This one came along unexpectedly and hung around for a while until I wrote it down...
"You can't, and that's that, so you may as well stop crying," said God.
But the man didn't hear, he was crying too much and filling the pool with his tears.
"I would do anything for you, you know, but not that, that's one thing that just won't happen," said God, looking on and feeling sorry for the man.
The man cried his despair.
"I'm right here. Shh," said God.
For three weeks the man had been crying, every cell in his body aching to be with his lost love again, his heart a huge pain in his side.
God stayed with the crying man to lend a helping hand, for just as soon as the man reached out to him for help.
"Maybe there's no cure for a broken heart," thought God.
Over in the shadows on the sun-lounger from Barbados lay Number 5 dozing under a watermelon tree. A monkey was nibbling on the vine that held it to the branch right above the dozing woman. In her dozing she was dreaming of watermelons falling as tears and hitting the hard ground and exploding into rainbows that shot off all over the place with little shrills of ‘eee’ left behind.
Number 5 was half Pawnee most days and three quarters Cheyenne on the others and always went far south for the winter to rest and recuperate from the tiring business of being a woman with too much to do. Not everyone appreciated her for doing this, as was their want, but it was her thing to get away once a year to be in peace and forget about everything.
The witch of chips, astride a terrible the dragon, passed over all this in a saintly fashion riding the high winds which were going too fast for stopping, and so they went on to the next story and left this one far behind where no one saw her or the dragon, except a little birdie who forgot it immediately and who hopped off on its skinny legs looking for worms.
Over in the bushes, Bag-eye was hiding behind a bush arguing with his friend the angel.
"Please go upstairs and put my lotto numbers in," pleaded Bag-eye to the angel.
"Shan't," said the angel, sulking.
"I'll tell God on you if you don't," threatened Bag-eye whose face was against the sun and so couldn't expect any windfalls just then.
Unbeknown to Bag-eye, all lotto tickets were automatically entered to win, or not as chance would have it, and so there really was no need to argue.
The angel wouldn't budge an inch in any direction Bag-eye wanted and so Bag-eye threw the lotto ticket away into a little wind that came and floated it into the hand of a small child outside the big walls of this little thing. The child ran to its father in glee, who took the ticket and put it in his pocket to see if it would win, and then carried on with his list of things he wanted from life.
God had taken a holiday away from the crying man by the pool and was on the beach with his bucket and spade building sand castles.
He read the man's list of things that he wanted, which was easy for God as he could see a very long way, and decided to take a hand in bringing them to fruition.
So he waved his hands in the air, and said: done, and because all things are connected in some way, it was so.
The next day, the father gave the lotto ticket to a cracked man behind his counter to see if it had won, but the cracked man said it had not, and put the ticket under the counter. The cracked man knew it was a winning ticket and wanted to keep it for himself. The father walked away, back to his lists and felt disappointed that the ticked was a dud.
God saw this and was not happy that the cracked man had taken the winning lotto ticket for himself and so made up a complicated plan to get it back to the father with his lists.
The monkey finally nibbled through the vine and the watermelon fell onto Number 5's belly and bounced off and hit the back of the crying man's head which pushed him into the salty pool that was so full it overflowed and ran down the incline into the shop of the crooked man who was holding the lotto ticket. As soon as the cracked man saw the water pour into his shop he shouted: "flood!" and ran upstairs, dropping the lotto ticket in his fear to get to safety.
The little birdie, that was half duck and three quarters flamingo, picked the ticket out of the air and was lifted up by the little wind that was there just then. Up the birdie went and let go of the unappetising lotto ticket which fluttered down into the father's hand. And so off he went again to cash it in.
"I'm most terribly sorry," said Number 5 to the crying man who was standing in the pool rubbing his head and who had fallen in love with her.
"Have dinner with me tonight," said the crying man who was not crying anymore.
"Alright," said Number 5 who was also feeling stirrings for the man.
Three weeks later the rich lotto winner threw a banana peel out of the window of his car to land at the feet of a beggar who was begging in the street.
God saw this with his far seeing eyes and thought: "that's not very nice. Hmm."
Bag-eye, who had been begging all morning, without much luck, woke up from his dream with a jerk.
"What?" he said.
His friend, the angel, sleeping next to him, woke up too.
"This is no good," said Bag-eye. "I'm off somewhere else."
Bag-eye stood up and took a step into the gutter and slipped on the banana peel that the rich man had thrown there and went tumbling head over heels into a time warp that took him so far into the future that he woke up in a new body that was just being born to the wife of the rich man who had won the lotto.
The angel hovered overhead looking down on it all.
"Here we go again," said the angel who had seen it all ten thousand times before.
"You can't go back, but you can go on."
Image from Pixabay