THE GOD WHO WENT INSANE

"Please, please, please! Save Roger!,"  she exclaimed with difficulty, trying to hold back her tears from mixing with her cry.
The man, sitting with his back to the door, didn't even move. When Lucy entered the room, he murmured quietly to himself and swayed from side to side, as if insistently bowing to the walls and perhaps trying to persuade them to listen to his voice. Now the muttering faded into a barely audible whisper.

"Please," Lucy repeated, feeling a bitter, acrid taste accumulating in her throat. No, she couldn't cry now. Why was he silent? He couldn't, he couldn't stay like this! His eyes should be clear, emitting a gentle and soft light from within. And the room... it looked as if no one had lived in it for a long time.

"Roger," the man said slowly, syllable by syllable, like a child who had just learned a new word. His thin bony hand, clad in dirty, white, and wrinkled fabric, trembled. He raised his head and mumbled incoherently, then started rocking back and forth like a pendulum, threatening to jam his shoulders into the corner and stay there forever.

"You must know!" Lucy cried in despair. "Mom said you always hear prayers and help those who ask. Why didn't you help?" Now her voice was tinged with cold anger. "He's dying!"

"Dying," echoed the man.

"What?.." The girl sat on the floor and dropped her head into her hands. In one moment, everything that was so important lost its meaning. She came to the wrong place. She didn't find the only one who could perform miracles and protect her family from pain and suffering. And that's why Lucy made a mistake. Because Roger would stop breathing soon.

The man froze. It was unclear how long they had been silent - a minute, maybe an hour. Or maybe it was just silly human thoughts, as minutes and hours had no value in the heavenly realm. As mom used to say, there's no time in eternity, only endless fields illuminated by sunlight, and angels with the faces of children soaring high above them.

"No," the man said wearily. "I don't want to. Forgive me."

"You don't want to?" Lucy couldn't believe her ears.

"I don't want to know. If I turn you off, you don't exist. Go away."

Lucy's fists clenched, but then relaxed, and her fingers became limp, as if they were plush stuffed with cotton. The girl got up and took a few steps towards the man. He didn't even turn around, but he heard her approaching, and his long unwashed, tangled hair seemed to sink into his shoulders.

An oak table eaten by worms, a striped mattress on the bare floor, a bowl filled with water - muddy, already spoiled, and unfit to drink. An old radio in the far corner of the room on a three-legged stool, its peeling white paint, that was the meager setting of the one who once claimed to be God. Lucy reached out and touched the radio, running her finger along it, removing a thick layer of clumpy dust. Almost without thinking about the possible anger of the man-pendulum and wishing only to break the hanging silence, she pressed the large red button near the antenna, and the music started playing. Despite the interference, a multi-voiced choir sang a long, mournful song in a foreign, fast-paced, and round language. Lucy flinched and turned the dial to change the radio stations.

Next, a woman was sobbing.

"Stop," the man said slowly. "I don't want this. Turn them off."

The girl knelt by the stool and continued turning the dial. She couldn't even explain the reason for her actions to herself. There was nothing pleasant about the melancholic, hopeful human voices, but she felt that it was important. Ordinary childish curiosity drew her to the radio. Lucy wanted to understand what was happening, and perhaps this old, worn-out box was the only key to unraveling the mystery. Her belief in miracles had waned, but there was still a glimmer of hope deep within the girl's heart. What if, by doing everything right, this strange man, who had almost forgotten human speech, would stand up and leave to make way for the real, loving, miracle-working God? And that God would cross the threshold of this grimy, dreadful room, embrace her, and when she cried uncontrollably, burying her face in his radiant garments, He would say that from now on, everything would be fine?

"Turn them of-off," the man muttered again. "No need. No need," he hit his head against the wall and began to cry softly.

The radio fell silent. Lucy touched the dial again, but it got stuck. A vague suspicion illuminated her frightened, restless mind, and horror filled her young soul with suffocating waves."

"So, you are God," she murmured with barely moving lips. "You just turned us off like... like a television!" Fear turned into anger. "You know what you are? You are vile. In the world, there are people who say you don't even exist, and you know what? They might be better off being right."

"I think so too," the man agreed quietly. "I thought I had ceased to be."

"You haven't," she said through her teeth. "While you sit here in this corner, people are dying in the world. People are getting sick, fighting, and crashing in planes. They pray to you and ask for your help. They believe in you, they truly love you, and they think you care about them! And you... you are a coward! A despicable coward who was scared of taking responsibility. My brother is seriously ill, that's why I came here, to you. I thought you must be busy, not listening as mom asks you every day to heal him, I thought there must be some important reason. But you..." She couldn't find how to finish the sentence and fell silent.

"You came here to talk about your brot-ther?" a barely audible sadness tinged his monotone speech.

"Yes."

"But how?"

"I jumped from the roof," Lucy said, staring intently at the back of God's head.

"That's what i-it is."

He struggled to raise his dried-up hand to his face and wiped his eyes. The sleeve slipped down to his elbow, revealing the painfully pale skin covered with red rash and long scratch marks.

"I can't help with anything," God whispered, as if apologizing. "I'm sorry."

"No."

"What?"

"I won't forgive you. I will never forgive you! You don't deserve to be forgiven."

"Yes, that's tr-true," he didn't argue. And he leaned his head into the corner, returning to his favorite, eerily monotonous swaying. Now he resembled a poorly balanced toy that someone accidentally knocked over.

Lucy left the room and, standing in the corridor, leaned against the wall opposite God's room. A simple, wooden, slightly battered door reminded her of another door, much more familiar to Lucy - the one leading to the stairs to the basement of the house where her family lived. Roger used to repeat a self-composed rhyme every time they passed by the basement entrance:

"Behind the door, darkness lies, and a cat's heart cold as ice"

Every time Roger uttered that silly phrase, shivers ran down Lucy's spine. She trembled like an aspen leaf, imagining that miserable, shabby, lifeless cat, crying and begging her brother to stop. Roger would just laugh in response, then reassure his younger sister, promising to protect her from any darkness, and Lucy believed him.

Only now she noticed a small cardboard sign lying at her feet, probably once hanging over the gilded plate with the word "GOD" nailed to the door. The cardboard slipped off the rusty, bent nail, not deeply embedded in the wood, and split the upper layer into splinters. Lucy leaned down, picked it up, bringing it close to her eyes. The words on the sign were crooked and half-fallen:

"LEAV. NO ONE'S H.HEARE."