He sneaked into the sacrifice shop out of the vile noises of the streets. The pleasant odour of the animals and pet food caressed his nostrils and made him relax. He walked through the shop, past the fish section, the mute and lovely fish, that never bothered anyone and were in many ways like himself. The screams of the parrots hurt in his head, he was coming closer to them. Their familiar mocks, their hysteria, their superiority. He heard their yells from far off: "Git! Twit! Stupid!" He put his head between his shoulders and paced past their cages without looking into their little stinging eyes that mercilessly spotted his faults. Their laughter rang in his ears just like that of the children at school. He hated the birds and yet he admired them. They could sense his inferiority. They knew he was an imbecile. And they were superior, not only because they could fly and talk, they were GOD's creatures. His winged messengers. DIVINE they were. He hurried around the corner into the next room. The yells became fainter, but they were still present, reminding and accusing him of his defects. The laughter never completely went away. No matter where he went. Even in his flat he could hear it from down on the streets. It took him a couple of seconds to calm down. He nervously wiped the pearls of sweat from his forehead. With a few deep breaths he regained control and became aware where he was. The mice, hamsters, guineapigs, the rabbits. DIVINE and lovely. Soft and gentle they were, sitting in their cages, chewing hay in contemplation, playing around in peace. Their little sniffing noses, their shiny fur, their whole appearance. The only down side was their vulnerability. That was the reason he felt close to them. The next step on his way into GOD's grace. He stood there for a while with a smile on his face, watching the unspoilt beauty of the little rodents. Lost in his admiration he was unaware of the trickle of saliva that made its way down the corner of his mouth. He admired GOD for creating such beauty. A shriek of a parrot tore him back into reality. He guiltily looked around whether anyone had noticed him and wiped away the saliva. He knew that he looked silly when he got lost in his thoughts. They had told him countless times. He stood there for a while, alone with the animals. He was about to give up and leave before he would arouse suspicion, when two little girls came into the room. They were about six or seven years old and one of them looked especially beautiful. She had long blonde hair and big blue eyes. She would turn out to be a very pretty woman. Pretty and arrogant and stuck up and arrogant and mean. DIVINE. It was the right and the duty of the superior to be mean to the inferior. GOD SEARCHES THE SUPERIOR, FOR SO IS HE. The girl wasn't aware of her beauty. Not yet. It had started when he was about ten. The other children noticed he was different, slow at grasping things. That was when they had started to pick on him. She was some time off from becoming like them. She was perfect for the ritual. He hadn't come in vain.It did not take him too much courage to talk to children. They usually liked him. He had the same way of thinking in some respects. He bent down to her and asked her name. "My name's Sarah, what's yours?" He told her, looked at the rabbits and said: "Which one do you like best?" She had a close look and then pointed to a young one with light brown fur. "Yes, that's a nice one. I think I'll buy it. It's for my niece", he added although the girl did not demand an explanation. He thanked her and went to get the shop assistant where he bought the rabbit. He was relieved no problems had occurred when he was leaving the shop. He dreaded talking to people. They scared him with their complicated questions he could not answer. And sometimes they yelled at him. Once he had talked to a girl in a shop and suddenly her parents were behind him. They were outraged, called him a child molester. Only because he had touched her. They screamed at him, hurt his delicate hearing. He shrank together and crunched on the floor, covering his ears to stop the pain. Finally, the manager threw him out. He ran through the streets in panic and fear, unaware of the roaring traffic and where he was going. When he had calmed down after a while he was lost in a back street of this big, intimidating city. It took him a long time to get back to the shelter of his flat. Still trembling he closed the door and cried for hours. At first he was not sure what he had done wrong, but he must have offended GOD by touching the girl. He hated himself for this sin and the fear. The fear was the worst. GOD DOES NOT WANT SCARED PEOPLE: GOD WANTS COURAGEOUS PEOPLE, FOR SO IS GOD. From that day on he never touched a girl again. But everything had went smoothly today. It did not really make him happy, though. He knew that situations like that would occur again. He could never trust his actions. He always did something wrong. Walking home, he felt the rabbit move in the little box. He kept close to the walls of the giant skyscrapers, which had been built by incredibly smart people. He held the eyes to the floor, so that he would not attract anyone's attention and disgust. Finally, he reached the place where he lived. He walked up the seventeen stairs to his apartment, although there was an elevator. He did not want to be trapped with someone who's attention he was not worthy, and walking kept him in shape. He was barely out of breath when he reached his flat. It had taken him a long time of hard work to get this fit. GOD SEARCHES HEALTHY PEOPLE, FOR SO IS GOD. His apartment was not furnished. There was nothing to sit on, not even a bed. A few blankets were all he had to sleep on, a sink, a toilet. Apart from that the apartment was empty, except for the altar room. Although luxury was a symbol of success, it made lazy. In his position he could not dwell on the merits of DIVINITY. He had to become hard to not attract GOD's wrath. He put Sarah in a cage in the altar room and sat down, his back against the wall to watch the little creature get accustomed to the new environment. The altar room was filled with thousands of empty cans of baked beans. They were stacked in a complicated pattern, the pattern of the wallpaper in the cupboard, his mother used to lock him in, when he had done something wrong, when he had sinned. That had happened quite often. He had spent countless hours in it in solitude, memorising the pattern, thinking, repenting. But he had liked it there in some way. No one ever came to bother him, to make fun of him, to call him a moron. In his cupboard he had started to think of GOD. He wondered why GOD had made him different and what he had done wrong. And he asked himself how he could please GOD, how he could get a part of his DIVINITY, what he had to do to become a proper human. That was the time when his religion had begin to form. At first it had been hard to figure what GOD wanted. There was the Bible, of course, and he tried to read it, but it was confusing. Too complicated. And the people read different things from it. Everybody seemed to have their own idea about what GOD wanted, and so he finally decided to rather use his weak intelligence to find out for himself, than to trust on other people to tell him. For years he had tried to figure out all these things to make GOD forgive him for whatever he had done. And that was his problem. He did not know what he had done to call GOD's wrath. But everybody else seemed to know. They all laughed and picked on him. He finally came to the conclusion, that they had an instinct for his EVILNESS and that had to mean they had a DIVINE spark in them. He was very proud having come to such a complicated conclusion when he was not even able to do simple arithmetics. To be fair, it had taken him years. He decided to watch the successful, beautiful people, to become one of them — well average was enough for him. That was his goal, all he asked from GOD — to become average. However, for that he had to do as the winners did. GOD SEARCHES THE WINNERS, FOR A WINNER IS GOD. He loved the beautiful and successful people, although they treated him so badly. But it was their right and even their duty to do so. He tried hard and this determination might get him a place in the ship to mind the cattle. Then he went to work, down the seventeen stairs, the 272 steps he had counted numerous times to take the underground. He dreaded the underground, the screams of the trains and the masses of people getting squeezed together. It scared him almost to madness. But he knew he had to conquer his fears. So he forced himself to go to crowded places, to eat baked beans, to put his hand under open flames until the smell of burnt flesh went into his nose, and to perform many more religious rituals. When he got off the underground he was in cold sweat, although he had taken the underground for years, but now he could stand the ride without freaking out like he had done the first times. He became better and he moved on to ever more challenging tasks. The ritual with Sarah was only another step to become average, and he would eventually proceed to more daring performances. It would not be long. He liked the work. All he had to do was put bags of nappies into carton boxes. All day long the same routine. Thousands of times a day, millions of times a month. No changes, no problems to think of. Sometimes work was not so good. When he made a mistake everybody would shout at him. But they knew him at work, so they did not give him any difficult tasks, and when they made fun of him, they would come afterwards, pat his shoulder and say: "Never mind, we're just kidding. No hard feelings." And then he would smile. These people were different from the children in the private school. Only when his bosses were angry, it was hard. They yelled at him because they did not know him. If he was lucky, one of his colleagues would come and say: "Give him a break, he's a twit." The boss would rave on a bit and go away. He liked it when people understood, although it was a sign of weakness before GOD. He felt slightly bad because he could not handle his own business and had to rely on others. He was a disgrace. GOD SEARCHES PEOPLE WHO TAKE THINGS IN THEIR OWN HANDS, FOR SO DOES GOD. But this day nothing had happened. When he returned home late at night, he sat in his usual spot and ate a cold can of baked beans. He had to choke to get it down. As a child he had to eat them all the time. His mother said they were healthy, and so he ate them to become big and strong, although he hated them. After finishing the can, he put it on the stacked pile and took Sarah out of the cage. He held and stroked her until he fell asleep on the floor in the darkness. It was crucial for the ritual to establish some sort of a relationship with the little animal. In the morning he found that Sarah had urinated on him and had run away. He could not blame her. As a DIVINE creature even she could tell imperfection. Everybody knew. He caught Sarah, put her back in her cage and then went to do some exercises. He did push—ups, sit—ups and lifted bricks with his well—trained body. At least his physical side was satisfactory for GOD's high standards, although that was not as important as the mental side. And it was his mental weakness that bothered him, his lack of intelligence, his weakness, his lack of arrogance and superiority. Once he had tried to beat up a bum, not because he wanted anything from him, but just to demonstrate his power. That's what DIVINE people did - demonstrate power. But when he heard this man's screams of pain and fear, he could not go on. It was humiliating not even to be able to be superior over a bum. But this bum reminded him of himself when he was a child and the children in school beat him up and laughed at him. They were merciless. Even when he cried, crumbled down to the ground they would not stop. Only when they got tired of it, which usually took a long time, they let go. They did not have mercy. GOD SEARCHES THE MERCILESS, FOR MERCILESS IS GOD. But back then he had not been ready for it. At least it had shown him that he had to go a long way, and he had come a long way. Pretty soon he would go further than that. GOD SEARCHES SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE, FOR SUCCESSFUL IS GOD. He would show GOD his determination, his devotion. And when GOD would come to choose the worthy people who would go with him to another world, GOD would choose him as well. Not to travel in the passenger ships but maybe with the cargo. They would need people to work, to mind the cattle, and he could do that, he might be worthy to mind the cattle if he worked very hard. However, that was a long way off. He went to take Sarah out of the cage. It took him some time to prepare for the ritual. It was like going down into the underground. He held Sarah in a firm grip and finally he dug his teeth into the rabbit's soft throat and tore it out. Blood squirted from the panicking rabbit. He collected it in the palm of his hand, drank it and rubbed it all over his face while his other hand was keeping the rabbit under control. Sarah's movements became slower and less powerful as the blood left her body. When she was barely moving anymore, he dropped her. With his heals he kicked in her head, tore open the scull and picked out the little brain. He swallowed it and lifted his blood red fingers to show GOD his devotion.