1 Words of God I heard some words of God. If I obeyed them, I’d go to heaven. If not, I’d go to hell. This happened like this. God appeared in front of me and said these. The other day, I was drinking a McShake at a McDonald’s, late in the afternoon. I had been reproached at the office and ran away out of there. I WAS sorry for having made a mistake, but that damned chief went so far as to say, “You, disgusting bug!” Bastard! I’ll kill him! I was sitting on a stool on the window side. Outside, it was full of sun shines in summertime. I almost drank up the McShake and heard slurping sounds of drinking the liquid and air at the same time. To check how much was left, I stuck the end of the straw on the bottom and dragged it along the edge in one cycle. And then another cycle. In the third cycle, I felt the straw hit something sold with a click. This had not been there minutes before. What the heck? I opened the cover lid and looked inside. What the heck?, I said to myself again. There I found a tiny Daibutu, the big image of Buddha. It was strange to say it was a tiny big Buddha, but it was just like a miniature of the famous great Daibutu in Nara. The head covered with small spirals, the round face, the costume of a Buddhist monk, the sitting posture of Zen meditation, bare feet…and the curled one-line mustaches, which impressed me a bit comically. Still being confounded, I was spoken to by the Daibutu. It continued to take a sitting pause, not turning its face toward to me, but it spoke directly to my brains. “I am God.” ---‘God’ is not a word for Buddha, I thought. No, no, now I should have thought, “What’s this?” But before I got some answer, God’s words were pouring into my brains steadily more and more. “You just thought you wanted to kill him, right? I can make your wish realized. It is an easy job for me. If it’s realized, well, well, your working place will turn into Heaven. Because that disgusting man will be gone out of there. But, on one condition. Hit the man sitting next to you with your fist! This is what you should do. He looks like a normal guy, but he is a calamity for us. Why so?, you may ask, but it isn’t necessary to answer it. With one punch of your fist, this guy will be dispelled. A condition for exchange.” The man sitting on the stool next was probably a college boy, who was working word-processing on the laptop. He looked good-natured, and I didn’t find anything that made me feel he was the Buddha’s enemy. But they say you can’t judge a book by its cover. Wait, that Daibutu should have some God-like power and definitely could kill him himself, couldn’t he? “I’ve got another thing to tell you. Now that you have heard this order from me and won’t follow it, I will make another one you know turn into a devil. Well, maybe, your wife?” ---She’s been already a devil…almost… “What are you going to do? Hit him or not?” ---Let me see. No matter what may happen to the creature lying at home like a melting rice cake, I don’t give a damn. No remorse. But this boy… If I hit him, afterward, can I say as an excuse I hit the wrong guy? Probably, I see, he will disappear like in a story of manga. Am I right? This may be the story line now. I scratched my head. Heaven or Hell? The moment came when I should make a decision. I clenched my fist. My heart was beating hard. I couldn’t move my fist. Watching this trembling fist, the Daibutu was so irritated that the small-spirals-headed guy forced me to punch. “Do it, do it, do it, nooooow. It is absolutely such an easy job! If you can’t, you are no more than a filthy bug!” With all my might, I thrusted my fist…down on the McShake. ---Don’t say I’m a bug! With a bang came a crushing sound of the cup. The plastic was broken and a bit of the remaining shake, not the broken parts of the Daibutu, flew onto the table. I had dirtied the table. In a rush, I picked up some paper out of the box nearby and swept it up. The college boy gave us a glance, not stopping working. He didn’t make a fuss. Good-natured. His attitude was like knowing there were some weirdos in the world who he shouldn’t be involved with. A shop clerk dutifully came up to me asking if everything was all right. I apologized, saying that it had been caused by ‘an anger in memory.’ “An anger in memory, yes, that sometimes happens,” she said, not blaming me. No such things like an anger in memory!! Hahaha, I laughed weekly. I would return to that working place the next day. Before that, I had to go back to that place where the devil ruled all. I had scratched my head, indeed. But it turned out Hell, but I’m not sure. Punch him or not, it didn’t matter. The result was hell, in any way. Wondering which was a waste of time. The sun was still shining outside, too early to cool down the heat by the evening coolness. I was staying there for some time and going back to where that devil was.
