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175Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlQFGHy9ZDG
Gerald Dillsworth is God.
Don't remind him of that though, he's not really proud of it.
His full name is Gerald Obadiah Dillsworth, or G.O.D, for short. He gave himself that name because he thinks it's funny. He gets a little chuckle out of it every time he has his license renewed at the DMV. He's never actually driven a car or even owns one. He never took a driving test to get his license. His name just suddenly appeared one day in the DMV database, and coincidentally, on the voter rolls.
He's never actually voted either. Well, not in person. He just receives a paper ballot in the mail and votes for a write-in candidate. He always votes for the same person no matter what government position is on the ballot: "Jesus."
After all these years, he's still trying to get his son a job.
Now, you might think that if you saw Gerald you would immediately know that he was God, that he had some glowing aura about him, or a halo. Nope. God is quite average-looking. He's an older man. He likes to keep himself appearing around 50 to 60-ish. In his mind, it's a good look. People tend not to mess with him or ask him stupid questions. He's of average-height, a bit stocky, with a little pooch for a belly. His hair is gray and fairly thick but always cut short. He used to go to a barber near his house but that guy disappeared years ago. It may have had something to do with him accidentally nicking one of Gerald's ears during his last haircut, but who can say for sure?
His haircut isn't really that important anyway because he is almost always wearing a baseball cap. He also prefers wearing a collared long-sleeve shirt, with the sleeves rolled up a bit. White, blue, or light-gray are his favorites. They're the kind of shirts that a laborer might wear as a uniform for their work and after retiring or moving on to another job, just kept to use as daily wear. He usually wears dark gray pants or blue-jeans as well as basic brown work boots.
He could easily be seen as your average older farmer or day laborer, like a guy that worked in a sheet-metal factory, or as a mechanic, or a truck driver. That would please God quite well. That is the look he is going for.
He does, however, have quite piercing green eyes, and whenever he complains to the clerks at the local market about the freshness of their fruits and vegetables, they easily comply with his requests. "Yes, sir. I'll certainly let the manager know," they say to him.
One look in Gerald's eyes and it is readily apparent: this man means business. He doesn't have time for chit-chat, and he's not here to make friends.
He can usually be seen walking along the city streets, carrying a large brown tote bag and picking up bottles and jars. He does this every morning from the first rays of sunrise up until about noon. Sometimes, on a good day, he might have his tote full of jars and start loading more up in a black trash bag. You might have even passed him one morning and barely noticed, thinking to yourself : 'Just some old guy picking up bottles.'
That's is exactly how Gerald likes it. He just wants to be part of the background. Unnoticed and unbothered.
His home is quite average-looking as well. It is a medium sized house that sits on a street of very similar houses in a quiet, older suburban neighborhood. It's a four bedroom, two-story house with a full basement and a two-car garage in the back. There's a 6-foot high gray privacy fence that surrounds his backyard and goes from the back of the house to the side of the garage. He has a concrete driveway that could use some repairing but it is quite serviceable considering that he doesn't actually own a car.
His house blends in quite nicely with all the other houses in the neighborhood. It's fairly well-kept but not exceptional. Gerald keeps the lawn mowed and the front porch and sidewalk swept and the roof appears to be just a few years old.
The only element that sort of stands out is his beautiful flower garden that runs from the side of his front porch to around the corner of his house and ends at the privacy fence at the back of his house. Gerald can often be seen working his front garden, watering it and applying fertilizer, pruning and pulling weeds. He has great pride in his garden and it shows. People walking along the sidewalk often pause and take a good look at it and some might even take a picture. Gerald often receives compliments when he's outside working on it. He graciously accepts their kind words. "Thank you." He replies in his deep, gravelly voice. "Yea...it keeps me busy."
One night, Gerald's neighbor, Ralph, came stumbling home from his nightly sabbatical at the corner bar. As he passed in front of Gerald's house he stopped to look at the beautiful garden. For some reason, he decided to get a closer look and stumbled over toward it. He swayed back and forth for a few minutes while his eyes were filled with a spectrum of hazy, unfocused colors.
Then he passed out.
His huge body flipped over the small foot-high, white picket fence in front of Gerald's garden and he landed flat on his back. His mind drifted off into a deep, intoxicated stupor. Flattened under his immense fleshy figure were two rows of Amazonian violets, a row of Dutch-Yellow tulips, six red '"sleep-me-nots'", two mazulis, and Gerald's prized Ivory rose bush (whose one frail bloom had taken two years of hard work to produce).
Ralph's terrible accident happened over two years ago. No one has seen hide nor hair of him since. A few of the neighbors heard a loud clap of thunder that night, but there wasn't a cloud in the sky.
The next day, Mrs. Pimperschniel, an elderly lady that lives four houses down, was out walking her terrier and caught Gerald working in his garden. She stopped and engaged Gerald in some idle chit-chat before asking why some of his flowers looked a bit burnt around the edges. Gerald just laughed and continued working a small pile of gray ashes into the blackened dirt with his hoe.
Gerald loves his garden. It reminds him of the past.
The front garden is quite nice, but his backyard, hidden by the privacy fence, is absolutely spectacular. There are several fruit trees, flowers, rows of vegetables and fruit plants, a nice little pond stuck in a corner with a few koi swimming about within, and a stone path that winds throughout the entire yard. The garden is always full of birds and insects and a few chipmunks. There's a little bench and table by his backdoor and Gerald enjoys just sitting there and sipping tea and looking upon the results of all his labors. He is often quite pleased.
Next to the garden, at the end of the cracked driveway, covered in vines and trellises sits Gerald's garage. The side window is painted black and the large front door has been bolted shut. No one has ever seen inside of it.
Each night, Gerald walks quietly out to the garage and unlocks the huge padlock on the 2-inch thick, steel, side-door. In his arms are several bulging grocery bags full of jars. He places the bags inside the door and then goes back to the porch of his house where he picks up several more bags and then walks back to the garage. He continues this nightly ritual for nearly an hour, until all the bags of jars are off his back porch and inside his garage. He then enters and closes the door and turns on the light that hangs down from the rafters. He scans the interior of the garage, trying to find an empty space somewhere. It is becoming an increasingly difficult thing to do, for there are about eight-hundred thousand jars in the garage already, and each night he brings a few hundred more. Gerald has never actually counted them all of course, he's always too busy looking for a place to put more. He stands under the swaying light bulb and scratches his head, while a perplexed look covers his lightly tanned, slightly wrinkled face.
Inside his house are about five or six million more jars. The basement, which is actually quite large by most people's standards, is crammed totally full, from the floor to the ceiling. The stairway down to the basement is packed full also, and Gerald even took the basement door off so as to use every inch of space available. The hallway from the basement stairs to the kitchen is packed full of jars as well, as is the laundry room.
Gerald once had four bedrooms and two bathrooms in his house, but all the bedrooms, as well as the bathroom upstairs have all been filled with bottles and jars, and Gerald now sleeps downstairs on a couch in the den, which has several rows of jars surrounding it and the television. Like little glass soldiers, the jars look as if they are guarding a sacred tomb. Some of the glass containers are small, like baby food jars, while others are quite large. There are cola and wine bottles and reused mustard and jelly jars. Bottles of all shapes, sizes and colors fill his entire house. Some have lids or corks while others are sealed with duct tape or aluminum foil. The only space he has left is a little path that goes from the downstairs bathroom, to the kitchen, and to the den. Every other inch is covered by a wall of sealed glass containers.
'My, goodness,' Gerald thinks to himself, '...the garage is nearly full.'
No one has seen Gerald's collection, for Gerald doesn't allow people in his yard. The gate to his front lawn is always locked, as is his door, and his shades are always pulled down. Some think he is some kind of hoarder, and in some respects, he most certainly is, but God has always been a hoarder in one way or another. However, God will certainly admit that hoarding is not his real problem – procrastination is.
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