Lewis Finlayson

written aged 13
Belmont Academy, Ayr

God's Greatest Mistake

Andrew was bored. Really bored. In fact, he was so mind-bogglingly bored that he was smacking his head against his desk in perfect time with his bedside clock. It was unbelievable how insanely bored he was. A piece of paper sat beside him. It had as much writing on it as a proverbial piece of toast. It was supposed to be an R.E. essay, but he had given up long, long ago.

"Bong!" went his head. "Tick," went the clock.

That was when it happened. It shouldn't have happened, but it did. If there was a God, then this was one of his stupider moves. For all at once, a very small spaceship crashed through the roof.

Andrew sat up and stared for a second, before returning to the desk. He had no time for hallucinations.

The door of the spaceship opened, and a man stepped out, followed by a shorter man, and a man with long blonde hair.

"You know, I don't think this is right," said Blondie.

"Yeah, it doesn't look like our ship," said the short one.

That's when they noticed Andrew.

"Hey little dude, you seen a big spaceship anywhere round here?" said the first man.

"Go away, I don't have time for hallucinations!" shouted Andrew. Then he had an idea. He picked up his essay and wrote:

God's first mistake was to create the universe, and most people will agree with me. However, within the universe there are many sub-mistakes. The first of these of which I have encountered: hallucinations. This is God's way of telling you that you are brain dead, probably from smashing your head against a table until it bleeds.

Andrew stopped to admire his work, and was hit rather hard and unceremoniously across the head with a lamp.

"That'll teach you to call me a hallucination!" shouted the now insulted man.

***

Andrew was confused. He got confused quite a bit, but this was a different kind of confused. It was very dark, and he was in a coat closet. How he got there, and why he was there was a complete mystery. All he knew was that he hadn't been able to scratch his bum for a whole ten minutes. Then the door opened and he fell out. Now his bum actually hurt.

He was staring into the faces of the three 'hallucinations'. Now he was in trouble.

They hauled him to his feet.

"Okay little earth dude, here's the deal," said one of them. "We're gonna take you back to earth, but first you gotta do as we say."

Andrew still thought this was a crazy, mixed up, brain dead dream, so he agreed.

"Great, now here's what you gotta do. First, we find our missing ship." So far this was sounding easy, so he just nodded.

"Then you gotta get to the guns, pick up a big one, kill the man-eating alien thieves and pilot the ship to our planet through a deadly asteroid field. Simple!"

*

The amount of confusion that goes through one's head is very limited. This was one of the few things which God did correctly, but this is counter-balanced by this limit bursting, allowing a whole new level of confusion in, so much so that it needs a whole new name. The name I will give it is 'Gnu' (pronounced 'noo')

Another of God's mistakes.

*

At this point in time, Andrew was feeling an awful lot of Gnu. Usually, this would result in his head exploding, but somehow he managed to be satisfied with some gibberish words, after which he collapsed.

***

The very odd party of aliens and a human boy were quite cold. They were following the trail of the ship thieves, and that had led them to a very cold planet named Dave. It wasn't a very logical name, but neither was the man who discovered it. Right now they were wading through three feet of snow and Andrew had had another idea.

"Mistake no.3," he thought, "is snowshoes. Or rather the lack of them. Without snowshoes in situations like these, you end up very cold, very wet and very lost."

Then Andrew realised that five seconds ago he wasn't lost. This was the bad news. Then matters were made much worse by a sudden, freak snowstorm.

"Oh," he said to himself. Someone, somewhere wasn't being nice to him, like a galactic pawn in the proverbial game of Galactic chess. (*Like normal chess but with 'galactic' in front of it.) It was beginning to dawn on him that this wasn't a dream, but was in fact reality.

Reality. The universe. Life. Death. All part of the ultimate mistake, all made by the same being. All making up the ultimate mistake of them all. What is it? You'll have to read on to find out!

***

God was sitting on his cloud smiting people, answering prayers and overall just being Godly. But he was unhappy. He hadn't been this unhappy since his son had gone down to a planet called earth with his friend and pretended to be a 'saviour', just for a laugh. God had to spend three whole days resurrecting him, in which time anything could have happened. Floods, space-time paradoxes, swarms of flesh-eating zombies threatening to destroy all life, anything! That was what God was there to stop.

And now this - thanks to one little mistake, one boy threatened to change the entire course of history, and so God was going to have to kill him and that could have even worse effects! Things were going very, very, very badly.

Andrew was sure that he was dead. He felt dead. All he could see was white. Then he realised that he was staring at snow. He was lying face down. And his bum hurt again. But at least he was alive. He stood up and took in his surroundings. He was in the exact same place as where he had last been conscious. It really did seem like God was trying to kill him. Well, he wasn't going down without a fight. It was going to be a one-on-one fight and he wasn't going to lose.

But at that moment, something large and spaceship shaped dropped out of the sky, and three men got out.

"Hey little earth dude, guess what? We found our spaceship... " he trailed off. "Oh... "

***

Andrew was sure he was dead. He felt dead. All he could see was white. Then he realised he WAS dead, and he was standing on a cloud with someone he was sure was God. He was tall, with a white beard and had just said,

"Hi, I'm God. And you're Andrew. Welcome to heaven."

Andrew, being in an inquisitive yet strangely calm mood, answered by saying,

"Did you try and kill me?"

"No."

"Oh!"

"I did kill you, sorry about that."

"So - am I dead?" asked Andrew.

"Yes, but if you like I can send you back to before this happened and stop it."

"Okay, but why?" asked Andrew, still confused about this calmness.

"Because I made a mistake. I didn't think it was possible for me to make a mistake - but there you are, I have! My greatest mistake... was to break one of my own commandment/rule thingies in killing you, because I was in a bit of a fix having let the alien guys bump into your planet. What a mistake to make!"