Young Writers Society

It all started as an ordinary day in the office. The man returned from his lunch break to sit in front of his computer once more, hastily clicking the mouse the same exact way as he did each and every day. He hadn’t expected much when he woke up that morning with his darling wife having left him two days before, but one of the last things he deemed possible was that he would soon become a god.

The middle-aged man felt a roaring pain in the side of his chest. “Is something wrong?” a co-worker as he winced in pain, his chest flaring up in agony. Breathing became difficult as the pain became even stronger.

“No, no,” he said. “Just some indigestion.” It started to get better, before it only seemed to get worse. He jumped from the chair clutching his chest, the brutalizing, torturous pain sending shockwaves through him as he fell to the floor, his eyes glued shut.

He peeled them back open. Took heavy breaths as he heard the muffled noises of his co-workers, stomping over to check on his well-being, screaming that something wasn’t right. He didn’t quite realize he was having a heart attack before fading silently into the afterlife.

When the man awoke again, he saw the beautiful luminescent clouds laid out in the sky before him, inhaled the flowers and dew through his nose. He stood to his own two feet and realized that the pain which befuddled him just moments earlier was now completely gone – he was healed.

Stepping closer to the pearly gates, he couldn’t have helped but smile. “Ha…ha…H-heaven,” he muttered. “I’m in Heaven. God damn, I didn’t really think there was a chance this place even existed.”

“Yes. God damn indeed.”

A light so bright that the man couldn’t look directly at it formed in the clouds overhead. He shielded his eyes as a loud thunder roared through the area, echoing throughout his eardrums. “You…you’re…you’re God,” he said in amusement. “Ha. This is crazy. I’ve got to be dreaming, right?” He started to pinch himself.

“It saddens me that you never accepted me like I’ve accepted you,” God said. “But nonetheless, it is time that I judge you worthy of my kingdom the way I have judged so many others.”

A long and awkward pause followed. The man started to giggle like a child. “You’re not for real. You know what? How about we do something different. How about I judge you.”

“Hmph. How amusing.”

“Yeah.” The man cockily nodded his head. “Yeah, yeah. If I’m supposed to believe you’re some beacon of goodness, what’s with all the dying kids? Huh? What about the starving kids in Africa with AIDs or whatever?”

“Those are—”

“What about cancer? What kind of monster lets cancer be a thing? You’re God! You can get rid of cancer if you want, but you choose to do nothing. You let poor people like me suffer, then you mock them before sending them straight to Hell. Torture them forever! What kind of God does that?”

“You mock me!”

“You’re damn well right I mock you! The way I see it? As terrible as the world is? You’re doing a real crappy job of playing God.”

The thundering echoed throughout the heavens once again, this time the ground shaking loud enough for the man to nearly fall to his knees. “Very well,” God said. “I’m going to cut you a deal then, if you think it’s quite so easy to do what I do. For one day, you will take my place. You will become God. If you manage to do this well, then I will accept you into Heaven.”

“And if I fail?”

God cackled. “You will have to wait and see what happens then.”

The man heard a loud popping noise, before a bright flash of light overtook him. When the man awoke again, he found himself amongst the clouds, floating, hanging from far above the earth. He tried to gaze at his arms but they were gone. He looked at his legs and they were no longer existent.

“I…I’m a god,” he said with a laugh. “I’m a god damn God.”

He looked to his left where a haloed boy floated next to him, a concerned look in his tiny, beady eyes. “Are you…”

The man laughed. “I’ve even got my own personal angel,” he said. “I’m going to…wait…wait…what’s that noise?”

Loud rumbling overtook his ears. The voices of billions of people, men and women, boys and girls, sick and healthy, poor and wealthy all screamed inside of him, clawing his mind like a nail on a chalkboard. “Ah, what the hell is that?” he scoffed. “Who are all those voices?”

The angel shrugged. “Those are all the people praying to you,” he explained.

“What the hell am I supposed to do about this noise!” the man complained. “How am I supposed to hear any prayers, let alone give them all what they want?”

The angel let out a hearty sigh, shaking his head back and forth. “You simply can’t,” he said. “God has been practicing for an eternity, but even he can’t help with every prayer given to him.”

The man rolled his eyes. “Fine. I’ll just ignore all this noise and do what I can do to help others.” He floated down through the earth, ignoring the screams inside of his head as he made his way to a small town somewhere out in a dingy desert area, the buildings worn and the people looking extraordinarily lost and hungry.

“These poor people,” the man said. “They look starving. I’ll whip them all up some hamburgers.”

“I’d advise against that,” the angel quickly said. “You don’t know how they’ll react to hamburgers falling from the sky.”

“That’s nonsense!” the man exclaimed. “Let this small town enjoy a good meal for once.”

Thunder echoed from the clouds, and in an instant, meat patties began to rain down upon the small town. The villagers all gasped in unison, rising to their feet, beginning to scream out of fear over what was happening. “It’s the apocalypse!” one of them cried out in a foreign language. “Everybody run!”

The villagers all scrambled for mercy, leaving their small village to spread the word of what had happened. “This is India,” the angel explained. “I tried to tell you…they don’t like beef.”

“Damn,” the man said. “Next time I’ll drop pizza or something.”

The man floated away towards another part of the world, this time the dingy slums of New York, overridden by gangs and marred by irredeemable violence throughout the area. He observed a man and a woman arguing against another.

“Meat fell from the sky!” the man exclaimed. “Don’t you see? It’s the beginning of the end times. God has come back to earth. There’s no other explanation for something like that.”

“Oh will you shut up with your religious garbage,” the woman scoffed. “There’s no such thing as—”

A young teenager ran up to the couple with a pistol and opened fire. “Hey! Hey!” the man yelled. “What’s he doing? Why did he just kill those people?”

“Gang violence like that is common in this area,” the angel explained. “Those two might’ve looked the wrong way or something.”

“Well he’s not going to get away with that when I’m in charge.” The man slaughtered the gangster and revived the man and woman. “There. Now, what could’ve gone wrong with that?”

The man and woman widened their mouths in pure shock of what transpired. “We just…we just…did we just come back to life?”

“Sir, you don’t know what you’re doing,” the angel said as the man started to float back towards the sky. “Bringing people back to life? People don’t know what to make of that. They don’t expect it because it doesn’t happen. What you’ve done is thrown off the balance of the world. Your revival is going to make news, and alongside the meat falling from the sky, I’m not sure how people will react.”

“You worry too much,” the man yawned. “They’ll get used to it. I’m going to be a more active God. The world will be perfect and they’re going to love me forever. Wish this screaming in my ear would stop, though. Now then, next on the list. I want to cure cancer.”

“Are you sure about that?”

The man scoffed. “Yes, I’m sure. What, are you going to say that getting rid of cancer will throw something off? What good can you possibly get from cancer?”

“It’s not as simple as that!” the angel shouted. “You don’t understand. You can’t understand. Cancer isn’t just any ordinary disease, it’s tied to the purposely flawed human body, prone to failure. To get rid of cancer, you have to give everyone else an entirely new body. And who knows how the world will react without cancer? It’s so ingrained in society, that removing it is like removing a single needle in a stack. You don’t know what else you’ll change by doing so.”

“What the hell are you rambling about now?” the man asked. “From now on, everyone has a brand new body! One that doesn’t get cancer. I decree it so. Now then, I’m going to go take a nap. Even gods need rest. If only this screaming in my ear would stop.”

A few hours passed, when the angel awoke the man in a hurry. “Sir, sir, you need to come look at what you did.”

“What? What did I do? I cured cancer, didn’t I?”

The man and the angel floated through the earth, now completely littered with bodies. The entire world population had been wiped clean. “What?” the man gasped. “How could…how could this have happened?”

“When God created the human body, he created every aspect of them carefully so that they were built to last,” the angel explained. “But you did it so hastily, I think you messed something up.”

“T-that’s not a problem, though, right?” the man hyperventilated. “I can just bring them all back! Like…like this!”

In an instant, the man brought back the world, but they were all confused as to what had happened. They started to scream and yell and shout, running back and forth in panic. The world was completely frenzied. “What are they doing? Why are they flipping out?” the man asked. “How do I stop them?”

“You can’t!” the angel said. “God gave them free will! They can do whatever they want!”

“So I’ll just take their free will! I’ll…I’ll control them!”

“That’s enough!” the haunting thunder echoed from above, and a bright flash of light overcame the man. He found himself once more at the pearly gates of heaven, once again standing in front of God.

“Well, looks like I failed,” the man admitted. “So, what do you have in store from me?”

A long silence followed. “You’re headed back to earth,” God explained.

The man scrunched his face. “Wait, what?” he said. “Why? Why would you…I thought you’d send me to Hell or something.”

“Is there really any other hell than planet earth?” God mused. “You will not remember what has happened. But nonetheless, you have not yet reached the date I had in store for you to die. Some other children of mine are coming close to reviving your physical form as we speak. I hope you will use the time remaining in order to turn your life around.”

The man nodded. “Understood. Thank you, God.”

“Now, go! You have a whole entire line of souls behind you.”

In a flash of light, the man vanished from the heavens.