“What’s that?”

The little wooden mask sat on top of a cheap IKEA side table. An odd assortment of baubles - necklaces, charms, cheap plastic flower leis, and the like - hung about its head and obscured its carved features. In front of it sat a magpie’s nest of offerings - subway stubs, cereal box prizes, pieces of sea glass, bobbleheads, skiball tokens, spider rings, and leftover change. Three candles illuminated the shrine like a tiny temple ensconced in junk.

“His name is Ku.” His lone priestess said solemnly.

The concerned college roommate raised an eyebrow. “And what are you doing with him?”

“He’s my tiki god.”

“Your what?”

“My tiki god. These are his offerings. It’s finals week.” she added.

“You study your ass off and you’re setting out tiki offerings?”

Adding three ropes of candy to the collection she bowed and touched the bulbous, ugly nose. “Ku helps.”

“So he’s like what, a god of wisdom?”

“War, but he’s reforming.”

“You’re not serious, right?”

Shrugging, the priestess continued to sit and meditate in front of her altar.

Courtney flounced away with a scoff, leaving the small room for the shared kitchen. She had meticulously cleaned and spot-checked everything for her friends coming over that evening. Sure, it was finals week - but who cared? She’d studied enough.

As she yanked open the fridge to check for potential hor’dourves she spied the small strip of notepaper held up by a magnetized bunny. The grocery list for the week included the usual - milk, pasta, hot pockets, granola, apples, sandwich meat, bread, and...what?

Closing the door, she squinted to make out the scribble at the bottom of the list. “Hey...Tanya?”

No answer.

It looked like it said “sacrificial goat hearts” but that couldn’t be right, could it? She shot another worried glance down the hall. Still no movement from Tanya, who supposedly sat in front of her altar praying for A’s. Snorting, she yanked the fridge open again and shook her head. What a prank. Like her little altar offerings really included bloody organs over plastic and artificial sweeteners.

Courtney’s friends arrived in a steady trickle between seven and eight that evening. They were loud, as was their music, and they stayed up past one in the morning when campus security arrived due to neighboring complaints. Tanya’s bedroom door remained shut all evening. Courtney forgot she had wanted to study, however she figured it wouldn’t matter anyway. Tanya always got good grades, with or without supernatural interference.

~

The following morning Courtney dragged herself to the fridge again, yanking it open and digging around for the last container of creamer for her coffee. With a yawn she nudged the door shut and noticed a small red line on the grocery list.

The word “goat” had been crossed out and replaced with the word “virgin” in bright red ink.

Scoffing again, Courtney went back to the coffee maker and dressed up her morning Joe in a clean white suit of milk and sugar. As she finished she turned to place the creamer back in the fridge and collided with Tanya.

“Oh - good morning.” She stumbled backwards, nearly tipping her mug.

Tanya’s bloodshot eyes stared back at her. “Morning.” she said tonelessly.

“Want some coffee? There’s a fresh pot.”

“No.” Reaching past her, Tanya pulled out a small bottle of vitamins from the cupboard overhead and then shrank back. Without another word she exited the kitchen and trotted back towards her room.

Taking a deep breath, Courtney returned the creamer to the fridge and yanked the grocery list off it. She had no patience for Tanya’s passive aggressive games. As she tossed the list in the trash she picked up her coffee mug and headed for the couch, taking a sip.

~

The police arrived at the apartment an hour later, along with the ambulance. Two kind looking orderlies hefted Courtney’s body out on a stretcher, after covering it with a blanket. Nothing seemed amiss, but somehow Courtney’s heart had stopped and no one had managed to revive her after her roommate called it in. They collected her body as the police officers collected Tanya’s statement.

One of the officers looked past Tanya to her bedroom, where her little Ikea-mounted altar sat. “That’s an interesting set up you have. Who’s that guy?”

Emotionless, she looked back at her tiki. “That’s Ku.”

“Ah. God for good grades?”

“War,” she said with a curiously pleased expression. “But he’s reforming.”

Just as worlds before it have ended, Earth too lay in ruin, scorched and cracked into an unrecognizable rock. The ground was barren of life, the sky was clogged with ash, and the water was murky with filth; a planet uninhabitable to all those who used to thrive there.

But Earth had not always been this way. Once lush and full of life, with people walking amongst other species like brothers, living off of what the good Mother Nature had provided for them. However, as it goes in most stories, humans became greedy, and began to kill their brothers and sisters by the thousands in order to profit from their deaths, to build, to evolve, to destroy.

Society grew and factories began to spit filth from their bellies, polluting the sky and the water that housed millions of animals seeking refuge from the humans. Corpses riddled the ground, ecosystems began to wilt underneath the rot of the humans, and still the people kept on building, willingly unaware of the hurt they were causing.

Mother Nature watched all of this happen with a sad smile, but did nothing. She could not, for humans were just as much of her children as every other animal was. So forlornly she watched, tears creating floods and sobs creating earthquakes.

But, as they usually do, humans persevered and continued to build, creating structures that scraped the sky and houses that dotted the once pure landscape like ugly zits upon nature’s face. The sky grew darker, the forests grew thinner, and then species of mouse in Australia became the first ever to go extinct.

Like a chain reaction, this triggered a culling, and one by one different species of animals began to drop off the face of the earth. Mother nature was joined by animal after animal in the heavens where she lived, and with every bit of company she gained, the angrier she grew. He tears were no longer wept out of sadness but out of rage, erupting volcanoes and releasing disease from the depths of the earth. Yet humans continued to destroy, and mother nature began to plan.

It was only a short, few years later when the last species of animal, a breed of frog, was wiped from the planet. No one noticed, no one cared, but when Mother Nature noticed her child, that precious little amphibian, seating on the arm rest of her throne, a change was enacted in her, twisting her core right down to the bone.

Her mind became warped, her inside ugly, and with a scream of unadulterated fury she unleashed her hurt and her anger upon the Earth. Flash fires riddled the countryside, horrible diseases ran rampant, and deadly storms swept the face of the planet, doing the job that Mother Nature had given them. Now it was the humans turn to be culled, now it was their turn to suffer, and now they could watch as the empire they built atop a pile of innocent corpses was destroyed by the very land they had shaped it on.

No more was Mother Nature a kind god, a giving god, but she would always be a just god. She delivered justice in the form of destruction, and no longer were people marveling at her kindness but instead screaming fearfully at her wrath.

No longer was she idle, no longer would she sit by. Once, she was the god that everyone worshipped, but now, she was the god they deserved.