Whip-it god

I found God in a whip-it.

“What do you mean it isn’t real?” I asked.

From under a bushy brow, He said, “I made it up!”

I was sitting across from a big guy in nothing but a dirty, white kimono with white whiskers dusting his face. When He introduced himself, I knew Jeremy wasn’t lying. These whip-its were fucking God.

He was waiting for me to respond like a dad does waiting to reveal a dad punchline.

“So you just invented Hell?” I said.

“Hell ya!” He said. “I invented everything.”

“You’re just in my head.” I said. “I’m just cruising on this nitrous, bro.”

“I’m in your head as much as you are. You’re making me up as much as you’re making you up.”

I was too high to taste that chicken. We were in the walk-in freezer at the Chic-Fil-A down the block from my parents. I leaned against the metal racks filled with freeze-fried food blessed by the barefoot dude sitting across from me. All I could think of was how they must not let pedicurists passed the pearly gates.

“I thought Jeremy was fucking with me when he said this shit makes you see God.” I said, rolling a spent whipped cream can between my hands.

“Well now, Jeremy’s Presbyterian. They’re a hospitable bunch. He knew he was recommending a good time.”

“I’m Atheist.” I said.

“Dude, me too!” God said. He fist-bumped the knuckles of my can-holding right hand. It wasn’t consensual. “I don’t answer to anyone. It’s like, I’m my own man, you know. I don’t need any higher power dragging me down. Anything left in that can?”

A Godless God was my kind of God. An Omniatheist God. An OG. I tossed him a new can from the shelf behind my head and said, “Here’s a fresh one, G.”

We whipped some more. We whipped-it good.

“So, why’d you make up Hell?” I said, and now I was so high I was pretty sure we were floating on sunny clouds under a clean blue sky.

“People are weird,” God said, coughing up cream like an amateur. “Been saying that since I thought ‘em up. Man, now that was a bender. Almost seven days… You would’ve loved it. But ya man, weird. They don’t do shit they don’t wanna do, and what they don’t wanna do could fill a book. I started telling people to write all the shit they didn’t want to do down so they’d know there’d be trouble for fucking each other up.

“Shit got old man. I had to babysit ‘em so much that one day I was fed up. I was like hey, you guys do you, I need a fucking vaca.”

This was all lining up exactly with what I’d learned in church. I learned that being an alter boy in a Sunday congregation of 500, you could chug a liter of wine without anyone noticing. With a belly full of Holy Franzia, I learned pretty much anything anyone in a robe says sounds good.

“So you just let all these people into heaven? Like no matter what? Even rapists?”

“Especially rapists! “God said, white cream now caking his white beard. “They’re some crazy mother fuckers. All the people who do shit they think they’ll go to Hell for, they get up here and think I’m fucking with them. They think I’m the devil Ashton Kutchering them and so they just chill, waiting to get fucked. They’re really the best behaved bunch on this side of the clouds if you ask me.”

“So, what. They die and get up here and you’re just like ya come on in?”

“Well no it’s not that easy. There’s a bit of a catch,” God said.

Of course there was. “A hundred Hail Marys or something?”

God looked like he’d gag. “Nothing like that. You ok man? No, I make them pick a house. One named after whichever sin killed them.”

“The fuck?” I said. “Why?”

God looked glum. “What do you mean why? Why’d I make you guys up in the first place? Shit’s boring out here. All my other planets are dusted, bro. Thought I’d try something new.”

“That’s dumb,” I said.

“About as dumb as sitting in a freezer when you’re too high to get up and let yourself out, ya.”

“Well what about babies. They don’t sin their way to death. When they get up there they don’t even know how to not shit themselves, let alone choose a House of Heaven. They’re babies.”

“Maybe their bodies are babies, but their souls aren’t.”

“I don’t think that’s right. Maybe you were on another bender when you had people write this down. I think your guy you put down here died so our souls weren’t like sinful or some shit.”

God furrowed. “No I don’t think so. I think I know what I had people write down. I’m God.”

“Nah man, you’re an idiot. People don’t have souls. You can’t make a whole human out of a baby when you didn’t let that baby go through life to become who they were going to be. Babies can’t leave earth with any experiences they didn’t already have, and that’s almost nothing. So everyone’s just ageless up there? Sexless, ageless, vanilla souls? Maybe you are the devil, because that’s what Hell sounds like. No one would be able to pick a house if you took away their humanity.”

God smiled glibly. “That’s the whip-its talking, friend.”

“No, friend .” I said. “You’re the whip-its talking.”

I came to with Jeremy waving ammonia under my nose. My head was pounding, my lungs ached, and I knew I never wanted to meet that part of me again.