Our ride starts in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the day, in the middle of our protagonist’s grievously pathetic life.  This is no hyperbolism on the part of your narrator -- we really are on the sweaty back of beyond -- about forty miles from Topeka, to be exact.

If God were to expectorate on the flattest, most stuporously boring patch of dirt covering Earth’s face, it would most likely rain on the residents of Henryville, Kansas, USA.

That’s where we are, in case that slipped by.  But don’t take my word for it.  Just look at the water tower in the distance, looming over the defunct jungle gym, painted against that Norman Rockwell sky.

As we go along, there will no doubt be many questions that you -- the reader -- will want to ask. That’s unfortunate.  If you find yourself drowning in something too far-fetched for belief, the only lifejacket I can toss you is the PFD of faith -- bulky, cumbersome and sometimes filled with duck feathers, it is perhaps the ‘Mae West’ of the spirit’s fruitages, but you know, it gets the job done.  If by some modern inconvenience you don’t subscribe to transpersonal relationships, maybe you shouldn’t be on this boat.

Still uneasy?  Pretend I’m Vic Perrin, if that makes you feel better. Pretend I’m talking to you in the familiar voice of Walter Cronkite.  Just pretend Jeremy Irons wasn’t tied up in contract negotiations with Siemens AG -- a reference which will date our story and elucidate itself around the 100 page bookmark.

Are you ready?

“…During the journey, your time machine vehicle will slowly rotate backwards and may stop momentarily…”

The seatbelt isn’t really necessary, but try telling that to the National Safety Council.

We’re casting away right here, right now, because it was on this very day, at this very moment that God decided to pay our protagonist a personal visit, and the truth is, your first encounter with the Almighty Creator of the Universe always seems special to you, no matter how hackneyed it is to the rest of us.

What made this visit extra special for Jiant Moondrake was that it was directly preceded by his first victory over the Nefarious Slug Gang of Breitenbush.

This was a battle and not the war, as the adage goes, but a well-earned surmounting nonetheless.

It had taken Jiant Moondrake several weeks, and lots of experimentation, but he finally captured their leader, Rosie O’Donnell, with a grapefruit halve filled to the rim with Smuttynose. Without her leadership, Jiant was confident that the remaining members of the Nefarious Slug Gang of Breitenbush would think twice before messing with his Jubilee Watermelons.  By itself, the beer hadn’t worked, nor had the grapefruit.  Or the copper or lava rock or coffee grounds. 

But the hollowed out half of shaddock with Old Brown Dog ale?

Silly lesbian gastropod.

Even if slugs are technically hermaphrodites, Jiant can’t help but think of them as feminist PETA members.

General Rosie hadn’t crawled into the Smuttynose and drowned, as was slug custom.  She merely poised her fat and slimy body on the rim of the fruit, no doubt drawn to the delicious aroma of the Willamette hops.  Jiant set the bowl down, and took out his packet of diatomaceous earth.  It was hard to do, but he tried to make direct eye-to-optic tentacle contact with the oozy pickle.

Jiant was alone -- just him and the mollusk behind the high school, surrounded on all sides by acres and acres of hay-rolled fields.  He was kneeling on his haunches at the perimeter of the garden, which may or may not be environmental art, when God pretty much materialized out of nowhere like a ninja, only without the white smoke composition.

“You’re not going to kill it, are you?” He asked.

Jiant jerked, turned around.  He thought it was Meteor, thought it sounded like his voice, but when he looked over his shoulder he saw someone he quickly mistook for David Carradine: the long gray hair, the time-carved face, the hitatare kimono.  He was dressed like a noble warrior straight out of Kagemusha, sans facial hair.

Jiant said, “Wha?”

“The slug,” He said.  “Tell me you’re not honestly going to kill a poor, defenseless creature.”  He asked, “Are you?”

He even talked the way David Carradine talked, slow and deliberate, careful to enunciate each syllable of every word.

“Aside from decreasing your odds of growing an award-winning watermelon, do you think that poor creature has done anything to deserve such a horribly violent demise?”

Jiant Moondrake said, “Who are you?”  Adding, “And yeah, as a matter of fact, this poor creature has been a major thorn in my side.  What would you have me do?  Lull it to sleep, then squash it underfoot?”

“I’d rather you do nothing,” the stranger said.  “Just leave it be.  Let it live to fight another day.”

“Just leave it be?  So it can ravage my garden all night?  No thank you,” Jiant replied.  Looking the stranger up and down, he said, “Who are you, anyway?  A new resident here on the work-exchange program?”

Stepping closer, the stranger said, “What if God were to appear before you, right now, and beg you kindly, as a personal favor, please, spare the life of this wonderful creature?”

“I would tell him I’m an atheist.”

At that, Jiant opened his packet of diatomaceous earth, and sprinkled it directly onto Rosie O’Donnell’s mantle.  He watched in amazement as the jagged skeletal remains of microscopic creatures tore and lacerated the length of the slug’s soft and squishy body.  He watched as it recoiled and convulsed, losing its grip on the rim of the grapefruit, sliding down into the ale where it disappeared in a nebulous cloud of thick mucus.

When he looked up from this nauseating display, the stranger was gone.  There hadn’t been enough time for him to cross the distance between here and the back door of the high school, but he was definitely nowhere in sight.  Jiant was definitely all alone.  He scratched his head in confusion.  Apparently, nothing had witnessed the pivotal desiccation except his own wide, green eyes and the falling pink sun. 

By the time Jiant had finished burying the snotty corpse of his adversary and erected a proper burial mound, night had draped itself like a tarp across the semicircle sky in economy twilight.  

Back inside the school, Jiant peered down the hall toward Meteor’s room.  The light wasn’t on, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything, as everyone in the Project kept odd hours and daily schedules, setting their watches to their own atomic creativity.

Jiant called out, “Hey Meteor,” and his voice went bouncing down the long dark corridor.

A few seconds later, a rectangle of white light tumbled through the doorway across the checkered hall, painting itself against the adjacent row of lockers.  There came a shout, “Yeah?”

Jiant yelled, “I just killed Rosie O’Donnell!”

A shout back, “How did it feel?”

“Anticlimactic!”

Jiant didn’t want to disturb anyone else, so he headed back to his room, which wasn’t so much a room as it was a gymnasium with a twin-sized bed set dead center on the half-court line.

He turned out the lamp attached to an extension cord strung out more than seventy-five feet across the gym floor, and plopped down in his rickety little bed.

After a full thirty seconds, he sat up and yanked the lamp back to life, positive sleep would not come easy tonight.

He was brimming with a bubbling confection of guilt and inspiration -- an electuary of sugary afflatus vaguely concealing the bitter shame of committing brutal violence.

Sprinting to the far wall, Jiant flipped on all of the overhead lights, showering the whole room in a harsh fluorescent glow.  He then sprinted to his work station next to his bed, which was one of the thick black tables taken from the science lab, complete with nonfunctioning sink.  Quickly, he spread out his materials: polymer clay, five shapers, and a pasta rolling machine.  Grabbing a handful of Super Sculpey, Jiant ferverishly kneaded it, then began rolling a big glob of it through the Imperia like an oversized pizza dough.

Working with the clay for a few hours, he had crudely fashioned a human bust, nearly complete with facial features and spaghetti clay for a devilock hairdo.  All that was left was the mouth, so he grabbed the shapers, using first the angle chisel, then the cup round, and finally the taper point.

There.

Jiant stepped back from the sculpture, nodding approvingly.

Done.     

Satisfied for now, Jiant sighed.  He’d been a victim of sculptor’s block for a long time now, and getting his hands dirty again felt amazingly satisfying.  He flipped off all the lights, silencing the bumblebee hum of surging electricity, and plopped back into bed.  Rolling over on his side, he slowly opened one eye and thoughtfully studied his new creation in the soft blue moonlight spilling in from the second story window like a river of sanguine hope.  It wasn’t exactly a masterpiece of inerrant beauty, he realized, but then, neither was its real-life model.

Jiant Moondrake closed his eyes and rolled over, putting his back to Rosie’s Contract Stiuplation, and, artistically assuaged, plummeted into a deep and restful slumber.