Gods

I felt her stare before I saw her. It happens from time to time and I can tell before I so much as raise my eyes to look.

"It can't be," she said, "David. It is you, but you haven't aged. Haven't aged a day."

I raised my eyes, though I'd only gone under the guise of David once and I knew it must be Silky. I was intrigued as to what she'd look like.

"Well, I'd better be going," grumbled Thor, even though he'd hardly started on his teacake. He recognised the moment though, my fellow gods know it well, the confusion on mere mortals' faces as they realise that you look exactly as you did two decades ago. "Thunder doesn't rumble itself you know."

"Silky," I smiled back at her, with just a cursory nod to the parting god, "you've hardly aged either, must be something in the water."

"You are David. But you're so young, you're exactly how I remember you." She paused as Thor left the café. "Who was that guy with the hammer?" Thor's presence is so confusing to the human mind that even the smartest are only able to take it in after he's left. Silky, it has to be said, is about as smart as the human mind gets.

There are a number of ways to play this situation, all of which I've tried dozens of times. You can pretend never to have seen her before, which is probably the easiest, though the least interesting approach. You can lie to her, say that you're a time traveller and offer to whisk her off to the middle of next week, or the end of the world, and try to shake her off before she finds you out. Or you can pretend to be your own son, the child she would have had if she had stayed with me. That's a weird one, the stories I could tell you where I've used that.

But with Silky. With Silky it was always going to be the truth, even though the truth is the hardest one of all. Nobody ever believes the truth, it's just too far fetched, so uneven.

Silky had taken Thor's place on the seat opposite me. Nervous, as she obviously was, she actually started eating his teacake, as if it had always been the two of us sat there, in the café, eating buns, drinking tea, catching up on old times.

"He is Thor, god of thunder, amongst other things. You're eating his bun."

She looked at the teacake in a new light, surprised either by the fact that I referred to it as a bun, or by the revelation as to its previous owner. In fact she seemed surprised to be eating a teacake at all, though once she'd grasped this fact she took everything else in her stride.

"You were having tea with a thunder god. A thunder god people ceased believing in two thousand years ago, ceased believing in when they actually found out what really causes thunder."

"Actually you'd be surprised. He remains a cult figure, a slighter following than in the old days, but at least it keeps him in existence. He's doing better than he was a few years ago anyway, the internet seems to have rebooted his career."

"Thor is being worshipped online?"

"You should see his Facebook page, he's got more friends than Jesus."

She was looking at me with the sure knowledge that I was mad. From nowhere a muffin and espresso appeared on our table, unordered, though consumed without question by Silky. Humans work in mysterious ways that we mere gods cannot comprehend.

"I'm a god too, you see. We were having a coffee and a catchup."

"That's nice. I guess Valhalla gets a bit crowded around lunchtime, much easier to pop down the café and have a flapjack."

"It is actually. Valhalla is good for a full roast meal, but a bit vast if you just want a tea and cake."

"So which god are you? The god of bastard boyfriends? The god of cunts that walk out without a word of explanation."

I told you the truth was tough. "Actually, I'm the God of unwanted immortality."

"The god of unwanted mortality? I've never heard of it?"

"No, well you wouldn't have, you're not immortal. Only other gods believe in me, I help them through the whole, tricky, being immortal thing. It doesn't get much tougher than unwanted immortality, let me tell you."

"So you're saying that you're not just god, you're the God of the gods."

"No, simply a god of the gods - they need of lot of gods, they're incredibly insecure."

"How can a god be insecure?"

"The trouble of being all knowing is that, well, there's a lot of bad things you're all knowing about. Once you understand the full scale of the universe and the sheer unfeasibility of our existence it leaves you pretty needy for a bit of divine guidance."

Silky was, to her credit, getting it. Only half believing, but enough of her mind had grasped the key facts that made my tale truth: i.e. that I didn't age and that she'd just seen the Norse god of thunder.

"Ok, if you're a god make a miracle happen, show me what you can do."

Tricky. I don't really do miracles. Gods can pretty much do anything they want, so the gods they worship tend to play more of a counselling role, help them to deal with the whole bewildering scale of responsibility placed on their shoulders.

I was saved by a sudden cascade of thunder. Nothing to do with me, but I was more than happy to take the credit. I'd have to return a favour to Thor some day. Then again, he'd left me to pay for his coffee and teacake, so that probably made us even.

"I can do lightning too," I said, "but don't want to overdo it." I gestured to the world beyond. "As you see, not a cloud in the sky, I don't like to worry the scientists too much. We try to keep them ignorant of our existence, they'd ask far too many awkward questions if they knew we were here."

"I don't understand. There's only supposed to be one god, not gods of thunder, not gods of sorting out the problems the other gods have."

"Ah, you forget about evolution. Gods evolved too you know."

"No you didn't. God's don't evolve, they're ever-present, from the beginning of time."

"That is sort of true, but time doesn't really work that way when you're a god. When you are created then you've always existed, but that would apply to a god that was created five minutes ago. Funny thing time, I'd tell you about it in more detail, but only one of us is going to live forever.

"The evolution of the concept of god is a form of evolution. In the early days there used to be gods governing all the day to day occurrences: thunder gods, rain gods, gods of dangerous beasties. Then the connection was made between one off tragedies and new gods of war pestilence, famine and plague evolved.

"As human knowledge grew there were no longer believers. Just as the tiny-toothed tiger fared badly in competition for food, so did the gods of things that are now easily explained in their competition for faith, which is why rain gods have completely dried out.

"Then of course, it all went completely tits up with Plato. The great philosopher saw that an ordered universe needed just one authority and mind to order it. Suddenly monotheism was the only beast in the jungle. Overnight thousands of gods were made redundant, far more than the recent science recession."

I let Silky take in the full weight of the story, while I finished my flapjack. She seemed to be engrossed in stirring her coffee, but I knew her well enough to know that her mind was busy coming to terms with the full mind-blowing truth I'd just presented her with.

She leant over and touched my face. "You are real," she said, stating a fact. Impressive. Nobody had ever believed me so quickly before, most can never take on board the full truth at all, let alone in less than the time it takes to drink an expresso.

"So that's why you left me is it, 'cause you're a god. All these years I've blamed Sharon Hodgskiss (ah, she knew about Sharon Hodgkiss). Why the hell didn't you tell me? We could've worked something out."

"I couldn't have told you. People never believe it, it's too much for the human mind to cope with."

"I'm believing it now aren't I?"

"It wouldn't work. I will live forever, you will grow old and die. We're incompatible."

"So if you're going to live forever, my life is just a fragment of a second to you, a nothing, a mere blip." I nodded. "In that case, why did you end it EARLY?"

"You'd change, grow old, hell you might even grow wise."

"Well, here I am, 25 years on, 44 years old, too ugly for you now I suppose. Too fucking wise?"

"No, you're still young, still attractive."

"Then you left me a quarter of century too early didn't you. We could have got married, had kids, left a legacy behind us. Are all gods so fuckin' stupid?"

She got up and walked out of my life, just as I'd done to hers 25 years previously.

The trouble of being the god of unwanted immortality is that you've no-one you can turn to about this sort of problem.