God & the Breakfast Bill

I slide into the booth in the corner cafe and God looks up from where he's shoveling eggs down his throat to quirk an eyebrow at me.

"Rough morning?"

"As if you don't already know."

He just shrugs and uses the hand not stuffing his face to push a second coffee mug across the table to me. It’s more cream and sugar than coffee; just the way I like it. He doesn't say anything, but I can see the glint of amusement in his eyes.

Smug bastard.

"I heard that," he sing-songs as he flags down a harried waitress for, presumably, more eggs.

I grumble unintelligibly back at him as I gulp down my coffee, forcing myself not to wince as it scalds the my tongue, the back of my mouth.

We sit in silence for a bit as he digs into his second plate of eggs, and I watch people pass by the window. The streets are crowded, packed to overflowing, for a Monday morning, but when I comment on the oddness to God he barely spares the teeming street a glance.

"They're protesting again. Something about another shooting, I think, but I could be wrong."

"You mean...you're not sure why they're protesting?"

"I mean, they protest a lot these days. It's hard to keep track.”

I set my now empty coffee mug down harder than absolutely necessary and the clang of porcelain on laminate draws the attention of a family sitting at the next table. God waggles the fingers of one hand at the youngest, a girl about two, and she gurgles happily.

I clear my throat to regain his wandering attention and he sighs dramatically before turning to me again.

"Isn't it kind of your job to know exactly what they're up to?"

"There's a pandemic. I'm quarantining."

"That 100% does not apply to you."

He pauses then, forkful of eggs halfway to his mouth, before shrugging.

"Well, it should. I'm exhausted."

I sit back in the booth, and I can feel my jaw crack with the force that I grind my teeth together to keep myself from saying anything that might get me smote right here in the middle of the cafe. Then, just when I’ve wrestled the storm of my indignation into something resembling submission, a boy walks by the window with his poster is crammed full of the faces of the deceased, the murdered, the innocent, and my blood boils like poisoned ichor.

"How dare you," I snarl. "How fucking dare you sit there and tell me you're exhausted. You're tired? You want a break? Well, too goddamn bad."

God frowns at me, like a disappointed parent when their child misses curfew.

"Now, there's no need for that sort of language." He glances over at the family next to us. "And in front of the kids, no less."

I choke down the retort that's ready to fly from my tongue and take a steadying breath.

"You have to help them."

God chews his next bite slowly, seeming genuinely confused.

"Why?"

"Why?” I whisper. "They're your children, that's why."

"And children grow up."

I feel my head shaking back and forth with the force of my disbelief. God appears unbothered as he chases down the last bite of eggs with the dregs of his cooling coffee.

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

He groans at the question, no doubt contemplating the irony of it, and his head lolls back on his shoulders for a moment before circling back upright.

"I told you already. I'm exhausted. It is exhausting getting up every day just to put out the same fires from the day before. It’s...it’s endless. And I’ve had enough.”

He slumps back like those few sentences have zapped any energy he has left, and stares listlessly at the tabletop, drawing figure eights with his index finger.

The waitress comes by to take away his empty plate as I watch the most powerful being in the universe play with stray grains of salt.

“You can’t just— they need you. Can’t you see that?”

My voice cracks in all the wrong places. The world around me seems too big and too small. God’s head finally snaps up, angry for the first time since I sat down.

“I gave them everything! I gave them everything, and they have squandered it at every turn,” he spits, and I am suddenly reminded of the meaning of fire and brimstone.

“I made this place for them, and then they destroyed it. I don’t owe them anything.”

I laugh then, my head thrown back hard enough that my neck aches, and keep laughing until I’m hunched over the table crying as my ribs threaten to shatter.

God just waits me out.

It’s not like he has anywhere to be.

“I forgot how self-righteous you could be,” I finally gasp, blinking tears from my eyes, desperate to pull some air into my bruised lungs.

He huffs, looking out the window, and I wonder if he sees what I do. I wonder if he sees the beauty in their brokenness, in the way they refuse to accept defeat in the face of insurmountable odds. I wonder if he marvels at the way they are knocked down into the dirt and squalor only to rise time and time again, grinning with blood between their teeth. I wonder if he can see the kindness that overflows in most of them; the love that they have for one another, stranger and family alike.

I wonder if he cares.

“You owe them everything,” I say, quietly; finally.

He looks back at me, his eyes shining like stained glass.

“What?”

“You heard me. You owe them everything,” I say again, fiercer this time. “Despite everything shitty and horrible in this world, over two billion of them still believe in you. They still crack their knees on the floor to ask for your forgiveness and your love even when you are nowhere to be found.”

I see a bit of shame creep onto his face then.

“And the ones that don’t believe in you? They believe in other things, good things, and they still love their neighbor as their-self, and they are just as kind and deserving as those that do.”

God, creator of the known and unknown universe, sits in stunned silence.

“You gave them life and then you left them here all alone with nothing but some third-hand words to comfort them, to guide them. What did you think they would do?”

This time I’m the one curling in on myself, like a puppet who’s had their strings cut by the puppeteer at the end of the show.

My audience is stiller than stone, as if waiting for the encore. There won’t be one.

The waitress—Marie her name tag reads—comes by to drop off the check.

“Is it all gunna be on one check today, boys, or do you want it split?”

“It’s on one today, Marie,” I say, sitting up straighter in my seat, my backbone rebuilding itself the way it has so many times before when it’s been ripped out of me.

She nods, and leaves the check sitting in between God and I.

He just stares at me, and for the first time since before the beginning of time, I can’t tell what he’s thinking. I shrug on my coat, wordlessly, and am standing before he speaks again.

“You’re leaving the check to me then?”

Anger twists my lips into something ugly, something forsaken.

“I think it’s the very least you can do.”

I only make it a few steps before he calls out to me.

“Lucifer.”

His voice is quiet and full of thunder, and it silences all other noise in the world. I don’t think he’s ever said my name quite like that before.

“What happened between us?”

I turn back just enough to see him before smiling and, despite everything, it still holds some sweet with all of the bitter.

“I guess I was just too human for you.”

I walk away, stepping out into the street, melding seamlessly with the crowd, and leave God, King of Kings, with all of his ruins.