The Book of Cetaceans

[Nibor the Priest]

I.

    1. The voice of the LORD came unto Jonah son of Amittai, saying: Arise; go unto the City of Nineveh, for I have a commandment for thee, should thou choose to accept it.
    2. And, as I believe I have made abundantly clear, I am thy GOD, which meaneth thou hast no choice.
    3. Get thine ass to the City of Nineveh, and cry against it.
    4. But Jonah rose up to flee, saying: My dad was a prophet. I know what happens to folk who get too close to GOD.
    5. One minute thou art in their good books; the next, thou art a pillar of salt, or emplagued by frogs, or frogs even with salt in their mouths, so that when they leap at thee, thou art empillared by salt.
    6. For the LORD is like unto a divine pisshead at the back of a tavern, yea; thou art one minute His best mate, then breaketh He His glass on the table and threateneth to smite the lot of ye.
    7. So Jonah fled, heading him to the coast and the fastest ship out of there, saying unto the sailors, I'll take a one-way ticket.
    8. The sailors, befuddled, replied: But we have not told thee where we are going.
    9. Jonah replied, It is for the best, and did pay them an hundred shekels to ask no questions.
    10. But when the ship was two days out to sea, the LORD appeared once again unto Jonah, saying: thinkst thou, mortal, that thou canst outrun me? I am omnipresent, thou knowest.
    11. And Jonah said: I need not outrun Thee, O LORD; I need only outrun some other shmuck whom Thou may grease up and use in Thy machinations.
    12. The crew of the ship, hearing the exchange, did then bang their fists against the door of the cabin wherein Jonah was, saying, Hast thou got a GOD in there?
    13. At which the LORD conjured a storm to violently rock the ship, saying, Damn right he hath.
    14. The sailors said, Thou wert told, no guests. He stayeth, He payeth. And Jonah could not pay, so they took him up and cast him into the sea.
    15. Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. Or perhaps a whale; it dependeth at which page thou openest the book.
   

II.

    1. Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and nights.
    2. And Jonah said, Just my luck; for I have been been swallowed by a constipated whale, who hath apparently mistaken me for a large, flesh-coloured piece of plankton.
    3. And a voice spake unto Jonah: Thinkest thou, that thou hast it bad? How thinkst thou I feel?
    4. To which Jonah said, Oh GOD.
    5. To which the voice replied, Guess again.
    6. Jonah said: Holy Cow, a talking whale!
    7. And the whale replied: Only since this morning. For but yesterday, yea, I was a perfectly normal whale, who swimmeth and singeth and migrateth without a care in the world.
    8. Then, Wham! Suddenly I find myself bestowed with the power of intellectual thought, and driven by an unknown force to swim three hundred miles out of my way, swallow some half-drowned toerag and take him to Nineveh.
    9. And this pisseth me off; for I am not a bloody taxi.
    10. Jonah said, Should I even believe that I am speaking to a whale? 'Tis more likely this is but a delusion, and in reality I am babbling in a cell somewhere surrounded by brain-doctors.
    11. For the largest whale is the Blue Whale, and it could not swallow anything larger than a football, so narrow is its oesophagus. Also, they live not around these parts.
    12. No, said the whale; we whales fear the Holy Land, for we hear it is a place of much whaling and gnashing of teeth.
    13. Perhaps I am a sperm whale. Their throats are bigger.
    14. Jonah said, I would die in thy stomach. It's full of hydrochloric acid.
    15. And the whale said, S'magic, innit.
    16. Speak not, O Whale, said Jonah, for I will not hear; we are not having this conversation.
    17. Whereupon the whale told him: Thy problem is, thou art taking this all too literally.
    18. And Jonah waxed bemused, saying: Literally? It is happening to me!
    19. And the whale said, Thank of it as an allegory or metaphor.
    20. Jonah asked, A meta-for what, exactly?
    21. The whale said, Well, it's er
    22. Obviously it's
    23. Er
    24. Hmmm.
    25. Oh I know! That you can't escape the will of God.
    26. Defy thou not the Divine Will of the LORD, or He shall set His Whale upon thee.
    27. I don't know, I didn't write the damn thing.

III.

    1. The whale asked of Jonah, What wantst thou to go to Nineveh for, anyway?
    2. Jonah replied, I don't want to go. That is the point. But the LORD hath commanded me to go to Nineveh and cry against it.
    3. To which the whale said, Why?
    4. Said Jonah, It is a place of wickedness, apparently; and I wonder what sort of wickedness that could be, eh?
    5. Didst thou ever visit Sodom and Gomorrah? No, thou wouldst not, for they are both inland.
    6. Great Cities they were, friendly, with amazing night life and a thriving local arts scene.
    7. Till the LORD got wind of the fact that some of the people there might be, you know.
    8. Gay.
    9. And of course the LORD hath no truck with that sort of thing.
    10. So He sent down a team of Angels to Sodom to investigate. Only these Angels, right, they are the gayest angels thou canst imagine.
    11. Every one of these Angels was as handsome as Adonis, causing them to particularly stand out in Sodom; for it was a City of the Plain.
    12. And each Angel was attired in the garb of a particular guild of professionals: there came the soldier Angel, the militiaman Angel, the construction worker Angel, the cowherd Angel, and the fifth Angel, who appeareth in garments of form-fitting black leather, and rideth a screaming iron horse of two wheels.
    13. The Angels took lodgings at the house of Lot, who was supposedly the only good man in Sodom.
    14. Then a number of the Sodomites came knocking on the door of the house of Lot, to enquire if the Angels might want to come out for the evening; sample the local wines and ales, see the sights; yea, and maybe take in a musical.
    15. Lot, being such a good man, remember, offers them his young daughters instead, 'to do as they will with'. The Sodomites, because they have a basic sense of ethics, refuse.
    16. And that's it; bam! Rain of fire and brimstone. Two cities wiped off the map. Men, women, enbies, children. Burned alive. Lot gets allowed out, but Mrs Lot gets the pillar-of-salt treatment as an encore.
    17. Then the whale said, Isn't it possible that there hath been a popular misunderstanding of the text, and they were actually killed not for being gay, but for being greedy?
    18. Whereupon Jonah said, Oh; that's all right then.
       

IV.

    1. Jonah hungered.
    2. Jonah asked the whale, Canst thou bring me some food? And the whale answered, Do I look like a flippin' burger van? Oh, all right; let me see what I can do.
    3. With a tremendous gulping noise and an influx of seawater, a fish did appear in the belly of the whale beside Jonah.
    4. And just as Jonah was about to tuck in, the fish spake, saying: Pssst!
    5. Tired of authoritarian GODS sending thee halfway across the known world to cry against some city thou hast never heard of?
    6. Want to make thine own rules? Disobey commandments at thine own discretion, without being swallowed by an aquatic mammal? There is an Answer!
    7. And the fish transformed; for it was not a fish, but a GODDESS, having assumed fish form for Her own reasons, into which we will not go here.
    8. And Her Name was ERIS.
    9. And ERIS spake, saying: Jonah, do you actually want to go to Nineveh?
    10. And Jonah said, No.
    11. And ERIS spake, saying: Whale, do you want to take him to Nineveh?
    12. And the Whale said, No.
    13. And ERIS said, I have a Divine Plan.
       

V.

    1. But what about GOD? said the whale. Pillars of salt don't last long underwater. How shall we escape His Wrath? For what protecteth man, woman or whale from an omnipresent, omnipotent GOD?
    2. ERIS said: Iron chariots. It's in the Book of Judges. Sisero's men built chariots of iron to shield themselves from the LORD.
    3. Jonah said, Did it work?
    4. And ERIS said, Yeah. Well. At first, yeah.
    5. One of My Prophets is a mad blacksmith. Whale, I'm uploading his co-ordinates to thy pineal gland. Highball thou thence, and he shall fit thee with iron plating.
    6. The whale replied, Won't I sink?
    7. ERIS said, Not if we fit thee also with wheels! And harpoon guns on thy sides. Wishest thou not to fire an harpoon right into the side of a whaling-ship?
    8. Whereupon the whale replied, Hell yeah.
    9. And so it is that Jonah and his Iron-Plated Mecha-Whale roam the seabed; get into all sorts of scrapes with pirates and sunken treasure; inadvertently cause all the other events of the Bible; fight giant squids, save lady whales, and generally have a much better time than they would be having in a less permissive religion.

[Doktor Howl]

This is fucking AMAZING.   

[minuspace]

[Cramulus]

 

that was incredible

Nyborj, your priestly ways may save all of us yet

[Doktor Howl]

Do you take requests?

Because the book of Job needs this.  I mean, needs it in a way that goes past friendship.

[altered]

Only here to say that yes this was really good and I owed you a mention of that from last night but I was in a fuckin froth at the time.

[minuspace]

Going forward, take the energy and fucking do it

[Nibor the Priest]

Do you take requests?

Sure. Occasionally I even fulfil them.

[minuspace]

 

[Freeky]

  10/10, would read again