Hammerport

At first she couldn’t see anything at all inside but gradually objects and borders coalesced from out of the darkness, giving the interior form. The smell of its squatters overpowering her, Mizzy covered her face with the arm of her sweater and began to make out feline blots drifting across the stone floor in furtive, wary movements away from her.

One blot hissed; another wailed. The hissing blot pounced on the wailing blot and together became one liquid cloud of blackness, spinning and bouncing off the walls. The black cloud screeched and bubbled with energy and Mizzy wanted to back out – there was no way she would be able to find the stigmata-cat in this darkness.

“Mizzy,” a powerful, albeit muffled, male voice called from an adjoining room. He knew her name. She should have been frightened, but she was now more sure than ever that she had been right to follow her heart. Faith had carried her through. She was a little perturbed that God was British, though. She identified British accents with big movie villains. It just didn’t seem fitting.

“Who’s there?” she replied.

“The maker of all things is everywhere,” the voice replied. “Come.”

The cloud continued to seethe and howl, but Mizzy ignored it, advancing to the next room.

The next room stank just as much but better illumination had endured through the muddy, brown windows at the back. She could make out the cats more clearly in this room; one growled at her, warning her not to approach. No furniture was evident, just bits of cardboard and broken wood were scattered around in almost deliberate disorder making it resemble pretentious, modern art. A curtain of some kind was draped over half the window, designed for a much taller frame, its excess heaped upon the floor.

“Welcome,” the curtain said with the same muffled voice as before. “I am what you have sought.”

“God?” Mizzy asked, unsure whether that question was perhaps too direct for the mighty creator of the Universe.

“The maker of all things is everywhere.”

Mizzy felt deflated. After all this wondering about the meaning of her vision, this did not exactly match up to her expectations of a revelation. A scummy old house, full of city cats that churned out rivers of piss. Congratulations, Mizzy, the prize is behind door number three.

She could only think of one question with which to challenge God. “So, you’re a curtain?”

“Is this so different from a burning bush? I am everybody and everything. I am the meaning that is sown into the fabric of the sub-atomic. I am the hymn that sings in the wind of hurricanes sweeping the land to clean it of Man. I am the bullets in the gun that assassinate Kennedy and create myth. I am the HIV virus that lurks silently within, justifying sexual purity. I am the planes that kiss the World Trade Center and nudge the world over the edge into the precipice of insanity.”

It was a nice, lengthy answer and Mizzy thought on it. After weighing it up, she said, “But… a curtain?”