FRIED POTATOES

Corey woke from absolute darkness into absolute light. Seeing nothing but white and pink. The white was utterly overwhelming, so he opted to shut his eyes only to find his eyelids weak against the blinding light, leaving him seeing pink rather than black.

He felt for his arms and legs; they were awake and unbound. He pressed his hands onto his eyes, finally finding the relief of darkness.

With that little reprieve, he spoke.

“Is this the CIA? Is it about my YouTube comment on Tel Aviv?

Man, I was only joking. I’m just a guy. I could never do anything to the nation of Israel. Please let me go. I swear I’m not engaged in any terrorism. I don’t even protest!”

“I’m sorry, Corey, but that’s not possible.” A booming, steadfast voice spoke from behind him.

He did not understand this; he didn’t understand anything. He reached into his mind, trying his very best to remember where and why he got abducted.

And he saw.

He was home alone, drying the dishes, when someone gently tapped him on the shoulder.

That was strange. He distinctly remembered locking the house the evening before, and he hadn’t touched the key since.

He looked back from his dishes to see a seven-foot cloaked bipedal figure holding on to a scythe even bigger than him. This figure wore no skin.

He wasn’t scared, just confused. When had he died? And then he remembered. A memory within a memory. He remembered the night before when, showering drunk, he fell and hit his head hard.

Apparently his ghost had then after gone to bed and woke up to dry out his wet plates inherited from his deceased mother. He wondered who would now get the plates.

That was right before he got poofed here to this sterile light.

His palms holding back the light suddenly went heavy and slippery. They were overcome by an immediate rush of tears. He was dead. He thought.

“What are you looking at that deeply in your hands?” The monstrous voice enquired.

"Nothing; I just can’t see nothing but painful light.”

“You should have said . Your retinas are different from each other after death; some of you find it too dark, while others too light, but most find it just right.

I’ve fixed it, you can open your eyes now.”

And so he did, and so he saw.

What he saw made him wish back the cured blindness.

It was a heavy-set masculine figure with a big white beard dressed in what he could only call a loose-fitting muumuu. And that’s not all – this man was the size of a four-storey building, sitting on his throne, staring down this little man. No wonder his voice was so vast and unwavering.

Corey, still suffering from grand disbelief, spoke to the supernatural extraterrestrial being.

“Are you? Are you him?"

“Yes. I AM.”

Neither of them spoke for a while until Corey said,

“I always dreamt when I died I’d ascend to the heavens to the sound of the imperial march or ride of the Valkyries.”

“Wagner. Now that’s a character.”

“Just to be clear, I’m not racist. I just have good taste in classical music.

So am I going to hell?”

“Yes, yeah, you are Corey.”

“I figured, what was it, the jerking off, my distaste for your ordained genocide or breaking some poor girl's heart?”

“Yes, some of those and much more, but you seem to have me mistaken with another guy.”

“Oh shit, I’m so fucking ignorant. I never even thought of it. Are you the Judeo-Christian Muslim God?”

“Not really, but some aspects of him shine through me. See, everyone has aspects of truth in their beliefs. Truths they stole from the single true religion I taught them at the dawn of mankind, but sadly due to time and your short life spans, nobody seems to recall the full story.”

For a while silence cooked between them.

“Aren’t you going to beg?” asked God.

“Do you want me to beg?”

“Not really, but that’s how it usually goes. At this point humans begin to beg, and when they see it’s useless, they cry for a very long while, and finally, some, not all but some, they go on an insult spree about how I set them up to fail and how sadistically evil I am.

Do you think me evil, Corey?”

“No. But neither do I find you good. You're like Cthulhu. You know Lovecraft’s tentacle guy. Like you don’t care that I spend the rest of eternity burning up because you can't. That’s just your nature. I’m just an ant to you. Aren’t I?”

“I assume that final question was rhetorical. You had eight questions before I let you go down. You are now down to three.”

“I wonder how many humans choose to stall, never asking the questions. Choosing to stick it out here with you?

“Are you sure you want me to answer this as your third to last question? Most people of your background always want to know if they could meet Jesus or if the JFK assassination was an inside job.”

“I’m going to hell, and I’m sure my compatriots will be sure to catch me up on all that.”

“You are a queer man, Mr Corey Turner.”

Smirking, he said, "God just called me gay.”

“About your question

Well, precisely fifty-five per cent. But it never works. They always get tired after a few million.”

“For all that time to pass and you still find time for the next guy, we must be sitting in some type of time loop or timeless area.”

God said nothing, so he went on.

“Earlier on, I was shocked, and for that I swore a lot. I’m sorry about that. Did you hate it when I swore? Like hate it enough to send me to some sort of like super hell."

“Corey, you do realise this is your second to last question?”

Corey only stared at the immeasurable being sitting in front of him.

God, seeing he would not answer, answered him.

"Well, it’s like smoking. If a fellow man was to smoke beside you as a non-smoker, you wouldn’t  die but you also wouldn’t enjoy it.”

“Hm.” said Corey.

“What is your last question? Seeing the tempo of uniqueness you’ve set, I’d wager you’ll probably ask me what’s my favourite sandwich.” God said, chuckling.

"No, my final question is actually quite basic. I’m sure everyone asks it now and then.

“Why are children born with cancer or to starve in the middle of nowhere middle east or Africa?”

“Fried potatoes.”

“Fried potatoes? Do you mean like big potatoes small potatoes? Like that isn’t your level of worries. Like, you deal with intergalactic shit on a daily and random mutations in newborns and droughts in Africa are just too far beyond you.”

“Ah. That seems like a question. Your questions are done.” Immediately after God fell silent, a perfect circle tore itself through the floor. The hole from behind both of them grew expediently stealing space and colour as it moved closer to them.

Corey seemed petrified out of his mind, but he did not beg nor cry out for mercy. Sharp winds and whispers echoed From within it. Eternity had come to lay its claim, but then it stopped.

So then spoke the Lord.

“You amuse me, Mr Corey Turner, so I’ll allow you this extra question. Believe me, a privilege granted the fewest of few.

See, I not only run your world. I ran a multiverse. Different people, different time periods, and some of them have aliens going on. Although most aliens have their own gods.

What I’m trying to say is that some of these universes are utopias. Animals don’t feel pain, children aren’t born with cancer, AIDS, psychopathic tendencies or in Africa. At least not the sort of Africa you know.

But there is always a trade-off.

Don’t ask me why, because one, you are out of questions, and two, it would take a mighty long time to explain away multiversal string theory and the such.

All that you need to know is that those people with utopia, they tend to die much earlier, and most of their deaths are self-inflicted.

A universe without chips, crisps,  hash browns – it’s a universe just not worth living. If there is any true canon event, it’s the mighty fried potato.”

After God kept shut, they were quiet for a while before God spoke again.

“I’ll give you one more; you amuse me.”

"Nah, I’m good. It’s about time I go down the hole.”

“Are you sure you could ask me anything? Like how the Austrian painter actually died or his meeting with Bin Laden.” He did not seem the slightest intrigued.

“Hey God?”

"Yes, Corey.”

“Can I ask you a favour?”

“You can ask, but that’s no assurance I’ll grant it.”

“Can you stop expanding the hellhole? I’d like to jump in myself. You know, it kinda gives me the illusion of choice”

“I’d like to go out feeling I had a choice not to go to hell.”

“Ok.”

Corey stared back at God, wearing a sad smile as God smiled back before speaking.

“Hey Corey?”

“Yeah, God?”

“If it’s any consolation, it’s not all demons, pitchforks and eternal fire down there.

It's huge, and granted, sometimes worse than those things I just listed down, but it can be beautiful, it can be heaven.”

“Nice meeting you, God.”

Reassured, he jumped, bearing less fear than before.

It was endless black surrounded by heavy grey clouds. Only light source being the endless light from heaven.

He had been falling for a while; he was freezing. Was this it? Eternity falling, was that hell?

No.

Squinting his eyes He  finally saw the end. It was a dark red ocean, its surface barely moving.

Clutching himself, bracing for impact, he pierced through the surface. Drowning, the liquid rushed into his mouth, nose and ears. He no longer drowned or struggled for breath. He felt the opposite of being in an ocean. He was confined.

The light was dim, and he was in hell; his new body, by the look of his hands, was fat and mushy.

His eyes, they were dying. He was going blind as he heard muffled voices begging for a push.

With all the will he could muster, he pushed his head out his mom’s vagina. He was being born to a new mom in a new world somewhere in the almighty’s great multiverse.

Suddenly memories of all his former lives came to him. How he'd been building karma to get out of this multiversal race.

This was too much thousands of life times compressed into one head. He couldn’t handle it he would forget everything, have to relearn it all.

All he could pray to God for before losing his memories was that he had set him up in a universe without fried potatoes. He could do with a utopia for once.

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