”I must have died,” I thought to myself, standing in an elevator, listening to “Dust in the Wind” coming out of the speakers above me.

I soon reached the top, and got out, facing an infinitely long corridor; at least, that’s what the sign said. That it was “infinite” might have been an exaggeration, because I reached the waiting room at the end in just a few minutes.

“Infinite my ass,” I said, sitting down on one of the chairs.

“Watch that tongue of yours,” said a voice from inside the office, “you’re in the presence of God.”

“Who the hell are you talking to?” said another, much heavier, voice.

“The new arrival, of course. Who else is there to talk to up here?”

“New arrival? Now? That can’t be right.”

“Well, it is, and,” he paused for a second and then continued with a voice soaked in annoyance, “you said hell, didn’t you?”

“I might have,” said the heavier voice in an overbearing tone. “Why?”

“I’ll tell you why, you big dope!” said the other, in a now high-pitched voice. “I just told the guy out there to watch his tongue in the presence of God!”

“So?”

“Well, how can you expect that he’ll watch his tongue, when you don’t watch yours?!”

“Well, I don’t expect that,” the heavy one said, “so LA-DI-DA!” he mocked.

“You are such a pain in the…” the other one started.

“Ask him to get in, will you,” the heavier voice interrupted.

“Fine!” he said. ”Get in here,” he then yelled to me.

I hurried in the door, and in the room I first saw a little middle-aged man, sitting in a chair in the corner, right of the door, knitting. The other guy, a giant one, was sitting at a desk far across the room, partially smoking a pipe while braiding his long off-white beard. I walked up to the desk very slowly.

“So,” he began, now standing, “you’re dead.”

“How keenly spotted, sir, ” the other guy said.

“Yes, ha ha, Timothy, you crack me up,” said the big guy.

“Are you God?” I asked tentatively.

“Well, yes, ‘The Original Deity’, that’s me. You can call me Tod, if you like.”

I thought about this for a while.

“No thanks, God’s fine,” I said.

“Okay, whatever, ” he said, seating himself at his desk.

“Am I dead?” I asked him.

“Well, you’re not here for milk and cookies,” said Timothy, not taking his eyes of his knitting.

“Come on, Timothy,” God began, “you know that most deadies are confused and nervous about suddenly being dead; that’s why I had the elevator song installed.”

“Ah yes,” Timothy began, “the elevator song, which supposedly helps people. And how many people have actually come out, ready to start their afterlife?”

“About a hundred and twenty,” God answered with a ready smile.

“And how many have come out crying?” Timothy continued.

“Well,” God paused, now looking a bit bothered, “the rest. But they’re fine now. So stop being such an ass; you’re making me look bad.”

Timothy gave a quick smile.

“Oh, you’re handling that very well yourself, sir.”

God gave Timothy the stinkeye, but when Timothy didn’t seem to notice, being deeply engaged, as he was, in his knitting, he soon returned to look at me.

“Now,” he began, “how did you die? It’ll help Timothy do the paperwork.”

Timothy grunted in the corner, and mumbled something about a fat chance.

“Well,” I began, “I was on my way to the bus stop, when a hamster attacked me.”

God looked shocked, with open mouth and everything.

“That can’t be right,” he slowly said, “you’re supposed to die of old age. How old are you?”

“19,” I said.

“Doesn’t sound very old to me,” Timothy said. “In fact,” he continued, “it sounds more like a typo.”

He pointed an accusing finger at God.

“Your typo!” he said loudly.

“Typo?” God said, looking a bit uneasy, but still pretty calm. “I don’t make typos,” he said quietly, running a finger around in circles on the table.

“Sure you do,” Timothy started, “you’ve got the worst penmanship I’ve ever seen.”

God looked at me, with an uneasy look on his face.

“You once made ‘egg’ look like ‘mosquito’!” Timothy shouted. “And you’re right, that’s not a typo; it’s a freaking crime against the written language.”

God went over to pick up his phone and started dialling a number.

“We’ll soon find out, who’s fault it is,” he said.

In a short while, the phone was picked up in the other end.

“Hi, it’s God,” God started.

“Oh hi, baby,” the other one said, and then he started shouting ‘wazzup’.

“Yeah, listen, I don’t really have time for that right now,” God interrupted. “Can you come up here now?”

“Yeah, all right,” the other one said, before hanging up.

“He’s on his way,” God said while putting the phone back.

“Who?” I asked.

And at this point the door blew open and in came a guy, wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and the pants to match.

“The Reaper is in the house!” he shouted while hanging his scythe on the coat rack

Then he continued waddling towards the desk.

“So,” he began, sounding a bit tipsy, “what can the Reaper do for you, baby?”

“Well,” God began, “this guy is dead.”

“Obviously,” Timothy said behind us, still knitting.

“But he’s not supposed to be dead,” God continued, trying to ignore Timothy’s comment.

“He’s not, baby?” the Reaper said.

“No!” said God. “Why did you kill him now?”

“Cause it says right here,” the Reaper said, deeply emphasising the s-sound in ‘cause’, while pulling out a small note, “that he dies at age 19.”

“What?” God said, not believing a word of it. “Give me that!”

God looked at the note he had written about 19 years ago, and suddenly looked furious.

“It says 79, you stupid bag of bones!” he shouted at the Reaper.

“Nice,” said Timothy, “get offensive.”

“Nah, it says 19, not 79,” said the Reaper, sure of himself.

“The hell it does,” shouted God.

“You, of all people, really shouldn’t say hell, sir,” said Timothy, surprisingly enough, without God noticing.

“Here,” he said, showing me the note, pointing to my ultimate age. “What does it say?”

“I think it says 19,” I said, knowing that this wasn’t what God wanted to hear.

“What?!” he cried, looking the note up and down.

“It’s very common, really,” said Timothy, in the tone of a know-it-all, “that one mistakes a 1 for a 7 and vice versa.”

God was looking, well, pissed off, but Timothy didn’t notice and continued.

“This can be helped by drawing a horizontal line right through the middle of the 7.”

God threw his arms down his sides in a quitting manner.

“But I did!” he then cried with his voice breaking up.

“Oh bugger,” Timothy said, not really that surprised, “your penmanship really does suck.”

I didn’t really know, what was going on, but I decided to join the conversation. It was basically about me, anyway.

“Why don’t you just use a typewriter or a computer?” I asked God.

“Well, I can’t,” he began, “cause I have B.A.H..”

“What’s that?” I asked, not knowing what B.A.H. stood for.

God held out his enormous hands, taking a deep breath.

“It’s my Big A…”

Timothy interrupted, shouting something about heavenly censorship, so the A-part was lost to me.

“…Hands,” God said, letting the sentence end in a smile, covering his entire face. “So you see,” he continued, seating himself, “I can’t press only one key.”

“Plus,” Timothy said, “both machines give him the creeps.”

God gave Timothy a piercing look, but seeing that Timothy didn’t notice him, he soon turned to me again.

“Any other bright ideas?” he asked me.

“Well, you’re God, right? So why not just make the writing appear on the note?”

“Nope!” Timothy said. “We’ve already tried that; it’s still his handwriting.”

We sat for a bit, looking at each other, not saying a word, although the Reaper was humming some kind of rap tune.

“Reaper,” God said, trying to start a sentence, but the Reaper interrupted him.

“Yeah, right here, baby,” he said, putting his hand in the air.

“Okay,” God said, looking at the Reaper as if he were a duck in a tutu. “Reaper,” he continued, seeing the Reaper nodding in consent. “You might have mistaken 79 for 19, but how can you possibly miss the ‘is to die of old age, sitting comfortably in a reclining chair’ bit?”

“Well, that’s easy, baby,” the Reaper said, “cause that’s not what the note says,” the Reaper said, calmly, sounding even tipsier than when he first entered the room.

“What?!” God shouted in the Reaper’s face.

The Reaper held his hands up to his ears, squirming a bit in his chair. Maybe he was drunk?

“It says,” he said, slowly returning to a more relaxed position, that he ‘is to die of bold rage, in the form of a hamster covered in hair.”

God looked very tired of it all, when he sat down. The Reaper, however, stood up and continued.

“The ‘covered in hair’ part was easy,” he began, swaying from side to side, “after all, there’s not many hamsters running around all ‘nekkid’ out there. Most of them actually have fur,” he said, as though this was a fact, only recently discovered by him.

He quickly took a bow to emphasise this point, and hit the desk, which sent him right up again.

“The tricky part was finding a particularly fierce one,” he said, trying to regain his balance as well as his consciousness. “Had to go all the way to Cambodia for that one.”   

God was now leaning in over his desk, rubbing his forehead, trying to cope with the drunken Reaper.

“Okay,” he said, “looks like this one was my fault.”

“Oh, you sound like it’s the first time, you’ve messed up,” Timothy said.

“So what now?” I asked. “Are you going to send me back?”

“What?” God said. ”You’re a teenager, who was killed by a hamster, not a charity working nun, who was shot. You’re just not worth the fuss.”

“Oh,” I said, slightly embarrassed.

“But there are many other things I can do for you.”

He took out a catalogue from the left hand drawer, and handed it to me.

“Here’s a list of possible choices,” he said.

I started looking through the catalogue, filled with pictures.

“Exactly how big is the pool, shown here?” I asked him, pointing to a picture of a very nice pool.

“Well,” God said, “that rubber ducky right there is actually a cleverly designed yacht.”

“Is that included?”

“Well, no, that’s a different item.”

“I’ll keep looking, then,” I said, flipping a few pages ahead.

“Is this dachshund really five feet tall?” I asked a moment later.

“It sure is,” said God, sure that I had found something I liked.

“Oh,” I said, “it says you’re not supposed to ride it. What’s the point of having a giant dachshund, if you can’t even ride it?”

“Exactly!” said the Reaper, although I’m not sure he knew what was going on around him.

I flipped through a few more pages.

“And how many scoops of ice-cream would this be?”

“About 9,” God said, looking at the tiny photo at the bottom of the page.

“Now, 10 would have been worth it,” I said, turning the page.

I looked through the entire catalogue, but didn’t find anything of interest.

“Sorry,” I said.

“It’s all right,” God said, putting away the catalogue, “but it does put us in a bit of a pickle, doesn’t it?”

“I have an idea,” said Timothy, who hadn’t really said much, while I was looking through the catalogue. “Why don’t you let him have a world. There are plenty of them out there, right?”

“Yeah,” God said, looking at me in disbelief, “but he’s just a kid; he can’t handle it.”

“I’m sure he can’t do a worse job than you,” Timothy said.

God leaned back in his chair, and started thinking it through. He looked at me a few times, shaking his head, but finally made a little series of nods in my direction.

“Oh, all right,” he said, getting up, “let’s go find a place for you.”

I got up and walked past the Reaper, who had passed out in his chair, and joined God, standing by the door.

“We’ll just have to find your spirit first,” he said, “you can’t be much of a god without that.”

“Is this how all gods are created?” I asked, as we made our way down the corridor.

“Well, most of them, yeah, but not me, I was born as a result of the Big Bang,” he said, suddenly realising that there was a joke in there.

God was looking me up and down, as we walked down the corridor, making me just a bit uneasy.

“You should get some new clothes, too,” he said, while turning the doorknob, “cause that there is rubbish.”

And then we went in.