A Second Helping of Pickles: A Day in the Life of the Celestial Wombat

Humans always assume Jesus is a straight, white man with flowing hickory-colored hair, a length of bushy beard, and an ethical sense of justice. There’s only a few things you really need to know to understand the complexity of my true personality. Firstly, I defecate in cubes. I litter tiny squares of cosmic shit all over the galaxy. How’d you think the Earth was created? No, gravity didn’t pull a million particles of dust and gas to form the planet. I just had a bit too much Taco Bell. Speaking of which, it takes me seventy of your Earth hours to digest a meal. They say Rome wasn’t built in a day and well…I guess they’re right. The last thing you need to know about me? Take a deep breath. This might be a lot for your pocket-sized human brain.

…I am a wombat. Allow me to tell you the story of the century when I almost quit my job.

It all started with Sonny Roswell laying on his deathbed. He was an eighty-three year old human male with two beautiful, fully grown children, a daughter named Pippa and a son called Jerrod, and fond memories of his deceased wife, Luanne, who had died five years prior from diabetic ketoacidosis. Sonny blamed himself for Luanne’s death because he had been too poverty-stricken to afford the insulin she needed, and her blood had risen to dangerous levels of acidity. Within days his wife had passed. Her soul now dances in oblivion.

Sonny himself was dying of coronary artery disease, a condition in which the arteries of his heart built up with plaque until he could no longer pump blood through his body. This had caused him multiple heart attacks, which led him to being hospitalized in Strummington’s Hospital for the Elderly. Sonny didn’t care for the hospital’s title, but the doctors were nice enough.

It happened on a warm, spring afternoon. He was surrounded by his children, an assortment of doctors, and the spirit of Luanne. It happened relatively quickly. That’s when I first met him. He appeared before me as all of them do, a misty reflection in the mirror of eternity. He was a stout old man with fat, wrinkly thighs and loose arm skin that dangled to his waist. A crooked nose was hooked to the center of his face between two beady eyeballs, just above the thin, cracked lips that concealed his complete lack of teeth. He stank of a strange musk. Like rotten cotton squares.

“Where in the balls am I?” he asked.

Now I hope you can imagine my surprise when these were the first words out of his mouth. As a neutered wombat, my godly testicles have been gone for quite some time, and I consider any mention of them to be quite the insult. Nevertheless, it is frowned upon for me to immediately send souls to Wombat Hell without questioning them, so I decided to greet the old man kindly.

“Greetings!” I said. I smiled at him and plopped down on my fluffy hindlegs, my two front paws waving high in the air as I had seen so many humans do before. I imagined I looked pretty damn cute.

“What in the hell?” he said. His eyes were wide, darting up and down as they examined each individual hair on my fuzzy wombat body. Normally when people died and met me, they wanted to pet me and rub my soft belly. It was annoying, but it made me feel nice. Sonny, however, did not appear to want to touch me at all. He looked like he was about to barf up his lunch.

“Actually,” I said, lowering my paws to the ethereal cloud of heaven I was perched upon, “This plane is actually quite the opposite.”

“Oh really?” Sonny said. His voice was skeptical with a cantankerous expression to match. He crossed his flabby old arms and glared at me. “If this is Heaven, then where is Jesus? And God? And all them angels?”

I got this question all the time. Humans always think their idea of the afterlife is the only true one.

“Well, you see, the God you speak of doesn’t exist.”

“Sure He does, He wrote an entire book about Him creating the universe! It’s a New York Times bestseller. I have one in the drawer beside my bed at home.”

“I’m sure you do,” I said with an awkward chuckle. I scratched my wombat elbow nervously. “But, uh. It’s all fake.”

This caused the old man to pause a moment and question whether I was telling the truth. But, as old men do, he decided to yell at me some more. “You’re fake, you fuzzy freak! You know what? God loves everyone, but I bet He doesn’t love you one bit!” Sonny spat in my face.

I wiped his sticky human saliva from my bristly cheek. “That’s because He isn’t real,” I muttered under my breath.

“You’re seriously trying to make me believe a giant kangaroo is the one true God?” Sonny said. He cackled, clinging to his stomach as his body shook violently with laughter. He looked like he was having another heart attack.

“I’ll have you know,” I said through gritted teeth that, mind you, could gnaw the old man’s spine in seconds, “I am a wombat. A celestial one, at that. And I promise you, I am the one you call God.”

Sonny stared at me with narrowed eyes. “Prove it.” I sighed, my stubby paw massaging my aching skull. “Fine,” I said. “You died of a heart attack, the fourth one this week. The last thing you saw before you died was a strange hallucination of a gecko eating a bag of your favorite potato chips, Heckie’s. You think the gecko symbolized your emotionally unavailable father who, by the way, is chilling out in the afterlife in this door behind me.” I gestured to the shimmering door frame I was resting my thick, dumpy tail against.

Sonny looked to the door in wonder. For the first time since I had met him, a strange kindness flooded his eyes and his mouth fell agape in awe. It was the most human I have ever seen him. It didn’t last long.

“Okay,” he said hesitantly. “But what if you’re just another hallucination, a trick of my brain? How do I even know I’m actually dead?” He thought for a moment. “Tell me something I wouldn’t know.”

“President Lincoln was predominantly bisexual.”

“Hot damn, I owe Amos $15,” Sonny cursed. He looked to me again, this time in defeat. “Fine. I guess you’re God.”

“Thank you. Now would you like to know how to enter the afterlife?”

“I guess.”

“Great!” I grinned, exposing my long, pointy teeth. “It’s really very simple. Basically, my friend, time is nonexistent. The story of the universe is constantly happening. You from pre-school is living right now, just as the you who died from a gazillion heart attacks is right in front of me in this very moment as well. Now, if you believe you have lived your life to your liking, you can enter this door behind me. If not, I can grant you a wish to change one little thing about the life you lived so it can be, quite literally, the best time of your life. It’s up to you.”

“I can wish for anything?” he asked. His voice was soft and gentle like he wasn’t a complete asshole of a human being. His eyes were downturned from me, hiding the secrets he didn’t think I already knew about him. Now, this was a wonder I rarely got to see: a man who already knew what he wanted to wish for.

“Absolutely anything at all,” I replied.

“Even…bringing back someone from the dead?”

“Sure. I can work a little magic and prevent whatever caused her, or uh, their death. At least for a little while.”

Sonny nodded, contemplating. “And there’s no catch to this? No hidden fees? No monkey’s paw bullshit?”

I looked him hard in the eye, my wombat conscience syncing with the desperate elderly man in front of me. “Nope. None of that.”

“If that’s the case,” he said, adjusting the sleeve of his stale flannel shirt, “Bring me back my Luanne.”

And so I did. Each time I grant someone a wish before they enter the afterlife, I take great joy in watching the new story of their life unfold. Sometimes their lives become much better, just as they hoped, and other times they get much, much worse. It’s like daytime television for me. I figured Sonny Roswell’s fresh narrative would be especially interesting.

Years went by before he saw me again, but I was watching the whole time from my little burrow in Heaven. I witnessed him as a baby, suckling from the rubber nipple of a bottle, him as a toddler tripping over a massive fallen branch and skinning his elbow, him as a middle schooler with a strange affinity for blowing bubbles in his milk instead of praying for the missing children on the carton’s side. It all seemed very much like Sonny to do these things, so much that I started wondering if I had performed the wish correctly. What if I had just sent him back to relive his life all over again with no change whatsoever? I was sure to get fired if that were the case. Then the Angelic Komodo Dragon would be sure to take my spot. He’s been after my job for millennia.

But then I noticed the differences of this life from his old one. Originally when Sonny had turned eighteen, he had interviewed at the local bacon shop for a job and had then proceeded to work there for the next forty years. He lived to chop bits of dead pigs and sell them to people. Eventually, he met his wife Luanne when she ordered a premium cut of pork, and then they had two children together. At fifty-eight, he had retired. Three months later, his wife had died. Then, he met me.

However, this timeline was all off. This time when Sonny graduated high school, he decided to apply to Texas State University and pursue a degree in what I have always thought of as one of the freakiest subjects of all time: wildlife biology. Sure, scientists discovered that my cartilage-filled booty is my strongest defense against predators, but I’d prefer to keep that impressive fact to myself. It was weird to think of Sonny as an intelligent man of science.

I proceeded to watch the rest of his life in earnest, my destructive wombat asscheeks hanging on the edge of their seat. In college, Sonny was a surprisingly superior student. He turned each assignment in on time, brought up intriguing ideas during group discussions, and even raised his hand instead of obnoxiously speaking out of turn. People in his classes liked him, thinking of him as a charming, charismatic young man who they would definitely be seeing going places after graduation.

And, somehow, it was all true. After college, Sonny ended up becoming the lead scientist at the most significant laboratory in the country, making thousands of dollars a week and contributing to some of the most exceptional discoveries in human history. People all over the world knew his name. Sonny Roswell: the most intelligent person on Earth.

It was a world-wide travesty when he died. He was fifty-two, three decades younger than when he had died the first time. Paparazzi found his estate had been broken into a day after Sonny had frontlined a major science exposition on national television. After a thorough police investigation, it was confirmed that a crazed fan had raided his home and murdered Sonny with a single action semi-automatic pistol. A classic assassination.

I saw Sonny moments later.

This time he was dressed quite fancily, and his expression was soft rather than sour. He was much healthier, too, but that could have been due to the fact that he had been robbed of the last thirty years of his life.

He smiled at me like an old friend. “Well hello there you little cutie,” he said. “What are you doing up here in Heaven? Oh, God must have known of my fondness for wombats and made you especially for me. Thank you Lord, for your kindness!” He crouched down to his knees and looked around, presumably for his preconceived notion of God to come running out of thin air.

Here we go again, I thought to myself. I proceeded to tell him religion was a lie and wombats are the supreme race and all that nonsense. And, if he so chose, that I could offer him a wish to change his past life. I did not, however, mention how we had met before. Or that he had already had a perfectly wonderful life before this one, or that he had once been a massive douche, as that is against the rules.

“A magical wombat genie,” Sonny breathed.

“In a sense,” I agreed.

“And I can wish for anything?”

“Absolutely anything at all.”

Sonny frowned. “I had a wonderful life, I truly did. I don’t want you to think I’m ungrateful, Mr. Celestial Wombat. But…there is one thing I wish I had experienced, even just once.”

His mysteriousness intrigued me. The first time he made his wish, he had been blunt as could be. Now he was too afraid to even ask.

“Yes?” I said.

“I wish for love, Mr. Wombat.”

And so I did. Each time he asked me to change an aspect of his life, I got more and more interested. Was his existence so meaningless and horrible that he had to keep living it over and over until he got it just right? Maybe this was his own personal Hell, and I had accidentally influenced it upon him? Perhaps he was just a perfectionist?

Either way, he kept coming back to meet with me. He died in every way possible: chronic illness, arson, heartbreak, suicide, car accidents. He had every occupation, lover, hope, and dream. In some lives he was the handsomest, kindest human imaginable, and in others he remained the crusty asshole he was when I first met him. He kept mixing and matching facets of his lives in hopes of creating a perfect one, until I decided to put a stop to it.

It was after his seventeenth life that I resolved to break every rule in the Godly Creatures Handbook.

He appeared as usual, this time born excessively short and hairy. Ironically, he looked about the same as when he had died the very first time. “Oh wow,” Sonny said the moment he saw my mighty wombat form, “I have no idea what kind of rat you are, but please don’t eat me.”

I sighed. “Sonny, I’m not going to eat you. You’re too…stringy.”

“Woah, you can talk? And you know my name and skin texture? That’s so weird. You know I used to know a hermit crab who could talk--”

“Listen,” I said with an exhausted flourish of my paw. “We’ve met before. You don’t know it, but I know you very well. And I am sick of your shit.”

Sonny seemed taken aback, probably because an enormous Celestial Wombat just insulted him and told him all of his memories were gone.

“Um--”

“You’ve lived seventeen lives now, bub. Seventeen. That’s a lot more than a human of your meaningless stature in society should ever get to experience.” I rethought what I had just said. “Well, in one life you were literally the president of the United Nations but…my point still stands.”

“I don’t remember any of that,” Sonny said. The way he spoke so wistfully made me almost think he had somehow retained his memories, but when I looked into his eyes, I saw no recollection there whatsoever. He truly believed he had never laid eyes upon my divine, heavenly wombat figure in this life or any other. It made me feel oddly pensive.

“Well,” I said, “You first died about twelve hundred years ago of a series of heart attacks. You had two wonderful children and a beautiful wife named Luanne.”

I then proceeded to tell this poor, fragile man about the details of his many past lives. I told of how in his fifth life he had sleptwalked into a congested Los Angeles street and how he had been saved by an elderly man much like himself who later became his sugar daddy. I expressed my negative feelings toward his thirteenth life when he had become a hermit with an extensive passion for collecting flower teapots. When it came to his ninth life, I spoke only of him and his girlfriend picnicking in a prickly wheat field. The girl shining blonde hair and mystical chartreuse eyes and a hobby of crocheting little frog dolls. A kind-hearted lady named Luanne.

When I finished, Sonny stared at me with some strange emotion I could not label. Was he furious at me for granting him so many wishes? Was he upset that I had erased such alluring memories from his pea-sized brain? Maybe he just couldn’t process all of the impossibility of it all.

“Celestial Wombat,” he said after a harsh moment of silence, “Please just…give me one more chance. I promise this will be the last time. I will get it right.”

Put yourself in my shoes for a minute here. I had just broken the strict rule of confidentiality over a human’s repetition of lives that is written at least five thousand times in the Godly Creatures Handbook, and at any moment the Angelic Komodo Dragon would come flying down from his spiritual savanna in the sky to yoink my occupation from right under my silky toes. I didn’t have any retail experience, so I couldn't afford to lose this job. I could have just thrown him through the door of the afterlife without a second thought, but there was something about the melancholy determination I saw in Sonny’s wrinkled face that stirred something within me. He really thought he could get it right with just one more chance.

“Alright,” I said reluctantly. “What is your wish?”

The last time I saw him was seventy years later. He was old and gray, but more so than the average elderly man. He had aged like a man who knew that he had technically lived over a thousand years.

“Hello again, you dumb old wombat,” he said.

“Hi there,” I replied. There was a small part of me that was glad to see the original Sonny. Another bit of me was confused as to how he knew who I was. All of me, however, wanted to slap him silly. “You remember everything, I see.”

“Yup. Dunno how. But I’d remember your vile, beasty odor any day of the week.”

I chuckled. “Classic Sonny.”

“And I didn’t lie to you, either. This was my last time.”

I nodded, slow. “Then I guess you’ll be wanting to get to the afterlife pretty soon then, huh? Maybe get a head start on looking for that Luanne of yours?”

Hope filled the old man’s eyes. “My wife is here?” he asked. I smiled and motioned towards the glittering door behind me. Sonny took a deep breath and readjusted the thin red suspenders attached to the waistband of his dirtied jeans. He was a man at the finale of a thousand-year-long adventure, finally coming across the grand prize at the end of the road. He radiated exhaustion, fatigue, and maybe even a little bit of confidence. He was ready to die for both the first and final time. He stepped toward the door.

“You know,” I called after him, “I didn’t really pay attention to this last life of yours. The first seventeen were so tiring, I never had time to do my godly duties.” I winked at him with a moist, nutmeg-colored wombat eye. “I don’t seem to recall what you even wished for.”

A toothless grin spread across Sonny’s face, pulling the scrunches of skin around his mouth into an unattractive mass. “Well, Mr. Wombat,” he said, inching his way closer to the door, “I’ve realized after all this time that my first life was my best one. It wasn’t perfect, and I sure missed my dear Luanne after she passed but…it was the tale the universe decided should represent me. And you know the sequels are never as good as the original. As for what I wished for? You remember the sandwich I had way back in 1971? I wished for a second helping of pickles.”