Melvin Burgess Stuff

A young man prays in his room.

A priest, new to this game, drawn to the church through prayer.

He has a special relationship with God. So do many; he has no idea how special.

He aks for blessings of course, for hope, for renewal, for love, for peace.

But he also likes to chat. He likes to imagine he is on the phone with the Almighty.

“Good morning, O God,” he says.

He likes to call his friend “O God.” It’s a little joke between them.

“How are you today? But maybe, You don’t have such things as days where You are.

“Maybe You don’t even have how are Yous, a being like You.

“The Being!

“Maybe you always feel the same way.

“Is that Your idea of Heaven, O God?

“It’s not mine.

Maybe you don’t even have any feelings!

But I think you do.

You must.

How else could you have made man in your image?

Or is that just another one of those stories they spread about You?

Even if you haven’t, you had them once, God. Becaue once, you were a man too.

I often wonder about that.

Do you like it, or hate it?

Do you enjoy the feel of the hot Palestinian earth under your feet?

Do you like the taste of olives in your mouth? Or was it dates, or wine? Did you try the kiss of a woman, I wonder, and never tell?

Tell me, God, what do you miss the most?

The sights, the sounds or the tastes of earth?

If you have no body now, maybe these things are denied you.

Or, being almighty, you can have them in spite of no body.

Even so, it must be different.

Surely it’s different, tasting something and having no body.

Well, O God, that’s all for today.

Thank you for an interesting talk.

I hope one day, you’ll join me for a glass of wine.”

Chuckling, the priest puts down the phone to God and goes about his day.

That evening, he comes home, opens the door and finds a man waiting for him in his sitting room.

His heart begins to pound.

“Who are you?” he asks.

The man, young, stubble on his chin, stands to greet him.

“I’ve come for that glass of wine,” he says.

For a long moment, the two stand looking at each other. Then the priest falls to his knee.

“No!” The man steps forward and raises him. “Not that, not here, not now.

“You are a friend to me. I come as a friend. Listen – you tempted me! I want to taste the wine again.

“A glass of good red wine. I miss that.

“Just chat me with me as you always do, only this time, we shall sip good red wine together. And I shall chat back.

“Can you do that for me?”

“I can do that for you,” says the priest. And he goes to the wine rack in the kitchen, and opens his best bottle.

“It’s Australian,” he says, “It cost ten pounds. “It’s the only posh one I’ve got.

“I don’t know how good it is. “I’m not a connoisseur

“Neither am, I,” says God.

He raises his glass. They drink. The wine tastes divine.

As they drink, they chat.

God’s talk is of fruit, bread, wood smoke on a still night. The feel of ripe melon in the mouth.

“It’s tastes and smells you miss the most. I can see without eyes, but to taste with no tongue …

“I don’t know. There’s something so physical about tasting something.

The priest is not sure if God is commenting or boasting.

“And women?” he asks slyly, after a while.

“Women!” exclaims God. “Yes, of course. I miss them too.”

“And yet,” says the priest, “You denied your priests that pleasure.”

“That was one of the Popes,” says God. “You think I would invent physical love and then tell you not to do it?

“What sort of an idiot do you take Me for?”

“A kiss, a touch, the moment of orgasm.

“They are holy things.

“Saying sorry is all very well, but I like people to appreciate My creations.”

The priest nods. He decides that’s one thing that’s going to change in his life, from now on.

When the bottle is finished, God wants another.

And after that, another.

God gets tipsy.

Pretty soon, God is totally Shitfaced.

He’s not much used to drinking.

“I think You’ve had enough,” suggests the priest.

But God has not had enough. God can never have enough.

He gets the priest to open another bottle while He goes upstairs to take a leak.

The priest goes to his slight store. Only white left now, it’ll have to do.

Only the best for God but on the other hand, the Lord doens’t seem to be all that fussy.

Just as he is about to pull the cork, there is a clatter above him.

A crack, a series of heavy bangs. The terrible din of someone falling incontinently down the stairs.

A cry of pain, a series of jolted yells, a floor shaking thud.

Silence.

The priest rushes out to find God lying insensible at the bottom of the stairs.

Panicked, the priest dances about Him for a moment, then he bends down and lifts the head up in his hands.

It is sticky round the back.

Blood.

God’s blood.

“I must ring for an ambulance,” thinks the priest.

But he pauses for a second. He is holding God’s head in his hands.

God’s eyes are half open, blurry, stained. You can’t see anything all that special there.

Bu tin between his hand likes the mind that made the universe.

Everything.

The atoms in their orbits, or is it shells these days? He’s not sure.

The compounds and their impossible variety. The particles, the space. Time.

All living things. All of them!

The vast sun, the endless vast stars. The glaxies. Light years of space.

Light centuries. Light millenia. Vastness beyond all all imagining – except for His.

Galaxies, made of billions of stars, more numerous than the sand on the beaches of the world.

The vastness of it all.

And this only one of countless more universes, rubbing up against one another like kittens in a bag.

Life. Space. Time.

All this he holds between his hands.

The priest rocks God’s gently between his palms.

And it has gone cold.

God has gone cold.

The blood behind the head has congealed so that his fingers are stuck to the cracked skull.

But how? How can this have happened? He paused for a only a few moments.

Just long enough to envision eternity.

Has time warped while God died? Or did he catch a glimpse of something so huge and wonderful that two or three hours felt like a few second?

Or is it more simple. Did Satan skip in behind his glasses and steal his senses, for just long enough for God to die as he held him in his hands?

It makes no difference. The result is the same.

He had the life of God in his hands. He could have saved the saviour of the world, but he was too busy having a religious experience to do the job.

God is dead. And it’s all his fault.

The priest weeps.

After a long time he lifts his head.

“Let’s try to be optimistic about this,” he says to himself.

His mother always told him to look on the bright side.

“A glass can be half full or half empty,” she always said.

“Try to make sure it’s always half full for you.”

And – hey! – this is God, the hero! He’s eluded death before.

True, He had time to prepare and he perhaps He wasn’t so rat pissed – but still.

Closing his eyes, the priest begins to pray.

He prays for an hour or more, but there is no doubt about it.

His friend is no longer there.

He takes out a cigarette and lights it.

Puffing, he looks at the body.

Then he looks at the cigarette.

“I’m going to have to give this up,” he says to himself,

thinking as he does, that life is all he has left to him now.