Worst Thing in the Universe

By Russell Nohelty

Albert Ross is the most miserable, pathetic, and terrible thing in the entire universe. He is reviled by many, most of all God. 

 

Albert Ross is an anomaly. Karma doesn't think anything he does is wrong. It's a glitch in the universe that God can't fix. Every trillion or so births in the universe, there is a karmic anomaly. 

 

That's not to say karma doesn't have its retribution. For every horrible act Albert Ross commits, karma punishes Vikram Suresh. Poor, sweet Vikram. 

 

He doesn't know why his life is so horrible. He doesn't know why the universe is unkind. 

 

It's unkind because of Albert Ross. 

 

That is the crux of the karmic anomaly. Karma thinks everything that Albert Ross does is actually carried out by Vikram Suresh. 

 

What a horrible lot in life. 

 

That's why Vikram kills himself. It usually doesn't matter when a poor, miserable schlub dies, but this death has instant ramifications. 

 

With his death, Karma can instantly see Albert Ross again and realizes its mistake. Like a rubber band, all the horrible things that Albert's ever done slingshot back to him at once. 

 

And God watches with glee as karma has its revenge. 

 

Worst Thing in the Universe is narrated by God, as he pontificates on the horrible fate of Vikram Suresh, expounds on the nature of the universe, and explores the flaws in the whole system. 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Russell Nohelty
• Release date: Jul 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393034414

Russell Nohelty

Russell Nohelty is a USA Today bestselling author, publisher, and speaker. He runs Wannabe Press (www.wannabepress.com), a small press that publishes weird books for weird people. Russell is the author of Gumshoes: The Case of Madison’s Father and My Father Didn’t Kill Himself, along with the creator of the Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter, Gherkin Boy, Pixie Dust, and Katrina Hates the Dead graphic novels. He also edited the Monsters and Other Scary Shit and Cthulhu is Hard to Spell anthologies, which both raised over $25,000 on Kickstarter. To date, Russell Nohelty has raised over $100,000 on Kickstarter across eight projects.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

WHEN I FINISHED THE first chapter of this book, I turned to my wife and said, You have to read this and tell me if I’m crazy. Is this one of the most fucking unbelievable first chapters of a book ever or is it just me? It was one of those rare moments of inspiration you only get a couple of times in your life. Luckily, that spark continued on throughout the rest of the book.

I’m not a writer who hates his work, either. I usually enjoy reading my words as long as I’ve had a couple of months’ distance from the time I wrote them. However, this book is especially fun to read for me, even against the rest of my canon.

I didn’t have an outline. I just had an idea. What if God gleefully watched somebody he hated get destroyed by karma for 300 pages? That was a fun as fuck premise to write, complete with all the things I love: sacrilege, blasphemy, sci-fi, karma, and comeuppance for corporation shills.

Since the entire book was written from God’s point of view, I was able to go everywhere from the beginning of time to the distant future and to the furthest reaches of the galaxy. I was able to dissect why God exists and how it’s possible he can be such a fucking asshat even if he’s supposedly omnipotent and omnibenevolent.

The words flew off the page. I completed the first draft of this book in a few weeks and went back assuming it would suck. I mean, honestly, you just can’t write a good book without at least a loose outline.

Except that it was good, really fucking good. I loved it even in crappy, first draft form.

Obviously, it had some flaws that needed to be buffed out...it probably still does, honestly. But I knew it was special even then. While my previous books dealt with the drama of one family and one person, this one expanded that perspective into infinity.

Yet, it was somehow still just about a couple of people.

It’s about God, and his flawed quest to understand humanity. It’s about Albert Ross, the richest man in the world, who suffers worse than any human in history.

It’s about Vikram Suresh, as he comes to terms with his own death and the fact he was a pawn in the universe’s game. It’s about Sasha Suresh, who has to overcome her husband’s death and find the strength to move on without him. And it’s about Rebecca Suresh, as she grows from a naïve girl into a capable woman.

Unlike my previous work, I set Worst Thing in the Universe far into the distant future. By doing that, I was able to comment on everything I hate and love about humanity without it feeling too close to reality.

In setting a large part in Heaven, I was able to come to terms with my own feelings of death and mortality. I’ve always believed I would die at 35, and that belief drove me to be as productive as possible in the first 34 years of my life.

This book allowed me to deal with my fears of death and what happens when you die, all with the fantastically weird feel of a Kurt Vonnegut, Alice Sebold, or Chuck Palahniuk book.

This book is equally a tiny story about those people and an epic about the fate of the universe. It’s tragic and heartbreaking in one moment, then deeply funny the next. At moments, it’s hard to read. Other moments, it’s impossible.

There are moments in this book so gut wrenching that I couldn’t stand to keep editing for weeks on end. Thinking about them now, years later, still gives me a lump in my throat.

Then, there are pages of immense humor and love. It’s as complicated and messy as life and I love every page of it so much that I actually wrote this introduction, which I never do.

I’m going to stop gushing about it now, so you can read it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

I will say, that there is a moment in the first two chapters that is so horrible that you might want to put the book down. I apologize for it in advance. However, in my quest to make the universe’s worst being, I had to make him do some vile things.

Truly evil, honestly.

ZERO

ALBERT ROSS IS, BY all accounts, a schmuck. Not even a little bit of a schmuck; a massive schmuck; a colossal schmuck; the schmuckiest schmuck that ever schmucked. 

I should know, I created him.

They say an all knowing, all powerful, omniscient, omnibenevolent being can’t hate, but that’s crazy. I hated Albert Ross from the moment his mother shat him onto her hospital bed and onward into his adulthood. I molded him from the ooze and muck of nothingness. I willed him into existence. I gave him the gift of life. He repaid me by being the most dreadful thing in the universe.

It’s not like I never gave him a chance to be decent – and it’s not like decent is too much to ask.

I gave him several Dare to be Great! moments in his miserable life: the raging kitchen fire of his youth - he walked past without a second thought; the hover car accident of his burgeoning adolescence - he watched unfazed; even the choking infant in the booth next to him in his late 20s – at every single chance he scoffed and turned away, content with his worthless life in his worthless time.

WHAT WAS HIS TIME YOU might ask? It would be easier to tell you when his time wasn’t. Being an omniscient, omnipresent being I don’t get hung up very much on dates, times, eras, or epochs.

IT WAS A VERY, VERY, very long time after dinosaurs, and wooly mammoths, and the pyramids (which were created by really, really hard work and not at all by aliens. Long ago, aliens deemed Earth a worthless rock of a planet and quarantined it off from the galaxy).

It was long after a group of religious zealots claimed that my son walked the earth, healed the sick, yet strangely didn’t cure cancer – which didn’t make any sense. My son would be a rock star, if I had a son that is. I guess I technically have quadrillions of sons and daughters, but that’s beside the point.

It was a short time after the invention of something called the printing press – of course a short time could be thousands or millions of years or a couple of minutes. I just don’t care enough to figure that out.

It was some time after a man named Hitler slayed millions of my followers, and another man named Stalin slaughtered millions more, and a chairman named Mao slayed even more, yet the latter two went largely unreported in most history textbooks for some reason. It was after the invention of the hover car, and the hover board, and the hover house. Though, I never understood why hovering was so fantastic. I like my feet on solid ground, or solid cloud as the case may be.

It was probably around... seven? If I had to give it a time in the world, I would say seven. I would not say 42, because that is the answer to another much more important question; perhaps the most important question.

ALBERT ROSS WALKED the planet in days well past humanity’s idealistic phase and well into their destruction of the planet phase. They inhabited all the lands, mined every natural resource, and killed everything that stood in their way. Their cities stretched across the horizon, and their locust-like swarms infected every corner of my once perfect planet.

Their palaces kissed the sky—no, not kissed, more than that – they made out with the sky – no, they got all up in the sky’s junk. Buildings and the sky got freaky deeky for lack of a better term. I know all the slang, being the creator of the universe and everything, so you can believe that’s the best one.

Their numbers doubled, tripled, quadrupled, and eventually dodecatripled the world’s carrying capacity. Humanity raided the seas, the land, the skies, and finally each other for the small yields of crops and livestock that remained.

They slaughtered every semblance of wildlife, then domesticated life, then sentient life, until such a time when their hunger pangs ignited all-out war. And that war led to the carpet bombing of—. You know what? I’ve said too much. Let’s just say eventually the world’s carrying capacity corrected itself.

I TEND TO SAY TOO MUCH. It’s a bad habit. I see all things at all times. I see every moment of every life of every molecule I’ve ever created. It’s so hard for me to focus on any one problem. My therapist says it’s my second most pressing issue; that I don’t see the forest for the trees. She also says I have a God complex. Gah duh.

I grew detached from the world; from the universe. I was bitter, jaded, and lacked perspective.

My therapist suggested I focus on one single point; one moment; one single person in one single instant in time. She said that it would help my focus. She said it would teach me empathy.

I DON’T THINK I HAVE an empathy problem – anymore. I used to have an empathy problem. There was a time I empathized with everything; when every single solitary creature, big and small, had a little voice in my head; when ninety dodecatrillion little voices sang through my head every moment of every day.

They were horrible, miserable terrible thoughts, those of the galaxy. For every selfless prayer, four selfish ones whizzed through, for every act of kindness, I heard ten acts of vengeance. ZOMG there was sooo much empathy it was coming out my ears.

THAT’S WHEN I SNAPPED. I spoke to people through muted whispers and revealed myself through burning bushes for fun. I sent floods and volcanos and all sorts of horrible things down on my creations throughout the galaxy – decimated my imperfect creations.

Those were the days of my psychotic break. But, I’m better now that I’ve shut out the voices. I’m much, much better now that I’ve stopped focusing on the individual problems of the people of the universe and more on the task of managing the universe.

I mean managing the universe is THE big job, the biggest job out there right? Plus, it’s easier to sleep at night when you don’t think about the trillions that died miserably and unjustly that day.   

I do realize that it made me cold and unfeeling. Unmovable. My psychologist didn’t like that one bit. How can you be a compassionate god, if you can’t feel anything for your creations?

How can you be a sane god, I responded, if you do.

WE WERE AT A STANDSTILL and remained there for a long while. Back and forth we went for an eon or two, until I finally relented. Truth be told, I kind of missed the voices, but I couldn’t let them all back in at once. I couldn’t handle that much hate and pain.

I could, though, focus on one moment in time and one person. I could focus on one miserable person. If I could let him in, if he could prove to me that he had even a single iota of goodness in him, maybe I could open the floodgates.

I DECIDED ON ONE MAN: Albert Ross. He would decide whether the rest of humanity was worth my compassion. It was all up to Albert Ross; a single man; a single, horrible, little man. Of all the people on the planet, and I can’t emphasize this enough...he was the literal worst.

I have the charts to prove it. At every moment, statistically, there must be one worst and one best being. Empirically, it has to happen. I shouldn’t have to explain that to you in any greater detail. I made your brain smart enough to get that little concept.

You are ranked from one to infinity depending on how many of you creatures inhabit the world in any one moment.

Dogs are ranked on their own chart. Cats too. Rocks, and every manner of stuff are as well. All the things are ranked. Angels liked ranking stuff. They’re kind of stats freaks.

Humans, cats, dogs, rocks, and alien life are all jumbled together and ranked in one long infinite chart too; every second of every day. Humans do NOT fare well with the rest of the universe... or the rest of the planet for that matter.  

People fluctuate from nanosecond to nanosecond depending on a lot of factors: success, height, weight, ability to spit a loogie onto a ceiling and have it stay for a long, long time, etc. etc. etc. There are infinite factors that go into every calculation, and those calculations are run infinite times a second.

And for thirty-seven nanoseconds, Albert Ross was the worst thing in the universe – fifteenth longest time in human history. Right behind Hitler, Stalin, and Leopold II, and far behind the Chairman. Those charts go back to the dawning of humanity.  And back even further to the birth of the universe and even beyond that.

THAT’S THE MOMENT I chose Albert Ross to focus on; that moment where he became the most worthless. I chose this worthless, useless, miserable thing as my single point in time to study, mostly to piss off my psychologist, but also to prove a point. If there is any good in humanity, it would present itself in every human, even the worst one in the entire universe, by a factor of a thousand.

If even Albert Ross could have a shred of human decency, then there was hope for everything in the entire universe and maybe – just maybe – I could let the voices back in.

ONE

ALBERT ROSS OPENED his worthless, miserable, wretched eye the morning after his 15th place bout of debauchery. It would be impressive if it wasn’t so revolting. Only 14 people in the entirety of human history topped his level of depravity – mass murdering dictators and serial killers of the highest order topped that list.

Righteous people would throw themselves into a meat grinder if they plunged the depths Albert Ross called home. They would jump head first off a diving board into an empty pool, before they could even think about the contemptible web of lies and secrets Albert Ross wrapped himself in for warmth and comfort.

ALBERT ROSS WALKED into his bathroom and downed the last swig of tequila to wash the morning breath off his forked tongue. He smacked his lips together once, twice, three times, before he shook his hair loose in the mirror.

Albert drew his fingers across the dark bags protruding under his beady, soulless eyes. Night after night of womanizing, boozing, and cavorting with the unsavoriest of characters took their toll on his skin. The same skin that on the first night of his most recent bender felt smooth and supple, bulged and bumped on the thirtieth, a sign of all the forgotten debauchery in which he had partaken.

Albert examined his pasty, dewy skin. He then drew his lips back exposing his teeth. The lethal concoction of poisons he injected, snorted, and sucked down took their toll on his once pristine teeth, turning them a dark sackcloth shade of urine – the same color as the urine he pissed after his dehydrating month long bender. He missed the bowl entirely and pissed on a stack of Titties Magazines, the last true vestiges of printed media, with their letters to the editor somehow passing for intelligent discourse.

Fuck, he mumbled through his parched throat. He grabbed the nearest bottle and took another swig. It was filled with more urine.

Fuck! He threw the bottle across the room. It smacked the corpse of a Parisian parakeet, sacrificed on the great alter of tomfuckery.

SOMEBODY HAD TO CLEAN up all the piss, shit, and miscellany scattered around the bedroom. It wasn’t going to be him though. He’d never lifted a finger for an honest day’s labor his entire life. Money bred laziness, which then bred contempt, which, in the end, devalued everything good and pure in the world; a fatal flaw in humanity. One of many.

IT WAS A FLAW THAT dated all the way back to that original, sodding arsehole Adam. He passed it on to his progeny. It grew stronger and stronger as generations of inbreeding passed along only the most deplorable qualities: greed, anger, lust, gluttony, envy, and wrath.

Weaker grew humanity’s redeeming qualities: justice, compassion, love, empathy, sympathy, charity, and chastity. Although, I totally agree with you on the last one. After the pill, why wouldn’t you fuck like bunnies? There’s a reason I made sex feel so fuckin’ good. 

ALBERT WALKED TO THE window of his opulent penthouse, passed the shimmering gilded pillars, and stepped up onto the veranda. From his balcony he took in the amazing panoramic view of the entire city, his city.

He breathed in the soft, autumn air and smiled. It was not the smile of a man content with his life, or even a man that was truly happy. It was the sly, callow smirk of a man playing with house money.

I wanted to smack that smug, egotistical smirk off his face.

IN HINDUISM (THOUGH it exists in a whole grip of religions around the world like Buddhism, Shintoism, and Sikhism to name a few), there is a belief in Karma. If you’ve been living in the backwaters of a place called West Virginia and you refuse to acknowledge any country but the United States of America, any skin color but white, or any religion but Christianity as valid, then you might not have heard of it.

To the rest of you with an IQ over that of a potato and the intellectual curiosity of at least your average three-year-old, accept my apologies while I explain it to the dullard mouth breathers. Those of you who AREN’T mouth breathers, please scroll down past the italics.

For you dumb dumbs left, I’ll use small words that even you can understand. 

Karma is the idea that every action, both good and bad, will come back to you in kind; that there is a cosmic scoreboard keeping track of your good deeds and bad deeds. Like runs in baseball, that scoreboard will reward or punish you accordingly. Got it?

No?

You really are stupid. I regret very much creating you. Earl Hickey had a saying –

Fuck. That’s probably either before or after your time. It was a—you know what, not important. Do good things, good things happen. Do