Where is Your God Now?

God Or Devil

The strangers stained fingertips slid into the boy's hair and pulled his head out of the crook of his father's arm gently. "Can you repeat the question? I don't think everyone heard.""Are you the Devil?" The little boy asked again, this time with new tears streaming from his eyes."Did you learn about the Devil in Sunday school, little one?" The stranger let go of the boy and returned to walking up and down the aisle. The boy went back to crying into his stunned father's sleeve without offering an answer."Are you?" I heard someone else yell, broken free of the spell just long enough to act of their own will.Another shout followed with the same question on its lips, then another and another. I suddenly felt the question rising up from within me, not in my mind but seemingly bubbling up from my stomach. With each time the question was barked out I felt more of an urge to ask it myself."Are you the Devil?""The lying one?""Are you The Morning Star?"These questions weren't being asked by choice. Somehow he was making us ask them, over and over again like a chorus. I shouted my own version of the question over and over again, everyone yelling and shouting - suddenly looking for answers. The stranger raised his hands high above his head as if he was in an old western stick up, then he slowly lowered them with flat palms facing down. A slow and intense shush came from between his teeth, a sound that no one should have been able to hear over the yelling...but everyone could. The room slowly tapered off in noise as his hands dropped, till all the questions were silenced. When the stranger spoke next his voice was even less human than it had been previously, as if some sort of mask was starting to slip away."Lucifer...that poncy little bitch. A whiny cunt who couldn't handle that daddy loved a bunch of apes more than him?" He laughed and stepped back towards the pulpit. He stepped over the pastor who was still passed out on the floor with the snakes circling around him and up onto the stage. "Never throughout the whole time of god and man has there been a creature more worthless and petty than angels, and never has there been an angel more worthless and petty than Lucifer."The stranger spit on the stage, and there was an animosity in his formerly plastic eyes. His bloodstained hands gripped the pulpit so tight I thought he was going to snap the wood from its frame."Lucifer is the ultimate expression of my point. He is just another failure of a corrupt god who cares only about taking from those who worship him. A disgusting fallacy of a creator who sits back and watches his people damned to hell for their mistakes, for the sin he heaps upon them at birth!"The stranger lowered his head for a moment as if he was deep in thought; after a few seconds his arm raised and he pointed a finger at the father of the boy who'd originally asked the question."To quote the great Johnny Cash: God said to Abraham, Kill me a son!" He raised his head, the fake plastic smile returned to his lips.Another gasp rose from the crowd as the father wrapped his hands around his son's throat and began to squeeze. You could see that the father's eyes were filled with protest but his arms moved independently of his mind. His wife next to him started screaming and trying to push him off but the man's grip was so tight, I could hear him pleading with his wife to stop him. She was suddenly raised out of her seat and thrown across the church by some unseen force, you heard the sound of snapping bones as she struck the back wall hard enough to leave a crack in the plaster."God says Abraham's bitch should stay the fuck out of it."The father kept going, even when his sons face had turned nearly blue, even as tears poured from both their eyes, even when the boy's body when limp in his hands. Right there in front of the whole town he killed his son, and we all did nothing but sit and watch. All of us except the stranger, who stood at the pulpit and laughed."Well I think I'm done here." The stranger took his coat from the cross and slipped it back on. He twirled his wide brimmed had in his blood palms for a second before placing it back on his head and jumping from the stage. He landed right in front of the Pastor who was finally waking from his time on the floor. As the stranger once again stepped over him, the snakes began to strike at the pastor's flesh. Over and over again they struck, the pastor's screams of pain mixing with the wailing of those who'd suffered loss on that Sunday morning. The woman who'd lost her husband, the man who'd lost his mistress, and worst of all - the wailing horrible cries of the father who'd killed his own son.If the strangers aim was to test the group's faith in god - or break it - he had likely succeeded with most."You've all been great fun to debate with..." He paused and looked down as he reached the door. "No...Actually, not really..." He looked up towards the crowd again and smiled. "None of you made a single good point!"I could feel the weight that had been placed up the room start to lift. It was as if the stranger was releasing his hold on the room, he no longer needed a captive audience...he'd made his point, or had his fun. In my head questions swirled and as the heavy wooden door creaked open and the light of Sunday morning crept into the darkened atmosphere of the church I found myself unable to hold back from saying something."What are you?!" I shouted towards the stranger as before he stepped through the door and out onto the steps. "What are you, and why did you do this?!"The stranger stopped and looked over his shoulder in my direction. His eyes looked like voids when he was backlit by the sun and there was a genuine madness on his face. I huffed out breathes as if standing and shouting was the greatest workout i'd ever been through, the feeling of the oppressive weight still lingering on my body. Meeting his gaze made me feel cold down through to my bones."I did this because I could..." He turned halfway towards me and it felt as if the whole world vanished and the two of us were left standing in a void as dark and empty as what was set in his eye sockets. He straightened his jacket again and spun on his heel, at first it seemed as if he would ignore the other part of my question - the meat of the knowledge that I wanted so badly and feared so terribly. Before the doors closed on him though, and he vanished to leave the stench of death and weight of guilt over our heads for the rest of our lives he gave me an answer so unsatisfying it made me wish he'd killed me along with the others."As for your other question..." His voice had started to fade as he walked down the steps 

"Such a good question" He said seeming to stop and think of a cryptic response. He snaps, glances to the sky and waves his hand behind his head pointing a finger. As if he had some kind of moment of clarity.

He Takes a paused breath "Your answer my dear God Fearing folk"

The door closes behind him with a large crash...

His voice left behind an eerie echo

"I am whatever you think I am..."