Yahweh’s Revenge of Death

Lazy clouds slung low, a corpulent, stubborn underbelly of the sky slowed to stop, stuck fast to the vault of Heaven. A heavy atmosphere, loaded, laced and ready for some cruel, as yet, unstated purpose, lay over the town.

Those clouds, that sky, a sun obscured, the Heaven smothered the Earth, the town far below.

The only one who knew, knew all there was to know. He was the Father, the Creator. Well, to be exact, he was more of a deputy, an UnderGod, than the real-deal Supreme Godhead.

To Yahweh Jr., the local God, the day moved as all temporal concerns do – as staccato, sudden jolts, quantum steps of unpleasantness exacted on all the occupants of the town. The complete package of harm came from Management up on the seventh floor, and Yahweh Jr. was just the messenger. For the town, the way of the world was played out every day the same way, but Yahweh Jr. felt let down and saddened. How sad? Very sad. He was all powerful but also, frankly, rather depressed.

The town had not chosen a god who was petulant and full of vengeance and wrath; they thought that Yahweh Jr. seemed out of touch, but surely He couldn’t be blamed for that? He was a god, after all. Nobody wants God to wear jeans and a polo and hang around at the bus stop. That seemed far too effable. But the townsfolk had long thought that Yahweh Jr. was too relatable. Where was the mystery?

Because of the local god’s flaws of good character, as they saw them, the townspeople felt free to openly mock the UnderGod. They felt free to drop Yahweh Jr’s name, make shallow chatter. At the start, the talk was sotto voce, under the breath, out of concern for Yahweh Jr. After a week of mutters, the good people of the town were emboldened enough to turn to banter about the UnderGod’s weaknesses and the name became more debased. What had started out as not allowed had turned to ‘not out loud’ and then, just allowed.

Eternal Essence made Yahweh Jr’s dad, the Godhead, angry, unwell, bad-tempered and peppery. Refused the sweet release of death, as your average god knows all too well, makes the quest for the flawless an utter waste of energy. When there’s always another chance to succeed, there’s not much that needs any effort at all.

Just because the Godhead could not enjoy a normal death, however, there was no way he could deny the same to the people he loved. But He had to stay remote, aloof. So he made many more clouds and told Yahweh Jr. to work out a way that anger and annoyance could be managed sans the town’s people awareness of the Godhead’s sadness. They would blame Yahweh Jr.

“You have a funny way to show us you love us,” the townsfolk would rasp as the UnderGod crushed a woman’s lung under a truck, gouged out an eye or set some hapless man’s trousers ablaze.

“Love you,” Yahweh Jr. spoke, as a tornado of cane toads splat across every surface of the town.

At last the chance came for the cruellest enforcement Yahweh Jr. had ever undertaken. The penance came as a response to a flagrant abuse of law, an abuse that had been observed and regretted by the UnderGod. As the local god, he was to enforce the order from even further above than most people knew. The Godhead had spoken and wanted to watch death; Yahweh Jr. was to enable the Godhead to do so. Fortunately, or unfortunately for the people of the town, Yahweh Jr. had a plan.

The order swept across the sky on a roll of thunder that compressed the atmosphere, only to tumefy, pucker and undulate as waves across the grey mantle. The town’s people had expressed words that they were not allowed to say and had therefore broken Godhead Yahweh’s laws. The law was the law – the name of God was sacrosanct and these words were the greatest offences there could be for Yahweh to contemplate, but the law was absolute, all the same.

The Godhead’s revenge, the proof of a remote and aloof Master of all, became real.

One by one, each breath of the town’s men and women would stop dead over the larynx. Those were Godhead Yahweh’s orders. The orders were paramount; no man or woman of the town was allowed any say. They could not speak, for God had spoken. Whatever Godhead Yahweh demanded, always came to pass. What Yahweh Jr. thought was of no consequence.

A payment for the breach must be taken. The Godhead had chosen to exact some germane penalty on the town’s men and women for the breach. And so each Breather collapsed, suffocated by the useless words of apology unuttered, unable to even wheeze through now-frozen and obstructed vocal chords.

They claw at the sky to seek Heaven, then scrabble the ground for Hell.

There was a sequence to the penance that the Godhead Yahweh extracted. At the start of the process, the throat would feel congested and a would cough to clear mucus from the lungs. The lungs would crackle as the human exhaled, the rattle would progress over the course of an hour to a moment of no return as the men and women would struggle not to draw enough breath but expel enough CO2 to make way for fresh breath to enter. Soon after, there would be a sharp glottal stop at the larynx as the folds of vocal chords began to adhere to one another. A sense of dread and fear would overcome all who suffered the fate. Mumbled and muttered prayers for clemency were left unheard.

Yahweh Sr. regretted any offence or hurt caused, but rules were rules and as long as each death passed Code, the Mandatory Standards of Slaughter by Act of God (MANSBAG) had been upheld and the relevant paperwork had been recorded, no appeal was warranted.

One by one, the humans’ unexpressed regrets and the thoughts they attempted to wheeze to Yahweh clogged each and every throat to the death. The last allowed, desperate gasp of the heavy atmosphere served to charge already burnt and corroded lungs full and swollen. When the Godhead Yahweh played a game, the mortals would always lose.

Some almost forgotten arcane rule under the Mandatory Standards of Slaughter by Act of God protected the young people of the town from Yahweh Sr’s wrath. And so seventeen year-old Fern had no way out but to be wrought by the trauma as she watched both of her parents suffocate by words and prayers. She was sure that she was meant to draw some lesson from the knowledge of her mother and father’s death.

The lesson turned out to be Heaven’s to behold, or what passed for Heaven, now that the Godhead had got the death he craved. Suddenly Heaven was burdened by unconsummated hope and the presence of so many beleaguered souls, rendered mute at the moment of death only added to the Godhead’s sadness and worry. The sky has kept the pressure on the town’s outcast, those lucky enough to be able to draw more breath. For now.