The Jesus Machine

He had just put a quarter in the Jesus Machine
when the pile of dead used batteries vanished.
They had been there, a stack of them,
he remembered because he had just put
a new dead battery on top of them- It couldn’t
have been more than ten or fifteen minutes ago.
Now they were gone, just vanished, like his first wife.
Then with full force it struck him- he had not had a
newly deceased battery and he had not put one on a
stack of old dead ones- he recalled instantly that he
had never had a wife. He had never been married.
He walked hastily to his ‘Important Papers’ file
cabinet and looked under the ‘Personal History.’
His birth certificate was gone, disappeared- and
then he remembered suddenly the path to paradise,
laughing as he saw his left foot evaporate and the
leg above begin to vanish.