God

A short story. TW.

The estate is a concrete scab called Othella, a piss-streaked labyrinth of high-rises and burnt-out Vauxhalls where the wind tastes like damp fags and industrial runoff. People here stopped praying a long time ago. Now, they just check their locks and hope the bailiffs don’t have a crowbar.

He rolls onto the scheme on a bike screaming with the agony of a million star-starved lungs. He wears a wax-dripped Barbour jacket stiff with the grime of a thousand blitzkriegs and heavy boots caked in the soot from the time of the Big Bang. He smells of frankincense, cheap pub bleach, and the hearty metallic tang of a cold slab in a basement morgue.

He’s here to repossess the fucking lot.

He kicks open the doors of “The King’s Head,” a flat-roofed pub where the carpet is a bio-hazard and the locals stare absently into their lukewarm pints. He ignores the stools. He stands by a cracked fruit machine bleeping static. He is the ammunition and the trigger, a walking violation of the Geneva Convention, radiating a chill that freezes the condensation on the windows.

The landlord, a bloated grease-trap of a man who spent forty years skimming from the till and selling dodgy gear to pensioners, reaches instinctively for a cricket bat under the bar. Before his knuckles even whiten, the stranger twitches. It’s a casual motion, a simple snap of the wrist. Finger pointed and a twitchy thumb.

God is a weapon and he’s starting with the pawns.

This man is the celestial High Court Enforcement. He stalks the council estates of history with a list of names written in the bile of the forgotten. He leaves the Prime Ministers for the Sunday roast. He clears the scraps first. He takes out the grasses, the small-time thugs, the ones who whispered the lies that saw their neighbours evicted. The dealers that laced the decent shit with Fentanyl. Sold it to thirteen year old babies that think they’re roadmen.

He finds a mid-level council bureaucrat in a rain-slicked multi-storey. The man shivers, clutching a briefcase full of excuses for cladding made of petrol and cardboard. The bureaucrat considers himself a cog. Grenfell wasn’t his fault after all.

Good Morning,

This is the BBC…

Burned for 60 hours.

72 dead, 70 injured. 223 traumatised.

He feels invisible because he wears a lanyard and drinks Fairtrade.

The stranger steps from behind a concrete pillar. He curls his lip into a jagged, nicotine-stained smirk and exhales a sharp, mocking “puh…pow” as his finger snaps forward, a sound so casual it makes the sudden detonation of a man’s entire existence feel like nothing but a punchline.

He offers zero chance for a Hail Mary. He just moves a digit, a sharp, dismissive flick of the wrist. The bureaucrat is deleted, scattered into the grey drizzle like cigarette ash in a gale. Perhaps He’ll allow him to meet with 72 others later. Let him explain the profit in a cut corner.

God is a weapon and he’s starting with the pawns.

The world is a fucking bin-fire and He’s the one holding the petrol can. He moves through the terraced streets, the betting shops, and the backrooms of reputable firms. He finds the teacher who watched a kid get bullied into the ground and only checked the clock for home-time. Signed the condolence card “sorry for your loss.” He finds the copper who took a crumpled fifty note to look intently at the cracks in the pavement while a girl was dragged into an alleyway. Pow. Pow. Pow. He finds the ‘good sorts’ who stayed silent while the filth rose up to their fucking necks.

He scrubs the foundation of the empire with high-velocity lead. Every time he moves, a soul hits the deck with a sound like a church bell hitting a skip. Clang. A life wasted on spite. Clang. A heart that went cold for a fucking pension plan. Puh..pow..clang.

God is a weapon and he’s starting with the pawns.

By 3:00 AM, the entire city screams with the vibrating, jagged pressure of his presence. He is a cosmic sniper, a celestial hitman bored with the “I was just doing my job” excuse. The horrors of the world are tallied on a huge dirty ledger, and the math is violence.

He sits on the wall of a derelict playground, staring at a horizon that doesn’t deserve to wake up. He has the whole of the M25 to cover before the sun dares to show its wary, grey face. He’s here to collect the debt you thought was buried in the paperwork.

The air around him vibrates with the threat of total erasure.

God is a weapon and he’s starting with the pawns.

He kicks the bike into gear and the exhaust spits sparks that burn holes in the smog. The lords in their manors are now shitting themselves, listening to the roar of that engine getting ever closer. They thought they owned the place. But the real Landlord is back baby! And He doesn’t give a fuck about your OBE’s.

The hunt is on. The grind is in the teeth and the fury’s in the trigger finger.

God is a weapon and he’s finished with the pawns.