A Meal with God, the Devil, and a Corpse
A Meal with God, the Devil, and a Corpse
By Ocean Boudreau
God spoke down to the woman in the doorway,
“I am no dreamer; I am god-defying and lost just like you.”
The woman replied,
“I am mad, man-hating, and all-loving like you.
I have taught myself everything I know and yet they still credit you.”
God leans against the decrepit dining chair and flicks a dying lighter, the woman breathes in the smoke of his cigarette.
“I picked you up, piece by piece, scrap by scrap. Your teeth were wedged within the back of your throat, my hand too large to pry them out. I can still feel myself crawling after you, and the guilt crawling after me.”
The woman, reduced to a mere girl, sits across from God. The radio sparks and sizzles before dying out completely.
“Can I beg to be forgiven? Forgotten or forlorn? What is more generous of a god than to let rest his creation? Did you not create my soul in your image? Will you not help me in an act of your own self-loathing?”
The woman begs and pleads. God remains silent.
In this room, let no sympathetic person enter, let no remorse materialize henceforth.
You are God. You are asked for a second chance, yet your mouth is empty and your stomach is full.
You are the woman. You spent your 13th Halloween alone, in your room. You wished to be out adorning a costume; instead, you are locked inside confinement by your regards. Do you choose to leave? Or do you suffer in knowing, preventable agony?
God pours himself a glass of warm, sticky beer. God does not look at the woman with kind eyes.
Sometimes, God is the face of the apocryphal father who sins as frequently as his creations. Sometimes, God takes the face of the young daughter in the doorway. Maddened and with a voice of the contrarian.
God does not take the shape of your mother, but he will regard himself as your creator.
The Devil enters the room with a fork and knife. He eyes the woman with an insatiable hunger. With malice, he feigns interest in the woman, pulling a discarded dining chair next to her and sitting down.
He tells her, “Take all of me! Take all of me until I am gone—all but on your lips and until my blood and yours interact.”
The woman is afraid. The devil bites. He pulls chunks out of her flesh from his teeth and spits them out on the table.
“I tell you, become closer to me.” The Devil poses himself as a savior.
The Devil’s face twists and mutates into the form of the woman’s lover.
“Now we have grown; metamorphosized into vague configurations of things we swore we would never be!”
The woman watches the lines divide and the uniformity shatter.
The woman fills her plate but is not hungry. God passes the Devil a bowl of stuffing. You watch as they stare back, your blood coagulated deep within the old, ratty carpet. You do not wish to close your eyes and travel elsewhere, the inexplicable heartthrob released from her cold, dead eyes is almost calming. The flesh of what once was a beautifully crafted face is now ripped apart and hanging by a thread at your jaw. The woman touches it, it feels like she thought it would, only warmer.
One last time, does the woman attempt forgiveness? Eyes silently plea at God for salvation, only she is met with the familiar, unforgiving ignorance.
In every version, you are the corpse. You are a lost, unlikeable, meretricious figure. Only through losing your body—metaphorically and physically—have you learned the extent a human can cling to their moral humanity.
Converse with God: distaste your origin.
