a one hundredth story...'ackerman'

Ackerman blinked.  He had not seen, or even considered God before.  Nor had he conceived that God was merely a pseudonym - God’s real name being Denis. 

‘I am Denis’, said God. 

Ackerman shielded his eyes from the radium light, ‘hello’, he replied rather sheepishly. 

‘I am Denis, creator of all things’, God continued, as Ackerman shifted from one foot to another, cleared his throat.  ‘Ahem’, he replied … ‘I see’. 

‘You see, do you?’ said God, furrowing his brow, ‘you see, but you must also listen.  Let’s begin again.’

And with this God flung his arms wide, ‘I am Denis creator of the universe, the sky, the heaven, the earth, the oceans, the mountains, the rivers, the riverlets, the streams, the brooks, the … and I made you!’.  God ended with a flourish. 

Ackerman tugged at his beard: had he spent more time gazing into the bathroom mirror, he might have noticed that he shared more than a passing resemblance to Moses, or John the Baptist, pre-wilderness years. 

‘What else did you create?’, Ackerman asked a little peevishly.

And God began again, naming one related ‘thing’ after another, while Ackerman stood and stared. 

Half an hour passed, an hour, and finally God concluded with, ‘and dear boy, I invented time!’ 

‘Time?’, said Ackerman.

‘Time!’ replied God, ‘Clocks, hickory-docks, stopwatches, wristwatches, Time Magazine, The Times of L-’.  And then God paused all of a sudden.

‘What about the Guardian?’, asked Ackerman in the interim, adjusting his spectacles to sit better on the bridge of his nose.

‘The Guardian’, God tutted, ‘yes, The Guardian’.  It was God’s turn to play with his facial hair (all 4.54 billion years of it).

‘The Observer?’, Ackerman prompted.

‘The Observer …’, repeated God, ‘that’s one and the same, isn’t it?’

‘It is, and its Gospel’, Ackerman asserted.

God had started to look at his feet, naturally he was wearing winged sandals.

A jumbo jet passed underneath Cloud Nine.

‘Do I feature?’, God asked presently.

‘Not much’, replied Ackerman, smiling thinly.

‘Not even as Denis?’, said God.

‘No one knows who you really are’, said Ackerman.

And God sighed at the realisation he was irrelevant to at least 200,000 people on a daily basis.