Take a moment and picture this: The God of this world--your world--sits in a little apartment downtown, one overlooking some of the nicer city streets. Down the block is a secondhand clothing shop, a bookstore, a cafe, a bakery--and rows and rows of bright one-bedrooms and studios, lined up like straight-backed toy soldiers with blue and green paint. Such is life.

There she sits. Yes, there she sits, hair short and light brown and feathery, sticking out at whatever angles it does so please, thank you very much. And below that mess of hair, a fair and freckled face with two big blue-as-the-sky dots of eyes, staring hungrily at a glowing computer screen.

God is a woman.

The springy bed she lounges on is a queen-sized that sags at one corner, so anyone who scoots too close to that edge will fall off with a graceless thump onto the floor. But God knows better, sitting on the very opposite side. She watches a bird fly by, a little sparrow with fluttery wings.

A sigh spills out as the bed creaks under new weight.

It is 11:52 AM.

A fine-figured young lady crawls over the sheets, eyes the screen. She mumbles something to God, calling her not that but Christina. And God answers to that name, replying that she has been busy writing all morning and simply could not be bothered to start the dishwasher this morning. She has more important things to do, she says, and the woman scowls at Microsoft Word.

"What's this one about?" she asks begrudgingly. God looks at her with those two blue skies of hers, watches for a moment, and begins to explain.

There's a girl, she says, born to a well-to-do family of three and their golden retriever. The girl starts off decently enough, all pigtails and swimming lessons, little drawings of cats and birds on the fridge. But as she grows older she develops into quite the presumptive little cunt, says God, and lies, cheats, back-stabs; everything just accumulates until she's 13 and loses her virginity to a man--not a boy, a man--who says he can take care of her, then she loses her family and everything else, and after a long and lonely life she dies alone, like the conniving little bitch that she is.

The woman asks, "Why does she turn out like that? Was it something her parents did? Friends? Drugs? Abuse?"

"That's life," God says plainly, her voice calm and simple like a white sheet. "It doesn't really matter why anything happens, only that it does. Why anything? Why you, why me, why this, why here?" She gestures to the room around them, then shrugs. "It happens, and here's what we do: We let it."

At this, the woman groans. "But you're the one shaping these... stories," she argues. "You decide the things that happen to these little imaginary people in their little imaginary world. See, you wrote something last week about a mother of three who gets cancer and kills herself, but maybe she wouldn't have done that if you hadn't written it in that she did. You, it's all you!" she cries, exasperated.

"It is not," God replies with a frown. "I don't make the stories. They come to me. And sure, I do some editing and such along the way--"

"See! See!" the woman hollers.

"--but nothing major, nothing that changes the course of the plot itself," she finishes firmly. "Now if you will excuse me, Felicity, there are stories yet to be told." And they sit in silence with the tapping and clicking of the keyboard between them.

Felicity glares at the wall and picks at a hangnail, a this-is-ridiculous expression on her face. God hums a tranquil melody, pausing with complete stillness and cracking her knuckles before typing something furiously, a new idea having struck her.

Felicity asks hesitantly, "Do you ever write about me?"

God hums a bit more, tapping her fingers against her chin. "Of course not."

"And why's that?" Felicity demands, affronted.

A cloud passes, blocking out the sun. The room is covered in shadows as dark as Felicity's hair. God ceases humming and instead mumbles a tune aloud.

"Oh, my little bird in a cage... Because you're real, Fee. I have you right here. Why would I need to make up a story?" she says rhetorically, offering a grin. "I need you to get up for me, up on that stage..."

"Oh." Felicity bites on her lip. "But don't you--" she starts, cut off with a loud And show the men it's not about the money. She sighs.

"Listen to me, Fee," says God, leaning forward on her elbows and staring at the screen. "I don't want you to be this little two-dimensional... puppet. That's not who you are. You're real," she says again, almost desperately. "If you're not real, what is? I can't--If I wrote about you--and it's not that I don't want to, or that you don't deserve to be written about--what does that say about everything about us, you know?"

"That's not--"

"Please, Felicity, just leave it." God laughs. "I really have no idea what I'm even saying anymore. Don't listen to me, I'm crazy." Felicity smiles feebly, leaning her head on God's--Christina's--shoulder.

Fifteen minutes pass. God swears. "Past noon already," she mumbles. "Time for me to go do my daily thingy."

"Thingy?" Felicity repeats. "Ah, there's your wonderful eloquence I love so much!"

God says nothing, instead scrunching her nose and sticking out her tongue.

"Careful, or your face might just get stuck like that. Oh, wait..."

Felicity keeps laughing, even when the pillow hits her open mouth.

The smell of springtime is strong, from the parks and streets to the depths of public transit; sugary and wet and crisp, like a citrus enveloping the city. God is standing, hand gripping a peeling yellow pole, even with a myriad of empty seats surrounding her. She always stands, watching out the window as they pass though tunnels and freeways, and suburbs, and trailer parks. And after an arbitrary amount of time, she gets off, walks around a bit, and boards another train in another direction.

This one is fuller than the last, and as there are no empty seats on this end she must stand. She hums quietly to herself and glances around at her fellow passengers.

A white-haired old woman is sitting in the handicapped section, close-eyed and open-mouthed with her cane laying across her lap. Her fingernails are painted primary red, tacky and bright against her pale, wrinkled skin. She remains very still for a moment, almost dead-looking, until her frail chest rises and then slowly, slowly falls.

Across from the elderly woman is a mother, Hispanic and not quite middle-aged, holding a restless infant in one arm and setting her other hand on the shoulder of her young daughter. Tiredly she hushes the groaning baby, taking a moment to wipe her bloodshot and baggy eyes. The girl shifts around in her seat, tugging on her mother's shirt. She yanks the girl's hand away with a harsh reprimand, and the girl, who is wearing a light green and flowery dress, stares hollowly at the floor.

Then God's eyes fall on the young woman standing in front of her, tall with frizzy hair sticking out from beneath her hat. Her expression is solemn, perhaps even tearful, as she looks down at a forty-five degree angle, her brown-sleeved arms ending in hands that hold a tangerine.

Never were there more unspoken words than at this moment, as the bumpy little fruit rests in long fingers with chewed-up nails and a cheap silver ring. God looks on expectantly, waiting for something to happen, to make sense. No matter how long she stares, the girl never looks up. All she does is hold on to that sugary and wet and crisp tangerine, looking for the world as if she is trying not to cry.

The train halts.

This is the final stop, says the operator.

God steps off onto the sidewalk and opts to take the bus home.

The moment she walks back into her bedroom, she goes to her laptop and deletes every single document; all but one, that is, one titled "Dear Mom and Dad," which she has always meant to send but never did and never will. And anyway, some things are better left unspoken. They can find out for themselves.

"Something wrong?" asks Felicity, who has walked in to find God lying in bed with her eyes glued to the ceiling, avoiding the dip in the mattress. "I thought you were writing."

"No."

"No?"

"Not anymore," says God. "No more puppets. No more little dancing marionettes with their pigtails and poverty and tangerines." She closes her eyes wearily.

Felicity tilts her head a bit to the side, watching with apprehension. "I thought there were stories to be told. Why not tell them? You said yourself you're not in control, so how are they puppets?" she argues softly.

"Fate," says God.

"Oh?"

"Predestination. It's bullshit. You were right, you know. The mom wouldn't have killed herself if I didn't write that she did."

"Oh."

"And anyway, every story has an end, or else we wouldn't tell them because it would take forever and ever and..." She sighs and shakes her head.

"So life isn't useless and unchangeable anymore?" whispers Felicity. "It has a meaning again, so long as no one writes about it?" She smiles. "No more pointlessness?"

"Never," God agrees, making circles in the sheets with her fingers. She rolls over and looks at Felicity. "People aren't puppets," she says with a quiet intensity.

Their eyes lock and they stay like that for a while, until Felicity says, "What, then? What are we?"

Surprisingly, God's eyes start to water and her hand shakes when she brings it up to wipe it away. "I..."

A bird, perched just outside the window, flies off in a storm of grey feathers and sunlight.

She takes a deep breath. "I'm not sure, but I think that's just it. We all have our own tangerines."