She woke up somewhere else. There was a bottle of vodka on a slick marble table. A single crystal glass with two cube of ice. There was a thin, dark skinned man sitting there. He looked like he would host a talk show on day time TV. One where people shouted at each other and threw chairs before finally disintegrating into sobs. He looked like he was intimately acquainted with insomniacs, atheists and suicide.
She knew he was waiting for her to sit down and pour herself a drink.
I am quite real he said to her as she took her place in the empty chair. I am God and I am real. You were as wrong as you were right. You atheists kill me. So confident you know something the whole rest of the world doesn't. You do. And you don't.
I exist, but not in the way everyone believes. I'm thoughts. I'm desperation. I'm need and hope. I'm hopelessness and hatred. I'm the manifestation of the thoughts of billions of people. I'm a lie willed into existence.
Sit with me. Let's talk for a while. You've got nothing, but time.
I'm dead?
You are, but you're not.
There's more. It's just not how people imagine it. It's not beautiful. It's hard. Like life is. It's soft. Like a first kiss. It's a thunderstorm choking on the horizon. It's the piercing hum of cicadas on a muggy summer night. It's the tremble of a single snowflake in a relentless blizzard.
Flesh is an extension of the universe. It's atoms and molecules. It's electricity and inertia. It doesn't wink out of existence. It degrades. It dissolves. It's digested back into the matter all around it.
So you're not real?
I am not.
But you exist?
I do.
So I was right?
You were.
But I was wrong?
You are.
Everyone is.