The Hanging God | Luke Electious
Telephone wires were hung across the United States in 1877. Nietzsche declared God dead in 1882. I’ve long thought the best way to die would be with telephone wires. God strung Himself to them, pulled the lines apart and hung Himself from the wooden beams. I don’t know when He did it, but my phone call with a sex operator in New York was broken up last week, so I suppose it must’ve been then. Nietzsche saw it, I’m sure.
Nobody knew what to do with God’s body. The first man who tried to unravel the wires from around Him died the moment he touched Him. God looked so awfully pretty hanging there, off a dirt road in eastern California, that the mayor of the town three miles over declared God’s corpse as city property. Before long, He became a tourist attraction. Folks holding avocado smoothies and fake Gucci sunglasses bought from Chinese immigrant workers in the streets of Los Angeles would drive in from the coast to take a picture of the Hanging God, post it in their weekly photo dump.
I went once on a Sunday morning after church. The communion wafer was dirty that day, soiled with the sweat of the priest’s fingers, and I figured I’d have a word with God himself about it. I couldn’t say anything when I got there, though, just looked up and stared at the Hanging God.
They charged me twenty bucks to take a picture, and another five to park alongside the road. The mayor had said they were using the money coming in from Hanging God to build new telephone wires, with which to replace God’s noose. Nobody believed him, of course. His daughter was the only one in town who knew what cashmere felt like.
Three days passed, and the loud neopsychos who’d been waiting on the side of the road for Hanging God to pick himself up after seventy-two hours, to jump down to the road and declare us all saved, finally went home, muttering to each other about a Corinthians verse. I gave it an extra day, because I thought God might’ve forgotten to come back and would remember soon, but nothing changed. I started going to daily mass. The police said God killed Himself, but I think it was my fault. They never did install new telephone wires.
Bonus audio of Luke reading his story…
about the author:
Luke Electious is a Lebanese-American writer with a lifelong love of storytelling and a soft spot for writing strange, unsettling fiction. He published his first works through the University of Notre Dame’s undergraduate literary magazine, The Juggler. He has since written two full-length novels, along with several short stories and flash fiction pieces. His writing blends psychological horror, dark fantasy, and coming-of-age protagonists. When he’s not writing, he’s probably overanalyzing horror movies or buried ten feet deep in a wad of philosophy essays.