"You don’t understand, I’m certain there’s been a mistake."

Josiah stood at the foot of a massive throne, larger than the pyramid at Giza. Sitting at rest upon it’s golden curves was the figure of a man larger than imagination. His body was flesh and bone, but where his head should have been there was only pure white light. Where his heart should have beat beneath his chest a fiery glow seeped out from under his bare skin.

He did not speak in any sense Josiah understood from his time on Earth, and yet the gargantuan being’s will became known to Josiah with pure clarity of thought.

There can be no error, God of Vengeance.

Josiah was flummoxed. It seemed like only an hour ago Josiah had been alive and well, driving to work, listening to the Weather on the Nines. He remembered cursing to himself about impending rain when someone sideswiped his Lexus and pushed him right underneath the bed of a 16 wheeler.

He’d woken up here, at the foot of the throne, with a new and unexpected title. God of Vengeance.

Farewell. Your throne awaits.

The giant God-man snapped a finger. Josiah opened his mouth to protest again, but before he could utter a single word the throne room was gone and Josiah stood at the gate of a castle.

The castle was set upon an asteroid from the look of it, the whole structure and it’s foundation floating through space. Everywhere Josiah looked he could see the most astounding celestial objects. An infinity of stars, swirling nebulae in a variety of vibrant colors, and distant planets of rock and gas and water, in iridescent blues and greens.

Josiah was marveling at the impossible density of the scene when the giant gates began to creak loudly and swing open. Josiah turned toward the opening and a living blade floated in mid air, threatening in its quiet promise of violence.

"My Lord," the blade said, although it had no features of any kind. It’s voice was calm and thin, as sharp as its edge. "Welcome to Retribution. Please, follow me."

The sword began to float away into the castle complex and Josiah followed close behind, gaping at the stars behind him as the gates closed of their own accord.

The Blade led Josiah through an empty courtyard and into another throne room. A throne made of scalpels awaited him there.

"Take your seat, my Lord."

Josiah hesitated before the sharp edges of the scalpel blades. However, when he reached his hand towards the throne, the blades of the scalpels receded from his touch. Tentatively, Josiah climbed up and set himself into the seat. To his amazement the blades shifted and morphed to his form until he was comfortably ensconced. It was the most comfortable seat he’d ever sat in.

"Praise be to the God of Vengeance," the blade said quietly. Then it began to leave, but Josiah stopped it with his voice.

"Hey, wait. What now?"

The blade stopped in mid air. "Administer Vengeance, My lord."

Josiah sighed, "but I’m not the sort to hold a grudge! I told the other guy that as well. I think there must be a mistake."

The blade shimmered as it turned gracefully in the air. "There is no mistake."

"But I told you, I don’t hold grudges. How can I be the God of Vengeance if I can’t hold a grudge?"

The blade made a strange hissing sound, in pulsating increments, and Josiah realized that it was laughing.

"My Lord, the weak and the impotent hold grudges. You are not the God of Grudges."

Then the Blade left without another word.

For a long moment Josiah just sat there when, of a sudden his mind was awash in images. Vignettes of people, millions and millions of living sentient beings. Some Josiah recognized as human or, at least, humanoid. But others were fabulously alien. Globs of white gel contained in thin membranes, multi-eyed creatures with boomerang shaped heads, large monstrosities with multiple mouths, singing bizarre songs.

Josiah watched them for a time, overwhelmed at first. But, slowly, he started to parse through it all. He found he understood what they all said, regardless of language. Moreover, he saw that each vision had something in common.

In each vision someone was wishing Vengeance on someone else.

Josiah sighed, uncertain whether he would be up to this task. After awhile he picked one vision, a human woman, because it was familiar. She was in her bedroom, weeping into a pillow, begging that something terrible befall a certain man.

Josiah reached out instinctively and touched the woman. The moment he made contact the vision shifted to the target of her ire.

There he was at a bar, wearing a wedding ring. The two were married. He takes the ring off and approaches a random woman. Eventually he takes her home with him.

The vision jumps to several such events, each time a different bar and a different woman. Each time he lies and says he is single.

Eventually, the adulterous husband’s sins revealed, the vision returns to the crying, spurned wife.

Josiah sucks his front teeth and shakes his head. "What an asshole," he says to himself. After a moment, feeling terrible for the crying woman, Josiah imagines the man taking a terrible tumble down a long flight of stairs, breaking both his legs in the process. It was, in Josiah’s sure estimation, what the guy deserved.

No sooner did he think of the image than the vision coalesced into reality. There the man was, climbing the stairs to his apartment because the elevator was broken, when he slipped and tumbled backward, down and down, landing with a crunch at the ground floor.

Then the vision resolved itself and disappeared.

Josiah blinked in surprise. He looked left and right at the empty throne room, unsure if he’d done something wrong. But there were no sirens or anything and the blade did not return.

After a moment, Josiah smiled to himself. That had felt good, giving the man precisely what Josiah felt he deserved. No hard feelings, no grudges, just plain old efficient reciprocity.

"Huh," Josiah said, pleasantly surprised, before calling up the next prayer.