The patient

Rosario was sitting at her desk with nothing to do. She was twenty-five years old and had just graduated as a psychologist. It had been a week since she opened her private practice, and she was still waiting for her first patient.

Then a child showed up and explained that he was God.

Rosario didn't hesitate.

The child appeared out of nowhere; the place was empty, and in the blink of an eye, this little boy was there. He levitated onto the couch and reclined comfortably. The clock's hands stopped, and the psychologist realized that the world had ceased to turn; a dove suspended in the air on the other side of the window was irrefutable proof that all of this was real.

"Call me God, that's what you people have named me," the child repeated.

He had reclined with his hands under his head and was fidgeting with his feet. Rosario stared at him, wide-eyed and dilated pupils.

"God is a child," she thought, "a child of about ten years."

There was God, with red hair and freckled cheeks. Rosario recalled the typical Hollywood clichés: God looked like an Irish lad. In her bewilderment and confusion, she spoke mechanically.

"Why have you come?"

"I hate my parents," he replied, furrowing his brow.

"Your parents?" Rosario hesitated, "Did you just say parents?"

"Yes, my parents. Or did you think I was born from an egg?"

"Why do you hate them?" Rosario asked, still too surprised.

To ask this simple question, the woman had to kick through the tangle of thoughts in her brain about what she had just discovered: God had parents.

"They're stingy," he grumbled. "They let me create my first universe, and I'm not complaining about that; it was great. But now they won't let me destroy it."

Rosario felt like she was suffocating. Sweat beaded on her forehead as if the office had magically heated up. She managed to swallow, and her stomach settled back into place.

"Destroy it?" she said in a low, almost apologetic tone.

Her clothes clung to her body as if they were a second skin. Her heart was pounding completely out of control.

"The Big Bang was fine, the dinosaurs were awesome, very bloody but with golf ball-sized brains. They would never amount to anything, just simple predators. That's why I wiped them off the map. I thought you guys would impress me, but you haven't. I'm tired, tired of waiting. Humans aren't taking the next step. They're as useless as the rest of the intelligent beings I've scattered throughout the universe."

"We need more time," Rosario interrupted. Nerves had made her forget her profession. "There is goodness in our hearts. I know we will come together and find peace."

"Unity is fine," God sighed, "but what's this about peace and goodness? My older brother is on his third universe. I was amazed at the intergalactic wars. That's what I want. Is it so difficult? They've only given me two insignificant wars among you. I'm super bored."

After speaking, he yawned.

Rosario wanted to say something, but she couldn't find the right words. Were there even right words? The child was more of a little devil in short pants than a God who loves destruction.

"I'm going to keep bugging my parents, and I'll put an end to this boring universe," he smiled, and his teeth shone with extreme whiteness.

"No!" Rosario shouted, though her refusal came out as a whimper. Sweat stung her eyes, her temples throbbed, and she began to feel nauseous. She thought she was about to faint.

God watched her with a furrowed brow.

"I think I'll see another psychologist. You're not professional at all. You look like a corpse with how pale you are. It's not like my problems mean anything to you."

God was silent for a brief moment and then burst into laughter, the laughter of a little boy who finally understands his own joke.

Then, just as he had appeared, he blinked out of existence without a trace.

Rosario tried to stand up, but the office started to spin around her, and she fainted. When she woke up, she was sitting in front of her desk.

"It was just a dream," she told herself.

She glanced out the window; a dove was flying outside. Rosario laughed in relief; she felt foolish.

The ground began to shake, and an incandescent glow enveloped everything...