FIELDING GOODFELLOW - THE FINGER OF GOD

Fielding Goodfellow has a background in Behavioral Psychology and has spent the past 35 years working in the children's mental health field. He began writing story telling in high school and is in the process of completing his first novel. He lives in Toronto, Canada with his wife and five children. 

​The Finger Of God

     When the blonde woman from The Weather Network who looked a lot like Connie Stevens announced the impending storm of all storms, my wife was quite excited. She had always been that way. I however, was somewhat indifferent. She was ecstatic, dancing around the house with the joyful exuberance of a school girl, waiting with gleeful anticipation of the impending downpour. She said that thunderstorms stirred up the spirit world and set the forces of the other side n motion. She said it was destined to be one scary night. The storm arrived late in the evening. She stood by the open window watching the lightening illuminate the night sky like fireworks on Canada Day, and listening to the thunder claps that shook her nerves and rattled her brain. The gale force winds howled, causing her to close her eyes every now and again as it blew the cool spring rain onto her face. She said she couldn't sleep, not with Mother Nature being so exquisite, so I went to bed, leaving her to revel in the euphoria of nature's unyielding power. Sometime during the deluge  I awoke to find her sitting on the edge of the bed nudging me. "You're not going to believe this." she said. "Someone was just in here."
"Ah, hell." I said. "There's always someone in here."
"I'm talking about someone from the other side." she replied.
"I know." I said. "They're the only ones you ever let in."
     She said that the experience was weird, even by her standards, and she needed to talk about it.  I hated those conversations and did my best to avoid them at all costs. She was well aware of my feelings, but just couldn't seem to stop herself from dragging me into her other worldly world. I had seen a lot of weird things over the years. With the assistance of an inordinate amount of hallucinogens and pharmaceuticals that I had religiously introduced to my brain, I have seen flying lizards, talking dragons, and miniature Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles performing 'Dancing Queen' in my kitchen sink, but to be honest, the whole spirit, and ghost thing just simply freaked me out. To my wife however, it was commonplace. It had become a recurring part of her life. This time though, she said it was different.
"It was really weird." she said. "I was just standing at the window, smoking, and someone just came up beside me and stuck a finger in my ear."
"You mean like a wet Willie?" I asked.
"Ya.” She said. “ But it wasn't wet."
"Of course not." I said. "I don’t suppose spirits would have saliva. Maybe it was just the wind.”
"Are you listening to me?" she asked. "It was a finger." She leaned over and inserted one of her fingers in my ear. "That's what it felt like, a finger."
"It doesn’t always have to be from the other side." I said.  "Maybe it was from another universe. Maybe it was an alien probe. According to the Enquirer, they’re really quite common.”
"Do they usually probe your ear?" she questioned.
"I don’t think so." I said. "But its possible you got a trainee."
     She thought that I was trying to be funny, and wanted me to take it far more seriously than I apparently was. I swear I was trying. She was spinning her wheels, stuck in trying to understand what the hell had just happened to  her. I struggled to help, trying to find some sort of reasonable explanation but sadly, I arrived at none. We carefully considered the possibility of her having been dreaming, but she was adamant that she was wide awake, standing at the window and smoking. Everyone else at home was sound asleep, and she claims to have not been under the influence of alcohol or drugs, although I have encouraged her to give it a try on several occasions,
"I suppose it could have been the finger of God." I said.
"The finger of God?" she questioned.
"The finger of God." I repeated.  "The same finger that brought the plagues to Egypt and etched the commandments into the tablets Moses brought down from Sinai."
"What would God want with me?" she asked.
"I don't know." I answered. "But I'm sure you're not the first one to ask that. I'm sure that everyone God has reached out to has asked 'why me'? I don't suppose it really matters though, I mean its God."
"That's a little nerve racking." she said. “God has never visited me before.”
“Then I guess you’re due.” I said.
     I sat beside her on the edge of the bed and I rubbed her back. The joy of the storm of all storms was gone. "Just come to bed." I said. "Its getting late."
"How can I sleep?" she asked. "This is just so weird."
"I'll protect you." I told her.
"Really? What are you gonna do?" she asked. I was surprised that I had to reminded her that I had spoken to God on more than one occasion, and that sometime in the mid 1970s I had firsthand experience with alien probing while completely messed up on a small bag full of peyote.
"Why don't you just lay down and relax" I said, "and leave everything to me."
"What are you thinking of doing?" she asked.
"Nothing, really." I replied. "Just trying to help. I thought that if we recreated an alien probe, you might be able to tell if that's what happened to you."
"In my ear?" she questioned.
"No" I said. "I think we need to go the more traditional route. I think its worth a try."
"Of course you do." she said. "But I suppose we've really got nothing to lose."
"Nothing at all. And after the probing" I added, "we can try to rule out the finger of God."
"How do we do that?" she asked.
"Just leave it to me." I said.

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