Welcome

It spoke to me, in great chants, in endless chants in ancient tongues that I couldn’t understand, that my mind refused to register. Some unholy syllables, pounding into my brain, screwing into my ears. 

“Yyuoo arr….vhalod” it repeated, and repeated. I took a stop forwards. 

“Dahnt bhe szho ha’ard ane yuurzelph.”

From the mass, the sticky mass of unearthly horror, emerged something. Something that my eyes didn’t want to see, that my mind wanted to blank out. It placed something in front of me. A thing of alien construction, a thing that resembled no known human architecture, no known ceramic of any culture. Beside it was a small cup, steaming hot. A tentacle, as brief as I could focus on it, gestured at the cup. 

I picked it up, took a smell of the strange, hot brew inside. 

Communism: You have 2 cows; the Government takes both and gives you some milk.

Fascism: You have 2 cows; the Government takes both and sells you some milk.

Nazism: You have 2 cows; the Government takes both and shoots you.

Bureaucratism: You have 2 cows; the Government takes both, shoots one, milks the other and throws the milk away..

Traditional Capitalism: You have 2 cows. You sell one and buy a bull. You herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

An American Corporation: You have 2 cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. Later, you hire a consultant to analyze why the cow dropped dead.

A French Corporation: You have 2 cows. You go on strike because you want three cows.

Japanese Corporation: You have 2 cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create a clever cow cartoon image called Cowkimon and market them Worldwide.

An Italian Corporation: You have 2 cows, but you don’t know where they are. You break for lunch.

A Swiss Corporation: You have 5000 cows. None of which belong to you. You charge others for storing them.

Chinese Corporation: You have 2 cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the numbers.

An Iraqi Corporation: Everyone thinks you have lots of cows. You tell them that you have none. No one believes you and they bomb your arse. You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of a Democracy…….

Counter Culture: ‘Wow, dig it, like there’s these 2 cows, man, grazing in the hemp field. You gotta have some of this milk!’

Surrealism: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

Apathyologism: You have 2 cows. You do not care.

Fatalist: You have 2 doomed cows…

Atheism: You have 2 cows. There is no God.

A West-Country Corporation: You have 2 cows. That one on the left is kinda cute.

A Brazilian Corporation: You have 2 cows. You pay taxes for 6 cows. You have to sell one cow in order to pay the taxes. Your remaining cow gets sick and dies while waiting for availability in the public vet hospital.

Russia: You have two cows. Since they are both female, if you happen to keep them in the same stable you will pay a 5,000 rouble fine for homosexual propaganda.

PETA: You have two cows. You kill them both. You then use naked women to convince other people that killing cows is wrong.

Moffat: You have two cows. Both of them are your daughters time traveling from the past where they had a brief love affair with Da Vinci making you the rightful Queen of England. As you assume the throne, you throw them off a building.

Hussie: You have 2 cows. You ask for another one. Instead of getting just 1 cow, you get 2,485,506 cows.

Romney: You have 2 cows. You are not the president of the united states.

Once-ler: You have 1 cow. Everyone decides to make 5 different versions of that cow.

Old Spice: You have 2 cows. The cows are now diamonds. I’m on a horse.

An Irish Corporation: You have a million cows because they’re everywhere

Tumblr: You have 2 cows. You ship them together and make GIF posts screaming about how much you love your cows, but they should stop existing because they are so perfect.

Also Tumblr: I give you a hamburger.

Night Vale: You do NOT have two cows. Cows do not exist. What’s a cow? Show me a cow! That’s not a cow! Who let you in here?

Tom Hiddleston: You have two cows. You are very sorry for them.

Thranduil: You do not have two cows, you have an elk. Riding on two cows is not majestic. Also the dwarves are on fire.

Dwarves: You had two cows but now they’re on fire.

Bilbo Baggins: You did not invite those two cows for dinner.

Cows: The shit you go through.

Anyways I’ve been getting over 380,000 notes a month easily and now I’m getting supposedly less than 1,000 a day. The ‘best stuff first’ feature has downgraded this site a tremendous amount, not only is the feature destructive to smaller blogs, they also somehow fucked up the activity page, and is no longer accurate or useful. 

“What do you think?” God asked as we passed a nineteen-way taking place in a pool of champagne. Little cherubs flitted overhead armed with mops and cleaning supplies, thankfully. “Lust is our most popular sin.” I eyed the supermodel-like figures of a couple passing nearby, and could easily see why. “You can look however you want. Hell, you can be whatever gender you want. No fetish is too taboo, and no desire can be denied here.”

It was quite tempting, but I wasn’t ready to make a permanent decision here. “Let’s see the others,” I told God.

We carried on to Greed. We passed rows and rows of mansions, each more opulent than the next. Some of them were so large that they would have had enough bed rooms to fit my entire hometown. And so many different styles: one second, we were in a beautiful French vineyard in front of a gorgeous chateau with the Alps in the background. The next second, a warm tropical beach with a modern mansion atop breathtaking cliffs. After that, a ski chalet in Colorado with a roaring fire in a hearth large enough to fit an ox. Each one had various Italian sports cars and Rolls Royces parked in front, with the occasional smattering of boats, helicopters, etc.

“Any material desire you ever wanted,” God explained. “Your own world, where you can have everything. You want the Hope Diamond? You can fly to Washington DC in your own solid gold helicopter and buy it from the Smithsonian. Hell, you can just buy the Smithsonian.”

Also tempting, but I decided to keep looking.

Gluttony was next up. Tables and tables of the very finest foods: beautiful steaks cooked medium rare; butter-poached lobster tail; fresh oysters on a half shell; exotic wines in dusty bottles that had been hiding in the cellars of the world’s finest restaurants. Everyone had a glass of champagne in hand and simply lounged on couches and chairs near the tables, eating endlessly. As soon as the inhabitants took a bite, the food just instantly came back. My mouth watered even watching them.

“In every other House, the food is practically sawdust compared to Gluttony,” God explained. “You haven’t truly experienced heaven until you’ve been to Gluttony.”

I shook my head, and we kept moving.

Sloth was as you’d expect. An endless sea of the softest mattresses, stacked with cushions and pillows that made the story of the princess and the pea seem minimalist. Little angels visited each resident, giving them massages that made them all melt into their blankets.

Wrath was… well, a lot like what I’d expect Hell to be like. Fire, brimstone, whips, torture.. you know, the works. Except here, you weren’t the one being tortured. Every enemy you’d ever made in your real life was now under your thumb. “Lots of people choose their fathers,” God explained. “Lots of grudges against parents in general, you know. But you’re not limited to that. Someone beat you out for a big promotion back on Earth? Take your pound of flesh here.”

Then we arrived at Envy. It looked… well, a lot like home.

“Go on in,” God said, gesturing toward the door. I turned the knob and walked in… and found Emily waiting inside. She ran forward, wrapped her arms around my neck, and planted a kiss right on my lips. “Welcome home, honey.”

I looked back toward God. “Oh, don’t be coy,” he said. “You have no secrets from me. We all know that you were in love with your best friend’s wife.” She didn’t seem to hear him at all; she went back into the hall. “We all know that you just settled for your own wife while secretly pining after her. Well, this is your chance to live happily ever after.”

I peered into the kitchen. Emily was baking something, wearing nothing but an apron. Her curly black hair fell softly over her shoulder as she whisked ingredients. She turned back, noticed I was observing her, and an enthusiastic smile spread across her face.

“It’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?” God whispered in my ear.

I wanted to take it. God damn did I want to take it. But I shook my head.

God seemed puzzled. “You need to make a decision,” he told me.

“I haven’t seen Pride yet.”

He scoffed. “No one ever wants Pride, trust me.”

“Well, I want to see it.”

_________________________

Pride was boring. Just a row of workbenches in a bare white room.

“I don’t get it,” I told God.

“Yeah, no one does,” he answered. “That’s why no one ever chooses it. Doesn’t cavorting in Lust sound better than sitting here building little trinkets for the rest of eternity? Wouldn’t you rather gorge yourself in Gluttony? Or spend time with Emily in Envy?”

I considered the options again. “I pick Pride,” I finally told him.

He narrowed his eyes. “What? Look at it!” He gestured around the room again. There wasn’t much to look at. “Why would you choose this for the rest of time?”

“Because you don’t want me to pick it,” I told him. If he was really God, he’d know what a contrarian I can be. And I knew he was hiding something, trying to pretend like Pride didn’t exist. There was something special about it.