Short Stories From Out There

Another Way of Things

God was tired. Creating the world left him weak. Whenever God was weak, he became male. To conquer and gain was to be male. To capture, absorb, demand, and reach for the horizon was to be male. That was how God preferred it. That was how God was raised. Except for variety's sake, his creations reflected this. When God was strong and content with his holdings, he became female. When God became concerned with the now and what needed doing and the kind of doing that made the now warmer, safer, and clean, God was a she. But now, God needed to be male to get back to full strength. Conquering and belligerent attainment of power and all that led to his full glory was ahead.

Yet, he was more tired than ever before, so God decided to rest. It would only be a day. His creation would sustain itself while he slept and slept he did.

God dreamed. He dreamed of his world and those he created. They moved against him, subtle at first, but more openly with time. A bite of an apple here, a creation of another god there. He tried to wake up but couldn't. Somehow, his creation had found a way to use his power.

Imagination.

He had given a rudimentary piece of Creation to the People for them to occupy themselves during his slumber, but they had taken the small piece and turned it into more. They created more ability to create. They imagined a stronger imagination. They saw God in themselves and in so doing, tapped into his power.

People used that power to make new gods and new rules. They changed the world to what they wanted to see. They abandoned Eden and blamed God for it. They created a being who opposed him: a being of guile and deceit, reflecting their dark nature. However, that being was without a mind of its own. It only existed as a counterpoint to God.

And God grew weaker. God grew smaller. God was about to disappear forever as his world became a universe, populated with stars he never made, galaxies he never conceived, and rules and laws he could no longer control.

In desperation, he left. He abandoned his post and allowed the People to fill it with their myriad dreamings of God. That God became vengeful and trite and strongly needing of worship, like the People who now ran the universe, without knowledge of their power.

God had to undo this mistake. He had to find a way to break their grip on the power. He remembered the one who opposed him and took the cloth of that being and placed it upon himself. He would fight against the God of the People. God finally awoke, not as powerful as he was, but awake nonetheless.

God almost won. He went back as far as he could as the Devil, Lucifer, The Deceiver, or whatever name fit. He brought other beings onto his side. God, or what was left of him after the trip, set them against the People. They stormed the place on high where he slept.

It was a great battle but fruitless. God and his forces were defeated, and as he saw himself sleeping, the People's God pronounced judgment and cast him into the pit of Hell and made him ruler. God now writhes in anger, flailing his rage and disgust at how things are. Souls get sent to Hell, and God creates new and more vicious ways for them to suffer.

God bides his time, whispering in the ears of anyone who will listen, "I am the true God." He does what he can to set the People against one another as he patiently, so patiently waits for Armageddon.