My friends and I are in an on-again/off-again writing club where the rules are simple. Every two weeks you have to submit three short stories that it took you 20 minutes or less to write. These are the results.

Please, God, No

I believe in God, but I don’t regularly attend church. In fact, I don’t go to church at all. However, I do believe in a higher power, and I occasionally pray to this higher power when I’m looking for guidance or need to help other people. I don’t make prayer demands or ask for anything because I figure it’s unfair since I don’t go to church. How demanding can I be if I don’t put demands like that on myself. Sometimes I pray and just tell God what a great job he’s doing. I figure he doesn’t get a lot of those. Despite this relaxed and positive relationship we share, for the first time I can remember since being a teenager, I asked for a direct intervention.

I had a friend over, and we were going to watch a movie. It was a movie about a guy driving while high on pills. Now, we’re not pill poppers, but we thought the least we could do was get drunk to get ourselves closer to being in the right frame of mind. The liquor store nearby was closed, so I headed downhill to the weirdo market.

It’s not a market run by or frequented by crazy people, it’s run be foreigners who charmingly enough have decided to run their store the way it would be run in their home country. Fair enough, it’s their store and they can do whatever the hell they want with it. So if I walk in and find they’ve laid out a patch of astroturf so patrons can play board games for money while dogs attack the potato chips placed on the lower shelves, who am I to complain?

In this particular case, them marching to their own mercantile drummer paid off, for sure enough, they were open for business while all the other possible venues for buying alcohol were done for the night. When I walked in, the person behind the register was sitting down and fiddling with a television he’d set up for himself. I was the only person in the store besides him, and I said hello as I passed on my way to the coolers and shelves in the back.

It was as I was perusing their limited rum selection that I heard it – the overzealous moans, grunting and slapping that are the de riguer of porn movies. I looked back to the register quickly, and saw that indeed my friend at the front counter was viewing an X rated movie. Loudly.

This was fine with me, though. As I said before, it’s their business, not mine. Perhaps he quickly turned down the television when I walked in, just in case it had been someone with more delicate sensibilities walking in. Perhaps he sensed I was the open-minded type with my hello, and knew I didn’t mind some hardcore fucking with my shopping. He was right.

I made my selection, and made my way to the front. When I set my bottle on the counter, it happened. I prayed to God. I don’t feel guilty about it now because it was instinctual, not premeditated. The second I saw that he was wearing sweatpants and was preparing to stand, in my mind I said, ‘Please God, don’t let this guy have a boner.’

My prayers were answered, which I think proves that God and I are on good terms.