The blazing sun scorched the waves of sand into simmering white gold. Mobantu and Igbunwe, the last of their tribe, had eluded capture during a raid of their village. Their friends, siblings, wives, children, and grandchildren, had been cut into pieces with machetes.

After two days on the run, the fugitives still could not be certain that they were not being followed in vehicles that would render distance inconsequential. Yet, each breath was now a struggle.

“I can’t go further,” Igbunwe finally said, at the point of total exhaustion. “My body is shaking. I can’t… I can’t control the direction of my steps.”

“There is a refugee camp only an hour away,” Mobantu pleaded. “We can make it.”

Igbunwe collapsed.

Mobantu helped his friend adjust his body to settle in a more suitable position. He then quickly began digging a ditch just big enough for them to lie down in partial shade, with a mound of sand behind their heads.

Dragging Igbunwe inside the ditch, Mobantu fell flat beside him. The coolness of the earth beneath the surface provided relief, and they lay there in silence.

Igbunwe almost immediately closed his eyes against his will.

Mobantu looked at the blue sky above, but all he could see was his granddaughter’s face, those eyes, shut peacefully, as her head was kicked around in a game of soccer by a pack of teenage boys who laughed like hyenas as their fathers stood by indifferently.

It was too much for him to bear. He could no longer cry because his body would not let him. So he closed his eyes and sank further into the sand.

Soon, Mobantu fell into a deep sleep and began to dream.

He was floating in a field of nothingness. There was no more up, down, left, or right. As his awareness grew, he found that he was in the presence of a strange light that could only be described as a sphere of pure black, darker than space, emanating energy in all directions throughout the universe.

“You are the creator, the source of all,” he said to this sphere knowingly. “Without your consent, the brutality of nature does not exist. Evil men do not exist. The Devil does not exist. Listen carefully. I am Mobantu, here now to become your God. Everything you have done to me, everything you have done to my family, I will now do to you. I will subdue you. I will humiliate you. I will fill your heart with unfulfilled longing. I will infect you with unimaginable disease. I will starve you until the wind moving across your bones feels like a stream of needles. I will burn your skin in the fire of the sun and give you nary a drop of water to quench your dying thirst. I will rape you. I will create loved ones for you so that they may watch me rape you. I will behead them before your eyes so that you can no longer see the blue sky.”

Mobantu then paused. He reflected for a moment and continued. “Yet, even after all of this, I could still not rightfully claim to be the God of God. This is only what you have done to one tribe. Until I create entire civilizations and curse them to unyielding destruction, suffering, and death, how can I compare to your divinity? Truly, you are incomprehensible!”

Mobantu was jolted back into consciousness by a rumbling sound in the distance. He grabbed Igbunwe’s shoulder and shook him, but his friend would not awake. “Get up!” he implored the motionless body. “Igbunwe!”

The sound drew closer. Igbunwe’s eyes remained peacefully closed.

The rumbling came to a halt behind the mound of sand. There was a moment of silence.

Mobantu held Igbunwe’s blue-black corpse in his arms and looked upward toward what he remembered as the blue sky.

Two doors slammed in succession.