God Complex

They called it "God Complex".

My condition, that is. It really is just an approximation based on third-party information, and while there is proof of it, it’s still something that’s debated.

As I stood on the edge of the highest building I could find, I thought of this term. A phrase that defined my very being, for years on end, simply because I chose to raise my voice one day as a child. I stood on the edge of that building, and the voice wouldn’t stop screaming.

It called itself “God”. It called itself that, because it considered itself among the highest, if not, the highest being in all of creation. It screamed and wailed for me to jump from the top of such a megalith of a building.

My body faced towards the edge of the monolith, only to hear along with the screams of “God”, the screams of the damned. The wind was blowing quite hard on this particularly gray and cold September morning. The sound of such a force pressing against the hardened glass, along with the ringing of “God’s” screaming, created a cacophonic orchestra of chaotic suffering, with no conceivable end in sight.

I was but a tool in those days—a tool for the strong so that they could keep their illusion of power, of control over others. And while I alone cannot say that that is the case anymore, I certainly did not think so when I stood upon that building’s edge, awaiting the forces that be to rip me of life, for the so-called “greater good”.

I stood on that edge, unable to hear, and yet was arguing with myself, trying to find clarity in my decisions. It was an odd sort really, trying to grapple with all of one’s life while simultaneously being goaded into death by every factor around you.

And in the brief moments of trying to hear my own thoughts, I remembered it all.

____________________________________________

I was five when I first heard the voice.

It called itself “God”, and I remember specifically, that it said, “You shall call me ‘God’ for I am the apex of all things and should be treated as such.”

Granted at the time, I didn’t necessarily understand what it was talking about, but I thought it was only in my head. I referred to the voice as an imaginary friend in that sense. As I grew in age, it would start to tell me things about the world and the people around me.

It would say things like, “This world is full of things that can help you, all at your fingertips”, but would then say something along the lines of, “Because you can hear me, I don’t know what will happen to you.” It was that state of confusion that was introduced too early in my life, that eventually led to the voice’s later actions.

Now, at the time, my mother and father were still with me, they both also knew about the whole “God” situation, and they too wrote it off as my imagination, just as I made the same mistake. It was on this day that “God” told me to do something for the first time. “Tell your parents that in exactly two minutes there will be a car accident, and that three people will die in the resulting fire”, it said. “Do this or something very bad will happen tomorrow.”

I told my parents, and they had this look of fear on their faces. My father looked down to me and asked why I would say that. All I could say at the time was, “’God’ told me say it or bad things will happen to me.” And then, just like clockwork, there was a devastating crash in the street, which killed three people, and ended up setting a building on fire in the process.

My parents took me to get a psychological evaluation at the time; a colleague of theirs worked with the government at the time, and specialized in abnormal psychology, so they took me to him out of extreme worry. The tests went as normal as they could’ve gone, and then, just as before, “God” got testy.

“Tell the researcher that the light bulb in the left corner of the room will burst in exactly one minute”, it said. “If you fail to do this, I will hurt someone in the room at random tomorrow.” I told this to the researcher, and he had a puzzled look. I was hooked up to a machine that would measure the activity in my brain, and as I spoke to the researcher, he said that there was a rather large amount of activity, as if I were having a seizure.

And just as the car crash had claimed a building and three victims, so too did the left corner light burst open, and bring shards of glass towards the floor. The researcher looked at me, with the sort of amazed look that you get when you find a large sum of money on the ground. Something that can be used, for your own gain.

And all the while that the foreboding presence of certain consequence was growing in the foreground of my parent’s decision, I heard something else for the first time.

“God” was laughing at me.

____________________________________________________

I was sixteen when she died. My mother, I mean.

I cannot say, nor could even comprehend the sort of hell that my life had been at that point. What had happened was that the researcher colleague that my parents had brought me in to see, reported his findings to his higher-ups, and thus they encountered me.

Soon after, they set new rules for my life and it was at this point that I think I was no longer a child, but a tool.

I was to report everything that “God” told me. Every mutter, every breath, every sound, and they would record it and judge from there. I was not allowed to go to school anymore, nor was I allowed to do anything that harmed my brain. I think after a certain point however, those government agents and lackeys just liked screwing around with little kids and messing with their lives as much as possible.

I was a tool for their purposes, and their purposes alone. And all the while, “God” was getting worse. It grew a lot more hostile in nature, telling me that bad things would happen to me, and everyone around me if I didn’t do what he said.

There were instances where “God” told me exactly how people would die, how brutal those deaths would be, and the longstanding repercussions of the events. It would tell me these things, and then say, “If you warn them, I’ll make those agents torture you.”

It was around the height of these events—all the reporting, the death threats, and the assault upon what I could call a life when my mother died.

It was my fault, or at least, that was what “God” told me.

On this occasion, I was walking in park, during my regularly scheduled downtime. I had two of these every day, one where I was not followed and guarded by agents, and one where I was, with this time being the latter. As we walked through the park, we passed by a mother holding her infant child on the bench.

For a moment, I saw that and thought there was still good things in the world, even if I was not the person to experience them. And then, like clockwork, “God” spoke.

“Kill the baby and the mother in open air of everyone”, it said. “Do it or bad things will happen to you in ten minutes.”

I heard this, and for some reason, that day, I chose to ignore “God”. Back in that time before the death of my mother, the only indication that the agencies and the scientists had that could tell I heard something from “God” was the fact that my eyes would become slightly bloodshot for an hour or two.

The two agents who followed me, saw me stop in the street when “God” spoke to me, and they looked down to me and asked what it said. It was then that I did something worse than keep quiet.

“’God’ said that the baby we passed will have a good life”, I said, with utter fear. “He will eventually become a great scientist who will help the world.”

The two agents shrugged it off, but like the hands of fate and death before me, I felt as if “God” was standing behind me, clutching me by the throat.

“You”, it said. “You didn’t hear me, and now you shall pay in blood.”

I fell to my knees, the agents looking at me. I couldn’t comprehend the intent by which a foreign entity like “God” could have over the mortal plane, but lo and behold, my mother died a week later.

They labeled it as an accidental discharge. One of the was present in my old house, guarding my family when he dropped his gun, which accidentally switched off his safety. When picking it up, he mistakenly pulled the trigger on his rifle, and shot my mother through the head.

I attended the funeral with my father, but those damned agents and scientists didn’t even allow anyone else from my family to attend. I remember during the services, I heard one of the superiors call her a distraction, a hindrance to my “God Complex”.

But just as I watched the casket close, and my mother’s body fade into corporeal nothingness, so too did I hear “God” once more. The day that “God” revealed his true colors, was the same day he laughed at me. The same day he screamed in my mind that it was my fault that she died.

I ran out of the funeral home, and a couple of agents tried to follow me. Due to their strict guidelines about my health, I could run quite fast for my age, and my body was strong enough to keep moving for hours on end.

I eventually lost them after running for an hour, but through all that time, I could not escape the voice of “God”. It would yell at me and laugh. “You killed your fucking mother!”, it yelled. “Ha! You’re going to have to die before you can run away from me, for I AM GOD!!”

I kept running, trying to replace the yells of a furious ‘God” with the sound of my heartbeat, but it was all to my chagrin. “God” would not stop, for it was but a game: to terrorize the mouse into submission. I kept running, eventually running into the same park from the previous week, when I tripped on a loose brick in the ground and fell face first into the pavement.

My forehead burst open with a stream of blood, hitting against the ground. My body was on fire, and all “God” did was scream. “Kill me”, I thought. “If there is a power besides the ‘God’ of my mind, then please end my suffering, once and for all.”

For a moment, as I lay on the ground, my face soaked in my own blood, the world went quiet. Suddenly, I didn’t hear the jeering of a “God” gone mad, and a shadow was placed before me. I looked up, and…

My family was never a religious one. And the fact that “God” was a something in our lives didn’t help that fact. My mother hated that voice for what it did to our lives, but she always had notions of higher beings with mercy on poor souls. She would pray to them when the experiments of those scientists would stretch too far into my psyche and leave me broken.

I looked up and saw someone. They reached out their hand and lifted me up from the ground.

It was a girl.

She was beautiful. Like the moon, unlike any person I had seen before. She saw that I was bleeding, and reached into her pockets, pulling out a handkerchief and pressing it against my forehead.

It what she said that really threw me for a loop. “Are you okay?”, she asked.

Her voice was beautiful, and much more so, it drowned out “God”. It was the first time I had heard silence in so long, and not only that, but to have it filled with the voice of a creature so beautiful, no less.

I stood there, unable to speak, only nodding my head in approval. She laughed a bit and grabbed me by the hand. “Not much of the talking type, I guess. Well, that’s fine, so come with me.”

She walked with me, and I still could not speak, only able to admire the silence that she brought. The agents eventually found me, but when they saw that I was with a girl, they stopped, and walked in the other direction.

I was happy for the first time in a while.

I couldn’t hear “God”, and yet “God” still screamed.

____________________________________________________

Her name was Alessandra.

She was born into a wealthy family and wanted to be someone who helped others. A doctor, specializing in cancer research. She was smart, sophisticated, funny, beautiful, everything that I could ever ask for and more.

But what I loved most of was that her voice could drown out “God”.

Our relationship is one thing I can think of as one of the few real blessings in my life. A time when mercy was acted upon in my sake. We talked with each other all the time, and she hated everything about “God”.

In the following days after the funeral, she came over to my house multiple times, and my father was ecstatic to have her over. It was the happiest I had seen him in a while, and I realize only now, that it was probably because I was relieved for once.

But with every blessing, so too did “God” grow malcontent.

“God” legitimately hated Alessandra, and I could tell. He would always say that if I didn’t break up with her, it would kill her. But of course, after speaking with her for just a few seconds, “God” would be drowned out.

In the years that followed, “God” was getting worse. Its utterances grew more violent, and it got to the point that less of my rights were afforded to me. Specifically, the visor.

When I was twenty, and had been with Alessandra for nearly four years, they introduced a new way of getting words out from “God”. When my mother died, they eventually found out that I lied, and they sought out plans to eliminate any variables that wouldn’t let them hear from the mouth of “God”.

The visor would flash words across in a descending pattern whenever I would hear “God”. The resulting brain patterns would turn into red text flashing against the black coated visor, which was ingrained into my face, covering my mouth.

They gave me a backpack that would track all my vitals, and make sure I never got hungry, sick, tired, or hurt ever again. I could not speak anymore. “God” loved this, even though I could still drown out his incessant noise by talking to my beloved.

Within the next year, “God” caused five wars, decimated an entire country beyond repair, and made a new disease to kill those remaining in the region. And to make matters worse, those scientists and officials followed the voice, all because it was their “God” that let them kill whoever they so wished.

I had two chances to put the visor on if I ever took it off, and on each of those times I would receive an extremely painful electric shock down my spinal cord if I failed to put it back on within ten seconds. If I got past the two offenses, I would be put under an intensive surgery that would leave me blind, deaf, mute, and become a vessel for “God” to speak through.

It became a rather dark time for my sanity, but at the time I still had my aging father, and my beloved. And “God” knew that; it hated that. A broken puppet was all that would fit the hand of “God” and so it tried to break me further, just a short time ago.

The agents were permitted to use violence against me, an order which started only a month before my position on the hallowed edge of the skyline. There were a few of said individuals, who, through their continuous actions, I could tell were only doing so because they were strict orders.

On one such occasion, “God” ordered something that I couldn’t believe.

As I walked with Alessandra down the crowded streets of my familiar city, there were three agents staring down from the rooftops, and two following us from behind. I heard “God” speak, and Alessandra saw. She began to speak, drowning him out.

“God” got very angry this time, angrier than he had been in a long time. It started to scream in my ears, trying to drown out Alessandra. She saw me start to hurt in my head, and so she started to speak louder to me.

“You make her shut up”, spoke “God”, “Or I shall do it myself!”

“God” still screamed, to the point that my head felt as if it were about to pop. My eyes started to shake, and my nose started to bleed, to the point where Alessandra had to hold me in the middle of the street and yell.

“Fine”, spoke “God”, “You asked for it.”

Up until this point, “God” had alluded to a great tragedy; it would be a life-threatening event that would kill everything on the earth, unless I killed myself within the year. And like moths to the flame, the associates wanted me to die.

Red text flashed across the screen, and my heart sunk in my chest as I heard the kill order go out. “Kill Alessandra Pierce, or else David will not kill himself”, spoke the mouth of “God”.

I tried to cover the visor with my hands, but the agents had already seen it all. They all loaded their rifles and were about to raise them up in the air when I rushed her to the ground and tackled her.

They all screamed for me to get off, but I wouldn’t budge. “God” screamed and laughed at the top of its lungs, but I would still not budge. I felt Alessandra’s hands touch my face, around the ends of the handles of the visor.

She quickly removed the visor from my mouth, and locked eyes with me, with tears streaming from her eyes. “It’ll be okay”, she said.

She then grabbed onto my shoulders, just as the soldiers began to fire. Their first shots rang out into the air like thunder, and quickly shot through the small of her back, and through the lower parts of her waist.

I hugged onto her, and threw her into the ground, just before they could reload their weapons, and then felt the electric shock being delivered. It felt as if my entire body were being lit on fire, and I quickly put the visor back onto my face. Once I did, the shock stopped, but my body still burned.

As I rose from her body, still holding onto Alessandra, I could hear “God” laughing like a maniac. “You’ll never be able to save her, you damned idiot!”, it said. It wanted me to die trying in this moment, and only now do I recognize these things for what they are.

The agents above me and behind me ordered to let her go, and return home, but I wouldn’t budge. Instead, I scooped her up in my arms, in clear view of their sights, all the while “God” cheered, and they screamed for me to let her go. I mustered together what little energy I had left and ran as fast as I could between the traffic in the streets.

As I ran, they spread their fire across the whole perimeter of the street. Multiple times, their bullets grazed my legs as I ran to safety, trying to cover my beloved as best I could. Finally, when it seemed that I could escape from their gaze, and ran into the nearest alley that I could, and dropped to my knees, still holding onto my beloved.

She was bleeding quite a bit, but if I got to my father’s house in time, we could treat her. I wasn’t going to take a chance going back to my home, as the agents and the authorities would probably be there to riddle her body with more bullets.

I got up, even though I felt like my body was about to give out from the pain and blood loss. I ran in the direction of my old house, to my father, if he could help at all.

As I sat on the front porch of my father’s house and looked out on the night sky’s glow across the field of grass that lay before me, all I could feel was emptiness. My existence, my life, all of it brought my beloved into harm’s way.

I could think of nothing but my next move in preventing her from being killed. “God’s” orders were still in effect, which meant the agents would be coming soon. I had to move fast in the coming moments, and if I faltered even a bit, then it might be the end for the both of us.

____________________________________________________

My wounds were still healing, and “God” would not silence, but I was ready to kill someone if I had to. My father used to be a doctor, before I was born. He quit from the professional setting after my birth, and we lived off his contributions to medicine, which afforded my mother to not have to work, and him to have enough knowledge to treat anyone close to him.

My father walked out onto the front porch where I was sitting and sighed with relief. “Man”, he said, “You are lucky all the damage was to her left kidney. Other than that, the wounds somehow missed every other important part of her body.”

“That being said, I don’t think her recovery will be so peachy.”

I could not speak, but my father knew I felt relief in that moment. He sat down on the porch with me, a bottle of liquor in hand, placing it in the space between us. He went back inside and grabbed two glasses and some ice.

“You need a drink after what happened to you today”, he said. I motioned to him that I couldn’t because of the visor across my mouth. He quickly motioned away from the bottle and poured himself a glass.

We sat in silence for a moment, looking up at the night sky and the glow of the stars. “She’s going to need you to help her in the coming months”, he said.

I looked at him, but he still stared up at the stars. “Recovery can be tough, especially if you were shot enough like she was. She was lucky to not have been hit anywhere important or deadly, but it will still have rocked her.”

My heart sank in my chest at that very moment, knowing that my beloved would suffer more after “God’s” orders.

“Was it him that said it? That ‘God’ son a bitch or whatever it calls itself?”

I couldn’t nod my head because I knew “God” would notice it, so I moved my eyes up and down as if to replace the nodding.

“I thought so. I know your mother died because of that ‘thing’ as well. I also know that that ‘thing’ tells you to blame yourself, or that it’s your fault, but it’s not son.”

“I was wrong son”, said my father. “When we took you in, and got you all examined and stuff, I thought you had a gift. That voice ain’t no gift, but a blocking point."

I grabbed a piece of paper from my pockets, and wrote down, "What do you mean? A blocking point to what?"

"Relief", said my father. "Happiness. Anything that would help you enjoy your life, really."

I looked up to the night sky, and could hear "God" denouncing my father, saying, "That son of a bitch better stop talking or I'll change the order to kill him."

All I could do was sit there and listen to the contrasting voices, each arguing for their own opinion in my life. My father stopped for a moment, and then asked of me, a simple request.

"When your woman in there is all healed up, leave. Go somewhere else. A different town, a different state, a different country. Anywhere but here, son. You could even leave now, and I'll give you everything I have left, and you protect her with your life. Go outside, find a nice hill somewhere, settle down, look at the sky; live a life, instead of dying like a guinea pig."

I turned over the sheet of paper, and wrote out "What about you?"

"Don't worry about that right now", said my father, staring me in the eyes. "Consider it one last good thing I can do for my boy. And if they kill me, then so be it; I am your father, and I won't ever let you down again."

He grabbed me by the head, and brought me close to his mouth, covering my eyes in a shroud of darkness. I heard a rustling in the bushes, and then I heard my father in my ears. "Listen up, you fuckin' psychopath. 'God' or whatever dumb name you gave yourself. For twenty-three goddamn years, you poisoned my son's head, you killed my wife, and shot down that poor girl. So, I dare you to come after me you sick piece of shit, because even if you kill me, you still lose!"

I could hear "God" growling within the confines of my head. It was furious that my father was calling him out, and within mere moments of hearing the rustling of the bushes, I knew what was to happen.

Just as "God" realized, so too did it speak aloud "Kill William Barlowe or David will not die."

I quickly removed the visor as fast as I could, trying to yell out to my dad, but my vocal chords had not been used in a while. All that could be let out was a hoarse whisper, saying, "Please, RUN!"

But just as the many deaths enacted by the hands of "God", my voice was not enough to save the life of my father. The agents shot him down, the ringing of their salvo deafening all but the malignant yelling within my innermost thoughts. His blood covered my face, and I immediately dropped the visor on the ground, slowly filling with only shock.

I didn't want to see it, but my eyes would not close, nor my head, turn away. The agents decided not to shock me for taking off the visor; a rare sign of courtesy, after committing such an act of violence against me. But then, just as my mother had died, an accidental flip of the switch still sent the signal for punishment.

The shock was so much stronger this time. That combined with the shock of previous events, left ringing in my ears, along with feelings that I still think the word "pain" cannot register. As the electricity flowed up my body, I felt the hand of death upon my throat, as if its eternal stranglehold upon my body was growing with the energy of their twisted and controlling machinations.

I quickly faded from my body, and fell to the ground. Everything turned black, and the world around me fell to the dark of the void. Even then I was aware of what had happened: my death via electric shock. And all I saw at the end of everything, was nothing. The void, and all of me that was left.

Sweet, glorious nothing.

____________________________________________________

They revived me seconds after, and I awoke the next day. They had put my beloved in a hospital to recover, but I was not there. I was atop the highest skyscraper in the city.

Because in the darkness that came to me unto death, I saw something. A glorious sight that could only be achieved through absolution. My face still carried remnants of my father's blood spatter. I didn't wash my face, simply because I would need my father there.

I would need my father with me when I decided to kill "God".

As I stood atop the edge of that building, listening to "God" screaming in my ears, and throughout my entire being to jump in order to "save everyone", I thought of everything. I thought of my mother, and how she tried to save me from harm's way. I thought of my beloved, and how her sweet voice could fill the room with the quiet I so yearned for. And I thought of my father, who still laid down his life so that i may feel any sort of comfort in what little I could call a life.

I stood on the edge of it all, on the border between the living world and the abyss I had seen in the previous night. As "God" would so scream into the vastness of the sky, "Now is the time for action."

I moved my hands along my face, removing the visor for one last time. I then removed the backpack that sustained my vitals and readied myself for what was to come from my actions.

I had always had a creeping suspicion that the backpack had some other alternative purpose, but until then was too afraid to take it off. After taking it off, I then realized that it was the same device that administered the shock from taking off the visor. And so, as I stood in the wind, forced to listen to the screams of "God", I felt no longer the pain of unending tension.

I cleared my throat, and used my voice for the first time in a long while, saying, "Hey."

"'God'. Listen up."

"God" still screamed, but I could tell I got its attention, as even it hadn't heard my voice in a while.

"A year ago today, you issued an order saying that if I didn't take my own life, then a disastrous catastrophe would unfold. The end of the world, as you so put it. For the longest time, I always wondered what you meant by that."

The howling screams of the wind and "God" built up to a cacophonous level now, as I presumed that "God" was getting angry. They were in sync, as if coming from the very same source, but I was unafraid now.

"For the longest time that I can remember, I could always hear you, even if I couldn't understand you. You were always there in the back of my head, just waiting for your chance to shine, huh?"

It still screamed; in fact it was growing louder, but there was now a tinge of worry and anger to what "God" would yell into my mind. The wind was growing stronger now. "I've seen you kill so many people who didn't deserve it, and seen even more suffer because you seem to enjoy seeing the ants burn, I can assume."

"I'm tired of it all really."

"Yesterday you killed my father, and nearly killed my wife. You have, up until this point made my life the hell that no one else can see. You killed my mother for caring. You have done such awful things to so many, and for what? Just to be seen?"

For the longest time, it had felt like I was talking but not really saying anything. As if I had always been the puppet who spoke the voice of "God". But it was when I faced near and sudden death, when I saw everything around me crumble, and felt the rage of "God" that I found something I hadn't seen before.

A large grin furrowed itself upon my face, one such that even "God" could notice and yelled louder.

"You know, it's funny. Yesterday, I died. The agents and the doctors who treated me said that I temporarily lost consciousness, but in truth, I know that I was dead on the ground. And do you know what I saw when I was separated from you?"

"Nothing."

"Absolutely nothing. And it was beautiful. There was no noise, no constant ringing in my ears from your voice. No suffering, no fear, not a single thing, really. Just me and the void of it all."

Its voice was growing harsher, with messages like "If you don't die, everyone will suffer", or "She will burn because of your insolence foolish child". But I did not care anymore. I was smiling with a menacing grin across my face, for I had become what "God" was.

"When I was in the dark, I knew that that was God. Not you, who covers itself in blinding light, calling itself a savior to man."

"You have been around me my entire life, and you are one of the reasons for why I am the way I am today. I am the sociopath you made me to be."

Its screaming faltered for a moment, as if stunned by my statement. It was true, nonetheless, that I had become sociopathic by seeing the worst that a being like "God" had to offer.

"I wouldn't be standing on this ledge if I weren't one, now would I; I wouldn't be renouncing you for what you are, would I?"

Just as I had shed my visor, and grimaced with delight, so too had i shed the former version of myself who would indeed tremble at the thought of defying their precious being who called themselves "God".

"Do you want to know something funnier? When I died yesterday, I gained clarity on everything that I needed to know for myself. And I have come to a single conclusion."

"You're no 'God' are you? Why, you're nothing but a parasite, right?"

In an instant, the voice that was screaming at the top of its lungs for me to jump to my death, was instead choked by the very same hands of death that I had felt around my throat moments before. For the first time in my life, I heard the voice of "God" fall silent.

"I thought so."

"I knew that when I died, that when my body fell silent, and when I had time to think on matters, that something was off. You want me to jump so you can take over my body. Dying normally doesn't do it, but self-inflicted death is the key, correct? Like jumping forward in a line, if I die normally, you go with me, but if I were to give up control, then you would be front and center."

"God" was still choking on his own words. I had killed it in this moment, knowing fully well what I would have to do next. "What's wrong?", I said. "Why, just a minute ago you were so talkative."

"So hey", I said, a smug grin forming about my face, "Here's the deal now. You're never going to say anything that harms people again. No more kill orders, no more diseases or wars. No more suffering; in fact, you will become a force for good in this world. You can do this, or I will make sure that no one ever hears your damn noise, ever again."

The parasite continued with its growling once more, but I held the upper hand for the first time in my life. I had become the monster that "God" had created, the psychopathic controller who wielded the hands of the almighty, and all I wanted to do was to make it shut up.

"Hmm. It seems that you still misunderstand." I said this, and all the while, I let out a laugh while talking, all the while "God" was growing more and more desperate. "When I say that no one will ever hear you again, I mean that I will comply with the orders that are given to my the government, and the scientists who track me constantly. I will follow their agenda to the very tee. And in doing so, without that pesky little visor on me... well, let's just say the only way you can talk is if I allow you to."

The wind howled now louder than the voice that decried itself to be "God", and for once, I knew something I had never known before.

The concept of relief.

I walked down from the building, "God" screaming with agony in tow, a different man. I would be on my way to see my beloved later that day, with the news that I had conquered "God". I would soon send in my regards to the agencies, the government, and the multitudinous researchers who would hear my agreeance to their policy. They would accept it with grace, and much more so, with suspicion.

I sit here now. On my porch. I remember it all, in fact, everything, much more now. My beloved is healthy, and I am the thing that is to be feared now. I am the sociopath that "God" made, and I intend for it to die with me.

The wounds across my mouth always bleed. A stark reminder of what I sacrificed to get where I am today. They cut deep, but when I smile, they show all of my teeth. My wife says it's beautiful, but I think it's horrifying; just the way I like it.

For what is more frightening: a murderous, vengeful "God" who controls people on whims of maleficent grandeur...

Or the man "God" fears, whose smile burns with psychosis?