thinking of Francis Intelli as “the world’s third richest person,” and had not adjusted to the death of Mr. Wu the night before, nor to the fact, probably unknown to Mr. Intelli, that due to some recent reverses in his global conglomerates, Sheik Abdul Shamil and Francis Intelli had, in fact, exchanged places as the number two and number three of the world’s richest.

When Abdul Shamil died the following night, more than a few reporters privately noted the coincidence of the demise, on three successive nights, of the world’s three richest people, but this fact was deemed unworthy of a place in the faintly sanctified and reserved spaces of the obituary page.

With the fourth death the following night the tabloids put it all together and ran headlines such as “Who’s Next?” or “Four Richest Men in the World Dead in Four Nights.” . . .

[This story is being published in the Three Hands Press Occult Fiction Anthology. Details coming.]