God Speaks by Richard Krawiec

So, I’m on the stoop, looking out at the sidewalk, hoping to find a butt. Tough times, right? Scrape where you can. Anyways, all I see are a couple of those dirty pink wads of dried gum. A few little pieces of a broken beer bottle, the brown glass shining like those teeth on TV in those toothpaste whitening commercials. Gleaming I think they call it.

Well out of the sky blue nowhere this ratty squirrel hops over, raises up on its back legs, and pokes its nose up at me.

“What are you sniffing at?” I say.

It sits there with its little hands kind of folded at its chest, like my father’s in the coffin.

“What the Hell do you want?” I ask.

“Hell?” he chirps, like he’s amused. “Wrong place buddy. I’m God.”

“Yeah, right, and I’m Satan.”

“Well,” he says to me. “That’s what I came to talk to you about.

© 2013 Richard Krawiec

Richard Krawiec has published 2 novels, Time Sharing and Faith in What?, a story collection, and Fools of God, 4 plays, and 2 books of poetry, She Hands me the Razor and Breakdown. He has won fellowships from the NEA, NC Arts Council(twice) and Pennsylvania Council on the arts. His work appears in Shenandoah, sou’wester, Witness, Cream City Review, Florida Review, West Branch, and dozens of other mags. He teaches fiction online for UNC Chapel Hill, for which he won their Excellence in Teaching Award.

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