Please don’t read if God or farts are objectionable to you.

                                       Ralph

          In the beginning the GREAT ORIGINAL SOURCE, IT, expelled a massive amount of universe-inventing air which became known as the Big Bang.  Eventually this creative flow evolved into the evolution called Humankind.  Mortals ever since have searched for the definitions of Positive and Negative.  Thus was born The Church of the Magnificent God Fart.

          Reverend Wizard Mayteach raised one knee and from beneath his full-length gray robe a whistling sound of methane gas escaped.   It rippled his shiny smock and attacked his audience with a deafening squeal.  A smile crossed his face.  “My accomplished relief starts each of our services,” he explained.  He lowered his leg.  “Thank you God for your Magnificent Fart, creator of all there is and more even.”  He paused and gazed at his congregation.  “Now that’s out of the way, I welcome you to today’s lesson, my child.”

           Being the only one in the small church’s audience, I knew he talked to me.  One pew and I sat on it.  One phew Reverend Wizard Mayteach opened the service with and I endured it by breathing through my mouth.  He stood on a six-inch elevated platform six-feet square made of polished golden brass.  The six-foot tall old man stood below six light bulbs hanging from six wires.  Most of the room’s light filtered through six small stained glass windows high over the small wooden door behind the reverend wizard. 

          “I’m not a child!” I hollered.  “I’m seventy-one and you’re not my father.  You may call me Ralph.  Why am I here?”

          “You are a mere child to me, Ralph.  I am older than wisdom and wiser than all the prophets of the ages.”  He stroked his gray beard, making its tip dance in the gilded dust at his feet.  “You are here.  You know that, right?”

          “Am I?  Reverend Wizard Mayteach, I’m not a member of this church…”

          “Please refer to my church by its rightful name.  The United Church of Reverend Wizard Mayteach.”

          “Don’t you mean Church of the Magnificent God Fart?”  I said it kindly, in case the minister wizard suffered from old man’s memory-loss disease and would be embarrassed.  “That’s what the sign said outside.  Why am I here?  I don’t remember coming in.”

          “You are here to meet your life’s Creator.  You shall meet him in person.  But first…”  He smiled and the twinkle in his eyes became glaring.  “You have to pass the gatekeepers.  Let’s see…for you there shall be two, the Taxman and the Referee.  Follow me.”  He turned and bounced from the golden platform like an athletic man of twenty.  He strode toward the plain wooden door at the rear of the room with the tiny inlaid letters spelling the church’s full name too tiny to read but large enough to perceive.  “I shall guide you.  Be not afraid.”  He opened the door and revealed a long well-lit hallway leading to another door that seemed miles away.  “Meet your first gatekeeper.  Taxman.”

          Taxman’s hair stood on end, flame red in body and yellow at its tips, like rising flickers of fire.  His tie was money green and shiny, with red dollar signs and golden coins with smiling and frowning faces.  His great mouth opened and screamed, “You’ve won the lottery!  Now fork over the taxes!”  He opened his lips wide and showed his glistening white teeth in a smile so large any cavities would be hidden by the brilliance, although I looked for them anyway. 

          A thought struck me.  “But I never bought a ticket?”  I stood at attention before the flamboyant round figure, my body ridged in outward pretended respect for authority.

          “What ticket?”  The Taxman’s lips became welded together in a grimace worthy of a man sitting on tacks.  “Why do you change the subject, pray tell me?”

          “The ticket that won the lottery?”

          “I don’t know nothing about no stinkin’ ticket!  I know about taxes.  You owe nine hundred million billion.  Hand it over!”

          “First give me the money.”

          “No, first you pay the taxes.”

          “How?”

          “It is inconceivable that you ask such a question after having the good fortune of winning all that wealth!  You have won with once in a lifetime good luck and yet you try to avoid the tax.  Have you no honor?”

          I looked behind me for Reverend Wizard Mayteach.  Not there.  I looked back at Taxman and saw the reverend wizard standing behind him.  I felt betrayed.  “But I didn’t buy a ticket.”

          “Well, go out and purchase one, and hurry.” 

          Reverend Wizard Mayteach leaned over to Taxman’s right ear, held his beard from falling onto the authority’s lap and whispered, “Call him Ralph.  He likes that, and besides it’s his name.”

          “You’ve already won.  Ralph,” Taxman said happily. 

          “Are you sure?”  I thought I’d remember any such happening.

          “I am the tax collector.  Of course I’m sure.”

          “Where do I go to buy my winning ticket?”

          “If I could tell you that I would go purchase it for myself.”

          “But how can I buy it if you won’t tell me where to buy it?”

          “You may as well ask me its price.”

          “How much does it cost?”

          “See!”  He stood and Reverend Wizard Mayteach backed away in what seemed to me to be mock fright as the tax authority pointed an accusing finger.  “I told you you’d ask the price!  Didn’t I tell you?  You cannot escape paying taxes by refusing to buy a ticket.  I will punish you to the full extent of the law!”  He cleared his throat, sat back down and straightened his lavish tie.

          “Like, what is the penalty?”

          “The complete forfeiture of all winnings, Ralph.  Every single penny, old and new, large and small, paper or metal.”

          I realized this had to be my key to bypass the roly-poly Taxman.  “I hereby forfeit all my winnings, OK?”

          “OK.  Now, that’s what I’m talking about!”  Taxman happily slapped his expensive desktop and motioned me past his pure gold desk.  “I thank you for your winnings, the government thanks you, and my wife would thank you if I could afford to be married.  You may proceed, Lottery Winner Ralph.”

          I briskly marched past Taxman, proud to have escaped.  As I came to the next partition, Reverend Wizard Mayteach joined me and whispered into my face, my ears picking up his comment.

          “This guard will not be so easily passed.  Meet Referee.”

          Referee wore a black striped white shirt and had a face to match.  His voice swam into my ears in a monotone.  “Trust you have no value judgments about my races.”

          “You appear to be a mix,” I said, bowing.  I wanted to say “Part human, part zebra” but didn’t.  One has to know when to keep his mouth shut.

          “Is that positive or negative?”  No change in volume nor rise or fall in his voice, an emotionless electronic feed tuned to bass.  “Negative or positive?”

          “Maybe a mixture of both?”

          “Choose one or you can stand there for the rest of your life.  No food.  No bathroom.  No nothing but messy death.  You are warned,” the deep unemotional voice said.

          I wanted to say, “Indeed I am.”  Instead I guessed, “Positive?”

          “So, on to your test.”  He pursed his black and white lips.  “A bomber straps on her explosives.  Is she being negative or positive?  Do not look at Reverend Wizard Mayteach.  It is your answer I need.”

          My intuition told me a quick answer might work to my disadvantage.  “Maybe you could tell me why she has decided to become a human bomb.”

          “She has no family left, no means of support and believes her life is over.  Positive or negative?”

          Again, I thought before answering.  “From whose viewpoint?”

          “Well done.  Care to elaborate?” 

          “Not really,” came to mind as I explained, “I think everyone has their own view of what’s negative or positive.  She wouldn’t strap explosives to herself unless she thought it a positive thing to do.  Perhaps Taxman can send her some money.”

          “Taxman already has, but it got there too late,” Reverend Wizard Mayteach whispered to me.

          The Taxman shouted and I spun around.  “Shut up, Wizard Reverend or whatever kind of Mayteach you are!”  No longer the flat monotone, Taxman’s hostile waves vibrated the air like angry bees buzzing puzzled around artificial flowers.  “I will spend your tax dollars as I see fit!  Mind your own business!”

          I turned my attention back to Referee.  “Can I pass now?”

          “You may pass.  I am an important person in your life.  Now you shall meet the most powerful and important person in your existence.”

          I proceeded to the golden door and grasped the knob, my hands twisted and it remained unmoved, proving to be slippery as greased ice on oiled Teflon.   Reverend Wizard Mayteach waved me away, wrapped his beard around the handle to gain a grip, turned it and opened the door.  I peered in.  Darkness.  An enthusiastic reverend wizard push and I flew into the void.  The door slammed shut, with my gray-bearded, gray-robed guide outside, probably laughing.

          “Hello?”  I took a step into the darkness.  “Ralph here.  Anyone there?  Creator?  Could you turn on a light?”  I waited.  I listened.  No sound.  I took a deep breath.  No smell.  “Are you late getting here?”  I waited.  No answer.  Of course, if Creator was late I couldn’t hear his answer any more than he could hear my question.  My eyes slowly allowed the black to turn into grayness.  Before me I made out an object about ten feet away.  I traversed toward it, and sucked in a bunch of air.  A distorted giant shape came at me—horrible and twisted, looking…somewhat frightened?  I stopped and it stopped.  I recognized the figure.  Me, myself and I, reflected in a giant distorted funhouse mirror.

          So my Creator is myself.  Wonderful lesson, Reverend Wizard Mayteach!  Bitterness—expectations smashed.  Yet, if I expected it and I created my own reality, why didn’t my Creator show up in a form I imagined?  The more I thought about it the more I saw myself creating myself without knowing I created myself.  I created anger, allowed it to take me over and ran forward.  I punched the mirror with absence of forethought about a slashed bleeding fist.  It shattered into billions and billions of pieces, the room disappeared and I dissolved into space.

          In the Universe.  Stars and planets and suns and moons and other space debris.  “Help me.  I’m broken and can’t get back together again.” I felt like Humpty-Dumpty flying from the hall and taking a big fall, and all the Universe’s horses and all the Universe’s men can’t put old Ralph back together again. 

I felt sick.

Ralph.