Monday 8 March 2010

Thursday Night Fever

This week’s sentence was taken from Wilkie Collins’ ‘The Moonstone.’

It was:
‘The Thursday night passed, and nothing happened.’

Thursday Night Fever

The Thursday night passed, and nothing happened.
God frowned.
'That's odd,' He mused, 'Thursdays haven't done that before.'
If all was right with His Creation lots of things ought to have happened on Thursday night. But they hadn’t.
He checked the BOOK.
‘Hmm.’
It looked like the moon had failed to rise, stars remained untwinkled, none of the albeit nocturnally themed and somewhat furtive activities that He had ordained had come to pass.
He had a thoughtful little rummage in His beard.
'I bet it's them buggers downstairs.'
God began to fume. Fuming is never a good sign in a deity, especially one signing Himself ‘THE’ rather than ‘A’ deity.
He banged on the floor until a small, somewhat irritable red face appeared above the skirting.
'Wot.' it squeaked.
God glared.
'Where's Lucifer?’
'Indisposed.' replied the imp.
God took a deep breath.
'You forget I am omniscient. I know full well he's sitting on Jane Austen and watching Project Runway. Tell him to get his pointy red arse up here, pronto!'
The imp disappeared. After some rumbling and a relieved squeak from Miss Austen the face of Beelzebub poked through the wainscotting.
'If it's about that Tea Party nonsense I'm sorry. I can never resist temptation. I'm the smegging Devil, you know.'
'It's about Thursday.' boomed God, adding a touch of reverb for good measure.
There was a pause.
'Ah.'
'Lucifer, I've seen that look before.'
‘Well it’s your fault for keeping me so bloody busy. I just wanted a night off, that’s all. Celebrity Enema was on telly and it was the semi-final. You never let anyone in up here so I have to run around all night collecting the souls of the damned and I’m frankly sick of it.’
God looked thoughtful.
‘Celebrity Enema, eh? I missed that one. What happened?’
‘Sheesh! You shoulda seen it! Jennifer Lopez versus Dick Cheney? It was awesome! Arse-gravy apocalypse!’
‘And I suppose it’s the final this Thursday?’
‘Damn right it is. And if you think I’m going to miss that you are sorely mistaken.’
God raised an eyebrow.
‘I suppose one more missing Thursday night can’t do any harm. How about you come up here and we watch it together? Bring some decent beer this time, and leave that awful Austen woman downstairs.’
‘I dunno, God. It's too bloody quiet up here for my liking. I mean there's only you and the boy, everyone else is downstairs. And you two bore the arse off one another.'
Jesus rolled his eyes.
'You don't know the half of it. I've had to turn the other cheek so often He's had me spinning like a top.’
‘Look,’ interposed Satan. ‘How about you send the lad downstairs for a bit? I mean you both need a break and there’s loads to do down there. Then me and you can sit up here and watch the telly and have a bit of a chinwag and a beer. Just like the old days. Eh?’
And lo, the following Thursday night passed, and nothing happened.

5 comments:

Lulubelle B said...

Love it!! Have you read Heinlein's "Job"...same sort of deal, and lots of fun.

dive said...

Hi, Lulu!
No, I'm afraid most sci-fi passed me by in favour of physics textbooks, which is a shame. Maybe I'll give it a go now.

Scout said...

Bah ha ha! C. S. Lewis couldn't have done better.

"You and the boy" is a nice line. So, is this the first Christmas or the second coming?

MmeBenaut said...

Oh, it just goes to show that when you use Pommy vernacular, it doesn't really matter much what the theme is. This is absolutely hilarious dearest Dive. Well done!

dive said...

Robyn: I always felt that the Bible is so picky about who goes to Heaven that there must just be the two of them up there, just sitting around and getting on one another's nerves.

Mme: Ah, good old Pommy vernacular. 'Estuary English' we call it up here.
I must confess, I have been waiting for ages for the opportunity to include the phrase 'arse-gravy apocalypse' in a story.