Armageddon

The end of the world was a disaster. God was so busy carving pictures of his son onto the toast of believers that he forgot all about the coming Armageddon and failed to save his followers. Instead every single one of them went to the same damned hell as Michael Gove, Coldplay and monkey gland salesmen.

However, a small number of people were saved, following an internet leak about the end of the world. Details of the true path to eternal bliss, were posted on the We Worship Jelly website. As a result, 3,472 of the most fanatical jelly eaters in the world were saved from damnation, and not a single other soul.

The first god knew about it was when he was disturbed from his latest toast carving by a raging man with a raging beard screaming at him in a manner than can only be described as raging.

“You call this heaven?” he yelled, “well where’s the jelly man? Heaven ain’t heaven without jelly.”

God was somewhat surprised by this development. He had deliberately planned for the meek to inherit the earth, knowing that he could boss them about like nobody’s business. They wouldn’t be standing there screaming at the top of their voice about the lack of jelly.

There was much more shouting and screaming, with the other jelly-lovers joining in the campaign. Eventually god had to give in, just to shut them up, and produced what became known as the ‘miracle of the jelly’. All manner, size and taste of jelly were conjured up by god’s magnificence, including 20,000 new flavours some of which, it was generally agreed, were even better than peach and lime. ‘That should be enough to keep the heavenly throng quiet for a while,’ god thought.

Leaving the jelly lovers to stuff their faces, He decided to visit His latest work, the Earth, post-Armageddon, in butchered and burnt state. The molten rock that slithered across the earth’s surface reminded him of the fiery pit of hell, to which he had doomed the whole of humanity who weren’t radical jelly obsessives.

‘Maybe I’m not divine’ he thought to himself. I’m powerful, I’m creative, the very universe owes its existence to me, but does that make me perfect, a figure for idolisation?

The jelly debacle wasn’t his first mistake. The boat he’d made Noah build wasn’t big enough for the dinosaurs. His majestic beasts, kings of the earth, simply didn’t fit and were left to drown with the fishes. (that’s something else that went wrong, why did so many fishes drown in the flood?) Noah was most sarcastic. “I’m gonna need a bigger boat,” he said.

And then there was forgetting to forbid lesbianism. That was a real cock-up (well, possibly the wrong phrase). He’d gone on and on numerous diverse sexual taboos: no sex outside wedlock, no masturbation, no homosexuality, no sodomy, no sex on a chair, no sex on Sundays, no sex with your sister, or your sister’s sister, no sex during lent, no doing it in church, no sex in the immediate vicinity of bric-a-brac. He’d filled a whole book with his anti-sex laws and forbidden fruit. Only he’d left lesbians out, they could just lick away unhindered and forgotten by his laws and mores.

It was an easy mistake to make though. I’m a man, thought god, I was thinking about the sexual monstrosities a man might do. Whoever thought that women could be just as obscene without us?

God reflected further on his most recent thoughts as he gazed into the hellish fires with which he had furnished the earth. Those words he’d found himself using: ‘I’m a man!’ What a giveaway. I am the template for a race that made constant mistakes, was frequently besieged by mindless passion, greed and lush stupidity. My genes are the foundation of that mess, a universe conceived in the false vanity of my belief in my own perfection. How wrong I was.

God reflected further on the mad decisions, mistakes, frailties that, looking back, made him seem almost human. ‘Maybe that was my real attraction’ he thought, ‘maybe man’s awareness of my imperfections made me more believable, more real to a sloppy, imperfect race.’

I seem to getting serious, all deep and meaningful, thought god. Maybe that means this piece will be granted a cherry, by the cherry god. Is it sufficiently deep and ponderous? Is it littered with stuff and matter of literary merit and import?

But god’s dreams of cherries came to nothing. He was interrupted by the mob.

“More jelly,” they screamed.

“Jelly, jelly, jelly, jelly!!!”

Bloated and fattened to purple-hued obese immensity, the self-selected chosen ones descended on god, having already stuffed and gorged themselves on all the jelly in heaven they had merely bloated their own eternal, immortal, insatiable desire for more and more jelly.

“Jelly, jelly, jelly, jelly!”

What have I done? thought god. In offering eternal salvation I have created a pack of unstoppable immortals intent on nothing bar their own fleeting candy-coloured desires. Why do I so abuse the devil and his followers, when his wrongs pale into insignificance compared to my own?

The jelly-obsessed mob were upon him, screaming and squealing at him, squawking and barking out their demands: more jelly, new flavours, nicer packaging, and can we have cream with it this time?

And then, all of a sudden, god was no more. He was trampled in the mad stampede, flattened into the steaming lavas of the earth, where his very essence and soul boiled away.

“Fuck, where’s god gone?” The crowd looked around, confused and afraid. Where would their next jelly come from without a god to serve them?

“Let’s go raid tesco,” another of the saved souls suggested and they tore off, taking their rampaging greed wherever it led them.