Selah
1.
Dean sat in class, half-heartedly listening to the lecturer drone on and whole-heartedly staring at Michelle Ranch. God, but she was foxy. Five-ten, a beautiful build (36-24-34), exotic Asian features, silky black hair hanging just above her nipples, each just barely visible if Dean stared hard enough through her white cotton blouse.
Sarah, next to him, poked him in the ribs. “Pay attention,” she whispered. “This is the important stuff.”
Dean sighed, and reluctantly turned his attention back to the college professor. Sarah was right, of course; she usually was. By the end of the first minute, Dean understood everything that had left him confused on last night’s calculus homework.
So why didn’t he teach us this YESTERDAY?! he thought irately, but continued taking notes. Finally, the professor launched into a soliloquy, not uncommon for him, and Dean was free to go back to daydreaming about Michelle. The room gradually lost its focus, until he saw nothing but her. If he concentrated, he could just see her deep cleavage from this angel...
He was concentrating so intensely that it took him a while to notice that all the noise in the room had faded away. Dean turned around, for a moment deathly afraid that the professor had uncharacteristically asked input from the students, specifically him, and now the entire lecture hall was staring at him. But no, everybody continued jotting notes or pretending not to be falling asleep, and the tutor kept on tutoring. Dean simply couldn’t hear it.
Dean hit his temple, cleaned out his ear, shook his head, anything to try and get sound back. He tried humming, and found that he could hear himself. Oddly, Sarah did not poke him and tell him to stop; she had in fact stopped looking his way altogether.
When Dean finally did hear something, it seemed to come from inside his own skull. “Pst. Dean?”
“Huh?”
“De-an?” a moderate male voice musically repeated.
“Yes?”
“Ah, good. Don’t worry about everybody else. They’re still fine. I’ve just sort of moved you about 1/8 of an inch past reality. Everybody’ll still see you and talk to you and think that you’re normal. I just moved your consciousness a little higher. Right now you are at a level of consciousness that’s only been reached by about six people, five of whom live on a mountain in Tibet. Neat, no?”
“Um, yes. Who are you?”
The voice was silent, and Dean was too focused on awaiting the reply to think of anything else. Finally, the voice answered, “Selah.”
“Your name’s Selah?”
The voice laughed. “No. ‘Selah.’ It’s a Hebrew word, used repetitiously in the Bible, amongst other places, used after particularly weighty verses. It means, ‘pause and reflect,’ giving the listener a chance to consider what he or she has just heard and to interpret for themselves. So who do you think I am? Selah.”
Dean tried to infer based on the last statement. “Are you God?”
The voice laughed heartily. “Well, yes and no. See, I’m not God, but I am your creator. Selah.”
Dean sighed heavily, more frustrated than he had been with the college lecture. At least that had been half-possible to understand!
The voice eventually said, “Yeesh! I thought college was for thinkers! Okay, since you’re not doing so well on your own, I’ll help. First, I’ll prove to you that I’m not just some part of your imagination.”
Dean blinked, and everybody in the room was suddenly naked. Lecturer, students, himself, Sarah next to him. He was surprised at how good she looked, although of course the last time he’d seen her naked they were five. Instinctively he turned to Michelle, and by his own bared physiology it was obvious that she was indeed in the buff. Any beginning of intelligent thought disappeared.
“And now...” the voice said, and Dean heard a snap.
Instantly, the classroom erupted in erotic moans as everybody, save Dean himself, began masturbating. Michelle reached up, pinching her nipples, leaning forward to suck on them. With her other hand she reached down and plunged her hand into her slit, her seat already soaked through from her juices.
A hand reached over on his right, and Dean turned to see Sarah inexpertly but frantically stroking her clit, rubbing her hands over her entire burning body.
The walls shook as everybody came at once.
And, just as suddenly, everybody became clothed and re-focused on the lecture, as though nothing had happened.
“Okay now you’re granted one of three possibly choices,” the voice explained. “The first is that you’re going utterly insane. Hearing voices in one’s head is usually a good indicator of that. Selah.” Dean did. When fear overtook rationality again, the voice began speaking again. “However, if I am a psychosis, than it is fairly obvious that I’m a very powerful psychosis, and if you’re experiencing visions you’re probably past the point of no return. As such, it seems to me that the most logical thing to do is to ride the madness out, Ella Fitzgerald-style, and accept me.
“Since you don’t know who Ella Fitzgerald is, that leads us to the second possibility, which is that I’m some rationally-explicable outside force, like aliens or a telepath or a demon. However, that would mean that the scene you just saw was actually OUTSIDE your head, making me one fucking powerful alien or telepath or demon. Regardless, if I am some outside force, than I am too powerful for you to fight, so you should just accept me. Selah.” As Dean pondered over that, the voice added, “Also, you should probably ask yourself why an alien or telepath or demon would take any particular interest in you. The obvious answer is that they wouldn’t, because you are so terribly mediocre, and thus via Occam’s razor that possibility is negated.”
“So what’s the third possibility?” Dean asked.
“That I am who I say I am, your creator. Call me Ralph.”
Dean scoffed. “Ralph!? Not exactly awe-inspiring, is it?”
“Well, maybe not,” Ralph replied, “but regardless, I am all-powerful in this reality.”
“How?”
“Well, you probably wouldn’t believe me, so rather than make another huge display I’ll simply MAKE you believe me. The answer is that I’m a writer, and you’re a character in a story. Selah.”
Dean believed him. For a moment, he couldn’t believe that he believed him, but then he believed that too. “You did that too?” he inquired.
“Yup?” Ralph answered.
“So if I’m a character in a story, why are you talking to me?”
“Because, quite frankly, you’re fucking up. You’re supposed to be in a love story. At the moment, you’re stuck in an unrequited-love triangle.”
“Triangle?”
“You’re in love with Michelle. You’re supposed to be in love with Sarah.”
“SARAH!?” Dean stammered. “But...but she’s...”
“Don’t pretend that she doesn’t do anything for you. I know you got off on her getting off.”
“But—”
“But what?”
“But I love Michelle!”
Ralph sighed. “You don’t love Michelle. You just want to fuck Michelle. Several times, and in several different positions. But you can’t spend the rest of your life with her. You can with Sarah, and she has the added bonus of already being madly in love with you too for some reason.” Dean scoffed.
“Obviously you don’t believe me,” said Ralph. “Would you care for proof?”
Dean nodded.
2.
The moment Dean accepted, his orientation changed, and he was sitting down beside Michelle instead of up by Sarah. He was now closer to her than he’d ever been before.
“From now on you can just think to yourself and I’ll be able to hear you,” Ralph explained. “You asked Michelle out two months ago, and she accepted. You went on several dates, and she finally kissed you because she was bored and you were too nervous to do it on your own. You broke your cherry with her two weeks into the relationship.”
Dean marveled at this precipitous turn of events. He casually put his arm around Michelle, and though she rolled her eyes, she did not push it away. She did, however, slap his hand when he began stroking her beautiful hair.
Ralph continued, “You’ve had sex eight times, four times on the first, two in the first week, not once in the last month.” As Ralph spoke, Dean began to remember this alternate reality.
Dean thought, Yeah, tonight’s our two-month anniversary. I’m serving her a candlelit dinner.
“Que romantique, Dean,” Ralph replied. Dean blinked, and found himself in his dorm, seated at a table laden with cold food, the candles burned down to nubs. “Michelle, however, will not show up, because she is shagging a basketball player two dormitories away. This is the fifth man she has fucked since she began ‘dating’ you, her twenty-seventh infidelity if you count based on sexual encounters. She will dump you the moment you get boring, and has only stayed with you this long because you give her pretty and expensive things.”
Dean felt his heart crack.
“That’s what Michelle will be to you if keep steering this course. Selah.”
Dean did. Finally, he looked up, where he imagined Ralph existed. “So change it.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Ralph.
“Change it. You were the one bragging about omnipotence. Use it. Michelle treated me that way because she didn’t love me. So make her love me. Make her find me irresistible. Selah yourself.”
Ralph was silent. Finally, he asked, “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
Ralph sighed, resigned. “Okay.”
3.
Dean’s orientation changed again. He lay in bed, naked, Michelle bare beside him, snuggled up asleep next to him. “You’ve been together for two months,” Ralph summarized. “You have sex a minimum of three times a night. Last night you gave her a three-minute orgasm. You never go anywhere without her on your arm.”
As Ralph spoke, Dean realized that he had to go to the bathroom, but couldn’t move without waking Michelle.
Ralph advised, “Here, take that pillow behind you, tap her with it gently on her side.” Dean did so, and after a moment Michelle turned and snuggled up with the pillow. Dean delicately rose from the bed and went to the bathroom.
As he flushed the toilet, he turned to see Michelle in the doorway. She struck a sexy pose leaning in the doorway, half her face obscured by her hair, dangling down just before her perky tits. “Hey, stud-muffin,” she said haughtily. She stepped toward him, her left hand reaching behind his neck to force his lips to hers, her right rubbing his stiffening cock. She broke the kiss, moving down, kissing his neck, his chest, his nipples, his belly, and finally sliding her lips around his manhood.
Dean moaned, as Michelle expertly brought him to a powerful climax.
Only then did he check his watch. “Shit! I’m late for class!”
“I’ll go with you,” Michelle said, wiping her mouth.
“It’s not your class, though,” Dean said.
Michelle shrugged, her breasts bouncing. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll go with you. Let me go get some clothes.”
In his head, Ralph spoke, “You don’t really need to get to class. You haven’t been in eight weeks. You’ve been too busy with Michelle. You are, in fact, going to get a letter from the school that you’re getting expelled for excessive absences. She already has.”
Dean went to see Michelle. “You got expelled?!”
“Oh, that. It doesn’t matter. Just as long as I get to be with you, I’m happy.”
“Michelle, you can’t get kicked out of college for me!”
“You’re so sweet!” she smiled. “And damned sexy.” She came to him again and began fondling him again.
“Come on, I have to get to class.”
“Not naked, you’re not, and I have your underwear!” She coyly brandished his boxers. “And I’m not giving them back unless you give me what I want.”
Sorely tempted as he was, Dean said, “Come on, Michelle.”
“Exactly,” she smiled, kneeling down to his dick again.
She stopped sucking long enough to say, “You’re not going anywhere,” the last bit muffled as she resumed.
Getting peeved, he pushed her off him. “Michelle, I need to go to class!”
Michelle grip on his penis suddenly grew tighter, uncomfortably so. “You’re not,” Michelle stated definitely, “going anywhere, lover.” She kept sucking.
“Michelle!”
In response, she lightly bit his cock, unwittingly pinching a sensitive part of his balls. Instinctively, he reached down and slapped her with the back of his hand. She flew back.
She was apologizing before she got up. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I know I promised not to ever do anything to make you hurt me again and I’m sorry I just love you so so so much and I’m sorry I’m sorry just tell me what to do and I’ll do it or tell me what not to do and I won’t do it just let me love you and I’m sorry and I love you and I’m sorry...”
Ralph interjected, “That isn’t the first time you’ve hit her, Dean. It’s actually the fifth. The second time this week.”
I...I would never hit a woman! Dean mentally shouted to Ralph.
“You just did, friend. And not for the first time. By the time you two get married, it’ll be much worse. She’ll have to keep on her veil to hide the black eye.”
But...But I wouldn’t...
“But you will! The longer this Michelle stays with you, the worse a person you’ll become. Because she’s not right for you. Sarah is.”
“Get off that!” Dean shouted out loud, trying to think over Michelle’s frantic apologies. “And can you please shut her up?!”
Michelle froze, still bend over beg, atoning.
“Okay,” Dean began, looking up to where Ralph presumably existed, “let’s try this again. I don’t want a lover so fixated on me that she can’t separate herself from me, but I do want her to love me. Can you do that?”
Immediately, the prone Michelle was replaced with a happy seated Sarah.
“Cute, Ralph. I meant Michelle.”
Sarah was again replaced by Michelle.
“Okay, now make Michelle love me. Completely and absolutely. But let her keep her own mind.”
“I did that,” Ralph countered. “You hit her.”
“That’s because she was being a bitch. You also have to make her nice. If she’s not being so demanding I won’t need to hit her.”
Ralph sighed. “You know, those white rats they run through mazes learn patterns pretty quickly. So do pigeons.” Dean gave Ralph a sarcastic glance, and Ralph said, “Okay, fine. Enjoy.”
4.
“You’re thirty-eight now,” explicated Ralph. Dean looked down to see a slight gut growing on him, felt his hair a little thinner and a thick moustache on his lip. “You work in an auto dealership; Michelle owns a used book store. Between the two of you you’ve raised a daughter whom you’ve just sent off to college, although she’s doing badly.”
Dean explored his house, twenty years of memories returning to him.
As he finished exploring upstairs, he heard a mature female voice from downstairs. “Dean! Breakfast!”
He went down to the kitchen, to find Michelle there. She was still attractive, even though she was about thirty pounds heavier, with the beginnings of laugh lines around her eyes and mouth and a single streak of gray hair at the front of her scalp. As soon as he noticed her changes, though, her appearance immediately became mundane and common.
“See you tonight,” Michelle parted, kissing him lovingly on the cheek as she left.
“So what do I do?” Dean asked Ralph.
“Today’s your day off. You’re supposed to fix a loose floorboard in the bathroom, and tend to the gardening. Riveting, no?”
“Very,” Dean muttered. He washed the dishes and got to work on the floorboard. “So this is what my life will amount to? Mundane family man?”
“Not necessarily. In the proper reality, if you’d just go for Sarah, Sarah is more ambitious. She’s going to become a quite lucrative attorney, bringing in enough money to support you and she. You are free to fulfill your lifelong dream of being a writer, and although you’re not very good, you have a small following that’ll encourage you enough to keep at it until you become great. At forty-two you’ll write your first national best-seller, at fifty-three you’ll be nominated for a Pulitzer prize. One novel you write will save eight people from committing suicide; another will change America’s opinions of a war in Panama. Sarah will eventually become mayor of the small city you two move to, not changing too much but keeping the town peaceful and happy. You two will have three children, each of which will excel at whatever they do. At fifty-five she’ll retire, though you’ll keep writing, and you’ll retire happily, spending a month in the archipelagos of Greece, and still having sex at least once a week, as you will have since your relationship began, an expression of LOVE. You...will...BE...HAPPY. IF you marry Sarah. If not, and you marry Michelle, your life will turn to this.”
Dean’s perspective changed. He was two years older, lying in the bed of a twenty-five year old blonde who, although a little overweight, balanced it out with an enormous chest. Returning memories told him that she had been his neighbor, Tiffany. They’d had an affair for over a year, he bored with Michelle and she bored with her husband, before Michelle found out.
Dean rolled over and began fondling Tiffany’s enormous 42D breasts. Half-asleep, she moaned and rolled over, letting him proceed to fuck her while she tried to decide this was worth waking up for or not.
As Dean rammed her, Ralph interrupted him. “She loved you too much to leave you,” Ralph narrated. “Instead she committed suicide. You found her note first, her body hanging in the attic. Your daughter blamed you, and rightly so, refused to ever see you again, moved to San Francisco, and is presently sleeping with a man she does not like because it is the only way she can support herself.”
“Isn’t there any way I can be with Michelle and be happy?!” Dean shouted.
Ralph sighed. “One, but you’re not going to like it.”
“Do it,” commanded Dean.
5.
Dean and Michelle walked hand in hand down the street. They had just shared their romantic first kiss beneath a streetlight on the bridge, and as emotions lingered for the moment they were both terribly in love.
They were so absorbed in one another that neither noticed the truck barreling down upon them. A second later they were in no position to notice anything at all.
6.
“You fucking smart ass, Ralph,” Dean cursed.
He looked around. He stood on a white floor, and a bright white light lazily illuminated a room whose walls stretched on to infinity. He felt like he was in a Ford Explorer commercial.
“Sorry. The Romeo and Juliet Effect The only way to be forever in lust is to die early.” Ralph appeared him. Dean recognized that it was Ralph, even though he looked exactly like Dean.
Ralph shrugged. “So I put myself in my story. Lots of authors do. Which is one reason that it’s so damned infuriating that you keep ignoring Sarah.”
“But if it’s impossible to be with someone forever, why should it matter who I’m with?”
“You can’t be in LUST! You can LOVE someone forever. Jesus!”
“I can try!” Dean shouted.
He flew back as Ralph punched him. Hard. Square on the nose. The hit didn’t break his nose, didn’t even draw blood, but Dean flew backwards with the force of the impact. He lay on the ground, supine. As he got up, Ralph stepped forward and kicked him in the gut. Dean flew up, hitting an invisible ceiling and falling back down. Before he landed, Ralph performed a flawless spin-kick, hitting Dean. He sailed forward, his body limp with pain. Somehow, Ralph was there to meet him, and a single punch knocked him flat on the ground, smashing into the floor.
Dean stayed down. Ralph finally paused, just standing dangerously over his battered body. Dean coughed, curling into fetal position.
Ralph spoke slowly, through clenched teeth. “I’ve tried logic. I’ve tried rationality. I’ve tried reason. I’ve tried emotion. And now, finally, I’ve tried force. I scared you, just now. You’ve never been hit that hard once, let alone multiple times. And now you’re too scared to even get up. So here’s the deal. I’m going to leave you alone here, with Sarah and Michelle both. Forever. When eternity is done, we’ll see how you feel.”
And with that, the two women disappeared. Michelle screamed, shouting and demanding to know where she was. Sarah saw Dean, hurt on the floor, and raced to help him.
“Selah,” said Ralph, and disappeared.
7.
It was a moment for Ralph. It was eternity for Ralph’s characters.
Ralph appeared before them. Dean and Sarah turned, their conversation interrupted. “Ralph!” Dean greeted with a smile.
“How’s it going, guys?”
“It’s great, Ralph. Thank you.”
“So you and Sarah...?”
Dean nodded. Sarah stepped forward. “You must be Ralph. Dean’s told me a lot about you. Thank you for bringing us together. I’ve been so happy! I’m so glad we could be here...how long have we been here anyway?”
“Oh, forever,” Ralph replied. “So what happened to Michelle?”
“She took off,” Dean answered. “She’s still trying to get out. We still see her every few thousand years, once she gets tired of going on direction and doubles back to try another. That thing you said about pattern recognition of rats and pigeons really applies to lots of people.”
Ralph shrugged. “The hardest things to see are those we blind ourselves to. You and Sarah found happiness in each other. Those other six people I told you about who reached that heightened state of consciousness were enlightened enough to find bliss in themselves. With literal eternity Michelle could probably have achieved Nirvana, if she’d only let herself.” He shrugged again. “It doesn’t matter. Eternity’s over. Are you guys ready to go back?”
“Go back to what? Eternity is over, right?”
“It is HERE. Not out there. I’ll take you guys back to the lecture hall I first took you from, with only subconscious memories of this. You can have a real lifetime together. Sound good?”
Sarah smiled. “It sounds marvelous.”
“Dean?”
Dean nodded. “Do it.”
8.
Dean blinked, rubbing his eyes as Sarah nudged his arm. “Yo, sleepyhead. Class is over. You slept through an entire chapter of calculus.”
“No big loss,” Dean replied, turning to her. He exhaled, suddenly taken with how amazing Sarah looked. “Did you get a haircut?”
“Oh, yeah,” Sarah smiled winningly. “Do you like it?”
“Yes. It’s good. It helps frame your face. You look really beautiful.”
Sarah blushed. She grabbed her books and started walking.
Moved by something he couldn’t quite identify, some subliminal directive, Dean moved to catch up with Sarah. He bumped into someone, whom he only vaguely recognized as Michelle (attractive, but no real depth), apologized, and moved past her.
“Hey, Sarah.”
“Hm?”
“Would you, maybe, like to go to dinner tonight?”
“Sure,” she answered. “Pizza?”
“Well, I was thinking something more...romantic. How does that sound?”
Sarah blinked, and blushed, and smiled nervously. “I’d like that, Dean.”
“Great,” said Dean.
“Great,” echoed Ralph. Dean shook his head, thinking that he was hearing things. But no voice followed up, and Dean shrugged it off.
Ralph smiled, the story finally getting on track, Dean and Sarah finally hitting it off. In the end, even if it had taken hundreds, thousands, millions of years, even an eternity, Dean could only see that Sarah was perfect for him when he let himself. Ralph had been remarkably profound, he reflected, when talking with Dean last. Really, the only blinders were self-imposed.
“Selah,” whispered Ralph, and disappeared.