The Other Before God

God woke when he felt the stirring of a foreign presence in his limbs. He discovered the paralysis the moment he tried to rise but failed. No amount of straining or grunting helped shift his deadened weight against it.

‘It’? It had been some millennia since he had created the universe, and at that absurdity he scoffed. There can be no ‘it’ unless it was made by me.

But his certainty was nudged aside by the very real immobility his answers fell short of explaining. It did not seem he was paralyzed – there was feeling, uncomfortable as it was.

The sharp tingle and aching stab felt like blood that had ceased to flow, a sleeping leg.

It’s sitting on me, thought God.

The air became cold; he reeled in the idea at once, angry for having allowed such a thought to escape.

There’s nothing there.

He crawled with apprehension; burning, freezing, sweating. He’d never sweated in all his existence, hadn’t known he could. Thoughts thudded in his mind like a bird he’d once watched, flinging itself into the window of its shop cage.

The paralysis only lasted long enough that he couldn’t pretend it was a dream – and short enough that he couldn’t begin to rationalize what it might have been.

The moment he felt it subside, God launched himself free. All around was silence, the stiff dark of the unrisen sun. He felt it was still present.

He called out.

The taught air vibrated with laughter in a voice distinctly not his own, ungendered and mischievous. Where was it coming from?

He demanded to know what it was.

The last vibrations edged their way away until the hush swallowed the sound.

He commanded to be told its identity.

But as the laugh disappeared, so did the immanent pressure, as though the volume of space had decreased as something had left.

Where is there to go? God was confounded. I am everywhere.

God remained still. He felt small with the realization that he was not alone.