Chapter Sixty Nine

One hour earlier I was still in the dark. I was afraid to the point of insanity and everything hurt. Everything! Something was pulling at my man parts and I couldn't make it stop.

"God! Why hast thou forsaken me?" I know that sounds overly dramatic, but put yourself in my position. I had run out of people to blame. I had stolen this line from the refrain of a song that Jesus performed when I was in Redneck Heaven. It really got the crowd going.

As I screamed, my arms and hands flailed in the darkness and banged against the walls. I straightened them out and pushed against my prison of blackness. Something brushed the palm of my hand, something embedded in the wall that had a shape and contour. Both of my hands surrounded it and studied it like a blind man reading braille. A slotted screw caught my fingernail. A hard, piercing, nipple-like structure grabbed my attention and I fondled it madly. It started to move upward and then with an earth shattering, mentally devastating, visually crushing buzz, everything went white.

I believed that I had found the great white light that draws all dying souls to heaven. I was at the eye of the Godly beacon that sends warmth and assurance to the frightened and broken dead.

Then, as my eyes began to adjust, I noticed the ceiling tiles.

Recessed fluorescent lighting, the kind that my ex-wife Cynthia felt should be banned from the face of the Earth because the way it made her skin look and because it was created by grinding up the souls of the dead. Right now it was better than the Sun to me.

It's funny how things seem when you're in the dark compared to what they really are when the light switch has been flicked on. I was in a room full of file cabinets. What I thought was a crazy tomb of insanity was actually a maze of double-wide storage chests and I was wedged into a corner created by the Steelcase file cabinet company.

I looked down and saw a human hand on my crotch. I recognized the class ring. It was Louis' hand.

"Louis you fag!" I grabbed the arm, below the wrist and it let go. I found the partially open file cabinet with the name "Tooth, Louis" typed on white cardboard inserted into the identification slot. I stuffed the roaming arm inside and shut the drawer.

Curiosity caused me to open a few more of the cabinets. They were filled with body parts. This was the place were all the lost limbs were waiting. I was thinking about my father and the countless organs and pieces that had been taken from him before he passed away. His file cabinet must have been enormous.

I maneuvered my way through the gray, unorganized maze until I found myself in a large, even grayer room of office cubicles. It looked like the worlds most boring insurance headquarters. It was very much like the accountants office of Foote, Carp, and Thor that I'd worked for so many years.

There were hundreds of work stations, each one with a computer and family photos on the desk. There were staplers and boxes of paper clips neatly arranged on top. The only thing missing was the people.

My heartbeat was all I could hear.

Among all of the desks that I passed, one had a screen saver of a small, bushy plant engulfed in flames. As I got nearer to it, I could hear the computer making the crackling sound of a fireplace. Something about it drew me to sit in front of it.

The screen cleared and an instant message screen from Yahoo came up.

God#1: Marty!!!!!

The visual message was followed by an audible. "Ding Dong!"

I answered.

C.Martin: Who is this?

God#1: Marty, it's me, God! :)

C.Martin: Really?

God#1: Of course. Can't you read my screen name?

C. Martin: That really doesn't mean very much, you know.

God#1: But it says right there.. God. Who else would have an ID like that?

C.Martin: This is IM chat. About a million other people.

God#1: That's why it says #1 , so you would know it's the real God.

C.Martin: Anybody can do that. How is a rational person to believe this is really God? For all I know you could be a 14 year old girl named Judy from Ames, Iowa with a terrible sense of self.

God#1: Then your God would be a 14 year old girl named Judy.

C. Martin: If you are truly the Lord Almighty then give me a sign.

God#1: Like a magic trick? I think you know better than that Marty!

C. Martin: Why don't you just appear to me?

God#1: I am appearing to you....via the Internet. Isn't it wonderful?

C. Martin: Why don't you appear to me in your physical form here in the room?

God#1: I'd like to but the room's not big enough for me. We couldn't both fit in there.

C.Martin You're not that large, I met you when I visited heaven. You looked pretty average to me then.

God#1: That wasn't me Marty. That was a guy that I let pretend is me sometimes when people need a little encouragement or a good scolding. He is actually a television executive from CBS in Chicago, Illinois.

C.Martin:That wasn't God?

God#1: Oh good lord Marty! Did you see his shoes?