“Let me get this straight, you want me to... suck your dick?”

"Not in so many words, but yes” God leans back, casually stretching his arms above his head. His white robe billows about him gently in the breeze.  We’re sitting together on a white park bench. In the distance I can see children running around a brightly colored playground. Birds chip in the trees overhead as glittering rays of sunlight stream through the foliage.  "Consider it... a test of faith."

“What does the Messiah's manhood look like anyhow?”

“What do you think it looks like?” God muses, prophetically.

“Like a big shiny golden dildo?” I shrug “Maybe some halos around it for good measure? And miracles shoot out the tip-- to give sight to the blind or cure polio. Or maybe God’s immaculate-ejaculate cripples you?”

God laughs. It’s a hearty sound like Santa Claus and every TV sitcom father rolled into one. “Really? I’m the same guy who dreamed up platypuses, aardvarks, and elephants… I made you in my image, and you think my divine-ding-dong is some gaudy sex toy?”

“Haha, gaudy. God-y.”

God chuckles “You always did like puns.”

“That’s the thing, you’re all knowing and all seeing. You already know if I’m going to do it or not."

“I suppose” God shrugs nonchalantly.  

“So why even bother with this conversation?”

“You watched Titanic seven times in theaters.” He scratches his beard absently.

I sit there in silence. Sometimes it’s easy to forget He knows all things.

“Yeah so?”

“You already knew the ending. That doesn’t keep it from being a good movie.” He elbows me playfully. “And how does it end?”

“Jack drowns.”

“No before that. “

“Jack draws some boobies.”

“After that.”

I sigh. “The ship goes down.”

“Bazzzing son!” God makes some finger guns and points them in my direction playfully, a wide grin plastered across his face.   

“That’s another thing. If we’re all your children, y’know lambs and such isn’t it incest to suck-off my savior?”

“Sure, you’re one of my creations. But you’re not my son” Got makes mock stigmata on his wrists, and then extends his arms out from him at his sides like a man on a cross. “You guys nailed my one-and-only to the wall, remember?”

I look down, dejected for a moment.  God puts his cross-bearing-arm around me. It’s warm and comforting. God continues: “You’re more like, if I made a crude drawing and then jerked off to it.” He gives my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “I still remember that by the way. You were one horny thirteen year old. Beating off to boxy boobs and triangle shaped vagainas. You’re definitely no Jack Dawson.” He’s rubbing both my shoulders now. His grip is so strong. I can feel his warm breath on my neck. It’s intoxicating, smelling like peanut butter and cinnamon.

“But isn’t it wrong?”

God smiles. “I impregnate virgin girls without their knowledge or consent.  I make fathers set their kids on fire.  I kill a bunch of innocent little babies because some people didn’t decorate their doorways the way I wanted. I drown half the planet, and give you guys a little rainbow at the end to say ‘oops sorry, my bad’... "

The will of God is strong. His hands are at my neck. Pushing and prodding my head at a slow sinking angle, like the Titanic going down, down. down.

“Heck the first guy I made… he wanted a girlfriend. And I could’ve easily made him a brand new person; I literally just made him out of nothingness five seconds earlier.  But instead, I made him give up his rib, just so he can fuck his rib. His own rib! Isn’t that twisted?  And you think a little fellatio bothers me?”

“Mhmmn mmm mhhmmm...”

“Shh… don’t talk with your mouth full my son.”

In the distance I can hear the children laughing and running on the playground.  The birds chirp overhead as the leaves rustle in the trees.  

And then, sirens.  

- - - - 

On the news that night, two men are shown led away in handcuffs: "...a local man and an escaped mental patient claiming to be God were caught engaging in sexual acts in a public park... "

She was mouthing the words of a song as she came out of the hospital bathroom, a sad song that hardly sailed with enough billow to be heard. A whisper, really. A secret told to only herself.

  ...the angels replied:

Oh, your baby has gone down the plug hole.

Oh, your baby has gone down the plug.

The poor little thing was so skinny and thin,

He should have been washed in a jug, in a jug.

Your baby is perfectly happy;

He won't need a bath anymore.

He's a-muckin' about with the angels above,

Not lost but gone before.

"Please, stop," I asked. I didn't like her song. She looked at me with disapproval, then caught herself. She stood there--totally alone--even though I was but two feet away.

“I had a cousin once,” she said out of the blue, with a rambling-on unfocused look in her tired eyes. She walked toward the bed and before she sat next to me I was able to shove away the wheeled platform that had held the tray of her unfinished breakfast. “I was just a little girl when it happened, of course.” She paused again, her aimless gaze drifting in one untargeted direction to another. “She had this baby,” she continued. “Everything was normal—a beautiful little boy baby."

"Oh, Abby, do you really think this will help?" I asked. 

"And then he got sick in the nursery, so they had to put him in a special nursery for sick babies. I think they had to put him on oxygen or something. It wasn't anything serious. I mean the baby did just fine and all. It’s just that, well, the point is that my cousin was discharged from the hospital before her baby was.”

“I don’t understand,” I said to her. “How is that the point? That happens.”

“The point, Ralph, is that she had to leave that hospital without a baby."

"Without her baby."

"Without any baby. And I remember thinking at the time, what a strange feeling that must be—to go and be pregnant all of that time. Remember that I was very little back then, and because of that her pregnancy seemed to go on forever. Anyway, to go and be pregnant all of that time, and then to go and have the baby for goodness sake, and then to have to leave with nothin’. Really strange.” 

I only listened; silence was the appropriate response. This was grim territory, and it was all hers.

“And I guess I remember this so well,” she continued, “about how strange that must have been for her only because she bitched and bitched about it. And when her baby did come home, about a week later, all of the fanfare had already fizzled. No glory. Just a beautiful baby. And I remember I was sympathetic with her frustration at wanting her baby to come home with her and not having it that way. She missed the relatives’ welcoming the two of them into the house. She missed the drop-ins of all of the people she’d show the baby off to. The little envelopes with the folded cash in them. She missed all of that. The show must go on, right? But for an empty house. The fickle audience had already found another trending event to shower with their fifteen minutes. She felt so gypped. Like when a mother’s only daughter elopes, robbing her out of the glory of the wedding she herself had always wanted.”

“Yea, I guess that’s kind of weird,” I agreed, just out of politeness, but I was wrong. She wasn’t sympathizing with her cousin.

“Well wasn’t that all just too damn bad!” Abby said angrily. “She did have her baby to raise--the important part--but she was all upset over stupid crap like that. A beautiful baby like that and she's furious over some maternalistic inconvenience. I loved her back then for her inconvenience." Her eyes regrouped a focus on me, fire burning the tears out of them. "I so hate her now, though. She should’ve known what it was like to leave the hospital without your baby because he’s stone cold dead!” 

The poor cousin was really catching it now. I didn’t say anything else. I let her have these sentiments all to herself. She suffered privately, as I just stared at the ground. She was beyond any help I could offer. Mrs. Humpty Dumpty. 

“Ready?” I finally asked her, hoping to break her melancholy. "Got all your things?"

“Yea,” she sighed, then said, “the kid ended up being a bum, anyway. Got involved with drugs. Had a kid he never saw." Abby laughed, but it was a snarky laugh. "Caused her nothing but pain her whole life. She blew raising him.”

"The important part."

"Right, the important part."

"Are you saying good for her?"

"Oh, no, of course not," she said, re-engaging those parts of the brain that keep the reptile in check. But after a pause, admitted, "Well, yea, I guess I am." Sometimes the reptile means well.

I call her Maggie and she doesn't seem to mind.

We've fallen into our routine quite easily, now that summers brought all her lovers into town again.

Sometimes I think it's strange how much we have in common. Had I not outgrown my phase of monochromatic formal wear, I'd consider whether I was a black widow myself. But, I think it's enough that we've both singlehandedly devoured the former loves of our lives. Metaphorically, literally -- it makes little difference.

In fact, Maggie is drenched in metaphors, too. Like me, she has a tendency toward clinginess, over-attachment. We try to keep people in our lives without using our words, or their free will. I'll inadvertently use emotional manipulation, or satin sheets - and Maggie, she has her silk - and we cocoon our loved ones in what we truly believe is love... until we realize it isn't. And it's always too late.

Perhaps one of the only details that separate us is her affinity for fruit flies, and my preference for mimosas. 

“Cross God one time, and you will be depicted forever as a bloodied goat man - but I’m the evil one.”

       She crossed and uncrossed her legs.

       Indeed, the young woman across from me was not unpleasant to look at. She was plain looking, mousy even.

       If I had been told that the devil were a woman, my mind would have filled with a vision of a Delilah temptress, forked tongue slipping in my ear while I quivered with waning resistance.

       Alas - no swirling smoke, no hopping henchmen. Dressed in crimson satin, a woman devil of my imagination would convince me to do vile things with whimsy.

       The woman across from me was buttoned down, no cleavage or flitting eyelashes. She looks like a mom. I try to keep my suspicion, any fool could guess that this was naught but a trick. Blue blouse and khakis did not an innocent make.

“Oh, this isn’t my normal form, this is a rental especially for you.”

       A wink, there it was - the trickster was out to play. Ignoring that Lucifer was reading my unexpressed thoughts - I was filled with disgust. This woman possessed, to be used and discarded like some puppet.

“Don’t you recognize me?”

       Staccato laughter burst from her, drawing the attention of the tables around us. It was that laugh that began the chill, which poured over my skin like oil.

“This is my fault, I tend to indulge in theatrics.”

       She began to change. Sallow shrinking greying meat - half of her face ripped up with a violence, showing bloodless flesh - she laughed again, the laughter strange sounding from behind flapping skin. It was then that I saw the tire marks, which crawled up across her chest before me.

“Remember me now?”

       I had tried to forget. Spread on pavement in the dark - I hadn’t gotten a good look. Besides, I had been very drunk.