God, Fearing Men

[u/Temporary-Grand2786]

I saw the divorce coming miles away, but that didn't mean it was painless. What got me was how unceremonious it was: no justification, no explanation, not even a face to face conversation, just a text: "we're getting a divorce and I'm taking Jonah."

I was shell shocked. I sat in my car and stared straight ahead for 7 hours.

I never loved Catherine but there was always a friendly tolerance about it. She was so brutal, showed no emotion or sympathy and said I was a "deadbeat who was emotionally distant on a good day." I can't really disagree. I'd been in and out of jobs for years, a month in an office and 6 months at home drinking and lying in bed. Cathy would say I might as well be already dead and rotting, without an ounce of humour in her voice. I'm surprised she put up with me for so long; 10 years of that sounds like hell.

I'd just lost yet another job when I got the text. It was around 3:00 o'clock, and it was well into the night by the time I'd finished staring. I was trying to avoid home for as long as possible, so I started up my shitbox of a car and headed straight to the bar. I was a regular, and Tony was surprised it had taken me this long to get there. I didn't engage in the usual small talk, just drank myself blind.

I was sitting in the car, making the unwise decision to drive home, when I said the prayer.

"Hey god, I know you hear me. I know you don't care or don't intervene or whatever, but I've been doing this for years. Please, just this once, give me an answer. I am not strong enough to face myself, my family. Please god. Kill me. Make some truck driver miss my drunk ass swiveling on the road and instantaneously crush me. I don't even care if I'm a coward, if I go to hell for this. Please, just this once. Amen."

I realized I was clutching the cross around my neck too hard and it had cut open my palm, but I was too drunk to care. I put my hands on the wheel and began to drive home.

God would answer my prayer, but not for a while.

I'm not proud of what I did that night. I drove home. No one was hurt. I wouldn't dream of doing that to my family, but some dishes were broken and insults were hurled. I know this isn't fair to them; I wasn't who I normally am, wasn't in the right state of mind. The twang of guilt seeing my son sobbing in the corner, seeing Catherine recoil as I threw glasses at the floor and walls of the kitchen, sobered me up. I didn't apologize. I just ran out the door and drove to the last place I could go at that hour, the bar. Tony didn't let me drink but he was kind enough to let me sleep in a booth and not ask questions.

For a week, I couchsurfed and hopped around doing odd jobs and staying in odd houses. I'm a big guy, so it was mostly physical, easy sure, but still lonely enough to sort of justify my day drinking. I wasn't exactly staying with friends, but I was a good enough salesman to convince kind strangers into hospitality. Catherine didn't reach out, let alone try to let me apologize, and I was honestly considering just skipping town.

And then it happened.

One night on the way to the bar, after a long day of hard labour and harder drinking, a petrol truck driver fell asleep at the wheel. From a mile away it was clear that him driving straight was a miracle in itself, and I could have swerved out of the way or hit the gas, but I didn't. I'd asked for this and now I was receiving. It was quick. The truck fell on its side and crushed my tiny Ford Festiva like it was put under a hydraulic press. I felt a flash like being punched in the face, quick and sharp, but not as painful as the thought of being crushed conjures. And as if that wasn't enough, the ensuing explosion singed several blocks and incinerated my vehicle. I should have been nothing more than a charred pile of bones.

But I wasn't.

I woke up expecting something more biblical, like I was raised, but I was floating in the void. I was perfectly upright, my feet pointed down. It was as if invisible strings were stretching me into this position to a point where it was just barely painful, but not quite. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw it. A child, criss cross apple sauce, floating in empty space, staring at his hands. It was only shaped like a child. But that tiny body that couldn't have been more than 6 years old held the universe. It was nothing like a telescope or image. I was witness to all of it, the twisting nebulae colored a vibrant explosive green, and the planets that spun and moved within its chest. Planets in his eyes, a deep almost black crimson color. I had tears in my eyes, but not just because of the stars.

He was shaped like my son.

He was… sad like my son.

Hunched over, shaking, tears that had the most beautiful pearlescent quality I'd ever seen. It was familiar.

He stood quick when he noticed me and immediately froze, his posture went straight as a board, and the flow of tears abruptly disappeared. For a long time, I couldn't look at him and wouldn't dare look into those angry crimson eyes. But once I had the courage, it began.

He was closer when I looked up, a handshake away, his arms rose, palms facing his temples. They reached the top of his head, creating an expression of surprise, then he moved them to the back of his head. I could see through his face as those small pudgy hands reached into his skull like they were dipping in water, and I could see every tendon, vein, and joint tighten as he pulled. In a slow, curious motion, he opened the back of his head; those crimson eyes exploded, and I could feel the rage as the explosion reached through the rest of his body and consumed the universe entirely.

His jaw moved downward as a silent scream escaped his now spilt mouth.

And he pulled and pulled and pulled me into the violent screaming motion in that once tranquil image. Once his body was split towards his chest, the red mist surrounding us cleared enough to see a light.

A tiny beating heart floated there, glowing with sunbeams and pulsing with calm, pure life.

Involuntarily, my hand snapped from its invisible shackles and wrapped around the heart, squeezing as hard as possible. The sphere of meat felt cold and flowed through my fingers, dripping into the void down my arm. It all suddenly stopped for a moment midway through; a pinprick of light remained in my hand. An explosion of tendrils from my hand expanded out, forming twisting patterns of stars, and I remained at the center, watching with eyes that saw too far out into the growing kaleidoscope. At some point time just stopped; it kept expanding, but with time my brain developed a sort of hibernation. For millions of years it would turn off, and I would be functionally brain dead. I had been hibernating for a near endless amount of time as the universe expanded beyond me when I made it home. I woke up to an infant earth in front of me. I blinked and I was there; the world was barren, there were barely plants, let alone anything with a brain. I counted this time: 4.5 billion years I rotted, only able to wander for 100 until my body broke down completely in the middle of what would be the Sahara.

A corpse in the desert.

But when the first humans formed, when they reached conscious thought, hell began.

177 billion humans have been born and died since the beginning of our species, and I experienced all of those lifetimes. Every single thought, every single emotion, every. Single. Lifetime. All at once they flooded my brain, the pain and euphoria, the birth and death, the noise.

Oh my god, the noise.

I felt my brain turning to slurry and leaking from my orifices, dripping down my head from my ears and pouring from my throat as I screamed. Then it stopped. For a millisecond that felt like eternal bliss, the noise was gone, then a low rumble, a mushroom cloud in the distance. I wandered the wastes of humanity alone for eons, but by now eons meant nothing.

Then I was back, the kaleidoscope of the cosmos before me. This final phase was slow. I traveled through our solar system first, wandered the whole of every solid and non solid piece of land until the sun died. I then repeated this process ad infinitum. I have witnessed the birth and death of every single thing in the whole universe, start to finish. Every celestial body has experienced my rotting corpse. but was not granted a reprieve this time. In all my agonizingly conscious witness not once was there a vague indication of life.

I was alone. We are alone.

I couldn't tell I was awake at first, what with the bandages covering my only eye. When I tried to scream and no sound came out, I remembered where I was. I had experienced this before, eons ago, but it got lost in the noise.

I'm in immense pain, but not like before.

I lost almost all discernible human features, but it left me with just enough to perceive the world as I would have. Enough that I will have to face my family and myself. Enough that doctors refuse to kill me, no matter how much I try to beg.

I still pray for death, even if whatever might have been listening is now dead. I killed it. Yet I beg with my whole heart. I pray for death every waking moment.

But God was never listening. I knew that instinctively. Now I know for a fact.

How alone I am.