The Story of God Page 12

  “Uh huh.”

  “Also, when you lose and are imprisoned, it will be, shall we say … temporary.”

  “How temporary?”

  “A million years.”

  “Much too long.”

  “Fine. A hundred thousand years then.”

  “No.”

  “Ten thousand, and I will not go lower, Satan.”

  “One thousand.”

  “One thousand?! No, absolutely not! That will fly by.”

  “Exactly.”

  There was a long silence; God and Satan stared at each other. God looked irate, Satan was impassive. Finally, he started to turn away. “Punish Babylon yourself, God.”

  God gritted his teeth, hesitated for a second, then called out: “Fine, a thousand years then! But after that, when you are released, Satan, understand that you will be flung into the lake of fire.”

  “By who?”

  “By Jesus—one of them anyway. Not Tanfoot, he’s a pussy.”

  “Why don’t you kill me yourself, God?”

  “Because I want one of my Jesuses to do it, alright?”

  “Because you’re scared of me and always have been is more like it.”

  God was aghast, disbelieving. “How dare—?”

  “What kind of man sends his child to fight for him? A coward, that’s who.”

  “ENOUGH!”

  Silence. Satan stared at God for a moment, then suddenly nodded. “Fine, it’s a deal. We’ll share power.”

  “I specifically told you—!”

  Satan talked right over God. “Since you’re obviously too weak to punish Babylon yourself, I’ll do it for you. I’ll let you imprison me for a thousand years, then go back to hell when your son quote unquote ‘kills’ me. I’ll play dead there for awhile before I come back and we start this whole business all over again, as we have so many times before.”

  God gasped, shocked at Satan’s insolence. “That is an absurd way to—!”

  “Here’s a contract. Sign right there.”

  “What, you drew up a contract?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But this was my idea.”

  They stared at each other in silence for a long, tense moment. Then God seized the pen from Satan’s hand and signed the contract.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The secret deal was made and put into practice. Satan let Babylon have it, which was excellent. As angels watched Babylon destroyed, they yelled down, “Kill her, burn her!” (Rev. 17:16–17) God felt a little bit weird, because they were essentially cheering for Satan at that moment. But it was so gratifying to see that slutty whore Babylon destroyed that God couldn’t help but join in the cheering: “Kill her, burn her, kill her, burn her!” Swordmouth Jesus got ready to swoop down to earth to battle Satan. His blood-red robe had “King of Kings, Lord of Lords” written on it. (Rev. 19:16) That showed confidence, God thought. (Or did it? Would Satan wear a hat that said “Prince of Darkness”? God wondered. Was there something vaguely desperate about it?)

  Swordmouth Jesus looked great flying down to earth, fearsome and righteous. God looked forward to the battle that was about to take place between Swordmouth and Satan. Satan would lose the battle, that had already been agreed upon. He would then be locked up for the also-agreed-upon thousand years. God smiled eagerly, very much looking forward to this fight.

  And then … what the hell happened? Did he fall asleep for a minute or something? One moment, Swordmouth Jesus was zooming down to earth, the next moment Satan’s two beasts were being tossed into the lake of fire! (Rev. 19:20) God shook his head, confused. Had there been a climactic fight between the beasts and Swordmouth Jesus, which culminated in Jesus shooting his sword out of his mouth and causing the beasts to topple backwards into hell? God liked to think so, but he had no idea, and that was annoying. After all this time, Jesus and the beasts had had it out and he’d missed it?

  Apparently what happened is that Jesus had killed all of Satan’s followers with his mouth-sword and afterward had pitched the beasts into hell. Then after that, Satan and Swordmouth had faced off, ready to fight, but before they could, an angel had flown down, grabbed Satan and locked him up for the agreed-upon thousand years. (Rev 20:2) When Tanfoot Jesus saw this happening, he looked at God, confused. “We had him, Father. Why didn’t you let that me kill him?” God shook his head, dismissive. “I have my reasons, Tanfoot Jesus.”

  “But you hate Satan, why didn’t you let that other me finish him off?”

  “You wouldn’t understand, Tanfoot.”

  “What, did you make some sort of deal with him?”

  “Do not ask such disrespectful questions, Tanfoot!”

  “Is it because you need Satan? Because your whole creation is so much about punishment that you can’t do without him?” Tanfoot said, in his high, trumpety voice.

  “Silence, Tanfoot!!”

  Baby Jesus, in Tanfoot’s arms, was crying now, and glaring at God, as if he knew something. Which, of course, he didn’t; he was a baby. The Elders and the eyeball-monsters had also noticed this flare-up and were looking at God and Tanfoot Jesus, uncertain.

  “Are you so weak that you can’t destroy Satan, Father, or are you so cruel that you choose to keep him around?”

  God suddenly lunged at Tanfoot and grabbed him by the throat, starting to throttle him, exactly as he had throttled Moses so long before. Baby Jesus shrieked in terror and everyone else present looked on in shock as God started to squeeze the life out of his insubordinate son.

  “How dare you doubt me, Tanfoot,” God whispered harshly. “I never should have made you. I don’t need you, I don’t need anybody. All you do is doubt me, all anyone has ever done is doubt me and I’VE HAD ENOUGH, I’LL KILL YOU ALL, EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU!” Tanfoot’s face turned red, he could barely speak, but he managed to croak out, “You’re … evil.” Suddenly God felt a hard slam in the back of his legs. His grip loosened, his knees half-buckled, and he wobbily spun around to see Lamb Jesus breathing heavily, crazy eyes glaring at him, nostrils flaring.

  This was not good, God realized; he’d created too many Jesuses and they were starting to team up against him! Wincing in pain, God looked at the Lamb, then at Tanfoot and the Baby. Should I kill them all right now? Turn some sickle-wielding angels on them and chop them to bits? It was a good idea, but there was a problem. God now understood that there was a bit of a “design flaw” in his system: Nothing stayed dead. Sure, you could “kill” things, but because of heaven and hell, everyone basically continued to exist, so what you were actually doing when you killed someone was creating an eternal enemy. God had enough of those already. He didn’t need to make a bunch of Jesuses his enemies.

  God slowly got up, looked at the three Jesuses, took a deep breath. He carefully sat back down on his throne. “I have spoken,” he intoned, hoping that his majestic tone would quickly rectify this embarrassing situation. “I really hate it when I blurt out the truth that way,” God thought to himself.

  Things calmed down for a while. A thousand years of peace and tranquility occurred under Swordmouth Jesus’ rule. By the end of this epoch, it was the year 3016. God was frankly amazed at how many robot-followers he had. Was that a good thing? He wasn’t sure. Most of the humans who now lived on other planets had drifted away from him, so he wiped them out with meteor showers. There were also by now known alien civilizations in contact with earth, but because they didn’t believe in him either, God wiped them out too. “Earth is the only place I’ve ever cared about!” he yelled to no one in particular.

  Swordmouth Jesus had done an excellent job on earth, but God’s relationships with the other three Jesuses—Lamb, Tanfoot, and Baby (who, for some reason, remained a baby)—deteriorated further. They didn’t approve of his plan, that was obvious. God sometimes saw them all conferring, looking at him. He was going to have to deal with all these Jesuses somehow, before they mutinied, which he knew they would do eventually. Could he manage to somehow send them to hell? Even
if he could, and he wasn’t sure about that, was it a good idea? Did he really want to hand a bunch of Jesuses over to Satan as potential allies?

  If only those poor misguided humans who believed in what they called “reincarnation” were right. He could then kill the rebellious Jesuses and make them come back as worms or jellyfish. Obviously, however, these people were wrong. There was no such thing as reincarnation. God found it amusing that so many humans had been so utterly and completely mistaken about how life worked. “But to hell with all of them! Literally!” God clapped his hands together in delight as he thought this. He had a wonderful sense of humor—witty and quick—and he knew it.

  When Satan was released after his thousand-year imprisonment, he proceeded to take over the world yet again, which was—yes, fine, what had been agreed upon—but God was not happy with how it happened: He’d expected Satan to come out of hell and kill a lot of people and (temporarily!) defeat Swordmouth Jesus. That would have been fine. But when Satan emerged from hell—“looking amazingly refreshed,” God fumed—instead of just killing and tormenting people, he tricked them into loving him again. Most of mankind, who had supposedly been so happy and content under Swordmouth Jesus’ rule? Well, guess what, they pretty much instantaneously turned on him and ran back to Satan! (Rev. 20:7–8)

  This was beyond infuriating to God. Swordmouth was his good Jesus, the one he could count on. He’d done an outstanding job running earth for a thousand years (lots of beheadings!) and now people instantly threw him over for Satan?!

  “Why would they overthrow Jesus?” God sputtered in rage. The burning hatred he felt for humans at that moment was overpowering. They were the most hideous, vile creatures he could even conceive of! “Made in my own image,” his mind taunted.

  A climactic battle loomed between Swordmouth and Satan, and this one was for real. Whoever won this fight was going to be the final winner of all time! God knew that Swordmouth would win, obviously, but still, given who he was dealing with, he didn’t want to take any chances. He dumped a bunch of fire down on Satan’s army and burned them all up. Swordmouth then grabbed Satan and tossed him into the lake of fire, where he would remain for all eternity. (Rev. 20:9)

  And that was that.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  It felt almost anticlimactic. After all these many thousands of years, the story was finally over. God had triumphed and Satan had been defeated. Now it was time to judge mankind, punish the wicked, and reward the good. Everyone who had ever died was brought back to life; the bad were tossed back into hell (where they had just been, sure, but now it was final). (Rev 20:12–15) As for the good, God had decided that he didn’t actually want them in heaven with him, so he turned earth itself into a kind of heaven. He dried up the oceans (finally!) (Rev. 21:1) and created a very lavish capital city, New Jerusalem, which was bedecked in gold, crystal, and jewels (Rev. 21:11)—very gaudy and extravagant and fabulous, exactly as God liked it. The good were allowed to live there forever, always happy, never ill.

  It was slightly disconcerting to God that even now, at the very end of the story, there were still foul, unclean people left on earth. (Rev. 21:27) What were they doing there? Why weren’t they in hell, where they belonged? Why were perverts and wizards still surrounding heaven on earth? (Rev. 22:15) Why were bad things so damned difficult to eradicate? “Because they came from you, Father,” Tanfoot Jesus would say; he was always saying bullshit like that by this time. “They are a part of you, and you cannot simply destroy them, you must learn to accept them.”

  God had decided to send Tanfoot Jesus to the moon. Lamb Jesus he had decided to slaughter and eat, while Baby Jesus he had decided to use as a kind of “hostage” in the event that Swordmouth Jesus ever turned on him. (Which there was no hint of, by the way; Swordmouth was his “go-to” Jesus.)

  In any case, Tanfoot was wrong. Evil persisted not because it was a manifestation of God’s nature—that idea was, honestly, completely discredited by this time. Evil came, as it always had, from two places: (1) Satan, who had turned out to be much more powerful than God thought he was, and (2) Humans, who had turned out to be even worse than God had thought they were. (“And I thought they were pretty bad from the start!”)

  Like it or not, foul, impure things continued to exist on earth. It did annoy God, he would have preferred to wipe “bad” out—but it also made him extremely grateful that he hadn’t allowed humans to come live in heaven. That would have been intolerable. To be completely honest, even “heaven on earth” was hard for God to stomach at times. He found himself wondering whether even the so-called good people who were living in New Jerusalem were all that good. Did they really love and respect him? Why should he assume they did when pretty much no one before them ever had?!

  “I need to test them again, and I know exactly how to do it,” God proclaimed.

  “I will put a tree of life in the middle of their city, ha!” (Rev. 22:2) When Tanfoot heard about this, he shook his head sadly and said, “Why are you putting a tree of life where people are going to live forever anyway, Father?” God despised Tanfoot by this time. He barely even acknowledged the question, he simply said, “You wouldn’t understand, junior” and pushed past him. (“Soon you will be living on the moon!” he wanted to say, but didn’t.)

  Looking down, God watched his followers in New Jerusalem worshipping him and he should have felt good, he knew that. He had demanded that they have “God” tattooed on their foreheads and they had and it looked marvelous. All they did was worship him all the time and that was splendid too. (Rev. 22:3–4) But certain things continued to weigh on God:

  1. People were worshipping not only him, and while God was fine with ruthless, fearsome Swordmouth being worshipped, he was not happy to have Tanfoot, Lamb, and Baby Jesus worshipped as, more or less, his equals.

  2. God couldn’t help but worry a little bit about Satan. Why wouldn’t he emerge from hell yet again? God knew he would, and this time he’d be leading a huge and vengeful army.

  3. Even the so-called good humans in New Jerusalem? They’d all turn against him eventually, God knew it. There was something bad in humans and it was only a matter of time before even the good humans began to ask questions they shouldn’t—do things they shouldn’t—think things they shouldn’t. “They’ll probably cut down my tree of life,” God muttered to himself. “Or start having huge homosexual orgies. My creatures are obsessed with cock and always have been.”

  4. Dealing with two and a half rebellious Jesuses was not going to be pleasant. They might even try to fight him, and they were formidable, especially that Lamb. In the end, God knew that he was fiercer and more ruthless, and he would kill them all … but it wouldn’t necessarily be easy.

  5. Even in God’s beloved home, heaven, there were concerns. The sickle-wielding death angels now had nothing to do and were starting to lop each other to pieces. Even God’s beloved eyeball-monsters weren’t as endlessly pleasurable as he had anticipated they would be. “I thought flying eyeball monsters singing to me eternally would be wonderful, but it actually gets extremely annoying at times,” he thought to himself. “Sometimes I wonder if I understand myself very well.”

  It bothered God a bit that even as he was concluding his magnificent communication with mankind (others in years to come would claim to be talking to him, but they would be afflicted with every kind of plague for these claims!) (Rev. 22:18), Jesus was still reassuring people that his words were “trustworthy and true.” (Rev. 22:6) It made him sound so insecure, God thought. Why, of course his words were trustworthy and true, why would that even need to be stated? The very final words of his book pissed God off. “I am coming soon,” Jesus announced. “Come, Lord Jesus,” John replied. (Rev. 22:20)

  And God thought to himself: “What about ME? I’m the one who’s coming soon! Why do you people not understand that? After all this and you don’t even mention me?” God got angrier and angrier the more he thought about it. “I am sick to death of this whole damned thing,
” he thought to himself. “Sick. To. Death.”

  Epilogue

  Before long, it would all fall apart. God would destroy New Jerusalem. All humans would end up in hell.

  God would kill the groveling, useless Elders, snapping their necks like twigs. He would kill all the Jesuses, even, sadly, Swordmouth, who he felt was a long-term threat. In time, God would even kill his beloved eyeball-monsters. The human-shaped one would be the last to go, staring pleadingly into its creator’s eyes as the life was squeezed out of it.

  God would be totally alone again.

  He would wipe out earth, then wipe out everything in a fit of rage, destroying the moon, the stars, all of it—hating it all, wanting it all gone, forever.

  Two things he would find he could not destroy: Water, dark and implacable, which somehow had flowed back into the darkness (almost as if it was not under his control), the sea monster Leviathan hidden in its depths, and hell, teeming with millions of souls who hated him, ruled by his arch-nemesis, Satan.

  Disturbing.

  God would sit in silence for a very long time, brooding, considering.

  Then he would think of something.

  He would try again.

  This time it would be better, he was certain of it. This time his creations would love him. This time Satan would not be allowed to interfere. This time it would all be different.

  Out of the darkness and stillness, God would speak.

  “Let there be light.”

  About the Author

  Chris Matheson is a screenwriter whose credits include Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, and Rapture-Palooza. He lives in Portland, Oregon.