The Living End by Stanley Elkin

Mother gently.
    The child raised his fiddle.
    Quiz, in Hell, heard the first faint strains of “Sheep May Safely Graze” and looked in the direction of the music. The others, unaware of it, flared by like tracers, like comets, like shooting stars, like some unquenched astronomy white with reentry. Look at them, Quiz thought. Like teams of horses.
    Runaways, their harness on fire. No longer in pain himself, he could enjoy the spectacle, their aurora boreal tic frenzy and lasered essence charming as fireworks to the appreciative ex-groundskeeper.
    “Hey,” he called, “hey. You guys are beautiful, you know? You look like a World Premier.” He laughed.

    “You look like fucking Chinese New Year’s. Come on,” he said when they snarled at him, “you got to stop and smell the flowers.” One of the damned, infuriated, came raging to embrace him, uselessly attempting to ignite him.
    “No you don’t,” Quiz said, “it won’t work. I’m asbestos now, I’m cool as a cucumber.”
    “You’re a dud,” the tormented man screamed, “you’re a dud,” he said, helplessly weeping.
    “Yeah,” Quiz said, not without kindness, “I’m a dud. I won’t go off.”
    The lost soul beat at him with his fiery fists, then, looking at Quiz with wonder, opened his hands and touched him, not with hatred now but as if struck by a sudden solace.
    “What?” Quiz asked.
    “What?”
    The man smiled and continued to hold him, relief moving across his face like sunset.
    “You’re cool,” he said.
    “You’re cool. I can douse myself in you. He’s cool,” he shouted.
    “My hands are cool where I touch him.”
    “Hey,” Quiz said, “hey.”
    Others moved toward him, groping for space on his body, desperate to get at least a finger on him. And
    “Hey,” Quiz called, “hey. There isn’t enough of me. I ain’t any HeIrs olly olly Ashen free. Let go. Hey.
    Let go. Hey, get me out of here,” he cried, and suddenly the music was louder in his head and he felt himself floating free of Hell.
    “I’m being translated,” he called as he rose above them, their heat lending him lift, loft, the demon aerodynamics of Hell. He rose. He rose and rose. Climbing the Gothic spaces of the Underworld, floating up beyond the eaves of Hell, carried high impossible distances, escaped as a balloon from the grip of a child.
    His stepson had already seen him.
    “Pop,” Christ said, “how are you?”
    The old man shrugged and the boy embraced him, kissed his cheek.
    “You need anything, Pop? Are they taking care of you?”
    “What I need I got,” he said.
    “So,” said the stepson cheerfully, “what’s doing, Pop?” The old man made a sly deprecative gesture.
    “You should have been up there on the Cross with me,” he kidded.
    “No fooling, Pop, I mean it. You’ve got miles on me long- suffering wise Joseph looked at him steadily, sizing him up, measuring him as he might, in the old days, have measured wood.

    “Say it,” said the stepson.
    “Shoot.”
    “Why should I say it? I said it already a million times. Why should I say it? You like hearing it so much?”
    “A million this, a million that. What is it, Pop? That the only number you know?”
    “I’m a humble fella. A humble fella says a million he’s got in mind maybe six or seven.”
    “Humble shmumble,” said Jesus.
    “Tinhorn,” said Joseph.
    “There you go, Pop. I knew you’d get round to it.”
    “You started.”
    “Me?” the Christ said innocently.
    “You. You. With your vaudeville Yiddish, your Pop’s and What’s doing’s, your mocky mockery. You, Tinhorn, you.”
    “Come on, Pop. Look around. Be a little realistic please.”
    “Get your legs fixed.”
    “Here we go,” Christ said wearily.
    “Get your legs fixed, take a therapy for your hands you shouldn’t go in the streets like you have on boxing gloves.” Pop.”
    “You wanted to hear it? So hear. You ain’t him.”
    “That’s not what He says.”
    “When the Holy One, Blessed be He,