God's Sign-Writer (Short Story)
26th January 2026
In: Short Stories
In the beginning was the light ...
I came to very slowly, as though swimming up from the depths of a thick soupy lake. The elements tugged at me: water held me down but I craved air. My chest desperate to lose the stones piled upon it, I struggled to free myself. Such are the ghastly illusions of a drug-sedated sleep. It took a while for reality to find even the most tenuous foothold.
There was a faint glow in the room, so I concluded it must be close to dawn. My head throbbed, pain running down my neck and back, limbs glazed in the slippery coldness of nightsweat. I lay like this for some minutes, my eyes not fully open, eyelids resting so that vision was reduced to a thin blurred slit. I recall thinking it felt like a limbo state — neither dead nor alive. If I was feeling sorry for myself, it was a very detached emotion. I was too exhausted to care. Thought rambled aimlessly and I had no control where it went. Drugs do this to the brain — distort and invent. Not dissimilar to a funfair maze of mirrors. But much-exaggerated, becoming hideous, unsettling, and confusing in their bizarre reflections. The metaphysical poets knew all this of course, those practitioners of drug-heightened creativity. They explored these avenues, created their masterpieces under the influence of mind-altering substances. Who knows what mountains they climbed, what monsters they communed with? Who guided their pen — man or demon? Beast or angel?
Absorbed in this curious mental debate, it startled me when the light in the room abruptly shifted. I don’t mean like the sun suddenly breaking through — it wasn’t like that at all. This glow had a centre and an indistinct form, and it moved, floated as though with some purpose, to the foot of my bed. I was puzzled, but felt no sense of panic. I dismissed the idea I might still be asleep and dreaming. More likely it was an hallucination. But I humoured this uninvited ‘guest’ and asked politely ‘Who are you? What do you want?’
I didn’t really expect an answer, it was more a thought spoken aloud as I squinted, trying hard to perceive a more distinct outline, so gain some clue as to what my visitor might be. Another shift, and it was closer. I stared into it, let my eyes slowly defocus and saw a face — eyes and mouth somewhere in the smoky glow. I waited, expectant. The mouth opened and closed, the lips moving as if in speech, but I heard nothing. The eyes held mine, intense with meaning, as though willing me to open all the doors of my mind, and then I would hear.
It took a while, and the voice was so very low and far-off that its murmur didn’t register as words exactly, but more as a concept or vague impression of meaning . Instinctively, I held my hand out as though it might act as a kind of fleshy receiver, drawing down signals. My fingers found warmth. I let the warmth and trickling sound mingle in my consciousness, a gentle wave washing all other thought away. Then I heard the voice clearly, and it was sublime. Words filled the room, and I can’t begin to describe the form or even the language but, inexplicably, it was known to me — I understood every inflection, each subtle nuance. I cannot define it as song, poem or prayer, or warning, prophesy or parable — it conveyed elements of everything, and then so much more. I let it take me somewhere else.
I told the doctor, for I was still in a euphoric state when he called. I tried to convince him it was real, attempting to infect him with my deepening sense of awe. I had by then decided it must be an angel who had come to me. I could think of no other logical explanation. The doctor suggested a change of drugs. I didn’t take them, I wanted my mind clear enough to record what had happened. I began covering page after page of my journal with notes. I had to have some record of it all — something that captured the experience in words on paper. But the message itself eluded me — I simply couldn’t translate it.
I drove myself almost mad trying. It was a frail cobweb of memory strung with a million raindrops, each one reflecting a mystical colour. It was a vast choir, tier upon tier of singers in a concert hall the size of Grand Canyon. It was a trip to the outer reaches of our universe, feeling the stardust in my body tremble with recognition as it neared its old home. My atoms expanded and I felt physically and spiritually enriched, imagining that somewhere my angel smiled on me with approval. Naturally, those who I shared this amazing experience with decided I was having mental health problems and, for my own good, took me out of circulation.
Eventually, they put me away in a semi-respectable-sounding rest home. It was comfortable, but it was a prison of locked doors. I had days when I felt resigned to it. Other days I threw my dinner at whichever poor unfortunate brought it in. I got very depressed, sure my angel would never find me here. A week went by. A month. I waited, hoping for a miracle, my moods swinging me dangerously close to crazed. They changed my medication, and were insistant that I took it. It made me feel horribly groggy, I lost track of the days and hated my life, praying things would end soon ...
Something woke me. I knew even before I opened my eyes it was close beside me. I held my hand out. Felt the warmth. The voice sounded different this time. It vibrated with a profound sorrowful anger and regret. It moved me like nothing else ever had. I wept in frustration, for they had confiscated my journal. The white-coated, stern-featured commandant in charge wanted to study it for possible insights into my particular condition. Of course, he wouldn’t understand it unless he was fluent in the mix of archaic languages it was written in. I had no doubt he would be none the wiser. A small consolation for such a violation of my privacy.
I don’t know what possessed me to try writing on the walls. It is such a cliché somehow. But the walls of my minimalist cell were white and bare, so simply begging for some decoration. I had no pen, no brush, no tool to work with. I glanced around, flummoxed. I can’t say if I received some sort of subliminal instruction, or if it was purely my own idea that just popped into my head: I’d use my finger. The solution felt satisfyingly biblical. I stood on a chair and began writing. My index finger appeared to grow in length, becoming more flexible as I formed the words I was hearing inside my head, pulsing down my arm to the very nail-tip, then spilling onto the paint. I covered a whole wall, then half of another. The flow slowed and finally ceased. The glow faded and I was alone with my wall art.
It didn’t go down well with the big boss. He couldn’t work out how I had achieved it, and I wouldn’t answer his questions. His irritation was palpable. He snapped at the orderlies to wash it off. But it wouldn’t shift, like it had some indelible quality resistant to ordinary household cleansers. ‘Paint over it!’ he barked. It made no difference, the words showed through the first, second and third layers of emulsion. I was moved to an even smaller room.
Pretty much the same thing happened. My angel came one night with a message I then transmitted across three of the four walls. Gossip ran rife amongst the staff. They weren’t supposed to talk about their patients — rules of confidentiality and all that, but these events were so above and beyond the usual run-of-the-mill tittle-tattle, rules went out the window. Their whispering in corners egged me on like flattery. I was suddenly very special — an enigma — and naturally everyone had a theory about the writing on the wall.
Inevitably, the story leaked beyond the grounds of my ‘safe haven’. One day a visitor turned up claiming to be my cousin Nigel. I have no cousin of that name, but thought I’d play along. What harm could it do? His cheery ‘Hello, old sport, how’s tricks’?’ grated painfully with its poor attempt at an Aussie accent, so that alone decided me to blow his cover.
‘What do you want?’ I demanded, adding ‘You’re a reporter, right?’ He pulled a face and nodded, so I’ll give him credit for coming clean immediately.
‘Yep. Only way I could think of to get in this place. It’ud probably be easier to get an audience with the Pope!’ he grinned. Not unlikeable, I thought, so I told him my story. Not that he got to print it. I’d hazard a guess that his editor and the bossman were probably members of the same lodge. So much for the fabled freedom of the press.
But he stayed in touch, our Nigel, and I was glad of it. Not one of my family had come near me in eighteen months, and I felt truly abandoned. So much for ties of blood. I suggested Nigel could maybe get a small camera smuggled in to me via his recently acquired girlfriend, June, who was one of the staff who did our laundry. A very obliging girl, as it turned out. It was a very basic point-and-shoot affair, and I wasn’t sure how much detail it would be able to record, the windows being so high up, resulting in the natural light often being limited, angled and difficult to predict depending on the vagueries of the weather. I took hundreds of shots in a frantic attempt to get some visual proof. The results were pretty lousy, but I kept trying.
Keeping the camera hidden from the staff who did frequent room checks required some ingenuity. Not exactly an original solution, I ended up cutting a slit in the underside of my mattress, and sliding the camera between the springs. It was a very tight fit, so not easy to access when in a hurry. I kept the memory cards in different places, until I was able to give them to Nigel when he paid his weekly visits.
Eventually, they discovered its hiding place, and the camera was spirited away. But not before I got lucky with a couple of shots. I was cautiously optimistic. Nigel thought there was potential — it provided the story with some much-needed visual content, which most of the magazines he submitted his freelance material to were adamant about. He couldn’t promise anything, mind. I told him to do what he could and tried to be patient. Almost a year went by. No Nigel, no angel, and a growing, deepening resignation I’d likely seen the last of both.
Out of the proverbial blue, a large brown envelope arrived for me, notable only because I received so little mail. I hid my excitement and made sure I was out of the range of curious eyes before opening it.The content was the rather crumpled current issue of a niche magazine called Weird & Wonderful, with a post- it note stuck on the front: ‘See page 14, and they may be interested in a follow-up. Fingers crossed. Nige’.
It was pulp fiction stuff, for all its repeated declaration to be fact, as evidenced by the poorly-reproduced photos too small and grainy to convince anyone except the truly gullible reader. Nigel claimed authorship, as I’d expected him to, but I felt let down to find my name did not appear anywhere. Nor, less surprisingly, did the name of my place of residence — the exclusive, expensive, very private location where these ‘happenings’ had occurred. As a footnote, the author stated for legal reasons he was obliged to ‘protect his source’. From that, I concluded that there was no chance now that anyone would come clamouring for an interview, and certainly no possibility of me breaking out and becoming the Christian Church’s media superstar due to what had been described in the article as my ‘heavenly connections’.
The acute sense of anticlimax sent me into a kind of withdrawal. I lost my appetite. Just sat staring at the wall and willing something else to happen. They changed my pills yet again. I didn’t resist — just swallowed them without any fuss — there didn’t seem any point. Mostly, I just felt numb. True, there was the odd night I felt a very faint throbbing at the tip of my writing finger, but I suspect it may have been wishful thinking. I admit, I missed the attention — even the grilling from the chief commandant, and the incessant behind-the-hand gossiping of the staff. Then, one morning, a new carer-cum-warder turned up looking like a young Jack Nicholson — same wicked grin. A bright plastic name badge labelled him ‘Michael’. He didn’t beat about the bush but came straight out with it, saying he knew who I was and I should get ready because a further news bulletin was due soon. He called me ‘God’s Sign-Writer’, laid his index finger alongside his nose and gave me a conspiratorial wink. I did wonder, feeling my spirits beginning to lift, if he was quite real. Dare I believe in more revelations to come? I nodded as he handed me my medication.
In the end, I am left waiting in the dark as, to some degree, we all are.
I came to very slowly, as though swimming up from the depths of a thick soupy lake. The elements tugged at me: water held me down but I craved air. My chest desperate to lose the stones piled upon it, I struggled to free myself. Such are the ghastly illusions of a drug-sedated sleep. It took a while for reality to find even the most tenuous foothold.
There was a faint glow in the room, so I concluded it must be close to dawn. My head throbbed, pain running down my neck and back, limbs glazed in the slippery coldness of nightsweat. I lay like this for some minutes, my eyes not fully open, eyelids resting so that vision was reduced to a thin blurred slit. I recall thinking it felt like a limbo state — neither dead nor alive. If I was feeling sorry for myself, it was a very detached emotion. I was too exhausted to care. Thought rambled aimlessly and I had no control where it went. Drugs do this to the brain — distort and invent. Not dissimilar to a funfair maze of mirrors. But much-exaggerated, becoming hideous, unsettling, and confusing in their bizarre reflections. The metaphysical poets knew all this of course, those practitioners of drug-heightened creativity. They explored these avenues, created their masterpieces under the influence of mind-altering substances. Who knows what mountains they climbed, what monsters they communed with? Who guided their pen — man or demon? Beast or angel?
Absorbed in this curious mental debate, it startled me when the light in the room abruptly shifted. I don’t mean like the sun suddenly breaking through — it wasn’t like that at all. This glow had a centre and an indistinct form, and it moved, floated as though with some purpose, to the foot of my bed. I was puzzled, but felt no sense of panic. I dismissed the idea I might still be asleep and dreaming. More likely it was an hallucination. But I humoured this uninvited ‘guest’ and asked politely ‘Who are you? What do you want?’
I didn’t really expect an answer, it was more a thought spoken aloud as I squinted, trying hard to perceive a more distinct outline, so gain some clue as to what my visitor might be. Another shift, and it was closer. I stared into it, let my eyes slowly defocus and saw a face — eyes and mouth somewhere in the smoky glow. I waited, expectant. The mouth opened and closed, the lips moving as if in speech, but I heard nothing. The eyes held mine, intense with meaning, as though willing me to open all the doors of my mind, and then I would hear.
It took a while, and the voice was so very low and far-off that its murmur didn’t register as words exactly, but more as a concept or vague impression of meaning . Instinctively, I held my hand out as though it might act as a kind of fleshy receiver, drawing down signals. My fingers found warmth. I let the warmth and trickling sound mingle in my consciousness, a gentle wave washing all other thought away. Then I heard the voice clearly, and it was sublime. Words filled the room, and I can’t begin to describe the form or even the language but, inexplicably, it was known to me — I understood every inflection, each subtle nuance. I cannot define it as song, poem or prayer, or warning, prophesy or parable — it conveyed elements of everything, and then so much more. I let it take me somewhere else.
I told the doctor, for I was still in a euphoric state when he called. I tried to convince him it was real, attempting to infect him with my deepening sense of awe. I had by then decided it must be an angel who had come to me. I could think of no other logical explanation. The doctor suggested a change of drugs. I didn’t take them, I wanted my mind clear enough to record what had happened. I began covering page after page of my journal with notes. I had to have some record of it all — something that captured the experience in words on paper. But the message itself eluded me — I simply couldn’t translate it.
I drove myself almost mad trying. It was a frail cobweb of memory strung with a million raindrops, each one reflecting a mystical colour. It was a vast choir, tier upon tier of singers in a concert hall the size of Grand Canyon. It was a trip to the outer reaches of our universe, feeling the stardust in my body tremble with recognition as it neared its old home. My atoms expanded and I felt physically and spiritually enriched, imagining that somewhere my angel smiled on me with approval. Naturally, those who I shared this amazing experience with decided I was having mental health problems and, for my own good, took me out of circulation.
Eventually, they put me away in a semi-respectable-sounding rest home. It was comfortable, but it was a prison of locked doors. I had days when I felt resigned to it. Other days I threw my dinner at whichever poor unfortunate brought it in. I got very depressed, sure my angel would never find me here. A week went by. A month. I waited, hoping for a miracle, my moods swinging me dangerously close to crazed. They changed my medication, and were insistant that I took it. It made me feel horribly groggy, I lost track of the days and hated my life, praying things would end soon ...
Something woke me. I knew even before I opened my eyes it was close beside me. I held my hand out. Felt the warmth. The voice sounded different this time. It vibrated with a profound sorrowful anger and regret. It moved me like nothing else ever had. I wept in frustration, for they had confiscated my journal. The white-coated, stern-featured commandant in charge wanted to study it for possible insights into my particular condition. Of course, he wouldn’t understand it unless he was fluent in the mix of archaic languages it was written in. I had no doubt he would be none the wiser. A small consolation for such a violation of my privacy.
I don’t know what possessed me to try writing on the walls. It is such a cliché somehow. But the walls of my minimalist cell were white and bare, so simply begging for some decoration. I had no pen, no brush, no tool to work with. I glanced around, flummoxed. I can’t say if I received some sort of subliminal instruction, or if it was purely my own idea that just popped into my head: I’d use my finger. The solution felt satisfyingly biblical. I stood on a chair and began writing. My index finger appeared to grow in length, becoming more flexible as I formed the words I was hearing inside my head, pulsing down my arm to the very nail-tip, then spilling onto the paint. I covered a whole wall, then half of another. The flow slowed and finally ceased. The glow faded and I was alone with my wall art.
It didn’t go down well with the big boss. He couldn’t work out how I had achieved it, and I wouldn’t answer his questions. His irritation was palpable. He snapped at the orderlies to wash it off. But it wouldn’t shift, like it had some indelible quality resistant to ordinary household cleansers. ‘Paint over it!’ he barked. It made no difference, the words showed through the first, second and third layers of emulsion. I was moved to an even smaller room.
Pretty much the same thing happened. My angel came one night with a message I then transmitted across three of the four walls. Gossip ran rife amongst the staff. They weren’t supposed to talk about their patients — rules of confidentiality and all that, but these events were so above and beyond the usual run-of-the-mill tittle-tattle, rules went out the window. Their whispering in corners egged me on like flattery. I was suddenly very special — an enigma — and naturally everyone had a theory about the writing on the wall.
Inevitably, the story leaked beyond the grounds of my ‘safe haven’. One day a visitor turned up claiming to be my cousin Nigel. I have no cousin of that name, but thought I’d play along. What harm could it do? His cheery ‘Hello, old sport, how’s tricks’?’ grated painfully with its poor attempt at an Aussie accent, so that alone decided me to blow his cover.
‘What do you want?’ I demanded, adding ‘You’re a reporter, right?’ He pulled a face and nodded, so I’ll give him credit for coming clean immediately.
‘Yep. Only way I could think of to get in this place. It’ud probably be easier to get an audience with the Pope!’ he grinned. Not unlikeable, I thought, so I told him my story. Not that he got to print it. I’d hazard a guess that his editor and the bossman were probably members of the same lodge. So much for the fabled freedom of the press.
But he stayed in touch, our Nigel, and I was glad of it. Not one of my family had come near me in eighteen months, and I felt truly abandoned. So much for ties of blood. I suggested Nigel could maybe get a small camera smuggled in to me via his recently acquired girlfriend, June, who was one of the staff who did our laundry. A very obliging girl, as it turned out. It was a very basic point-and-shoot affair, and I wasn’t sure how much detail it would be able to record, the windows being so high up, resulting in the natural light often being limited, angled and difficult to predict depending on the vagueries of the weather. I took hundreds of shots in a frantic attempt to get some visual proof. The results were pretty lousy, but I kept trying.
Keeping the camera hidden from the staff who did frequent room checks required some ingenuity. Not exactly an original solution, I ended up cutting a slit in the underside of my mattress, and sliding the camera between the springs. It was a very tight fit, so not easy to access when in a hurry. I kept the memory cards in different places, until I was able to give them to Nigel when he paid his weekly visits.
Eventually, they discovered its hiding place, and the camera was spirited away. But not before I got lucky with a couple of shots. I was cautiously optimistic. Nigel thought there was potential — it provided the story with some much-needed visual content, which most of the magazines he submitted his freelance material to were adamant about. He couldn’t promise anything, mind. I told him to do what he could and tried to be patient. Almost a year went by. No Nigel, no angel, and a growing, deepening resignation I’d likely seen the last of both.
Out of the proverbial blue, a large brown envelope arrived for me, notable only because I received so little mail. I hid my excitement and made sure I was out of the range of curious eyes before opening it.The content was the rather crumpled current issue of a niche magazine called Weird & Wonderful, with a post- it note stuck on the front: ‘See page 14, and they may be interested in a follow-up. Fingers crossed. Nige’.
It was pulp fiction stuff, for all its repeated declaration to be fact, as evidenced by the poorly-reproduced photos too small and grainy to convince anyone except the truly gullible reader. Nigel claimed authorship, as I’d expected him to, but I felt let down to find my name did not appear anywhere. Nor, less surprisingly, did the name of my place of residence — the exclusive, expensive, very private location where these ‘happenings’ had occurred. As a footnote, the author stated for legal reasons he was obliged to ‘protect his source’. From that, I concluded that there was no chance now that anyone would come clamouring for an interview, and certainly no possibility of me breaking out and becoming the Christian Church’s media superstar due to what had been described in the article as my ‘heavenly connections’.
The acute sense of anticlimax sent me into a kind of withdrawal. I lost my appetite. Just sat staring at the wall and willing something else to happen. They changed my pills yet again. I didn’t resist — just swallowed them without any fuss — there didn’t seem any point. Mostly, I just felt numb. True, there was the odd night I felt a very faint throbbing at the tip of my writing finger, but I suspect it may have been wishful thinking. I admit, I missed the attention — even the grilling from the chief commandant, and the incessant behind-the-hand gossiping of the staff. Then, one morning, a new carer-cum-warder turned up looking like a young Jack Nicholson — same wicked grin. A bright plastic name badge labelled him ‘Michael’. He didn’t beat about the bush but came straight out with it, saying he knew who I was and I should get ready because a further news bulletin was due soon. He called me ‘God’s Sign-Writer’, laid his index finger alongside his nose and gave me a conspiratorial wink. I did wonder, feeling my spirits beginning to lift, if he was quite real. Dare I believe in more revelations to come? I nodded as he handed me my medication.
In the end, I am left waiting in the dark as, to some degree, we all are.