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"Meow?"

Lovelace, my white cat, studied the pentagram with mild amusement. She sniffed one of the pillar candles but given that it tasted of wax and not of mouse she quickly lost interest. "If you've got a question for God, Lovelace, please let us know."

She seemed to think for a moment. Then she sat down and said, "Mrrreeeow."

"Do we really want to do this? I'm an atheist. What if the big man shows up? I'll look like an idiot." Stanley, my brother, stared at the pentagram with his hands folded in lackluster defiance. "And are you really sure about that thing in the middle? Seems ... inappropriate."

"What?" I said. "The goat skull? Of course we have to include it, the dusty old *Book of Demon-Conjuring Spells* said so."

Stanley scoffed. "It's not the *Book of God-Conjuring Spells* now is it?" He shook his head. "Where did you even get that thing?"

I stared at him, all serious. "I traded my soul for it."

"You did no such thing, Rob. A soul for a goat skull? That's a terrible deal."

Actually, I got it from IKEA. "No, it's a great deal. We'll ask God for a few favors. It will all be worth it."

"He's not a genie. Also, he's not real. At least that's what I think. Do you seriously believe in some magic sky fairy?"

"Stanley! Watch out!"

He jumped and nearly fell over onto the pentagram, knocked down a lit candle, and it gave Lovelace such a fright that she bolted out of the room. "Goddamn it, Rob! What was that?"

"Your neck," I said, holding a hand over my own neck with a look of concern. He did the same, frantically running his hand over it to check whether it had accidentally slit by some ghost or something. "Yeah," I said. "That's a beard. On your neck. You big neckbeard."

Rob picked the candle back up. "... It's above the Adam's apple. It's not a neckbeard, you turd."

"Whatever you say, m'lady." I mimed tipping my invisible fedora at him.

"What are you even on about?" asked Stanley. "Is this because I called God a sky fairy? I'm a man of science, Rob. I believe in evolution. I believe in the Big Bang."

"You also believe that spending your college fund on a Bored Ape NFT was a wise investment. You can't be trusted, Stan."

Stanley massaged his brows. "Look. You don't get it. That's fine. You think it's just some new Beanie Babies craze, only on the internet. What you don't get is that I *own* that constellation of pixels, it's mine. I have ownership. And when the metaverse gets here—"

"—you're finally getting laid. Is that it?"

Stanley muttered some curses. "You don't get it," he repeated.

We finished setting up the pentagram, as described in the book, and all that was left was the incantations. I cleared my throat. "*Age, exi inde, loqui tibi volumus, age, exi, ludere volumus, oro, age, vere frigus si modo exiit nunc*."

Nothing happened. "Isn't Latin, like, a dead language?" said Stanley. "What if you're not pronouncing it right?"

"Oh. You're right."

He raised his eyebrows. "Yeah? Maybe say it with an Italian accent or something."

"What? How would that help?"

Stanley shrugged. "Maybe it's closer to Latin. Try saying it like a mobster."

Well. I supposed it couldn't hurt. I repeated the words, doing my best impression of Tony Montana. "*Age, exi inde, loqui tibi volumus, age, exi, ludere volumus, oro, age, vere frigus si modo exiit nunc*!"

Something happened. A burst of wind entered the room and blew out the candles. Then the pentagram started glowing like a hot wire. "Oh shit," said Stanley. "Shit shit shit."

We stepped back. I hadn't actually expected this to work. My favorite show had just been removed from Netflix and I had to come up with something to pass the time. Thought I might as well try some Satanic ritual, but with a twist. My idiot brother was onboard right away. "G-God?"

A dark mist appeared, and behind it lurked a figure. It was much smaller than I had expected. Was God a little person? Or was he some abstract shape impossible to perceive accurately by humans? I'd heard Biblically-accurate angels were like that. Then God made a sound.

"Meow?"

"Not now, Lovelace," said Stanley.

"Stan. It wasn't her. The sound came from ... there." I pointed toward the center of the pentagram, at the apparition lurking in the shadows. The mist lifted ever so slightly to reveal the corporeal form of the Creator of All Things.

"Huh?" said Stan.

It was a cat.

"Meow," God repeated. Then God licked its paw.

"I think you messed up the ritual."

"No," I said. "I don't ... I don't think I did."

God was a gray tabby cat with whiskers and pointy ears and the whole feline package. "God?"

"Present and accounted for," said God.

Stanley screamed. "It just talked! What the heck? What's going on?"

God sighed. "Let me guess. You expected me to be some old guy with a beard. You probably expected me to wear some white dress or something as well, right?" Tabby-cat God lifted his leg and started licking his divine ... lower tail region.

"Wait, this means I'm right!" Stanley clapped his hands together. "The Biblical God isn't real, right? It's just a made-up book for stupid people? I knew it!"

God looked up at my brother, then stared back at me. "What's the deal with his guy's beard? Why is it so low?"

"Ah. He's a neckbeard."

"It's above the Adam's apple!"

That was when Lovelace returned to our living room. "Mrrreeeow," she said.

"Excellent question," said God. "'Why is there something instead of nothing?'—for millennia cats have asked themselves this, and the answer is simple: I created it all because I was bored. Who created me? Now that I don't know. I gained my sentience two days before the Big Bang. Which was also my doing, by the way. Then I came up with evolution, and that really freed up my time. Letting life run on autopilot, you know, it made things easier. So I went around and I explored the earth. I created cats in my image, of course, because why wouldn't I? And I did spend some years in Egypt where I had fun entertaining the local apes with magic. They really loved it. Oh, I'm so sorry. Not apes, *humans*. I know it's rude to call you apes."

"That's ... amazing." I couldn't believe this. God was a cat. And a real nice one too. "I can't wait to tell people about this."

"Oh," said God. "You see, there's something I should probably tell you right away. You're familiar with mice, yes?"

Me and my brother looked at each other. "Yeah? What about them?"

"Well," said God, "mice actually used to be humans. I don't want people to know about me. The ancient Egyptians got really clingy and I regret that phase of my life. So. Now anytime I am summoned by humans I make sure to transform them into mice afterward."

We tried to run, but God was too fast. Lovelace watched with great interest as me and Stanley shrunk and turned gray and our screams went higher and higher in pitch. She licked her lips.

First she went for Stanley. She swallowed him whole. It was a terrible thing to witness. I scurried across the floor and hid inside the goat skull. But God lowered his head and stared inside through the eye holes. "You can't hide from God," he said.

Lovelace shoved her head inside the skull. She was the size of a truck. "No!" I cried. "I'll give you your favorite food. Just please spare me!"

She grabbed me by my tail and she pulled me out.

"Meow?" said God. "An offering? For me? Why, thank you!"

The jaws of God opened up before me and that was the last thing I ever saw.

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Submitted by ripeblunts on Tue, Aug 30, 2022 to /r/WritingPrompts/

The prompt

Everyone knows about the creepy dark rituals that satanic worshippers and bored teens alike use to conjure demons, but no one has ever tried to use such a ritual to summon God. Unexpectedly, it works.