At the end of Stint’s life, he invented sound. His last gift to the universe. Though his inventions were all revolutionary, humans have yet to understand the importance of the things he created. They’re all ideas that exist in the god world; we can’t even begin to comprehend them. “Complex things are easy to invent,” Stint said after he created sound, “it’s making something basic that is difficult.”
Sound was then known as the forty-eighth sense, and to the planet beings like humans, it became the fifth sense. Stint created only the plans for hearing. He left the universe before he got the chance to hear anything.
The manufacturing of sound took months. Millions of workers offered their services for free. Needing to make sounds for every object, they made creations called vocal chords to communicate sound, and objects called ears were made to hear them. They made loud sounds for BIG objects crashing, and shrilling sounds for small objects rubbing together. Every sound all had to be different. Every sound needed to be special/unique, like how every being is special/unique.
On the last day, sound was thrown across the universe. Every entity that existed had the capability to hear. But nobody was allowed to listen until the start of the next day, waiting with earplugs through the remaining hours. It was decided that the next day would be a celebration, dedicated to sound. It would be called Listen Day.
On the start of morning, everyone was allowed to use their new sense. The beginning of a world with sound. They spent the entire day listening to their new hearing worlds, listening to everything and everything, whatever they came across. It was a feast of audio noises. The first BIG celebration in millions of years.
From then on, Listen Day was considered an annual holiday and nobody was to work on that day, every year — though years go by differently depending on where you live in the universe. There were celebrations where everyone would make noise in the gathering areas. A festival phenomenon arose. Eventually, music was invented, and the whole celebration became a music festival, where a non-stop concert replaced the noise-making. And beings would feast their ears to several music compositions, and they would sing.
All over the universe, these festivals are cooking up right now. But my God’s Eyes don’t go far enough for me to see them.
Christian finds Nan masturbating in the bathroom. She’s holding a picture of Jesus Christ. Jesus is hanging dead from his cross. Blood prickles from his nails, from the crown of thorns.
“GET THE FUCK OUT!” Nan screams, throwing the picture at Christian.
Throwing the picture was an act of violence. It was an attempt to explain to Christian her level of anger. It wasn’t meant to cause him pain. But if Nan was using some kind of dildo or any object pretending to be a dildo, she would have thrown that at Christian to cause him both pain and disgust. Getting a smelly dildo thrown at you is extremely insulting too.
Christian steps out of the bathroom with the picture of Jesus Christ. He doesn’t seem to be bothered by Nan’s performance.
He says, almost laughing, “Nan still masturbates to pictures of Jesus.”
Satan hears this, since Listen Day is all about listening. “She’s attracted to Jesus?”
Christian nods.
“Why?” Satan asks. “Jesus is BIG and fat. Why does she masturbate to him?”
“Jesus is obese?” Christian smirks slightly. “She’s obsessed with raping the messiah, got a sick little head on her shoulders. She only knows the paintings of him though. Nobody knew he was fat.”
Satan says, “You know he’s here, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“Jesus. He lives here in Satan Burger.”
“I never saw him.”
“His room says Men’s Bathroom. Haven’t you been in there?”
“Actually, I did see a fat guy in there before. I thought he was a customer.”
“He was kicked out of heaven just like I was, so I let him move in here. Our dad doesn’t like it when we rebel against him. It’s a common thing for kids to do, but God doesn’t accept rebellion from his angel children. After awhile, he banishes you to a place where you can only interact with humans and demons. It’s called damnation when your God banishes you, but it’s not all that bad — I guess.”
“I thought you and Jesus were enemies,” Christian ponders.
“We were, not anymore. Now our father is the BIG enemy. We team up together so that we can take him out of power, to make heaven a more democratic place. Of course, we’re only kidding ourselves. Angels can’t destroy gods.”
“So you and Jesus are friends?”
“Let’s not go overboard now.”
Nan gets out of the bathroom and starts out the door.
“I’m coming with you,” Christian tells her, ensuing.
“Fine,” she says. Incensed.
They go blue, bottomward to Lenny’s autotruck, no Silence but it’s quiet, and Christian remembers her masturbation sequence. He laughs…
“Talk shit and you’re dead!” Nan says.
But Christian laughs again. He doesn’t need to mention anything to be teasing. And he mostly laughs at the idea of Jesus being a large fat man instead of the perfect man that Nan fantasizes about.
I go back to my body:
The bladder is in worse shape than before. I see a large yellow pulsating creature as I go inside my body with God’s Eyes. Neglecting to urinate any longer will give me future urinary problems, like kidney stones or golf-ball-sized testicle disorder, so this blue woman needs to roll off me, or I need to wake her off, or push her off.
I hear somethings crawling in the walls. Rats?
It’s okay, rats in the walls aren’t uncommon for warehouses. Right now, nothing in the world matters except getting rid of my bladder pains, even if the rats are really squirrel-sized spiders. And a spider is the only creature left that scares me, besides the scorpion fly. The pain pounds hell-fists at the surface flesh.
I try to move, but it only makes the pain worse.
The somethings in the walls continue to make crawling sounds.
Eyes to Death’s house:
Gin, Mortician, and Vodka are sitting in a sitting room there, drinking dog tea, with Gin’s living dreadlocks serpenting, jellyfish. They’re waiting to meet Satan’s twin brother, but they haven’t seen him yet. Supposedly, he’s doing business somewhere.
Mrs. Death is there with them, petting her daughter, who has three years. Her other daughter, who has eleven years, is in another room, listening to things that have interesting sounds. Mrs. Death says Death will be back soon, and Gin says that Nan will be encompassing shortly. The word encompassing is a good adjective for Nan
Mrs. Death says to them, “He is out with our son, Jerry Jr., getting some music for listening today.”
She eats from a pretzel-cheese mix, crunchy-crumbs crumble and fill her dressy lap with snacking food.
Mortician says, “Is that Mr. Death’s first name? Jerry?”
She looks up. Her pudgy lips, cherry red lipstick (a child’s brand), smacking at the cheesy pretzel mix. “Oh, no. He was named after me. I’m the Jeri that Jerry Jr. was named after. My husband’s first name is Chuck.
She pauses to choke down a mouthful of martini.
“Our other daughter, in the listening room, was named after him. But we call her Charley. Do you like that name for a girl? I always thought Charley was a cute name, but she doesn’t find it aristocratic enough. She wants to change it to Adelaide.”
“I like the name Charley,” Gin says. Breakfast spasms to the discomforting cold.
“Good. I like it too.” She smiles pleasantly.