has to know the water level

CONTENT WARNING: Blasphemy, dreamscapes

We're two in a throng proceeding down a boardwalk in an autumnal marsh, all brown reeds and rushes and sawgrass. God is at the head of the procession. He looks like the lead singer from Creed, which I suppose makes as much sense as anything.

"Watch ye my right hand!" he shouts above the shuffle of feet.

"Yeah," I mutter to the friend next to me, "because he's going to deck you in the face with his left."

This friend sniggers appreciatively and mimes a blow to my head; I mock-reel backwards. God has halted the march at a wooden fenceline and turned to face the crowd. He's going on about something, bla bla bla.

There's a camera shift and now we're at his back, see the folds in his unsurprising long white robe. "Pass under and ascend, ye Mississippians!" Apparently he's calling the chosen ones by state, like a primary convention. We see a wall of rapturous black faces sweep under his outstretched arm and begin to rise like balloons into the mist. God summons another group. An old man with a cane drifts by. "I sho' never done flew befo-ah," he remarks.

My friend and I seem to be hovering above the fenceline, maybe 15 feet off the ground. God is packing up to leave.

"Hey!" shouts a voice from the boardwalk. "Don't forget me!"

God closes the clasps on his briefcase and looks fleetingly over his shoulder. "You'll get there if you get there," he says, with total disinterest. The voice protests but God is streaming upward toward a break in the clouds that's spewing yellow evening light.

Still suspended, I turn to my friend. "Should we bring him?" He shrugs. God is a speck in the distance.