Behind the door is another door and behind that door is a demon, but you already knew that. Behind the demon, there’s nothing. The demon is you, didn’t you know? You should do. Something tells me you’re not as self-aware as you think you are.

Me? Oh, I don’t need to be self-aware, especially when I’m aware of you. That’s my curse, you see. Also my gift, if you want to look at it that way. People have said that some more self-awareness would be a good thing, but you humans are always banging on about shite which doesn’t matter.

I’m a god. I don’t have to worry about much. About the only thing, I’ve got to worry about is whether I’m going to be overthrown. Even then, that’s hardly anything to be concerned about. If any of you saw me, you’d go completely insane. Oh, wait... Yeah, you are insane. Sorry about that.

You really should thank me. I’m really not bothered by any of you. You’re just my little soap opera, little shadow puppets, dancing around, flailing and being idiots, just for my amusement. Okay, not just for my amusement, but for the other gods too. Have you ever wondered why, if we’re gods, we don’t come and help you? Some of you have.

This pish you spout about there being only one god. Well, I’m here to tell you, there are hundreds. As I recall, someone discovered this centuries ago, but the poor bastard was killed. The barbarians took him, beat him senseless, rolled him in a carpet and set him on fire. No, it wasn’t Rasputin. He’s one of us.

He wasn’t always. I know, I was going to tell you about the dude who discovered the true nature of this world, but I’m a god, give me a break. I have something that you lot would say resembles ADHD. In reality, I just get bored with saying something too much. I’ll tell you about the truth-stumbling man later... Probably.

First, Rasputin. He was a good guy. Nice human, slightly evil, a lot weird. Did stuff, stuff I can’t remember. I suppose I should ask him about it again. Maybe one day. He’s a great drinking buddy. That day when he was beaten and killed, we took him over here. Notice I said ‘over’ and not ‘up’. We’re in a different dimension, we ain’t above, below, or anything like that. It’s like a doorway, of sorts. We actually exist in your dimension, but also in our own. You just can’t see us. Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah!

Anyway, I put on this big, booming voice and talked to Raspy (that’s my pet name for him). I said:

“Hey, dude, wanna be a god?”

He was all:

“Wha’?..” Confused and shit.

So I told him to get his arse over here. Took him a while, but he got here. Poor bugger was all bloody. Fucked up, he was. Dazed and confused, like the Led Zeppelin song. Those guys are good.

“We want to make you a god.”

“Are you serious?” He panted.

“Yeah, deadly. Oh, that’s literal, by the way. You do have to die first. So, wanna be a god?” I asked.

“Eh, sure why not, but aren’t I already dead?”

“You’re pre-dead. In a state of deadness, like unconsciousness, but not,” I explained.

“Oh, jolly good then!”

And just like that, I killed him and he was a god. Yeah, Raspy is one of my best pals, ain’t you Raspy? He’ll be reading this and blushing. He’s cute when he blushes. I suppose you want to know about the truth finding guy now?

Okay, get comfy. The dude, I’ve forgotten his name. I’ll just call him Fred. He searched for the truth. He wasn’t like any normal human. You see, at the time when he was searching for the truth, about the 16th century, or something, people only believed in one god. ‘The true God!’, as they put it. We didn’t care. It kept us entertained.

Well, this man, Fred, he went on a mission and overcame trials and shit like that. I quite liked Fred. I must admit, I was quite enamoured with him. There was just something good about him. A little evil, too. Not in the usual ‘hey, I’m evil, I’m going to kill your family,’ kind of way, but more of a ‘well, let’s go out and do some mischief!’ Okay, so maybe that made him more naughty than evil, but he had his moments. He was mostly virtuous, though.

When he started his quest for the truth, he scoured the land. He looked in books, he looked in nooks. He looked in crannies, even guys called Manny. He didn’t find anything, for it was all nothing. The truth he saw wasn’t really The Truth. Forsooth, forsooth, he would sleuth. And, so it came, that he was evil’s bane. Kept searching, did he. Then, at once, he found the key.

That key, you see, was the thing he needed.

“Quick, grab the popcorn!” I shouted to my fellow gods, once he found that key.

Hecate flung me a barrel of rum and Ra popped some corn, Raspy took his seat on my lap and kissed me. I love that man. Oh, anyway, enough about our homo-tendencies. Where was I? Oh, yes. He’s found a key.

So, Fred found a key. He didn’t know what it was, but throughout his travels, he kept hearing something about a codex. He wondered if that key, which was a literal key, you know the ones you shove in a lock and give a twirl? Yeah, it was one of those, he wondered if it was that codex thingy.

As he kept searching, he realised about the key. He, of course, kept it secret. He saw through the ages, all the atrocities happening to his fellow truth seekers. He knew he’d have to get some proof, before confronting the masses about it, but he wasn’t sure how. It ain’t as if he could say that he’d read it in a book. They loved their books in the 16th century, but in religious terms, they only liked The Book. Arrogant bastards.

Most of them were bastards, actually. Born of wedlock and all that crap. I have no idea where this idea of having to be married before having children came from. It seems really stupid!

Fred did his best to keep his findings a secret. He made a device, which made his scribblings illegible and another which made them legible again. I’ve no idea how he did it, but it was pretty fucking cool! The unfortunate thing was, back then, people were always searching for the truth, so he had to keep moving on. That helped, but it also hindered. He knew the only way to keep his findings safe was to take them to the grave, but he wasn’t ready to die, so he faked his death.

It was pretty bloody genius the way he did it. Y’see, this was all before DNA and such, so it was just people’s faces and bodies that were used to identify folk. Now I think of it, it probably wasn’t quite so genius, by today’s standards. All he really did was give the guy his clothes - right off his own back, too. Then he grew a giant beard, and finally burnt fuck off the guy’s face, so that he couldn’t be identified. The man was dying of consumption, or mould... Something stupid like that, so Fred did him a favour.

Faking his death worked for a while, but it wasn’t long before Fred was found. It was one of his competitors who found him. They tortured him, tried to make him give his secrets away, but Fred wouldn’t fold. Fred was tough. He even re-wrote his secrets in his special code, then destroyed the only decoder he ever made. Nobody was getting to know our secrets. We didn’t even guide him.

Fred’s torturer, Waylon, devised a lot of horrible punishments. The worst one was when Waylon hog-tied Fred, then occasionally dipped him in a vat of ice cold water. It was the original ice bucket challenge. Sometimes straight after dunking Fred in the ice water, Waylon would dunk him in some tepid water. That caused immense pain, but Fred didn’t yield.

Eventually, Fred managed to escape. He waited until he was untied and then stabbed Waylon in the chest. Murder was a small price to pay for his secrets being kept so, but we were curious as to how things would go when the secrets were leaked, so we sent someone down and had him try to make a decoder, just like Fred’s. Our guy failed, so we decided to just keep watch over Fred. He had our secrets, so we wanted to make sure he, and thus them, were all safe.

Fred, somehow, outlived Waylon, but it was when Fred was on his own deathbed, that he was discovered to know the truth of the world. The world, still being bigoted, didn’t believe him, so they hastened his death. He was dying slowly, so they actually did him a service. That’s why we decided to make him a god. I might have to tell you about the hierarchy of the gods, but it’s a bit involved, and I can’t really be bothered.

Back to Fred and his death. He was being poisoned by someone pretending to be his friend, and every day, the poison would get stronger. It was a horrible way to die and not very nice at all to watch.

When Fred arrived with us, he was seething. We decided to let him stay as a lower god.

So here’s the hierarchy: I’m the head of the gods, but I’m not the god of the gods. We hold elections to see who gets to be in charge. Below me, but only just, is Raspy. His duty is to run after me, or whomever is in charge. He’s also my lover, but that’s exclusive to me and me only. He doesn’t love anyone else Okay, he loves other people, but he’s not in love with them, as he is, me. Then below him, there are people like Hecate, Thor... Gods of weather and such. They have to run after the gods above them and also control the humans through devices such as weather, land and natural disasters. Optionally, they can grant prayers.

It has been this way forever. I’ve been in charge for a long time. I think my fellow gods are happy with how things are going here. It’s peaceful here, but sometimes we do intervene on earth. We don’t have to intervene too much, though.

I don’t know how to end this, but I do hope you enjoyed this narration by a god. If you search for the truth, you might just find me. See you around! (But don’t try to see me; you really can’t, until you die.)

Oh, one other thing: Please stop killing each other, you’re all just as pathetic as one another, so just... Don’t.