[Writing Prompt] God turns out not just to be real, but also a real nut case. He(/she/it?) reveals that yes, there is a specific purpose for human existence, but it’s more insane than anyone expected.
God Is Crazy
“Halitosis!”
Ralph blinked. “Huh?” Ralph said. He remembered who he was talking to and added, “my Lord?”
“Halitosis!” God said again, his monstrous voice over-loud. Like, really extraordinarily loud. Loud enough that when he spoke the ground shook for miles, even though there was no ground as far as Ralph could see.
“Oh. Yes. Sure,” Ralph scrambled for something witty to say. He came up with nothing. “Halitosis!” He repeated with cheer.
“Yes, exactly.” God sat back down on his gargantuan throne.
The two figures were alone in God’s throne room. The throne room was as wide as the widest, most majestic portion of the Grand Canyon. It was much longer still. Ralph eyeballed God’s distance from him and came up with four to six miles. God was still quite large and perfectly audible.
“Which I why,” God started again, “I called you here.”
Ralph pursed his lips in confusion and gave the room a sideways glance. “Um, Halitosis, Lord.”
‘Yee-ess! Yes! Halitosis my dearest, most foul smelling subject. Halitosis. Bad breath. That, my little friend, is why you are here with me.” God accentuated those three words by pointing a pair of finger guns at each subject – first Ralph, then the cloudy ground, and finally God himself.
Ralph was speedily discovering that God was a real weirdo.
God stood up and began pacing. His every step shook the firmament of the universe. “You see Porgy,” He paused and looked back at Ralph, “you don’t mind if I call you Porgy, right?”
Ralph was considering opening his mouth when God interrupted. “Well, you see Plowdoe,” God paused again and lifted one of several pairs of sunglasses. He looked over at Ralph again. “You don’t mind if I call you Plowdoe, do you?”
This time God waited for an answer. Ralph cleared his throat. “Uh, no sir. Um, my Lord.”
God nodded contentedly and put the sunglasses back on over the many other sunglasses. “Well, Ralph, you see you and I are not so different…you and…I.” God considered the sentence, moving his finger through the air to see where he might have gone wrong and mouthing “you and I” over and over again.
Eventually, God lost interest in this conundrum of his own making and continued. “I too have Halitosis. I’ve been told, by the other trans-dimensional beings, that it is quite…pungent.” God turned toward Ralph. “Can you smell it Downy? Can you? Can you smell the breath of God?”
Honestly, Ralph couldn’t. “No, Lord, I don’t smell a thing.”
God paused, uncertain whether he was being patronized. To be sure, God violently entered Ralph’s mind, plumbing the depths of his multidimensional soul in a searing act of violation.
After Ralph got done screaming for several days, God continued. “Oh, Dumbo. Anyway, look, I have halitosis. I can’t get rid of it. No matter how hard I try. They say it might be in the diet or genetics. Who knows?”
God lingered on the question, staring at Ralph through sunglassed eyes. Ralph still reeled from his ethereal invasion and it took him a long time to recognize the question was not rhetorical.
“Oh, um, I really don’t know who knows. Lord.”
God sucked his teeth. “Damn. Well, so that’s why I made all of you. In my image, of course. My exacting image.”
Ralph didn’t understand. “Wait, why did you make us?”
God had lost interest. He had a giant tablet out and was toying about with it. “Huh? Oh, you’re still here Flomby.” God put the tablet down for a moment. “Yes, well, I made you all as an experiment to see what causes Halitosis. The results have been inconclusive. So I’m ending the experiment.”
Ralph stood slack-jawed. “Wait, what?”
God repeated himself. “It was inconclusive…”
“And now you’re going to end the experiment? Like, the human race?”
God paused and looked up. “Yeah,” he said with a haphazard nod, “right.”
Ralph became incensed. “But, that’s horrible. This whole thing is horrible. People are suffering down there. Billions of lives, billions of people, living and dying, and it’s all for your stupid experiment? And now you’re just going to snap your fingers and wipe them away?!”
God nodded again, still playing his game. “Yep.”
Ralph was beside himself. He had so many questions, but one, in particular, stood out to him right then. “But, why tell me this? What’s special about me?”
God didn’t look up. “Well, you’re their king, Plowdoe. Plowdoe, King of the humans.”
Ralph had just about had it with the nicknames. “My name is Ralph. And I’m not the king, I’m just a plumber!”
God looked up, a little confused. God leaned in for a better look at Ralph and began taking off all his sunglasses, one by one. As he got further and further down, his bright eyes shone behind the dark plastic, until at last the final pair of shades came off.
God’s multidimensional eyes bored into Ralph’s being. In those eyes, Ralph saw everything – the great expanse of existence – the big bang, the heat death of the universe, and the quantum tunneling event which would start the cycle over again.
Ralph saw all these things, and he wept, for it was good.
God peered at Ralph for just a second from his perspective. “Oh, you’re not the King. Eh, whatever.”
Then God farted and Ralph, the entire human race, and all of God’s creations disappeared as if they’d never existed in the first place.
When it was done God put his glasses back on and briefly looked around his throne room. “Where’d that Ralph guy go?” God asked the infinite nothingness.
Then God shrugged and continued playing Vegas style solitaire. God loved Vegas style solitaire.
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