I wrote this story ten years ago, and it remains a personal favorite (sometimes I feel like I say that about all my stories). I had trouble finding a home for it, until John Kenyon of Grift Magazine accepted it with, “I’ve never read anything like this before.” I am thankful that he liked it, and I hope you will, too. I miss his snappy little journal.
Six Feet Under God
by Thomas Pluck
One morning I awoke from uneasy dreams to realize I was the same sorry son of a bitch I was when I passed out drunk the night before, except with a massive existential hangover. It felt like I woke up inside a gong. I cracked my eyes to my dingy office, I rolled off the sofa and staggered to the window. The hammering wasn’t all penance for the night before. The cheer of a parade assaulted me from down in the street.
The sun hit my face like the devil’s flashlight. I squinted down to see broads in bonnets arm in arm with their doughy husbands in suits, their brats holding hypnotic lollipops the size of their noggins and watching buttoned-up band boys march behind a goof in a bunny suit.
It was Easter Sunday.
I don’t know what the hell they were celebrating. God was dead, and nobody would do anything about it.
I splashed some water on my face, felt my sandpaper stubble, gave my rumpled suit a sniff. Maybe it was time to stop bellyaching, and do something about it myself. After all, I was a private dick.
I scratched my sturdy chin. If I figured who’d iced the Almighty Father, it would be a boon to the whole disrespected profession. Finding out who punched the Big Man’s ticket wouldn’t be easy, but if I was a quitter, I’d have done the Dutch years ago. So I took a slug of bottom-shelf rotgut for breakfast, put the cork back in my lunch, and scrawled a note for Maggie. She answers the phone for me. Shouldn’t be in ‘til Monday, but I knew she’d check in.
God is dead. We all know it. No one’s doing anything about it. Except me. —Kelsey
I dug my iron out from between the couch cushions and threw the TV remote over my shoulder with a fistful of change. It was a Colt 1911 that Gramps used in The War. Whoever took out the Prime Mover was no piker, and this I could trust. I mashed my hat on my cinder block of a melon and headed to suspect number one, the one who’d announced it when Jehovah took the lead pill.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche.
* * *
I parked my DeSoto outside his crib in Liepzig, and banged on the door.
“Open up, you philosophical freak.”
A mustache opened the door, attached to a little egghead with his hair slicked back like a jazz-loving hop-head.
“Guten morgnen, vas ist das?”
I put my fist in his bristle brush and pushed inside. “My Gramps didn’t get Nazi bullets in his ass for me to listen to your moon-man talk.”
“Why’d you gotta do zat for?” he said, rubbing his lip.
“God is dead. You said it. Why’d you do it, Wilhelm?”
“Ja, ja.”
I gave him the stink-eye and he went back to American.
“Gott remains dead. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?”
“So it was revenge?”
“We all killed him. You killed him. I killed him.”
“Start talking sense before I beat the sauerkraut out of you. Your superman drivel caused us a load of trouble about thirty years after you’re worm food, Willie.”
He shrugged. “Do what you will, I am punished already.”
“Not punished like I can punish,” I said, and picked him up by the curly ends of his mustache.
“Ach! Mein Gott! Nein, Gott ist tot!!”
I dropped him on his keister.
“I’m ze walking dead, Kelsey. I got the syph. It is only a matter of time before my brains belong on ze plate mit a few slices of bacon. Beat me all you want.”
“Gah. You got any hand sanitizer?” I wiped my hands on my pants.
“Nein. Uh, no.”
“Give me a lead, Willie boy,” I said, taking out the 45. “Or thus spake Colt-athustra.”
“The Devil? Ask Faust, perhaps.”
“We all know the devil’s just God when he’s got half a bag on.”
He furrowed his brow, as the bowl of custard between his ears worked overtime. “Ze Jews!”
I backhanded him across the face. “It’s always the Jews, with you people!”
“Zey killed ze son, why not the Father?” he said, and cringed.
“It was the Romans, schmuck! I oughtta put you out of my misery. But I think the syph will do you just fine.”
In the car, I lit a smoke. I dug in the glove box for a wet nap. I only found a mess of napkins and a severed hand clutching a gun, left over from my last case. With the Big Man gone, life was absurd anyway, according to Camus and the existentialists. Plus, where I came from, we had antibiotics. Tough break, Willie boy.
* * *
The Jews. They always get the blame, don’t they? Well, a lead’s a lead, so I headed straight to my favorite deli.
The line was out the door. Lunchtime was always a madhouse at Noshensteinmanberg’s. I got in behind three doctors in white coats, a rabbi and a kid with a beanie.
“I hear the pastrami is terrific today,” I said.
“In other news, God is dead,” the kid said.
“For shame, you who haven’t even had your bar mitzvah yet!” yelled the rabbi.
“Would you know anything about that, kid?”
“Who’s asking?”
I held out my P.I. license. There was a bullet hole through it, but it was legit.
“Kelsey Flinthoof,” the kid said. “Well hoof it, dick. I’m getting lunch.”
The rabbi shook his head. “The youth of today. I bet he reads Nietszche.”
“That schmuck can go pick a peck of pickled peppers,” I said.
“And you should go hide me some eggs,” said the kid to the rabbi.
“I’m not a rabbit, I’m a rabbi, you schmendrick!”
“Then go find a priest and a bar to walk into.”
The rabbi and I shared a table. I got pastrami, and paid for his tongue on rye, hoping it would loosen his own. Our sandwiches towered before us like games of meat Jenga.
“The kid said G-dash-D is dead, Rabbi. And I’m looking for His killer.”
“Why you bothering me for? I worship the fellow. Why would I kill him?”
“Nietzsche fingered your people for the job,” I said. “Said you did in the Son.”
“Always with this. That dirty hippie is alive, I tell you. He probably killed his own father with the guilt and the shame.”
“Or for the insurance money,” I suggested.
“So, why don’t you ask him and let a man eat in peace?”
“You know what, maybe I will. Where is he these days?”
“Havaii,” he said. “He’s hiding out on the North shore. Likes the surfing.”
“I thought it was pronounced Hawai’i.”
“No, it’s Havaii.”
“Thank you, rabbi.”
“You’re velcome.”
* * *
I got my sandwich to go, and drove right to Honolulu. Tossed the Styrofoam box in the Pacific garbage patch. What’s one more? God’s dead, so who’s looking?
Havaii was as vunderful as they always said it was. A girl gave me a lei when I got off the plane. And some flowers too.
“Welcome to Hawai’i,” she said, in my hotel room, smoking one of my butts.
“It’s pronounced Havaii.”
She smiled. “I bet the Rabbi sent you. I suppose you’re looking for J.C.,” she said, the L-shaped sheet covering her breasts.
“You know the guy? I hear he walks on water.”
“Only if there’s a surfboard underneath him. Everyone knows him.”
“Wanna take a ride?”
“I thought I just did.”
“I mean to the beach, to see Jesus H.”
“Nah, I hate the beach. And I got another plane landing in an hour. So am-scray, shamus.”
I watched her silhouette through the shower door as I got dressed. Number One Son wasn’t on my list, but if he decided to swap lead, I figure his bum hands would give me the edge I needed.
On the beach there was a cave with a boulder in front of it. I figured this was the place. I knocked real hard.
“Lazarus, come forth!” I said.
No answer.
I peeped the waves, in case he was hanging ten.
I heard the boulder grind sideways, and I pulled my gat.
I drew down on a longhair with bloodshot eyes, hipster beard, robe and sandals. “You trying to get the drop on me, daddy-o?”
“Whoa, dude! Chill, ” he said, and smiled. “I do this shtick every Easter. Old times, man. Come on in, Kelsey. I’ve been expecting you.”
He shuffled in, and I followed. There was a futon and a TV with an X-Box, and a water bong that could’ve served as a smokestack on a steam freighter.
“Nice dump you got here.”
“It is easier for a camel to boogie through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of my Pops.” He sat down on the futon, and took a three minute hit off the bong. The whole place smelled like the devil’s lettuce.
“Enough with the parables. Your Old Man’s been done in. You should be quoting Hamlet. Or were you in on it?”
“Whoa. I am Him. Why would I kill me?”
“The insurance. Or maybe you’re not the real Messiah?”
“Whatever, dude. I got it made,” he said. “Talk about trust funds. Why would I kill the golden goose?” He offered me the bong with its deadly brew.
“Never touch the stuff. I don’t want to go raping nuns and schoolchildren.”
“To each his own, duder. I’m gonna go surf in a bit. You should try it. Chillax a bit. You’re forgiven, man. Just be nice to people, and we’re cool.”
I picked him up by the robe. “I know you know something, savior. You’re omniscient. So get with the chin music.”
He laughed at me, so I backhanded him across the face.
“You like that, longhair?”
I never saw it coming. Everything went black.
When I got up, he was picking up pieces of his bong. I must’ve fallen on it. My pants were drenched in the foul black water. “A judo kick to the bread box, Hay-zeus? You call that turning the other cheek?”
“I got tired of mean people like you harshing my mellow,” he said. “You suck, by the way. Mean people. That bumper sticker? That was me.”
I picked up my hat. “Am I still forgiven?”
“Of course you are,” he said, and gave me a noogie. “Who’s a good little Christian? Who is? You are!”
“Quit it! Or I’ll shoot some more holes in your hands.”
He shoved me away. “Go talk to Darwin. It’s all his fault. I had a good thing going.”
“Where is he?”
“Uh, 19th century England? Long beard. Tell him I said thanks for nothing.”
“Thanks, Christ.”
“Don’t forget me on my birthday,” he said. “I never get shit.”
When I walked out, I noticed there was only one set of footprints in the sand. What a comedian.
* * *
I parked outside Darwin’s house in the country, by the hitching posts. It was a white mansion and covered with ivy. Nothing made noise except all the black birds. The perfect place for a murder.
I knocked three times, and got no answer. I took out my piece and walked around the back, where a greenhouse squatted in the woods. Behind it, I spied an enormous sandaled foot sticking out between the trees. I ran up and checked the ankle for a pulse.
Nietzsche had been right. God was dead.
I heard rustling. I cocked the hammer and took cover behind the Almighty Big Toe.
“Up here,” a voice said. “I knew you’d figure it out.”
I looked up through the sights of my gat. Someone who could kill God was capable of anything.
Darwin hung upside down from a prehensile tail on a high branch of the oak tree, hands folded across his tweed jacket. Little finches nested in his long white beard.
“Charles Robert Darwin,” I said.
He climbed halfway down the tree with simian feet. “I call this trick The Descent of Man.”
“Why’d you do it? Tell me, before I shoot you in your diseased monkey brain.”
“It was an accident. I never meant to kill him, only to explain life.”
“That’s what they always say. He got in the way of your fame and fortune, didn’t he? Kept putting gaps in the fossil record.”
“There are no missing links. It’s more like a tree. There’s enough evidence to prove my findings a thousand times over. God was collateral damage,” he said, and swung right-side up, jumped to another branch, and picked a flea from a neighboring chimp’s head.
“An innocent bystander,” I said. “That’s your story? Tell it to the cops, Chuckie. I’m taking you in.”
“Who’s to say he didn’t start it all? The Big Bang, the spark of life on Earth. I didn’t kill him. All I did was show mankind where Daddy kept the bullets to his gun.”
“Come down now, or I’ll carry your body in.”
“I am not the least afraid of death. My genes have been passed on to hundreds of my progeny, and my scientific discoveries can never be undone.”
“If that’s how you want it,” I said, and fired.
He swung on a vine, and drew two six-shooters with his monkey feet. His chimp henchman joined in and flung poo at me. Ruined my best suit. We traded lead for a while, but Gramps’ Colt never lets me down. Darwin fell from the tree with a thump. The chimp screamed and shook an angry poo-smeared fist at me.
I pried the guns from Darwin’s cold, dead toes.
The monkey man faded. The Creator’s body did too. And the English countryside.
I was back in my office, Colt in hand, barrel smoking.
Maggie burst through the door. She looked up at the bullet hole in the ceiling and sighed. “Not again. I’ll get the super to patch it.”
“I guess it was us that did it all along, Mag.”
“Did what?” She folded her arms. Tapped a foot at the end of a sleek leg.
“Killed God.”
“And why would we do that?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and tucked the gun in a drawer. “I just kind of stopped believing, years ago.”
“It happens,” she said. “With me, it comes and goes. Clean up, we can still make the late mass.”
“You pray how you pray,” I said, and took my board from the closet. “I’m going surfing with Jesus.”
© 2023 Thomas Pluck, all rights reserved.
I love when you write like this.... Bizarre. Funny. So interesting. 😁🥰 More please.