Expiration Date

She was behind the bar when God showed up and ordered a screwdriver.

Emilia didn’t think the old dude, unshaven and rumpled and wearing worn-out jeans, was God, of course. Not when he introduced himself, for sure.

“I’m God, by the way.” he said when Emilia set the drink before him.

She smiled a little. “God’s gift to women, no doubt.”

He shook his head. “No, just God.” She went back to washing and rinsing glasses in the little sink under the bar.

“You don’t believe me,” he said.

“It’s OK,” Emilia said. “I get a lot of different kinds of people in here. Yesterday it was Hugh Jackman, only he couldn’t sing or do a single pushup.” She lowered her voice. “I’m beginning to think it wasn’t Hugh.”

He pointed to the TV hanging over the bar. The world’s biggest idiot was on, rambling. “He’s gonna sneeze five times.”

And then the idiot on TV sneezed five times.

“One more for good measure,” the old dude said. As Emilia watched the TV, another sneeze came. She picked up the remote and flipped from one news channel to another. The press conference was apparently live and, when the idiot finally stopped speaking, they all replayed the video of him sneezing. The talking heads speculated about his health.

“Is that good enough for you?” he asked Emilia.

“You couldn’t have given him a heart attack, live on the air?” she asked.

He shifted on the barstool. “I know you’ve heard a lot about how I like to kill people, but I’m trying to avoid that lately. I mean, people die, for sure, but I’m not starting any earthquakes or plagues. I’m trying to act a little more mindfully.”

“God says words like ‘mindful?’” Emilia asked.

“Yeah. Sometimes I even use words like ‘gifted.’”

Emilia pointed at him. “You’re not God, you’re the Devil.”

He snort-laughed, another not-very-God-like thing to do, but Emilia was liking the guy and couldn’t help but smile.

“How about this? I’ll give you a free drink every time you have accurately described the next person through the door.” She looked at her watch. “We’re due to get a little busier about now, so you’ll have to keep up.”

“Deal,” he said. “Young businessman type.” The next through the door was a guy with his jacket slung over his shoulder, talking on his phone.

“OK, we are downtown, so that was a given,” Emilia said. But she set a fresh screwdriver in front of him.

The old dude smiled. “Three guys still wearing their neon safety vests, fresh from road work.”

He was right. Then he accurately predicted the two women, nicely dressed, then a guy with a service dog, then three men, then a woman in jeans with a fashionable blowout. It went on and on.

“Are you predicting this, or are you causing these people to come in?” Emilia had stopped setting out screwdrivers a while back but had assured him he still had several coming.

The old dude nodded to the TV. “Traffic helicopter crash.” Within a minute, the news anchor broke into the weather report with footage of a copter crash-landing on a helipad in Indianapolis.

"You said you’re not killing people,” she said, her eyes on the screen.

“We have an update to this story,” the blonde co-anchor said in a relieved tone. “Our sister station in Indianapolis reports that, miraculously, no one was seriously injured in that chopper crash.”

“Miraculous,” the old dude snorted.

Emilia took a breath. “So does God just hang out in bars every afternoon, or is this a special occasion?”

God smiled. “Special occasion.”

“You meeting someone?”

He nodded at her and she stiffened.

“So this is it, then?” Emilia said. “I’m gonna die. You’re here to collect me and take me to … heaven?” She thought for a second. “Heaven doesn’t track as a final reward for me, if I’m being honest.”

He shook his head. “You’re not dying. I don’t do that anyway. I have people who do that.”

The TV news was replaying the sneezing incident.

“If you’d had my power,” he said. “Would you have done what you said I should do? Would you really have given him a heart attack?”

Emilia looked at him for a long minute. “No. Maybe. Hell, I don’t know.” She took a breath. “I probably shouldn’t wish death on anybody. Hey, what do you mean, if I had your power?”

He ignored her question. “Or if you had my power, would you use it to save people?”

“But you didn’t answer me.”

“Step out on the sidewalk.” He nodded toward the door.Emilia moved around the end of the bar.

“Before you step out there, you should know that every time – every single time – you use this gift, you might die.”

She frowned.

“You’ll never know if the next time you save someone will be the end for you.”

Emilia felt like she was in a fog. She walked to the door and opened it.

From the sidewalk, she could see how fast traffic was moving. Cars were blowing past. Trucks trundled at a fast clip. At the corner, a woman and a little girl waited for a walk signal.

But the little girl, with braids and wearing what must have been her favorite dress, didn’t wait. She stepped off the curb and into the path of a truck. Her mother screamed.

Emilia couldn’t say later what went through her mind, but the girl floated – there was no other word for it – above the truck. The driver had jammed the brake through the floorboard and his tires screamed but he couldn’t stop the truck, which slid past the corner.

The girl floated, a look of surprise on her face, above the truck. Emilia thought about the girl in her mom’s arms and she drifted down into her agitated mother’s grasp. They hugged and huddled on the sidewalk while the truck driver stood over them, laughing and crying and thanking, well, God.

Emilia felt her way back through the door and saw God studying her.

“You did good,” he said. “Do a lot of that and not too much causing heart attacks, even for assholes, OK? I got people who take care of that too.”

“Was … was this a test?” Emilia asked.

God eased off the stool. “Yeah.” He took out a wad of bills, but Emilia waved him off.

“What am I supposed to do now?” she asked.

He dropped a $20 on the bar. “Let me leave a tip at least.”

“But what am I supposed to do?”

God smiled. “Do what you think is right. Save people. Remember, you don’t know how many of those you got in you before your expiration date.”

“But you know, don’t you?” Emilia said.

God nodded. “Yeah, I know. You don’t have to skimp.” He opened the door. “I’ll see you next month.”

THE END

BIO: Keith Roysdon is a Tennessee writer whose 1984-set high school crime novel THAT OCTOBER was published in June 2025. He was a newspaper reporter and editor in Indiana for 40 years, beginning in high school. His short fiction has been published in anthologies and on many sites and his news and pop culture articles have been published on sites like CrimeReads. This week he began duties in the editorial division of Constellate Creatives, helping writers achieve their goals.