It’s not your fault, Son. After all you went through, they still didn’t follow instructions.
“It didn’t work. There’s too much suffering. What can we do?”
Shut it down. Just like I started it 6024 years ago.
And God said, “Let there be no light.”
And there was no light.
Harry Demarest wrote this story.
“I’ll never forgive you,” the man whispered so only God could hear his voice. “I’ll hate you until the day I die.” He stared at the massive cross looming over him, his eyes filled with rage.
Then he forced a smile, turned to face his congregation, and started the sermon.
Ethan Noll works in a welfare office and writes as often as possible.
The architects studied the plans for the umpteenth time. There was something missing, but what was it?
Gabriel turned the drawings upside down and then Michael turned them sideways. “This won’t work. It will fall apart,” they both agreed.
“Just get on with it,” sighed God. “It’s not that important.”
Patrick Mc Loughlin is an English Language Teacher in Ireland who dabbles in writing. He also dabbles in painting and music and someday hopes to do more than dabble. He lives in the west of Ireland, where it’s hard to concentrate.
The heart of the great scientist had beat its final defiance. The ganglionic sparks had begun their exodus from the bland greyness confined to the mind which the world had so treasured.
Their energy encountered an embrace beyond description.
“So what’s this crap about me not existing?” the Creator posed.
Irish writer Perry McDaid lives in Derry under the brooding brows of Donegal hills which he occasionally hikes in search of druidic inspiration. He even finds it on occasion. And sometimes he barges in on subjects a tad too soon… where angels fear to tread.
The eggheads cracked it, opened a door to the afterlife. Come and go as you please. They chose me, figuring I had plenty of questions for the Big Guy. They didn’t know I’d need an appointment. Didn’t know I would have blown Him off if I had one.
“Hey, kiddo.”
Andrew Walo is a freelance writer and a hunter of wild paragraphs and domesticated monsters. He resides in Norfolk, Virginia, but he lives for jacket-weather. More work can be found at AndrewWalo.com.
God awoke in a restless state. Something was not right yet. God watched Adam and Eve frolicking in the garden. Perhaps one more creature, something simple and resilient, something that would survive the humans if they actually managed to blow everything up.
God slipped two cockroaches under the garden gate.
Robbie Gamble identifies primarily as a poet. When not obsessing about image and line breaks, he works as a nurse practitioner caring for homeless people in Boston, Massachusetts.
The hospice nurse used an eyedropper to slip more morphine beneath his tongue. The whole problem was God. God’s absence throughout. That summed it up. God at the beginning, pressing dimples into your chin. God at the end, sliding his hand over your eyelids, saying, Shush. That’s enough for now.
Over the years Bob Thurber’s work has received a long list of awards and prizes. His most recent book is a collection of brief stories titled “Nothing But Trouble.” His first novel, “Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel,” was recently rereleased. Visit BobThurber.net.
On Christmas morning,
in the darkness before dawn,
all the stars shifted,
arranging themselves
into sharp, crisp letters
twenty miles high,
spelling out
“God Knows.”
Every creature saw the miracle
in the language they understood best.
And those without language,
millions of children among them,
saw it better than anyone.
Over the years Bob Thurber’s work has received a long list of awards and prizes. His most recent book is a collection of brief stories titled “Nothing But Trouble.” His first novel, “Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel,” was recently rereleased. Visit BobThurber.net.
To Church on a wet and stormy day in November. Father and daughter together.
On the way there, an oncoming truck rushes madly around a sharp curve – hydroplaning.
Head on crash. Trapped for hours.
Days later, the daughter wakes. “Where’s my Daddy?”
“Gone.”
Alone, the girl wonders, “What of God?”
Kimberly Hausbeck wrote this story.
About to drink her non-alcoholic communion wine, Jane thought she was certain of exactly two things.
God loved her,
and
God is in the details.
However, if both those things were true, why did her husband leave her at the altar to be with Greek Leon from the HR department?
John is an English and Creative Writing graduate who splits his time evenly between writing, reading, and procrastinating. He very much hopes that one day the burden of reading his work will be taken off his family and friends and placed onto the general public.